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Infinite riches in a little room.—CHRISTOPHER MARLow E.
AMERICANIZED

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
REVISED AND AMENDED.
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES AND LITERATURE
TO WPHICH IS ADDED
BIOGRAPHIES OF LIVING SUBJECTS
96 COLORED MAPS
AIN D
NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS.
WOL. I.-A—AU D.
CHICAGO :
BELFORD–CLARKE CO., PUBLISHERS.
189C).
COPYRIGHT,
BELFORD-CLARKE CO.,
1890.
PRINTED AND BounD BY ILLINOIS PRINTING AND BINDING CO.
91--> 0 +6
ſ — ( (c. 4 (2
PREFACE.
THE compilation of an encyclopaedia may be fairly regarded as one of those
“inventions” that are said to be born of necessity. The march of science, the
growth of literature, the development of art, combine to demand an encyclo-
paedia. With the increase of stores comes the need of the store-house, with the
larger wealth of grain comes the necessity of a commodious granary. And this
is precisely what an encyclopaedia is — a store-house of knowledge, a granary of the
treasures of truth. The word encyclopaedia has a very wide significance. We are
greatly indebted to the dead languages of long ago for many of our best names
and clearest definitions. This word, for example, is composed of two Greek
words, ºtAos, a circle, and ſtatócia, instruction or knowledge. In the combination
of these two words we get this comprehensive word encyclopaedia, which means, the
circle of knowledge, the complete round of the arts, the sciences, and all literature.
Many centuries ago — long before the invention of the printing press — great
students felt the need of something like an encyclopaedia. Seneca complains of
the “ distraction ” that comes of a multitude of books; and, in effect, suggests
that every man should make his own encyclopaedia. “What is the use,” he asks,
“of countless books and libraries whose owner hardly reads through their titles in
his whole life? #: :8: $ We ought to imitate the bees, and to separate
all the materials which we have gathered from multifarious reading, for they keep
best separate ; and then by applying the study and ability of our own minds, to
concoct all those various contributions into one flavor.” These words were spoken
before the dawn of the Christian era, when reading was a luxury rather than a
habit, and books were among the costliest treasures men possessed. How much
more impressively would Seneca speak if he could witness the flood-tides of litera-
ture that in our age are pouring forth their treasures night and day without ceasing.
There are two forces at work in these days that tend to make a good encyclo-
paedia an indispensable possession. The first of these is the vast number of books
published, rendering it quite impossible for the most industrious student to keep
abreast of the literature of his time; and the next is the busy, restless character of
\ ( I )
11 & P R E F A C E .
©
the age, that absorbs so largely the energies of men in the acquirement of material
wealth, that they have but little time, and by reason of the weariness that comes
of overwork, but little inclination for literary pursuits. In this connection the
wonderful growth of literature in the past few years is well worth a moment's con-
sideration. In the full blaze of the noontide we are apt to forget the grayness of
the dawn; and in the prodigal richness of our literary possessions we are apt to
forget that it is not so very long since libraries were the luxuries of the rich, and
the books of the poor were few. It is within the remembrance of men now living,
when a dozen books would comprise the library of ordinary homes, but now the
households are few where there is not a moderate representation, at least, of gen-
eral literature. There is an embarrassment of poverty, and there is an embarrass-
ment of riches, and which of the two is most embarrassing it is not quite easy to
tell. In the matter of literature we are suffering most from the embarrassment of
riches. It is a pleasant thing to ramble along the banks of a river, but to stand
upon the shore of an illimitable sea inspires awe rather than gladness. And this
is exactly our case in the matter of books. They overflow all our banks of oppor-
tunity, they inundate us with their wealth. In support of this conclusion a few
figures relative to the great mass of books issued annually by the press of Europe
and America may be at once interesting and suggestive.
Literature has three distinct departments; the technical, the general, and the
ephemeral. Under the head of the technical, all works of reference are included,
such as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, lexicons, text-books, manuals, and the like.
These are for the university, the college, the high school, and the study. The in-
crease in this department is not, of course, very large, and yet the annual growth
of even technical literature is much greater than we commonly suppose. These
books are for study and consultation rather than for reading. Under the head of
general literature, the whole realm of books which people read, rather than study,
must be classed. Poetry, history, fiction, travel, biography, essays, and criticism
all come under this head. It is with this department of literature we are now deal-
ing. The ephemeral, which includes newspapers, magazines, reviews, and the like,
has perhaps hardly a just claim to be regarded as literature. The enormous quan-
tity of this class of work poured forth every day from the press, utterly defies all
attempt at tabulation. Concerning the output of general literature it is possible
to arrive at some approximate understanding. The number of new separate
books published in Europe and America annually, has been steadily on the in-
crease for the last twenty-five years, until now the press of Europe and America
issues more than 20,000 new works of general literature every year. The man
who boasts that he will keep abreast of current literature, is confronted with the
Herculean task of dealing annually with 20,000 books, to say nothing of the claims
of books of reference and ephemeral literature, which cannot be wholly set aside.
P. R. E. F. A C E . iii
Now, what are the possibilities for the most studious and industrious of men P
If we take these volumes as averaging the size of an ordinary book of about
three hundred pages, we shall be under rather than over the mark. The ordinary
reader will not read more than one such book a day, even if he should devote the
major portion of his time to the task. Now, let us give our diligent student his
Sundays free from reading, with a few days for holidays, and, at most, we find he
is able to get through three hundred volumes a year. No one will deny that the
reading of three hundred books a year represents good, hard, honest work, even
if the reader has little else to engross his attention. But the march of literature is
too much for him. He begins the race on the New Year's morning bravely; he
toils faithfully on through spring and summer, through seed-time and harvest, but
when the end of the year comes, he is nineteen thousand seven hundred books
behind, and the dawn of the new year brings him twenty thousand more | Let
us suppose this course of diligent reading to be pursued for the larger working
portion of a long life, say for fifty years. What then P Our untiring student has
read fifteen thousand books But literature — even if her pace has remained the
same — has beaten the student by nine hundred and eighty-five thousand volumes
There is no logic so stern and unbending as the logic of facts. And this set
of facts may well make a thoughtful man pause and wonder. What shall we do?
Because of the impossibility of dealing with this great mass of literature, shall we
give up in despair? Shall we refuse a well-chosen bouquet because we cannot
have all the flowers of the garden? Shall we decline to gaze upon the patient,
peaceful stars, because we can only see a few thousands, while uncounted millions
lie beyond the range of our vision? True wisdom suggests that we use the
winnowing fan with unsparing hand; that we let the chaff fly on the wings of the
wind, while we garner the finest of the wheat with jealous care. But after all our
winnowing, and care, and prudence, there must remain an enormous mass with
which we cannot deal. And it is just here where a comprehensive and reliable
encyclopaedia comes, if not to solve the whole problem at issue, at least to render
efficient and invaluable aid in circumstances environed with perplexities.
The Encyclopædia Britannica—of the latest and ninth edition, of which this
is a condensed, amended, and an Americanized edition, prepared at infinite cost
and labor for American people—is without controversy, the grandest monument
of scholarly research and patient endeavor in the whole realm of literature. It was
commenced in 1771, and was then composed of three volumes, and was little more
than a dictionary of arts and sciences. The first edition of the encyclopaedia
proper was issued in 1776, when historical and biographical subjects were added,
increasing the stately compilation from three to ten volumes. In 1797 the third
edition of eighteen volumes was issued. In 18 IO the fourth edition appeared,
composed of twenty volumes. The latest and ninth edition, of twenty-four
iv PR E F A C E .
volumes, was issued about fifteen years ago. It is this latest and most perfect
edition of this unparalleled work, born of the culture and genius of the best minds
of a century, that is here presented, having undergone the most thorough and
exhaustive revision and amendment, making it prečminently suitable for the
American people. The AMERICANIZED ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA contains all
that is important to know, in a nutshell—compact, reliable and intelligible. Here
is an entire library of knowledge; the realization of Christopher Marlowe's ideal
definition of a book : “ Infinite riches in a little room.”
There are certain special points of interest in this invaluable work to which it
is desirable to call particular attention :
I. In respect of the process of condensation. While there has been the utmost
care in the matter of condensation, there has been no elimination of subjects. Not
one subject has been left out. It is obvious, however, that many of the themes
discussed have a relative rather than universal interest. There are many matters
of interest to Europeans that cannot, in the nature of the case, have the same
interest for Americans. Many of the details of historic events that are probably
of great importance in a work distinctively Britannic, are not of equal importance
in a work distinctively American. For example, the English reader will be inter-
ested in all the details of the Battle of Waterloo, while the American reader will
be more concerned about the details of the Battle of Gettysburg, the decisive
battle of the War of the Rebellion. The work of condensation and the work of
amendment, have been wrought with equal care, in order that nothing of Old
World interest might be omitted, and that due reference might be made to those
grand personages and events which have made the history of America the wonder
and admiration of the world.
One or two examples of the method of condensation will best indicate how
judiciously the work has been done. The examples are taken at random. The
first is the case of HERTFORDSHIRE. The County of Hertford, in the south of
England, is rich in romantic history that antedates the Christian era, all of which
is of great interest to the antiquarian. There are also matters of geography,
geology, population, products, political characteristics, etc., which are dealt with
in detail in the following article ; but these details, interesting as they may be to
English readers, cannot be equally interesting to Americans, and yet it will be
observed that in the condensed article on the opposite column, everything of
importance has been retained, and no salient point that could interest the general
reader has been eliminated. The second example is of an American city—MONT-
GOMERY, the capital of Alabama. In this case the order has been reversed. The
details that are of deepest interest to every American, not to be found in
the original edition, are fully supplied in the AMERICANIZED ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA.
PR E FA C E . V.
HERTFORD, County of, HERTFoRDSHIRE, or
HERTS, an inland county in the southeast of England,
is situated between 51° 36' and 52° 5' N. latitude and o”
13' E. and O9.45' W. longitude. It is bounded on the
north by Cambridgeshire, northwest by Bedfordshire,
east by Essex, south by Middlesex, and southwest by
Buckinghamshire. The area comprises 391, 141 acres
or 61 I square miles.
The aspect of the county is pleasant and picturesque,
its surface being broken by gentle undulations which in
some parts form a quick succession of hills and valleys.
The highest summit is Kensworth Hill on the border of
Bedfordshire, about 91o feet above sea-level. Fine
oak and other trees are grown in the hedges, and from
being pruned obliquely they form high walls of living
timber shading narrow winding lanes. The arable and
pasture lands of the farms are intermingled with the
parks and ornamental woods of the country seats which
are scattered thickly throughout the county. These
features varied by its winding rivers, impart to it a
peculiar beauty, while in luxuriance it is not surpassed
by any county in England.
The principal rivers are the Lea, which, rising some
miles beyond Luton in Bedfordshire and entering Hert-
fordshire at Hidemill, flows southeast to Hatfield and
then east by north to Hertford and Ware, whence it
bends southward, and passing along the eastern bound-
ary of the county falls into the Thames a little below
London, having received in its course the Maram, the
Beane, the Rib, and the Stort, which all flow southward
in the northeastern part of the county, the Stort for
some distance forming the boundary between it and Es-
sex; the Colne, which, flowing through the southwest-
ern part of the county, falls into the Thames at Brent-
ford, having received in its course the Ver, the Bul-
borne, and the Gade; the Ivel, which, rising in the north-
west of the county, soon passes into Bedfordshire. The
New river, one of the water supplies of London, made
by Sir Hugh Myddleton (1607–13), has its source in
some springs near Ware, and runs parallel for many
miles with the Lea. The Grand Junction canal from
London to Birmingham traverses the southwest corner
of the county, passing by Watford and Berkhampstead.
There are mineral springs in the parishes of Chipping
Barnet, Northaw, and Watton.
Geologically the county consists of Cretaceous and
Tertiary rocks, the greater part being Lower, Middle,
and Upper Chalk, which in the southeastern part of the
county are covered by Tertiary deposits belonging to
the London basin. Over a large part of the eastern side
of the county there are superficial deposits of glacial
origin, and on the western side there are traces of the
Lower Tertiary beds having formerly extended over
a much wider area, outliers of the beds being of not in-
frequent occurrence, and the drift deposits on the chalk
hills being largely composed of their debris. The vales
traversed by the rivers and streams exhibit in the bot-
toms a rich sandy loam; the sloping sides are covered
by loams of in ſerior quality; and the flat surface of the
high ground is generally formed of a loam of reddish
hue tending toward common clay, with which it is often
confounded. -
The climate is mild, dry, and remarkably salubrious.
On this account the London physicians were accus-
tomed to recommend the county for persons in weak
health, and it was so much coveted by the noble and
wealthy as a place of residence, that it was a common
saying: “He who buys a home in Hertfordshire pays
two years’ purchase for the air.”
According to the agricultural returns for 1879, the total area of
arable land was 339,187 acres, of which 145,666 acres were under
corn crops, 39,443 under green crops, 38,416 under rotation grasses, l
HERTFORD, or Herts, an inland county of Eng-
land, lying north of Middlesex, south of Cambridge-
shire and Bedfordshire, and west of Essex. Its area is
391, 141 acres, all highly cultivated land, the county
being about equally divided between pasture and arable
farms. It is watered by numerous small streams, from
three of which, the Lea, the Colne, and the New river
(the latter an artificial conduit), part of the London
water supply is obtained. The subdued beauty of the
landscape and its contiguity to London have rendered
this county for many years a favorite residential district,
and it contains hundreds of country-seats of the nobility.
It is well-wooded and produces the best wheat in Eng-
land. Much of the land is used as market gardens, and
orchards are plentiful.
Farms average about 200 acres in extent, and cultiva-
tion is carried on with all modern improvements. Hert-
fordshire is traversed by four great trunk lines of rail-
road; the Great Eastern, the Great Northern, Mid-
land, and London and North-Western. The old Roman
roads to York, to St. Alban's and Bedford and to War-
wick, cross it, and its highways are among the best in
the kingdom. The Grand Junction canal passes through
its southwestern border and furnishes with its feeder,
the Colne river, water-power for hundreds of flour-
mills. Hertfordshire contains numerous breweries,
tanneries, tile works, and carriage factories. Its
principal manufactures are, however, silk, paper and
straw plait.
The county town is Hertford, population 8,000.
Other towns, ranging from 9,000 to 4,000, are St. Al-
bans, Hitchin, Watford, Bishop Stortford, Hemel-
Hempstead, Ware, Berkhampstead, Tring, and Bar-
net. The county returns three members to parliament,
and the borough of Hertford sends one. The popula-
tion, in 1889, was 203,069.
Hertfordshire is one of the most interesting counties
in England to the antiquary. Verulamium (now St.
Albans) was the capital of the Cassaii, whose chief Cassi-
velaunus was defeated by Caesar 54 B.C., and numerous
Roman earthworks are still visible. St. Alban, the
proto-martyr of Britain, suffered death at the city named
after him, and the abbey, still in magnificent preserva-
tion, was founded in 793 A. D. During the Wars of the
Roses two great battles were fought at St. Albans, and
at Barnet the Earl of Warwick was defeated by Edward
IV. Francis, Lord Bacon, lived at Gorhambury;
Queen Elizabeth at Hatfield House, the present seat of
the Marquis of Salisbury; William Cowper at Berk-
hampstead, and Lord Lytton at Knebworth.
V1 P R E F A U. E.
97,548 permanent pasture, and 18,111 fallow. The area under
woods was 20,714 acres. It will thus be seen that the main prod-
uce of Hertfordshire is corn. The principal crop is wheat,
which, in 1879, occupied 59,363 acres. The varieties mostly
grown are white, and they are not surpassed by those of any
county in England. Wheathampstead on the river Lea receives
its name from the fine quality of the wheat grown in that district
Of barley, which is largely made use of in the county for malting
purposes, there were 49,129 acres in 1879, and of oats only 25,779.
Little or no rye is grown, and of pease and beans together there
were in 1879, only a little over 11,000 acres. Of green crops, tur-
nips and swedes occupied in 1879 an area of 21,578 acres, while
potatoes had only 2,576. Vetches are largely grown for the Lon-
don stables, extending to 8,191 acres in 1879. The greater part
of the permanent grass is made use of for hay. There are some
very rich pastures on the banks of the river Stort, extending from
Hertford to Hockeril on the borders of the river Lea, and also near
Rickmansworth, where they are watered by the river Colne. The
percentage of cultivated area in 1879 was 86.7 instead of 85.1 in
1870. Of area under corn crops 37.2 instead of 38.5 ; under green
crops Io. I instead of 11.5; u..der rotation grasses 9.8 instead of
Io.2 ; and of permanent pasture 24.9 instead of 22.o. The most
common system of rotation is the five-course — turnips or fallow,
barley, clover, wheat, oats. In the southwest part of the county
large quantities of cherries and apples are grown for the London
market. On the best soils nearest to London culinary vegetables
are forced by the aid of rich manure, and more than one crop are
sometimes obtained in a year.
Generally speaking, the quantity of stock, kept is small. Not
much attention is paid to the breeds of cattle, but among cows
the Suffolk varie...y is the most common. The number of cattle
in 1879 was only 31,754, or an average of 9.3 to every roo
acres under cultivation, the average for England being 11.9, and
for the United Kingdom 21.5. Of these the number of cows in
milk or in calf was 11,802. The number of horses in 1879 was
15,022, or an average of 4.4 to every Ioo acres, the average for
England being 4.5 and for the United Kingdom 4.1. The horses
used for . agricultural purposes are cniefly Suffolk punches.
The number of sheep in 1879 was 171,133, or an average of 50.4
to every 1oo acres under cultivation, the average for England
being 75.3, and for the United Kingdom 68 o. The principal
kinds are the Southdowns and Wiltshire, and a cross between
Cotswolds and Leicesters. Pigs in 1879 numbered 30,404, or an
average of 8.9 to every Ioo acres under cultivation, the average
for England being 7.2, and that for the United Kingdom 6.7.
In Hertfordshire the number of resident proprietors is very
large, which circumstance, as well as the proximity to London,
has doubtless, greatly aided the development of agricultural
enterprise. The average extent of the farms is about 200 acres,
and the modern improvements are everywhere adopted.
According to the return of owners of land for 1872–73, the soil
was divided among 12,387 proprietors, holding land the gross
annual rental of which was £1,103,192. Of the owners 77 per
cent. held less than one acre, and the total annual value for the
county was £2 17s. 3% d. per acre. There were only eight pro-
Fº who held upward of 4,000 acres, viz., Marquis of Salis-
ury, Hatfield, 13,389; Abel Smith, Watton, Io,212; Earl Cow-
per, Panshanger, Io, 122; Earl of Verulam, Gorhambury, St.
Albans, 8,625; Earl Brownlow, Ashridge Park, 8,551; Lord
Dacre, The Hoo, Welwyn, 7, 1oo; Charles C. Hale, King’s
Walden, 6,558; and Earl of Essex, Cashiobury Park, Watford,
6,157. W. R. Baker, Bayfordbury, comes next with 3,911 acres.
The staple trade of the county is in corn and malt, most of
which is sent to the metropolis. There are numerous flour-mills,
as well as breweries, tanneries, tile-works and coach factories,
but the principal manufactures are paper, silk and straw plait.
Hertfordshire is so much intersected by railways that no place
in any part of the county is more than five miles distant from a
station. On the eastern border there is the Great Eastern, with
branches to Hertford and Buntingford. The middle of the
county is traversed by the Great Northern, with branches from
Hatfield to Hertford, Luton, Dunstable and St. Albans, and
from Hitchin to Royston, and thence to Cambridge. The Mid-
land passes through St. Albans, with branches to the Great
Northern and London and North-Western. The London and
North-Western traverses the southwestern corner.
The county comprises eight hundreds, and the municipal
buroughs of Hertford and St. Albans. The principal towns are
the municipal and parliamentary borough of Hertford (municipal
borough, 7,169), the city of St. Albans (8,298), Hitchin (7,630),
Watford (7,461), Bishop Stortford (6,250), Hemel-Hempstead
(5,996), Ware (4,917), Berkhampstead (4,683), Tring (4,045), Bar-
net (3,720). For parliamentary representation the county is an
undivided constituency, and returns three members, while one
member is returned for the borough of Hertford. Hertfordshipe
is in the southeastern circuit. There were formerly two courts
of quarter sessions, one for the county and one for the liberty of
St. Albans, which liberty had also a separate commission of the
peace, but the county and the liberty are now amalgamated,
though prisoners are tried both at Hertford and St. Albans. The
jail for the county is at the latter city. The county is divided
P R E F A C E .
into fifteen petty sessional divisions, and for some purposes into
two divisions, those of Hertford and the liberty of St. Albans.
The boroughs of Hertford and St. Albans have commissions of
the peace. Ecclesiastically the county is in the diocese of St.
Albans, and contains 138 civil parishes, townships or places, as
well as palts of other parishes extending into adjoining counties.
The total population in 1871 was 192,226, of whom 93,244
were males and 98,982 females. The population in 1861 was
173,280. Since the first census in 1801 it has increased by 94,833,
or 97 per cent.
History and Antiquities.—Previous to the Roman invasion
the Celtic inhabitants of Hertfordshire, as of the other parts of
South Britain, had been subdued by the Belgae. In 54 B.C.
Cassivelaanus, the chief the Cassii, led an army to oppose
Caesar, but he was defeated, and his capital Verulam, near the
present town of St. Albans, taken. At Verulam and Berkhamp-
stead traces of ancient British works may yet be seen; and it
has been conjectured that British stations existed at Royston,
Braughing, and various other places in the county. Numerous
British coins have been found at Verulam. Three principal
British roads or trackways crossed the county: Watling, Street
passed through its southwest corner in a northwest direction by
St. Albans to Dunstable; Ermine Street entered the southeast
corner at Little Hookgate, whence it proceeded by Gough’s Oak
and Broxbourne Bury to Ware, holding thence much the same
course as the present road by Buntingford to Royston; Icknield
Street, from Dunstable to Royston, crossed the northwest corner.
There are numerous barrows at Royston, and along the range of
chalk hills at thre northern edge of the county. Hertfordshire
was the scene of an important part of the struggle carried on
against the Romans by Caractacus about 44 A. D.; and during
the rebellion of Boadicea the Romans were defeated on the road
from Verulam to Colchester, and Verulam itself was taken and
devastated by the Britons. The shire was included within the
Roman province of Flavia. Among the Roman stations within
its limits were the capital Verulamezuma, which the Romans re-
built and fortified; Forum2 Diazza, not far from Dunstable; Ad
A'izzes, supposed to have been near Braughing, where there are
remains of a vallum with fosse; and probably others at Royston
and Bishop Stortford. Watling Street and Ermine Street were
causewayed as Roman roads, and other branch roads traversed
the county in various directions. Roman antiquities have been
found at Verulam, Braughing, Royston, Wilbury Hill (where
there are remains of an ancient camp), Cheshunt, Hemel-Hemp-
stead, and Bishop Stortford. After the conquest of England by
the Anglo-Saxons, Hertfordshire was included partly in
Mercia and partly in Essex. It was the scene of frequent con-
tests between the Saxons and the Danes. In 896 the Danes,
having anchored their vessels in the Lea near the town of Ware,
laid siege to Hertford, whereupon Alfred the Great, by dividing
the stream into three channels, stranded their vessels and com-
pelled them to retreat to the Severn. After the battle of Senlac
in Iof6, William the Conqueror, in order to force the earls to
hurry home from London to their earldoms, crosssa the Thames
at Wallingford and marched into Hertfordshire, where at Berk-
hampstead an attempt was made by the abbot of St. Albans to
stop his course by cutting down the trees; and at a meeting of
nobles held at the town he took an oath to rule according to the
ancient laws and customs of the country. The subsequent events
of historic importance connected with the county are the capture
of Hertford castle by the revolted barons under the French dau-
phin, December 6, 1216; the battle between the royalists and the
the armies of the White Rose at St. Albans, May 22, 1455, in
which Henry VI. was wounded and taken prisoner, a second
battle near St Albans, February 17, 1461, in which the earl of
Warwick was defeated by Queen Margaret: the defeat near
Barnet of the earl of Warwick by Edward IV., April 14, 1471;
and the arrest by Cromwell of the high sheriff of the county as he
was proceeding to St. Albans for the purpose of proclaiming by
order of Charles I. that all the Parliamentary commanders were
rebels and traitors.
Among the objects of antiquarian interest may be mentioned
the cave of Royston, re-discovered in 1742, doubtless at one time
used as a hermitage, and containing rude carvings of the cruci-
fixion and other sacred subjects; Waltham cross, in the pointed
style of architecture, (restored in 1833), erected to mark the spot
where rested the body of Eleanor, Queen of Edward I , on its
way to Westminster for interment; and the Great Bed of Ware
referred to in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Wight, for many years
shown to visitors at the Crown Inn of that town, and in Sep-
tember, 1864, put up to auction at the Saracen's Head for roo
guineas and bought in. The principal monastic buildings are
the noble pile of St. Albans abbey, founded about 793 in honor
of the great Christian martyr of Great Britain; the remains of
Sopwell Benedictine nunnery near St.Albans, founded in 114o;
the remains of the priory of Ware, dedicated to St. Francis, and
originally a cell to the monastery of St. Ebrulf, at Utica in Nor-
mandy; and the remains of the priory at Hitchin built by
Edward II. for the White Carmelites. Among the more inter-
esting churches may be mentioned those of Abbots Langley and
emel-Hempstead, both of late Norman architecture; Baldock,
P R E F A C E .
a handsome Gothic building supposed to have been erected by
the Knights Templars in the reign of Stephen; Royston, formerly
connected with the priory of the canons regular; Hitchin, built in
the fifteenth century on the site of an older structure, with a fine
porch in the perpendicular style and an altar piece by Rubens;
Hatfield, dating from the thirteenth century; Berkhampstead,
chiefly in the perpendicular style, with a tower of the sixteenth
century. The ruins of secular buildings of importance are the
massive remains of Berkhampstead castle, Hertford castle,
Hatfield palace, the slight traces at Bishop Stortford, and the
earthworks at Anstie. Of the , numerous mansions of interest
only a few can be mentioned: The Rye House, erected in
the reign of Henry VI., tenanted by Rumbold, one of the
principal agents in the plot to assassinate Charles II. ;
Moor Park, Rickmansworth, at one time the property of St.
Albans abbey, granted by Henry the VII. to John day Vere, earl
of Oxford, for some time in the possession of Cardinal Wolsey
and subsequently of the duke of Monmouth, who built, the
present mansion, which, however, after it was sold by the duchess
of Monmouth to Mr. Styles, was cased with Portland stone, and
received various other additions at a cost of 4, 150,000; Kneb-
worth, the seat of the Lyttons, originally a Norman fortress,
rebuilt in the time of Elizabeth in the Tudor style, and restored
in the present century; Hatfield House, the manor of which was
granted to the abbey of St. Ethelred at Ely by King Edgar, and
with the palace was made over to Henry VIII., from whose
reign it remained a royal residence until the time of James I.,
who exchanged it for the palace of Theobalds with Sir Robert
Cecil, afterward earl of Salisbury, by whom the present mansion
in the Elizabethan style was erected, being founded in 1611;
Panshanger House, now the principal seat of the Cowpers, a
splendid mansion in the Gothic style erected at the beginning
of the present century; Cashiobury House, the seat of the earls
of Essex, supposed to derive its name from the old British tribe
Cassii, and the manor of which was formerly held by the abbot
of St. Albans, rebuilt in the beginning of the present century
from designs by Wyatt, somewhat resembling those of Windsor
Castle; Gorhambury House, formerly the seat of the Bacons,
and the residence of the great chancellor, but rebuilt by the
Grimstons. Among the eminent persons connected with the
county were Nicholas Brakespeare (Pope Adrian IV.), Francis
Bacon, Sir John Mandeville, William Cowper, Charles Lamb,
and Lord Lytton. . - º
MONTGOMERY, a city of the United States, the
capital of Alabama, is built on a high bluff on the left
bank of the Alabama River, 158 miles northeast of
Mobile, with which it is connected by rail (180 miles)
and by steamboat service (330 miles). The State House,
rebuilt in 1851 at a cost of $75,000, occupies a com-
manding site on Capitol Hill. There are a city hall, a
court-house, and two theaters; a large flour mill, a
cotton factory, two oil mills, a fertilizer factory, and
several foundries and machine shops. The population
was 16,713 in 1880; and in consequence of the marked
increase in commercial and industrial activity since that
date, it is now (1883) estimated at 19,000. Founded in
1817, and named after Gen. Richard Montgomery
(1736–1775) the town of Montgomery became, in 1847,
the seat of the State government instead of Tuscaloosa.
From February, 1861, to March, 1862, it was the capi-
tal of the Southern Confederation. In 1865 it was
seized by the Federal forces under General Wilson.
MONTGOMERY, the county seat of Montgomery
county and capital of the State of Alabama, stands on
the left bank of the Alabama river, on a pleasant, hilly
site, 175 feet above sea-level. It is 158 miles northeast
of Mobile, and has steamboat connections with that city
and the Gulf of Mexico. Six railway lines pass through
or have their termini in Montgomery, thus making it
the receiving and distributing center for a large section
of productive country. The city was founded in 1817,
and was named after Gen. Richard Montgomery, who
was killed at Quebec in 1775. In 1847 the State capi-
tal was transferred from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery,
where a State capitol, one of the handsomest in the
South, was erected for the accommodation of the execu-
tive and legislature. Other important buildings are the
Federal offices and postoffice, the Masonic temple, two
fine theaters, and thirteen hotels. There are two na-
tional and five other banks. The city has a first-class
fire department, maintained at an expense (1889) of
$10,192. The police department consists of twenty-six
officers and men, and cost $24,037 in 1889. The city
has grown very rapidly since the war, and now has a
population (1890) of 30,000. Its bonded debt is $722,-
oSo; annual receipts for 1889 were $336,424, expendi-
tures during same period, $267,789. There is a good
public-school systèm, with an appropriation last year of
$20,410, and expenditures of $57,417. There are five
schools, three for whites and two for blacks, with an en-
rollment of 992 white and 543 colored pupils. Pickett
Springs/Park, four miles from the court-house, is the
principal park, and there is a handsome city cemetery.
Montgomery is notable in history as the city in which
on February 4, 1861, delegates of the seceding States
met to organize the Confederacy. Howell Cobb pre-
sided, and on the 9th the convention organized a Pro-
visional Government under the title of “the Confederate
States of America.” Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi,
and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia. were respect.
P R E F A C E . IX
wº
ively elected Provisional President and Vice-President
of the newly-constituted government. Montgomery be-
came the capital of the Confederacy, and so remained
until the seat of government was transferred to Rich-
mond, Va.
2. Another important point worthy of careful notice, is the attention paid in
this work to the life and work of men still living. The original Encyclopaedia
Britannica made it a rule not to deal biographically with living men, proceeding,
probably, on the theory that a story ought to be finished before it is told. It is
not designed to discuss the wisdom of this policy. A shrewd critic has said that
“it is the good fortune of many dogs to be transformed into lions when they are
dead.” Solomon said, “A living dog is better than a dead lion.” The AMERICAN-
IZED ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA has pursued another course. It deals with living
leaders of men the wide world over—leaders in all departments of life —legisla-
tors, judges, religious teachers, authors, artists, men of science, travelers, political
and Social reformers, and the great host of noble men and women whose lives exalt
and enrich the age in which they live. -
This course is taken, not because it is thought to be due to the living not to
be wholly ignored while they live, and then unduly magnified when they are dead;
but because of the conviction that there is a growing spirit of appreciation among
the people at large of great and worthy men and women. The lives of legislators
and statesmen, of poets and painters, of the thinkers and toilers, of philanthropists
and social reformers, are precious in the sight of the people, and they desire, from a
motive somewhat higher than mere curiosity, to know all that can be wisely told of
the great men and women of the hour.
3. Another point of importance in connection with the AMERICANIZED ENCY-
CLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA is the fact that it is now more than fifteen years since the
first volume of the ninth and latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was
issued. Those years have been among the most stirring times of the history of
America and of the world. The years of the nineteenth century grow richer in
events of transcendent interest as that century draws nearer to its close. This
work — to use a phrase that is somewhat crude, but has the advantage of being
thoroughly intelligible — is compiled “up to date,” and may therefore indulge the
claim of being a faithful chronicler of current events. It is rich in brief records of .
the important doings of the hour. It deals not only with what has been, but with
what is. The growth, the development, the changes that fill these modern days
with new meanings, are not permitted to pass unnoticed in these pages.
4. It is hardly necessary to say that, in the very important tasks of revising,
condensing and amending, men of the very highest ability have been engaged,
who have devoted themselves to their work with an enthusiasm only equaled by
their untiring patience; impelled, no doubt, by the conviction that it was well worth
while to consecrate skill and labor and time without measure, on a work that when
y
X P R E F A C E .
completed will not only be a monument of cultured toil, but one of the grandest
literary treasures of the age, and a priceless legacy to America for all coming
years. Of all work of brain or tongue, of hand or pen, such a work as the
AMERICANIZED ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA should be done well or not at all.
The toilers on this masterpiece of compact and concentrated knowledge have brought
rare ability to their tasks, at which they have patiently wrought to the last particle
of their power. !
5. Special attention has been paid in this work to the rise and growth of
cities; a subject as interesting as it is important in a land where the sudden birth
and wonderful growth of a community, is coming to be, not the exception, but almost
the general order. America has seen the fulfillment, in spirit, at least, of the
promise of the Hebrew seer: “A nation shall be born in a day.” In more than
one instance this country has seen a community Spring up in a single generation,
greater than Rome could boast in her most palmy days. An encyclopaedia to be
worthy of the name must keep careful record of these marvels of civic growth.
This work takes in its wide sweep the whole of North America.
6. In consonance with the general plan of this great work, especial attention
has been devoted to the development of scientific research and commercial prog-
ress in the United States during the last ten years. All statistics of population,
exports, imports and manufactures have been brought up to date, and the most
recent improvements in all branches of mechanics and applied science, such as the
telephone, electric light, etc., as well other results of inventive genius, have been
carefully noted.
7. In the special article upon the UNITED STATES the most recent data upon
all these and cognate subjects will be found grouped. The multitude of new in-
ventions, and the rapid movement of events has necessitated this arrangement,
and as an aid to the reader, a copious and exhaustive index to the whole article
upon the UNITED STATES will be found at the end of that article. By this
arrangement the reader will be able to refer to any of these subjects without the
slightest difficulty.
8. Another important element of worth in the AMERICANIZED ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA, is its fine array of maps. It is impossible to exaggerate the value of a
good set of maps in such a work as this. These maps, ninety-six in number, are
from the establishment of Rand, McNally & Co., who are universally acknowledged
to be the highest authorities on the subject. These maps have all been recently
revised. tº
It was thought not long ago that the only appropriate place for the
encyclopaedia was in the public library, or the libraries of universities and colleges,
and of those whose lives were devoted to education or to literature. But the world
moves on. The leaven of education has worked mightily. The homes that a
PR E F A C E . xi
generation ago were content with a handful of books and a weekly newspaper,
are now ambitious for a library if only of modest dimensions. And this ambition
will grow; the shadow does not go backward on the dial. The taste and culture
that demands a library will need an encyclopaedia. Public men, public teachers,
orators, writers, and all those engaged in any way in educational and literary
affairs.know that a good encyclopaedia is worth more than its weight in gold. But
an encyclopaedia need no longer be the luxury of the wealthy and the learned.
Every household in the land would be immeasurably richer in the possession
of the AMERICANIZED ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. In the ordinary course of
daily life, a thousand questions arise that are difficult to answer, and at best the
answers we get are little more than guesses. But this great treasure of knowledge
answers all questions reliably and with a ready will. In the better days at hand the
wise American will be content with furniture that is not of the carved and costly
sort, if perchance he may become possessed of that most desirable piece of
furnishing — for books are ever the best furniture — that combines the beautiful
and the useful — a copy of the AMERICANIZED ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA.
LIST OF MAPS
VOLUME I.
PAGE
AFRICA © C O º © © O © © o © © © O © O O O O O tº 8O
ALABAMA . . . . . . . . • - - - - - - - - - 157
ALASKA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
ALGERIA, Morocco, TUNIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I98
AMERICA (CENTRAL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
AMERICA (North) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
AMERICA (SOUTH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
ARGENTINE REPUBLIC, PARAGUAY, URUGUAV, CHILI . . . . . 477
ARIZONA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498
ARKANSAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
ASIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550
BIOGRAPHIES.
In Volume X. will be found biographical sketches of the following persons
not treated of in this volume, and not to be found in the English edition:
Abbot, Ezra.
Abbott, John S. C.
Abbott, Lyman.
Abdul-Hamid II.
Abercrombie, James.
Adams, Charles Francis.
Adams, Charles Francis, Jr.
Adams, Charles Kendall.
Adams, George Everett.
Adams, John Couch.
Adams, William Taylor.
Adler, Felix.
Agassiz, Alexander.
Agnew, D. Hayes. N
Aimard, Gustave.
Ainsworth, William Harrison.
Airy, Sir George Biddell.
Albani, Mme. (Marie Emma Lajeunesse).
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.
Albert, King of Saxony.
Alcott, Amos Bronson.
Alcott, Louisa May.
Aldrich, Nelson Wilmarth.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey.
Aldridge, Ira.
Alexander II., Emperor of Russia.
Alexander III., Emperor of Russia.
Alexander, Archibald.
Alexander, Stephen.
Alexander, William.
Alfonso XII., King of Spain.
Alger, Horatio.
Alger, Russell Alexander.
Allan, George William.
Allan, Sir Hugh.
Allen, Ethan.
Allen, William.
Allibone, Samuel Austin.
Allison, William B.
Alma-Tadema, Laurence.
Amadeus, Duke of Aosta.
Ames, Oakes.
Ampudia, Pedro de.
Andersen, Hans Christian.
Anderson, Galusha.
Anderson, Mary.
Anderson, Robert.
Andrassy, Count Julius.
Andrews, John Albion.
Andrews, Stephen Peari.
Andros, Sir Edmund.
Angear, John J. M.
Angell, James Burrill.
Anthony, Henry Bowen.
Anthony, Susan B.
Arabi Pasha, Ahmed El.
Argyle, Duke of.
Arista, Mariano.
Armitage, Edwin.
Armstrong, John.
Arnold, Arthur.
Arnold, Benedict.
Arnold, Sir Edwin.
Arnold, Isaac Newton.
Arnold, Matthew.
Arthur, Chester Alan.
Arthur, Timothy S.
Asbjörnsen, Peter Christen.
Asbury, Francis.
Atkinson, Edward
AMERICANIZED
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA.
V O L U M E I.
A
A THE first symbol of every Indo-European alpha-
3 bet, denotes also the primary vowel sound. This
coincidence is probably only accidental. The alphabets
of Europe, and perhaps of India also, were of Semitic
origin, and in all the Semitic alphabets except one, this
Same symbol (in modified forms) holds the first place; but
it represents a peculiar breathing, not the vowel a,--the
vowels in the Semitic languages occupying a subordinate
place, and having originally no special symbols. When
the Greeks borrowed the alphabet of Phoenicia, they
required symbols to express those vowels, and used for
this purpose the signs of breathings, and therefore needed
not to be preserved; thus the Phoenician equivalent of the
Hebrew aleph became alpha; it denoted, however, no
more a guttural breathing, but the purest vowel sound.
Still, it would be too much to assume that the Greeks of
that day were so skilled in phonetics that they assigned
the first symbol of their borrowed alphabet to the a-sound,
ôecause they knew that sound to be the most essential
vowel.
Now, we do not assert that there ever was a time when
a was the only existing vowel, but we do maintain that
in numberless cases an original a has passed into other
sounds, whereas the reverse process is exceedingly rare.
Consequently, the farther we trace back the history of
language, the more instances of this vowel do we find; the
more nearly, if not entirely, does it become the one start.
ing point from which all vowel sound is derived.
It is principally to the effort required to keep this sound
pure that we must attribute the great corruption of it in
all languages, and in none more than our own. Indeed,
in English, the short a-sound is never heard pure; it is
heard in Scotland, e.g., in man, which is quite different
from the same word on English lips. We have it, how-
ever, long in father, &c., though it is not common. It
has passed into a great many other sounds, all of which
are denoted in a most confusing way by the original sym-
bol, and some by other symbols as well.
As in English, so in Sanskrit, the short ah-sound was
Y.
lost, and was replaced regularly by tile IIeutral soullu, 111
Latin the sound was probably pure, both short and long,
and it has been preserved so in the Romance languages
down to the present day. In Greek there was consider-
able variation, proved in one case at least by a variation
of symbol; in Ionic a commonly passed into 1z, a symbol
which probably denoted the modern Italian open e, but
possibly the close e, that is, the English a in aże.
A is frequently used as a prefix in lieu of some fuller
form in old English. Thus it stands for the preposition
on (O.E. am) in azvay, again, afoot, asleep; for off in
adown (O.E. of dune); and seems to be intensive in
athirst (O.E. of thirst). Sometimes, especially with
verbs, it represents the old English á, which in old High
German appears as zer or er, and in modern German as
er, which signifies the completion of the action, as in
erwachen, to which awake corresponds.
The place that A occupies in the alphabet accounts
for its being much employed as a mark or symbol. It
is used, for instance, to name the sixth mote of the gamut
in music; in some systems of notation it is a numeral
(see ARItHMETIc); and in Logic it denotes a universal
affirmative proposition (see LoGIC). In algebra, a and
the first letters of the alphabet are employed to rep-
resent known quantities.
A was the first of the eight litera mundinales at
Rome, and on this analogy it stands as the first of the
seven Dominical letters.
It is often used as an abbreviation, as in A.D. for
anno domini, A.M. for ante meridiem, A.B. and A. M.
for artizam baccalat/reus and artium magister. In
commerce A stands for accepted.
AA, the name of about forty small European rivers.
The word is derived from the old German aha, cognate
to the Latin aqua, water.
AACHEN. See AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.
AALBORG, a city and seaport of Denmark, is sit-
uated on the Liimfiord, about 15 miles from its junction
with the Cattegat. Soap, tobacco, and leather are man
2 A A L — A B A
ufactured; there are several distilleries; and the herring
fishery is extensively prosecuted. Grain and herring are
largely exported, as are also to a smaller extent wool,
cattle, skins, tallow, Salt provisions, and spirits. t
AALEN, a walled town of Würtemberg, pleasantly
situated on the Kocher, at the foot of the Swabian Alps,
about 50 miles E. of Stuttgart. Woollen and linen
goods are manufactured, and there are ribbon looms and
tanneries in the town, and large iron works in the neigh-
borhood.
AAR, or AARE, the most considerable river in Switz-
erland, after the Rhine and Rhone.
AARAU, the chief town of the canton of Aargau in
Switzerland, is situated at the foot of the Jura mount-
ains, on the right bank of the river Aar, 4.1 miles N. E.
of Bern.
AARD-VARK (earth-pig), an animal very common
in South Africa, measuring upwards of three feet in
length, and having a general resemblance to a short-
legged pig. It feeds on ants, and is of nocturnal habits,
and very timid and harmless. Its flesh is used as food,
and when suitably preserved is considered a delicacy.
AARGAU (French, ARGovIE), one of the cantons of
Switzerland, derives its name from the river which flows
ºugh it, Aar-gau being the province or district of the
alſ.
AARHUUS, a city and seaport of Denmark, situated
on the Cattegat, in lat. 56° 9° N., long. Io9' 12" E. It
is the chief town of a fertile district of the same name,
one of the subdivisions of Jutland. It has a good and
Safe harbor, has regular steam communication with
Copenhagen, and is connected by rail with Viborg and
the interior of the country. Agricultural produce, spir-
its, leather, and gloves are exported, and there are sugar
refineries, and manufactures of wool, cotton, and
tobacco.
AARON, the first high-priest of the Jews, eldest son
of Amram and Jochebed, of the tribe of Levi, and
brother of Moses and Miriam.
AARSSENS, FRANCIS WAN (1572–1641), one of the
greatest diplomatists of the United Provinces. He rep-
resented the States-General at the Court of France for
many years, and was also engaged in embassies to Ven-
ice, Germany, and England. His great diplomatic abil-
ity appears from the memoirs he wrote of his negotia-
tions in 1624 with Richelieu, who ranked him among
the three greatest politicians of his time. A deep stain
rests on the memory of Aarssens from the share he had
in the death of Barneveldt, who was put to death by the
States-General, after a semblance of a trial, in 1619
ABABDE, an African tribe occupying the country
between the Red Sea and the Nile, to the S. of Kosseir,
nearly as far as the latitude of Derr. Many of the race
have settled on the eastern bank of the Nile, but the
greater part still live like Bedouins. They are a
distinct race from the Arabs, and are treacherous and
făithless in their dealings. They have few horses; when
at war with other tribes, they fight from camels, their
breed of which is famed.
ABACA or ABAKA, a name given to the Musa tex-
tilis, the plant that produces the fibre called Manilla
Hemp, and also to the fibre itself.
ABACUS, an architectural term applied to the upper
part of the capital of a column, pier, &c. The early
form of an abacus is simply a square, flat stone, prob-
ably derived from the Tuscan order. In Saxon work it
is frequently simply chamfered, but sometimes grooved.
The abacus in Norman work is square where the col-
umns are small ; but on larger piers it is sometimes
octagonal.
ABACUS also signifies an instrument employed by the
ancients for arithmetical calculations; pebbles, bits of
bone, or coins, being used as counters.
The Swan-Part of the Chinese closely resembles the
Roman abacus in its construction and use. Computa-
tions are made with it by means of balls of bone or ivory
running on slender bamboo rods similar to the simpler
board, fitted up with beads strung on wires, which is
employed in teaching the rudiments of arithmetic in ele-
mentary schools. -
A BAE, a town of ancient Greece in the E. of Phocis,
famous for a temple and oracle of Apollo. The temple
was plundered and burned by the Persians (B. c. 480), and
again by the Boeotians (B.C. 346), and was restored on a
Smaller scale by Hadrian.
ABAKANSK, a fortified town of Siberia, in the gov-
ernment of Yeniseisk, on the river Abakan, near its con-
fluence with the Yenisei. This is considered the mildest
and most salubrious place in Siberia, and is remarkable
for the tumuli in its neighborhood, and for some statues
of men from seven to nine feet high, covered with hiero-
glyphics.
ABANA and PHARPAR, “rivers of Damascus,” are
now generally identified with the Barada and the Awaj,
respectively. The former flows through the city of
Damascus; the Awaj passes eight miles to the south.
ABANCAY, a town of Peru, in the department of
Cuzco, 65 miles W.S.W. of the town of that name.
Rich crops of sugar-cane are produced in the district, and
the town has extensive sugar refineries. Hemp is also
cultivated, and silver is found in the mountains. Popu-
lation, 20,000.
ABANDONMENT, in Marine Assurance, is the
surrendering of the ship or goods insured to the insurers,
in the case of a constructive total loss of the thing
insured. There is an absolute total loss entitling the
assured to recover the full amount of his insurance wher-
ever the thing insured has ceased to exist to any useful
purpose. Where the thing assured continues to exist in
specie, yet is so damaged that there is no reasonable
hope of repair, or it is not worth the expense of bringing
it, or what remains of it, to its destimation, the insured
may treat the case as one of a total loss, and demand the
full sum insured. But, as the contract of insurance is
one of indemnity, the insured must, in such a case, make
an express cession of all his right to the recovery of the
subject insured to the underwriter by abandonment.
The insured must intimate his intention to abandon,
within a reasonable time after receiving correct informa-
tion as to the loss; any unnecessary delay being held as
an indication of his intention not to abandon.
ABANDONING a young child under two years of age,
so that its life shall be endangered, or its health perma-
nently injured, or likely to be so, is in England a misde-
meanor, punishable by penal servitude or imprisonment.
In Scotland abandoming or exposing an infant is an
offense at common law, aúoºf no evil consequences
should happen to the child. In the United States the
grade of the offense and its punishment vary in the
several States.
ABANDONMENT of either husband or wife is, in some
of the States of the Union, vaild ground of divorce.
ABANO, a town of Northern Italy, 6 miles S.W. of
Padua. There are thermal springs in the neighborhood,
which have been much resorted to by invalids for bathing,
both in ancient and modern times.
ABANO, PIETRO D’, known also as Petrus de Apono
or Aponensis, a distinguished physician and philosopher,
was born at the Italian town from which he takes his
name in 1250, or, according . to others, in 1246. After
visiting the east, he went to study at Paris, where he be-
came a doctor of medicine and philosophy. In Padua,
to which he returned when his studies were completed, he
iº
A B A
3
speedily gained a great reputation as a physician, and
availed himself of it to gratify his avarice by refusing to
visit patients except for an exorbitant fee. Perhaps this,
as well as his meddling with astrology, caused the charge
to be brought against him of practising magic. He was
twice brought to trial by the Inquisition; on the first
occasion he was acquitted, and he died (1316) before the
second trial was completed.
ABA RIS, the Hyperborean, a celebrated sage of
antiquity, who visited Greece about 570 B.C., or,
according to others, a century or two earlier. -
ABATEMENT, ABATE, from the French abattre,
aôater, to throw down, demolish. The original mean-
ing of the word is preserved in various legal phrases.
The abatement of a nuisance is the remedy allowed by
law to a person injured by a public nuisance of destroy-
ing or removing it by his own act, provided he commit
no breach of the peace in doing so.
Abatement of freehold takes place where, after the
death of the person last seised, a stranger enters upon
lands before the entry of the heir or devisee, and keeps
the latter out of possession.
Abatement among legatees (defalcatis) is a propor-
tionate deduction which their legacies suffer when the
funds out of which they are payable are not sufficient to
pay them in full.
Abatement in pleading is the defeating or quashing of
a particular action by some matter of fact, such as a
defect in form or personal incompetency of the parties
suing, pleaded by the defendant. Such a plea is called a
plea in abatement; and as it does not involve the merits
of the cause, it leaves the right of action subsisting.
In litigation an action is said to abate or cease on the
death of one of the parties.
ARATEMENT, or REBATE, is a discount allowed for
prompt payment; it also means a deduction sometimes
made at the custom-house from the fixed duties on cer-
tain kinds of goods, on account of damage or loss
sustained in warehouses.
ABATI, or DELL’ABBATO, NICCOLO, a celebrated
fresco-painter of Modena, born in 1512. His best
works are at Modena and Bologna, and have been
highly praised by Zanotti, Algoratti and Lanzi. He
accompanied Primaticcio to France, and assisted in
decorating the palace at Fontainebleau (1552–1571).
Abati died at Paris in 1571.
ABATTOIR, from abattre, primarily signifies a
slaughter-house proper, or place where animals are
killed as distinguished from boucheries and &taux pub.
Zics, places where the dead meat is offered for sale.
But the term is also employed to designate a complete
meat market, of which the abattoir proper is merely part.
Perhaps the first indication of the existence of abat-
toirs may be found in the system which prevailed under
the Emperors in ancient Rome. A corporation or
guild of butchers undoubtedly existed there, which
delegated to its officers the duty of slaughtering the
beasts required to supply the city with meat. The
establishments requisite for this purpose were at first
scattered about the various streets, but were eventually
confined to one quarter, and formed the public meat
market. As the policy and customs of the Romans
made themselves felt in Gaul, the Roman system of
abattoirs, was introduced there in an imperfect form.
A clique of families in Paris long exercised the special
function of catering for the public wants in respect of
meat. But as the city increased in magnitude and
population, the necessity of keeping slaughter-houses as
much as possible apart from dwelling-houses became
apparent. As early as the time of Charles IX., the
attention of the French authorities was directed to the
subject, as is testified by a decree passed on the 25th of
º
February 1567. No definite step seems to have been
taken until the time of Napoleon I. The evil had then
reached a terribly aggravated form. The constant
accumulation of putrid offal tainted the atmosphere,
and the Seine was polluted by being used as a common
receptacle for slaughter-house refuse. This condition
of things could not be allowed to continue, and on the
9th of February 1810, a decree was passed authorising
the construction of abattoirs in the outskirts of Paris.
The abattoirs are situated within the barriers, each at
a distance of about a mile and three-quarters from the
heart of the city, in districts where human habitations
are still comparatively few.
The Paris abattoirs were, until recently, the most per-
fect specimens of their class; and even now, although
in some of their details they have been surpassed by the
new Islington meat market, for their complete and com-
pact arrangement, they remain unrivalled in Europe.
The condition of London in this important sanitary
respect was, for a long period, little more endurable than
that of Paris before the adoption of its reformed sys-
tem. Smithfield market, situated in a very populous
neighborhood, continued till 1852 to be an abomination
to the town, and a standing reproach to its authorities.
No fewer than 243,537 cattle and 1,455,249 sheep were
sold there in 1852, to be afterwards slaughtered in the
crowded courts and thoroughfares of the metropolis.
But public opinion at length forced the Legislature to
interfere, and the corporation was compelled to abandon
Smithfield market, and to provide a substitute for it
elsewhere.
The site selected for the market was in the suburb of
Islington. It occupies a space of Some twenty acres on
the high land near the Pentonville prison, and is open to
both native and foreign cattle, excepting beasts from
foreign countries under quarantine. &
The Edinburgh abattoir, erected in 1851 by the cor-
poration, from designs prepared by Mr. David Cousfin,
the city architect, is the best as regards both construc-
tion and management in the United Kingdom. It occu-
pies an area of four acres and a quarter, surrounded by
a screen-wall, from which, along the greater part of its
length, the buildings are separated by a considerable
open space. In America, the immense packing-houses
of Chicago, Cincinnati, Kansas City, St. Joseph, and
other Western cities, represent the largest and best
equipped abattoirs in the world. Here the animals are
slaughtered in quantities not only sufficient for home
consumption, but an immense domestic and foreign ex-
port business is carried on, both in fresh meats in bulk
(which are transported in refrigerators), and in salted
and packed meats. No portions of the animal pro-
duct are wasted, even the offal being manufactured, and
having commercial value.
ABAUZIT, FIRMIN, a learned Frenchman, was born
of Protestant, parents at Uzès, in Languedoc, in 1679.
His father, who was of Arabian descent, died when he
was but two years of age; and when, on the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the authorities took steps
to have him educated in the Roman Catholic faith, his
mother contrived his escape. Abauzit's youth was spent
in diligent study, and at an early age he acquired great
Fº in languages, physics, and theology. In 1698
e was introduced to Sir Isaac Newton, who found in
him one of the earliest defenders of the great truths his
discoveries disclosed to the world. The reputation of
Abauzit induced William III. to request him to settle in
England, but he did not accept the king's offer, prefer-
ring to return to Geneva. There, from 1715, he ren-
dered valuable assistance to a society that had been
formed for translating the New Testament into French.
He declined the offer of the chair of philosophy in the
f
4. A B B
University in 1723, but accepted, in 1727, the sinecure
office of librarian to the city of his adoption. Here he
died at a good old age, in 1767.
ABB, a town of Yemen in Arabia, situated on a
mountain in the midst of a very fertile country, 73 miles
N.E. of Mocha. The population is about 5000.
ABBADIE, JAMES, an eminent Protestant divine,
was born at Nay in Bern about 1657. His parents
were poor, but through the kindness of discerning
friends, he received an excellent education. He prose-
cuted his studies with such success, that on completing
his course at Sedan, though only seventeen years of age,
he had conferred on him the degree of doctor in theology.
He died in London in 1727. Abbadie was a man of
great ability and an eloquent preacher, but is best known
by his religious treatises, several of which were trans-
lated from the original French into other languages, and
had a wide circulation all over Europe.
ABBAS I., surnamed THE GREAT, one of the most
celebrated of the sovereigns of Persia, was the youngest
son of Shah Mohammed Khodabendeh. After heading a
successful rebellion against his father, and causing one
of his brothers (or, as some say, both) to be assassinated,
he obtained possession of the throne at the early age of
eighteen (1585). When he died in 1628, his dominions
reached from the Tigris to the Indus. Abbas dis-
tinguished himself, not only by his successes in arms,
and by the magnificence of his court, but also by his
reforms in the administration of his kingdom. He en-
couraged commerce, and, by constructing highways and
building bridges, did much to facilitate it. His fame is
tarnished, however, by numerous deeds of tyranny and
cruelty. His own family, especially, suffered from his
fits of jealousy; his eldest son was slain, and the eyes of
his other children were put out, by his orders.
ABBAS MIRZA (b. 1785, d. 1833), Prince of Persia,
third son of the Shah Feth Ali, was destined by his
father to succeed him in the government, because of his
mother’s connection with the royal tribe of the Khadjars.
He led various expeditions against the Russians, but
generally without success. By a treaty made between
Russia and Persia in 1828, the right of Abbas to the suc-
cession was recognised.
ABBASSIDES, the caliphs of Baghdad, the most
famous dynasty of the sovereigns of the Mahometan or
Saracen empire. They derived their name and descent
from Abbas (b. 566, d. 652 A.D.), the uncle and adviser
of Mahomet, and succeeded the dynasty of the Ommiads,
the caliphs of Damascus. Early in the 8th century the
family of Abbas had acquired great influence from their
near relationship to the Prophet; and Ibrahim, the
fourth in descent from Abbas, supported by the province
of Khorasan, obtained several successes over the Ommiad
armies, but was captured and put to death by the Caliph
Merwan (747). Ibrahim’s brother, Abul-Abbas, whom
he had named his heir, assumed the title of caliph, and,
by a decisive victory near the river Zab (750), effected
the overthrow of the Ommiad dynasty. Merwan fled to
Egypt, but was pursued and put to death, and the van-
quished family was treated with a severity which gained
for Abul-Abbas the surname of Al-Saffah, the Blood-
shedder. From this time the house of Abbas was fully
established in the government, but the Spanish provinces
were lost to the empire by the erection of an independ-
ent caliphate of Cordova, under Abderrahman.
On the death of Abul-Abbas, Almansur succeeded to
the throne, and founded Baghdad as the seat of empire.
He and his son Mohdi waged war successfully against
the Turkomans and Greeks of Asia Minor ; but from
this time the rule of the Abbassides is marked rather by
the development of the liberal arts than by extension of
territory. The strictness of the Mohammedan religion
was relaxed, and the faithful yielded to the seductions of
luxury.
The territory of the Abbassides soon suffered dismem-
berment, and their power began to decay. Province
after province proclaimed itself independent; the caliph's
rule became narrowed to Baghdad and its vicinity; and
the house of Abbas lost its power in the East for ever.
The last of them, Motawakkel III., was taken by Sul-
tan Selim I., the conqueror of Egypt, to Constantinople,
and detained there for some time as a prisoner. He
afterwards returned to Egypt, and died at Cairo a pen-
sionary of the Ottoman government, in 1538.
ABBE is the French word corresponding to ABBOT,
but, from the middle of the sixteenth century to the time
of the French Revolution, the term had a wider appli-
cation. The assumption by a numerous class of the
name and style of abbé appears to have originated in the
right conceded to the King of France, by a concordat
between Pope Leo X. and Francis I., to appoint abbés
commendataires to 225 abbeys, that is, to most of the
abbeys in France. The abbés commendataires were not
necessarily priests; the papal bull required indeed that
they should take orders within a stated time after their
appointment, but there seems to have been no difficulty
in procuring relief from that obligation. The expecta-
tion of obtaining these sinecures drew young men towards
the Church in considerable numbers, and the class of
abbés so formed—abbés de cour they were sometimes
called, and sometimes (ironically) ačö& de Saizzte espé-
rance, abbés of St. Hope—came to hold a recognised
position, that perhaps proved as great an attraction as
the hope of preferment.
ABB.EOKUTA, or ABEOKUTA, a town of West
Africa in the Yoruba Country, on the Ogun River,
50 miles north of Lagos, in a direct line, or 81 miles by
water. It lies in a beautiful and fertile country, the sur-
face of which is broken by masses of grey granite. Like
most African towns, Abbeokuta is spread over an
extensive area, being surrounded by mud waſls, 18 miles
in extent. The houses are also of mud, and the streets
mostly narrow and filthy. There are numerous markets
in which native products and articles of European manu-
facture are exposed for sale. Palm-oil and shea-butter
are the chief articles of export, and it is expected that
the cotton of the country will become a valuable article
of commerce. The slave trade and human sacrifices
have been abolished; but notwithstanding the efforts of
English and American missionaries, the natives are still
idle and degraded. & -
ABBESS, the female superior of an abbey or convent
of nuns. The mode of election, position, rights, and
authority of an abbess, correspond generally with those
of an abbot. The office was elective, the choice being
by the secret votes of the sisters from their own body.
The abbess was solemnly admitted to her office by epis-
copal benediction, together with the conferring of a staff
and pectoral, and held it for life, though liable to be
deprived for misconduct.
By Celtic usage abbesses presided over joint-houses
of monks and nuns. This custom accompanied Celtic
monastic missions to France and Spain, even to Rome
itself. At a later period, A.D. I I I5, Robert, the
founder of Fontevraud, committed the government of
the whole order, men as well as women, to a female
superior.
ABBEVILLE, a city of France, in the department
of the Somme, is situated on the River Somme, 12 miles
from its mouth in the English Channel, and 25 miles
N.W. of Amiens. It lies in a pleasant and fertile
valley, and is built partly on an island, and partly or
both sides of the river. A cloth manufactory was estab-
lished here by Van Robais, a Dutchman, under the
A B B §
patronage of the minister Colbert, as early as 1669; and
since that time Abbeville has continued to be one of the
most thriving manufacturing towns in France. Besides
black cloths of the best quality, there are produced vel-
vets, cottons, linens, serges, sackings, hosiery, pack-
thread, jewellery, soap and glass-wares. It has also
establishments for spinning wool, print-works, bleach-
ing-works, tanneries, a paper manufactory, &c.; and
being situated in the centre of a populous district, it has
a considerable trade with the surrounding country.
Vessels of from 200 to 300 tons come up to the town at
high-water. Population (1889), 32,000.
ABBEY, a monastery, or conventual establishment,
•under the government of an ABBOT or an ABBEss. A
priory only differed from an abbey in that the superior
bore the name of prior instead of abbot.
The earliest Christian monastic communities with which
we are acquainted consisted of groups of cells or huts
collected about a common centre, which was usually the
abode of some anchorite celebrated for superior holiness
or singular asceticism, but without any attempt at orderly
arrangement. The formation of such communities in the
East does not date from the introduction of Christianity.
The example had been already set by the Essenes in Judea
and the *... in Egypt, who may be considered the
prototypes of the industrial and meditative communities
of monks.
In the earliest ages of Christian monasticism the ascetics
were accustomed to live singly, independent of one another,
at no great distance from some village, supporting them-
selves by the labor of their own hands, and distributing
the surplus after the supply of their own scanty wants to
the poor. Increasing religious fervor, aided by persecu-
tion, drove them further and further away from the abodes
of men into mountain solitudes or lonely deserts. The
deserts of Egypt swarmed with the cells or huts of these
anchorites. -
The real founder of coenobian monasteries in the modern
sense was Pachomius, an Egyptian of the beginning of the
4th century. The first community established by him was
at Tabennae, an island of the Nile in Upper Egypt. Eight
others were founded in his lifetime, numbering 3Ooo monks.
Within 50 years from his death his societies could reckon
50,000 members.
Monasticism in the West owes its extension and
development to Benedict of Nursia (born A.D. 480).
His rule was diffused with miraculous rapidity from the
parent foundation on Monte Cassino through the whole
of Western Europe, and every country witnessed the
erection of monasteries far exceeding anything that had
yet been seen in spaciousness and splendor. Few great
towns in Italy were without their Benedictine convent,
and they quickly rose in all the great centres of popula-
tion in England, France, and Spain. The number of
these monasteries founded between A.D. 520 and 700 is
amazing. Before the Council of Constance, A.D. 1005,
no fewer than 15,070 abbeys had been established of
this order alone.
The history of Monasticism is one of alternate periods
of decay and revival. With growth in popular esteem
came increase in material wealth, leading to luxury and
worldliness. The first religious ardor cooled, the strict-
ness of the rule relaxed, until by the Ioth century the
decay of discipline was so complete in France that the
monks are said to have been frequently unacquainted
with the rule of St. Benedict, and even ignorant that
they were bound by any rule at all.
The reformation of these prevalent abuses generally
took the form of the establishment of new monastic
orders, with new and more stringent rules. One of the
earliest of these reformed orders was the CZuzzi.ac. This
order took its name from the little village of Clugny,
12 miles N.W. of Macon, near which, about A. D. 909,
a reformed Benedictine abbey was founded by William,
Duke of Auvergne, under Berno, abbot of Beaume. He
was succeeded by Odo, who is often regarded as the
founder of the order. The fame of Clugny spread far.
and wide. Its rigid rule was adopted by a vast number
of the old Benedictine abbeys, who placed themselves in
affiliation to the mother society, while new foundations
sprang up in large numbers, all owing allegiance to the
“archabbot,” established at Clugny. By the end of the
12th century the number of monasteries affiliated in the
various countries of Western Europe amounted to 2000.
The monastic establishment of Clugny was one of the
most extensive and magnificent in France. The next
great monastic revival, the Cistercian, arising in the last
years of the 11th century, had a wider diffusion, and a
longer and more honorable existence. Owing its real
origin, as a distinct foundation of reformed Benedictines,
in the year 1098, to an English ecclesiastic, Stephen
Harding (a native of Dorsetshire, educated in the mon-
astery of Sherborne), and deriving its name from Citeaux
(Cistercium), a desolate and almost inaccessible forest
solitude, on the borders of Champagne and Burgundy,
the rapid growth and wide celebrity of the order are
undoubtedly to be attributed to the enthusiastic piety of
St. Bernard, abbot of the first monastic colonies, subse-
quently set forth in such quick succession by the first
Cistercian houses, the far-famed abbey of Clairvaux
(de Clara Valle), A. D. I I I6.
The rigid self-abnegation, which was the ruling prin-
ciple of this reformed congregation of the Benedictine
order, extended itself to the churches and other build-
ings erected by them. The characteristic of the Cister-
cian abbeys was the extremest simplicity and a studied
plainness. Only one tower — a central one—was per-
mitted, and that was to be very low. Unnecessary pin-
nacles and turrets were prohibited. The triforium was
omitted. The windows were to be plain and undivided,
and it was forbidden to decorate them with stained
glass. All needless ornament was proscribed. The
crosses must be of wood ; the candlesticks of iron.
The renunciation of the world was to be evidenced in
all that met the eye. The same spirit manifested itself
in the choice of the sites of their monasteries. The
more dismal, the more savage, the more hopeless a spot
appeared, the more did it please their rigid mood. But
they came not merely as ascetics, but as improvers.
The Cistercian monasteries are, as a rule, found placed
in deep, well-watered valleys. They always stand on
the border of a stream ; not rarely, as at Fountains,
the buildings extend over it. These valleys, now so
rich and productive, wore a very different aspect when
the brethren first chose them as the place of their
retirement. Wide swamps, deep morasses, tangled
thickets, wild impassable forests, were their prevailing
features. The “Bright Valley,” Clara Vallis of St.
Bernard, was known as the “Valley of Wormwood,”
infamous as a den of robbers. “It was a savage,
dreary solitude, so utterly barren that at first Bernard
and his companions were reduced to live on beech leaves.
The Premonstratensian regular canons, or White
Canons, had as many as 35 houses in England, of which
the most perfect remaining are those of Easby, York-
shire, and Bayham, Sussex. The head house of the
order in England was Welbeck. This order was a
reformed branch of the Austin canons, founded A.D.
II 19, by Norbert (born at Xanten, on the Lower Rhine,
c. 1080) at Prémontré, a secluded marshy valley in the
forest of Goucy, in the diocese of Laon. The order
spread widely. Even in the founder's lifetime it pos.
sessed houses in Syria and Palestine. It long main-
tained, its rigid austerity, till in the course of years
6 A B B
wealth impaired its discipline, and its members sank
into indolence and luxury. The Premonstratensians
were brought to England shortly after A.D. 1140, and
were first settled at Newhouse, in Lincolnshire, near
the Humber.
The Carthusian order, on its establishment by St.
Bruno, about A.D. 1084, developed a greatly modified
form and arrangement of a monastic institution. The
principle of this order, which combined the coenobitic
with the solitary life, demanded the erection of build-
ings on a novel plan. This plan, which was first
adopted by St. Bruno and his twelve companions at the
original institution at Chartreux, near Grenoble, was
maintained in all the Carthusian establishments through-
out Europe, even after the ascetic severity of the order
had been to some extent relaxed, and the primitive sim-
plicity of their buildings had been exchanged for the
magnificence of decoration which characterizes such
foundations as the Certosas of Pavia and Florence.
According to the rule of St. Bruno, all the members of
a Carthusian brotherhood lived in the most absolute
Solitude and silence. Each occupied a small detached
cottage, standing by itself in a small garden surrounded
by high walls, and connected by a common corridor or
cloister. In these cottages or cells a Carthusian monk
passed his time in the strictest asceticism, only leaving
his solitary dwelling to attend the services at the Church,
except on certain days when the brotherhood assembled
in the refectory.
ABBIATE GRASSO, a town in the north of Italy,
near the Ticino, 14 miles W. S.W. of Milan. It has
silk manufactures, and contains about 5000 inhab-
itants.
ABBON OF FLEURY, or AB Bo FLORIACENSIs, a
learned Frenchman, born near Orleans in 945. He dis-
tinguished himself in the schools of Paris and Rheims,
and was a proficient in science, as known in his time.
After spending two years in England, assisting Arch-
bishop Oswald of York in restoring the monastic sys-
tem, he returned to France, and was made Abbot of
Fleury (970). He was twice sent to Rome by Robert
the Wise (986, 996), and on each occasion succeeded in
warding off a threatened papal interdict. He was killed
in IOO4, in endeavoring to quell a monkish revolt.
ABBOT, the head and chief governor of a com-
munity of monks, called also in the East Archiman-
drita, from mandra, “a fold,” or Aegumenos. The
name abbot is derived from the Hebrew, Ab, or father,
through Syriac Abba. It had its origin in the monas-
teries of Syria, whence it spread through the East, and
soon became accepted generally in all languages as the
designation of the head of a monastery.
The name abbot, though general in the West, was not
universal. Among the Dominicans, Carmelites, Augus-
tines, &c., the superior was called Praepositus, “Pro-
vost,” and Prior; among the Franciscans, Custos,
“Guardian,” and by the monks of Camaldoli, Major.
Monks, as a rule, were laymen, nor at the outset was
the abbot any exception. All orders of clergy, there-
fore, even the “doorkeeper,” took precedence of him.
For the reception of the sacraments, and for other reli-
gious offices, the abbot and his monks were commanded
to attend the nearest church. This rule naturally proved
inconvenient when a monastery was situated in a desert,
or at a distance from a city, and necessity compelled the
ordination of abbots. This innovation was not intro-
duced without a struggle, ecclesiastical dignity being
regarded as inconsistent with the higher spiritual life;
but, before the close of the 5th century, at least in the
East, abbots seem almost universally to have become
deacons, if not presbyters. The change spread more
slowly in the West, where the office of abbot was com-
monly filled by laymen till the end of the 7th century,
and partially so up to the 11th. Ecclesiastical Councils
were, however, attended by abbots. Thus, at that held
at Constantinople, A.D. 448, for the condemnation of
Eutyches, 23 archimandrites or abbots sign, with 30
bishops, and, cir. A.D. 690, Archbishop Theodore pro-
mulgated a canon, inhibiting bishops from compelling
abbots to attend councils. Examples are not uncom-
mon in Spain and in England in Saxon times. Abbots
were permitted by the Second Council of Nicaea, A. D.
787, to ordain their monks to the inferior orders. This
rule was adopted in the West, and the strong prejudice
against clerical monks having gradually broken down,
eventually monks, almost without exception, belonged
to some grade of the ministry. &
Originally no abbot was permitted to rule over more
than one monastic community, though, in some excep-
tional cases, Gregory the Great allowed the rule to be
broken. As time went on, violations of the rule became
increasingly frequent, as is proved by repeated enact-
ments against it.
Abbots were originally subject to episcopal jurisdic-
tion, and continued generally so, in fact, in the West
till the 11th century. The Codex of justinian ex-
pressly subordinates the abbot to episcopal oversight.
The first case recorded of the partial exemption of an
abbot from episcopal control, is that of Faustus, Abbot
of Lerins, at the Council of Arles, A.D. 456; but the
oppressive conduct, and exorbitant claims and exactions
of bishops, to which this repugnance to episcopal con-
trol is to be traced, far more than to the arrogance of
abbots, rendered it increasingly frequent, and, in the
6th century, the practice of exempting religious houses
partly or altogether from episcopal control, and making
them responsible to the Pope alone, received an impulse
from Gregory the Great. These exceptions, though
introduced with a good object, had grown into a wide-
spread and crying evil by the 12th century, virtually
creating an imperium in imperio, and entirely depriv-
ing the bishop of all authority over the chief centers of
power and influence in his diocese. In the 12th cen-
tury the abbots of Fulda claimed precedence of the
Archbishop of Cologne. Abbots more and more aped
episcopal state, and in defiance of the express prohibi-
tion of early councils, and the protests of St. Bernard
and others, adopted the episcopal insignia of mitre, ring,
gloves, and sandals. The adoption of episcopal insignia
by abbots was followed by an encroachment of episcopal
functions, which had to be specially but ineffectually
guarded against by the Lateran Council, A. D. I 123.
It was necessary that an abbot should be at least 25
years of age, of legitimate birth, a monk of the house,
unless it furnished no suitable candidate, when a liberty
was allowed of electing from another convent, well
instructed himself, and able to instruct others, one also
who had learned how to command by having practiced
obedience. In some exceptional cases an abbot was
allowed to name his own successor. Cassian speaks of
an abbot in Egypt doing this; and in later times we
have another example in the case of St. Bruno. Popes
and sovereigns gradually encroached on the rights of the
monks, until in Italy the Pope had usurped the nomina-
tion of all abbots, and the king in France, with the
exception of Clugny, Prémontré, and other houses,
chiefs of their order. The election was for life, unless
the abbot was canonically deprived by the chiefs of his
order, or, when he was directly subject to them, by the
Pope or the bishop.
The ceremony of the formal admission of a Bene-
dictine abbot in mediaeval times is thus prescribed by
the consuetudinary of Abington. The newly elected
abbot was to put off his shoes at the door of the church,
A B B - 7
and proceed barefoot to meet the members of the house
advancing in a procession After proceeding up the
nave, he was to kneel and pray at the topmost step of
the entrance of the choir, into which he was to be intro-
duced by the bishop or his commissary, and placed in
his stall. The monks, then kneeling, gave him the kiss
of peace on the hand, and rising, on the mouth, the
abbot holding his staff of office. He then put on his
shoes in the vestry, and a chapter was held, and the
bishop or his commissary preached a suitable sermon.
The power of the abbot was paternal but absolute,
limited, however, by the canons of the church, and,
until the general establishment of exemptions, by epis-
copal control. As a rule, however, implicit obedience
was enforced; to act without his orders was culpable;
while it was a sacred duty to execute his orders, how-
ever unreasonable, until they were withdrawn. Exam-
ples among the Egyptian monks of this blind submission
to the commands of the superiors, exalted into a virtue
by those who regarded the entire crushing of the indi-
vidual will as the highest excellence, are detailed by
Cassian and others—e.g., a monk watering a dry stick,
clay after day, for months, or endeavoring to remove a
huge rock immensely exceeding his powers.
The abbot was treated with the utmost submission
and reverence by the brethren of his house. When he
appeared either in church or chapter, all present rose
and bowed. His letters were received kneeling, like
those of the Pope and the king. If he gave a command,
the monk receiving it was also to kneel. No monk
might sit in his presence, or leave it without his per-
mission. . The highest place was naturally assigned to
him, both in church and at table. In the East he was
commanded to eat with the other monks. In the West
the rule of St. Benedict appointed him a separate table,
at which he might entertain guests and strangers. This
permission opening the door to luxurious living, the
Council of Aix, A.D. 817, decreed that the abbot should
dine in the refectory, and be content with the ordinary
fare of the monks, unless he had to entertain a guest.
These ordinances proved, however, generally ineffectual
to secure strictness of diet, and contemporaneous litera-
ture abounds with satirical remarks and complaints con-
cerning the inordinate extravagance of the tables of the
abbots.
The ordinary attire of the abbot was according to
rule to be the same as that of the monks. But by the
Ioth century the rule was commonly set aside, and we
find frequent complaints of abbots dressing in silk, and
adopting great sumptuousness of attire. With the
increase of wealth and power, abbots had lost much of
their special religious character, and became great lords,
chiefly distinguished from lay lords by celibacy. Thus
we hear of abbots going out to sport, with their men
carrying bows and arrows; keeping horses, dogs, and
huntsmen; and special mention is made of an abbot of
Leicester, cir. 1360, who was the most skilled of all the
nobility in hare-hunting. In magnificence of equipage
and retinue the abbots vied with the first nobles of the
realm. They rode on mules with gilded bridles, rich
saddles and housings, carrying hawks on their wrists,
attended by an immense train of attendants. The bells
of the churches were rung as they passed. They asso-
ciated on equal terms with laymen of the highest dis-
tinction, and shared all their “pleasures and pursuits.
This rank and power was, however, often used most
beneficially. For instance, we read of Whiting, the
last Abbot of Glastonbury, that his house was a kind
of well-ordered court, where as many as 3oo sons of
noblemen and gentlemen, who had been sent to him for
virtuous education, had been brought up, besides others
of a meaner rank, whom he fitted for the universities.
His table, attendance, and officers were an honor to the
nation. He would entertain as many as 500 persons of
rank at one time, besides relieving the poor of the
vicinity twice a-week. He had his country houses and
fisheries, and when he traveled to attend Parliament his
retinue amounted to upward of IOO persons. . The
abbots of Clugny and Vendome were, by virtue of their
office, cardinals of the Romish Church.
Alay affóots, so called, had their origin in the system of
commendation, in the 8th century. By this, to meet
any great necessity of the state, such as an inroad of
the Saracens, the revenues of monasteries were tem-
porarily commended, i.e., handed over to some layman,
a noble, or even the king himself, who for the time
became titular abbot. Enough was reserved to main-
tain the monastic brotherhood, and when the occasion
passed away the revenues were to be restored to their
rightful owners. The gross abuse of lay commendation
which had sprung up during the corruption of the
monastic system passed away with its reformation in
the Ioth century, either voluntarily or by compulsion.
The like abuse prevailed in the East at a later period.
John, Patriarch of Antioch, at the beginning of the
12th century, informs us that in his time most monas-
teries had been handed over to laymen, beneficiarii, for
life, or for part of their lives, by the emperors.
ABBOT, CHARLEs, speaker of the House of Com-
mons from 1802 to 1817, afterwards created Lord
Colchester. See COLCHESTER.
ABBOT, GEORGE, Archbishop of Canterbury, was
born October 19, 1562, at Guildford in Surrey, where
his father was a cloth-worker. He studied at Balliol
College, Oxford, and was chosen Master of University
College in 1597. He was three times appointed Vice-
Chancellor of the University. In 1608 he went to Scot-
land with the Earl of Dumbar to arrange for a union
between the Churches of England and Scotland, and his
conduct in that negotiation laid the foundation of his
preferment, by attracting to him the notice and favor of
the king. Without having held any parochial charge, he
was appointed Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1609,
was translated to the see of London a month afterwards,
and in less than a year was made Archbishop of Canter-
bury. This rapid preferment was due as much perhaps
to his flattering his royal master as to his legitimate
merits. After his elevation he showed on several occa-
sions firmness and courage in resisting the king. In the
scandalous divorce suit of the Lady Frances Howard
against the Earl of Essex, the archbishop persistently
opposed the dissolution of the marriage, though the in-
fluence of the king and court was strongly and success-
fully exerted in the opposite direction. In 1618, when a
declaration was published by the king, and ordered to be
read in all the churches, permitting sports and pastimes
on the Sabbath, Abbot had the courage to forbid its
being read at Croydon, where he happened to be at the
time. As may be inferred from the incident just men-
tioned, Abbot was of the Protestant or Puritan party in
the Church. He was naturally, therefore, a promoter
of the match between the Elector Palatine and the
Princess Elizabeth, and a firm opponent of the projected
marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Infanta of
Spain. This policy brought upon him the hatred of
Laud and the court. The king, indeed, never forsook
him ; but Buckingham was his avowed enemy, and was
regarded with dislike by the Prince of Wales, aſterwards
Charles I.
ABBOT, GEORGE, known as “The Puritan,” has
been oddly and persistently mistaken for others. He
has been described as a clergyman, which he never
was, and as son of Sir Morris Abbot, and his writings
accordingly entered in the bibliographical authorities as
8 A B B — A B D
by the nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He
was son or grandson (it is not clear which) of Sir
Thomas Abbot. He was a member of the Long Par-
liament for Tamworth. As a layman, and nevertheless
a theologian and scholar of rare ripeness and critical
ability, he holds an almost unique place in the literature
of the period. He died Aug. 5, 1623, at Corydon in
retirement.
ABBOTT, ROBERT, a noted Puritan divine, who is
surrounded by an atmosphere of uncertainty. He is
supposed to have been born in 1588 or 1589. IIe wrote
a good many hortative works for his parishioners, and
was the beau ideal of the English country clergyman.
He died, pastor of St. Augustine's, London, about 1662.
ABBOTS FORD, the celebrated residence of Sir
Walter Scott, situated on the south bank of the river
Tweed, about three miles above Melrose, Scotland.
ABBOTSFORD CLUB, one of the principal printing
clubs of Scotland, was founded in 1834, and named in
honor of Sir Walter Scott. It had fifty members.
ABBREVIATION, a letter or group of letters, taken
from a word or words, and employed to represent them
for the sake of brevity. Abbreviations, both of single
words and phrases, having a meaning more or less fixed
and recognized, are common in ancient writings and
inscriptions, and very many are in use at the present time.
A distinction is to be observed between abbreviations and
the contractions that are ſrequently to be met with in old
manuscripts, and even in early printed books, whereby
letters are dropped out here and there, or particular col-
locations of letters represented by somewhat arbitrary
symbols. The commonest form of abbreviation is the
substitution for a word of its initial letter.
ABBREVIATORS, a body of writers in the Papal
Chancery, whose business is to sketch out and prepare in
due form the Pope’s bulls, briefs, and consistorial decrees.
They are first mentioned in a bull of Benedict XII., early
in the 14th century. Their number is fixed at seventy-
two, of whom twelve, distinguished as de parco majori,
hold prelatic rank; twenty-two, de parco minori, are
clergymen of lower rank; and the remainder, examin-
atores, may be laymen.
ABDALLATIF, or ABD-UL-LATIF, a celebrated physi-
cian and traveller, and one of the most voluminous writers
of the East, was born in Baghdad in I 162. An interest-
ing memoir of Abdallatif, written by himself, has been
preserved with additions by Ibn-Abu-Osaiba, a contem-
porary. From that work we learn that the higher educa-
tion of the youth of Baghdad consisted principally in a
minute and careful study of the rules and principles of
grammar, and in their committing to memory the whole
of the Koran, a treatise or two on philology and juris-
prudence, and the choicest Arabian poetry.
ABD-EL-KADER, celebrated for his brave resist-
ance to the advance of the French in Algeria, was born
in Mascara, in the early part of the year 1807. His
father was a man of great influence among his coun-
trymen, from his high rank and learning, and Abd-el-
Kader himself, at an early age, acquired a reputation
for wisdom and piety, as well as for skill in horseman-
ship and other manly exercises. In 1831 he was chosen
Emir of Mascara, and leader of the combined tribes in
their attempt to check the growing power of the French
in Africa. His efforts were at first successful, and in
1834, he concluded a treaty with the French general,
which was very favorable to his cause. War again
broke out in 1839, and for more than a year was carried
on in a very desultory manner. In 1841, however, Mar-
shal Bugeaud assumed the chief command of the French
force, which numbered nearly 100,000 men. The war
was now carried on with great vigor, and Abd-el-Kader,
after a most determined resistance, surrendered himself
t
to the Duc d'Aumale on the 22d December, 1847.
The promise that he would be allowed to retire to Alex-
andria or St. Jean d’Acre, upon the faith of which
Abd-el-Kader had given himself up, was broken by the
French government. He was taken to France, and was
imprisoned, first in the castle of Pau, and afterward in
that of Amboise. In 1852, Louis Napoleon gave him
his liberty, on condition of his not returning to Algeria.
Since then he resided successively at Broussa, Constan-
tinople and Damascus. He is reported to have died at
Mecca in October, 1873. See ALG ERIA.
A BDERA (1), in Ancient Geography, a maritime
town of Thrace, eastward from the mouth of the river
Nestus. Mythology assigns the founding of the town
to Hercules; but Herodotus states that it was first col-
onized by Timesias of Clazomenae, whom the Thracians
in a short time expelled.
ABDERA (2), a town in Aispania Baetica, founded
by the Carthaginians, on the south coast, between
Malaca and Arom, probably the modern Adra.
ABDICATION, the act whereby a person in office
renounces and gives up the same before the expiry of
the time for which it is held. The word is seldom
used, except in the sense of surrendering the supreme
power in a state. Despotic sovereigns are at liberty to
divest themselves of their powers at any time, but it is
otherwise with a limited monarchy. The throne of
Great Britain cannot be lawfully abdicated unless with
the consent of the two Houses of Parliament. When
James II., after throwing the Great Seal into the
Thames, fled to France in 1688, he did not formally
resign the crown, and the question was discussed in Par-
liament whether he had forfeited the throne or abdi-
cated. The latter designation was agreed on, for, in a
full assembly of the Lords and Commons, met in con-
vention, it was resolved, in spite of James’s protest,
“that King James II. having endeavored to subvert the
constitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original
contract between king and people, and, by the advice of
Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the
fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of
his kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that
the throne is thereby vacant.”
ABDOMEN, in Anatomy, the lower part of the trunk
of the body, situated between the thorax and the pelvis.
See ANATOMY.
ABDOMINALES, or ABDOMINAL FISHEs, a sub-
division of the Malacopterygious Order, whose ventral
fins are placed behind the pectorals, under the abdomen.
The typical abdominals are carp, Salmon, herring, silures
and pike.
ABDUCTION, a law term, denoting the forcible or
fraudulent removal of a person, limited by custom to
the case where a woman is the victim. In the case of
men or children, it has been usual to substitute the term
KIDNAPPING (7.7).) -
ABDUL MEDJID, Sultan of Turkey, the thirty-
first sovereign of the house of Othman, was born April
23, 1823, and succeeded his father, Mahmoud II., on
the 2d of July, 1839. Mahmoud appears to have been
unable to effect the reforms he desired in the mode of
educating his children, so that his son received no better
education than that given, according to use and wont,
to Turkish princes in the harem. When Abdul Medjid
succeeded to the throne the affairs of Turkey were in an
extremely critical state. At the very time his father
died, the news was on its way to Constantinople that
the Turkish army had been signally defeated at Nisib
by that of the rebel Egyptian viceroy, Mehemet Ali;
and the Turkish fleet was at the same time on its way to
Egypt, to be surrendered perfidiously by its commander
to the same enemy. But, through the intervertion
A B E — A B E 9
of the great European powers, Mehemet Ali was obliged
to come to terms, and the Ottoman empire was saved.
In compliance with his father's express instructions,
Abdul Medjid set at once about carrying out the exten-
sive reforms to which Mahmoud had so emergetically
devoted himself. When Kossuth and others sought
refuge in Turkey, after the failure of the Hungarian rising
in 1849, the Sultan was called on by Austria and Russia
to surrender them, but boldly and determinedly refused.
A BECKET, THOMAS, Archbishop of Canterbury and
Chancellor of England in the 12th century, was born in
London on the 21st of December, 11 18. His father,
Gilbert Becket, and his mother Roesa or Matilda, were
both, there can be little doubt, of Norman extraction, if
indeed they themselves were not immigrants from Nor-
mandy to England. At ten years of age Thomas was
placed under the tuition of the canons regular of Merton
on the Wandle in Surrey. From Merton he proceeded
to study in the London schools, then in high repute. At
Pevensey Castle, the seat of his father's friend Richer de
l'Aigle, one of the great barons of England, he subse-
quently became a proficient in all the feats and graces of
chivalry. From Pevensey he betook himself to the study
of theology in the University of Paris. He never became
a scholar, much less a theologian, like Wolsey, or even
like Some of the learned ecclesiastics of his own day; but
his intellect was vigorous and original, and his manners
captivating to his associates and popular with the multi-
tude. His father's failure in business recalled him to
London, and for three years he acted as a clerk in a law-
yer's office. But a man so variously accomplished could
not fail to stumble on preferment sooner or later. Ac-
cordingly, about I I42, Archdeacon Baldwin, a learned
civilian, a friend of the elder Becket, introduced him to
Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, who at once ap-
pointed him to an office in the Archiepiscopal Court.
His talents speedily raised him to the archdeaconry of the
see. A Becket's tact in assisting to thwart an attempt
to interest the Pope in favor of the coronation of Ste-
phen’s Son Eustace, paved the way to the archdeacon’s ele-
vation to the Chancellorship of England under Henry II.,
a dignity to which he was raised in 1155. His pomp and
munificence as chancellor were beyond precedent. In
I I59 he undertook, at Henry's request, an embassy to the
French Court for the purpose of affiancing the king's
eldest son to the daughter of the king of France. His
progress through the country was like a triumphal pro-
cession. “How wonderful must be the king of England
himself whose chancellor travels in such state l’’ was on
every one’s lips. In 1162 he was elected Archbishop of
Canterbury, Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Herford, alone
dissenting, and remarking sarcastically, at the termination
of the ceremony, that “the king had worked a miracle in
having that day turned a layman into an archbishop and
a soldier into a saint.” Hitherto A Becket had only been
in deacon’s orders, and had made no profession of sanctity
of life. At the same time, there is nothing to show that
his character was stained by the gross licentiousness of
the times. Now, however, he devoted himself body and
soul to the service of the church. The fastidious courtier
was at once transformed into the squalid penitent, who
wore hair-cloth next to his skin, -fed on roots, drank
nauseous water, and daily washed the feet of thirteen
beggars. , Henry, who had expected to see the archbishop
completely sunk in the chancellor, was amazed to receive
the following laconic message from A Becket:-‘‘I desire
that you will provide yourself with another chancellor, as
I find myself hardly sufficient for the duties of one office,
much less of two.” From that moment there was strife
between A Becket and Henry, A Becket straining every
nerve to extend the authority of the Pope, and Henry
doing his utmost to subject the church to his own will.
Throughout the bitter struggle for supremacy which ensued
between A Becket and the king, A Becket was backed
by the sympathy of the Saxon populace, Henry by the
support of the Norman barons and by the greater digni-
taries of the church. At the outset A Becket was worsted.
He was constrained to take an oath “with good faith and
without fraud or reserve, to observe the Constitutions of
Clarendon,” which subjected clerks guilty of crime to the
ordinary civil tribunals, put ecclesiastical dignities at the
royal disposal, prevented all appeal to Rome, and made
Henry the virtual “head of the church.” For his guilty
compliance with these anti-papal constitutions he received
the special pardon and absolution of his holiness, and
proceeded to anathematise them with the energy of a
genuine remorse. The king resolved on his ruin. He
was summoned before a great council at Northampton,
and in defiance of justice was called to account for the
sum of 44,OOO marks declared to have been misappro-
priated by him during his chancellorship. “For what
happened before my consecration,” said A. Becket, “I
ought not to answer, nor will I. Know, moreover, that
ye are my children in God; neither law nor reason allows
you to judge your father. I refer my quarrel to the
decision of the Pope. To him I appeal, and shall now,
under the protection of the Catholic Church and Apos-
tolic See, depart.” He effected his escape to France, and
took refuge in the Cistercian monastery of Pontigny,
whence he repeatedly anathematised his enemies in En-
gland, and hesitated not to speak of Henry as a “malicious
tyrant.” He was barbarously murdered in the great
cathedral at the foot of the altar of St. Benedict, on
the 29th December 1170.
A’BECKETT, GILBERT ABBOTT, a successful cul-
tivator of light literature, was born in London in 1811,
and educated at Westminster School. He wrote bur-
lesque dramas with success from his boyhood, took an
active share in the establishment of different comic
periodicals, particularly Figaro in London and Punch,
and was a constant contributor to the columns of the
latter from its commencement till the time of his death.
ABEL (breath, vanity, transitorizzess), the secondson
of Adam, slain by Cain, his elder brother.
ABEL, KARL FRIEDRICH (1726–1787), a celebrated
German musician. His adagio compositions have been
highly praised, but he attained greater distinction as a
performer than as a composer, his instrument being the
Viola da gamba, which from his time has given place to
the violoncello.
ABEL, NIELs HENRIK, one of the ablest and acutest
mathematicians of modern times, was born at Findöe,
in Norway, in 1802, and died near Arendal, in 1829.
ABEL, THOMAS, a Roman Catholic divine dur-
ing the reign of Henry VIII., was an Englishman,
but when or where born does not appear. He had been
introduced to the court through the report of his learn-
ing in classical and living languages, and accomplish-
ments in music; and he was appointed domestic chap-
laim to Queen Catherine. As belonging to the Church
of Rome, he inevitably opposed Henry VIII.'s assump-
tion of supremacy in the church. Ultimately he was
tried and condemned for “misprision of treason,” and
perished in the usual cruel and ignoble way.
ABELARD, PETER, born at Pallet (Palais), not far
from Nantes, in Io'79, was the eldest son of a noble
Breton house. As a boy, he showed an extraordinary
quickness of apprehension, and, choosing a learned life
instead of the active career natural to a youth of his
birth, early became an adept in the art of dialectic, under
which name philosophy, meaning at that time chiefly the
logic of Aristotle transmitted through Latin channels,
IO
A B E
was the great subject of liberal study in the episcopal
schools. His wanderings brought him to Paris, still
under the age of twenty. There, in the great cathedral
School of Notre-Dame, he sat for a while under the
teaching of William of Champeaux, and the most
advanced of Realists, but, presently stepping forward,
he overcame the master in discussion, and thus began a
long duel that issued in the downfall of the philosophic
theory of Realism, till then dominant in the early Middle
Age. First, in the teeth of opposition from the metropol-
itan teacher, he proceeded to set up a school of his
own at Melun, whence, for more direct competition, he
removed to Corbeil, near Paris. The success of his
teaching was signal, though for a time he had to quit the
field, the strain proving too great for his physical
strength. On his return, after IIo8, he found William
lecturing no longer at Notre-Dame, but in a monastic
retreat outside the city, and there battle was again
joined between them. His discomfited rival still had
power to keep him from lecturing in Paris, but soon
failed in this last effort also. From Melun, where he
had resumed teaching, Abelard passed to the capital, and
set up his school on the heights of St. Genevieve, looking
over Notre-Dame. He stepped into the chair at Notre-
Dame, being also nominated canon, about the year 1115.
Few teachers ever held such sway as Abelard now
did for a time. Distinguished in figure and manners,
he was seen surrounded by crowds of students, drawn
from all countries by the fame of his teaching, in which
acuteness of thought was relieved by simplicity and
grace of exposition. Enriched by the offerings of his
pupils, and feasted with universal admiration, he came,
as he says, to think himself the only philosopher standing
in the world. But a change in his fortunes was at hand.
In his devotion to science, he had hitherto lived a very
regular life, varied only by the excitement of conflict:
now, at the height of his fame, other passions began to
stir within him. There lived at that time, within the
precincts of Notre-Dame, under the care of her uncle,
the canon Fulbert, a young girl named Heloise, of
noble extraction and born about 1 IoI. Fair, but still
more remarkable for her knowledge, which extended
beyond Latin, it is said, to Greek and Hebrew, she
awoke a feeling of love in the breast of Abelard; and
with intent to win her, he sought and gained a footing
in Fulbert’s house as a regular inmate. Becoming also
tutor to the maiden, he used the unlimited power which
he thus obtained over her for the purpose of seduction,
though not without cherishing a real affection which
she returned in unparalleled devotion. Their relation
interfering with his public work, and being, moreover,
ostentatiously sung by himself, soon became known to
all the world except the too-confiding Fulbert; and,
when at last it could not escape even his vision, they
were separated only to meet in secret. Thereupon
Heloise found herself pregnant, and was carried off by
her lover to Brittany, where she gave birth to a son.
To appease her furious uncle, Abelard now proposed a
marriage, under the condition that it should be kept
secret, in order not to mar his prospects of advancement
in the church; but of marriage, whether public or
secret, Heloise would hear nothing. She appealed to
him not to sacrifice for her the independence of his life,
nor did she finally yield to the arrangement without the
darkest forebodings, only too soon to be realized. The
secret of the marriage was not kept by Fulbert; and
when Heloise, true to her singular purpose, boldly then
denied it, life was made so unsupportable to her that
she sought refuge in the convent of Argenteuil. Imme-
diately Fulbert, believing that her husband, who aided
in the flight, designed to be rid of her, conceived a dire
revenge. He and some others broke into Abelard’s
chamber by night, and, taking him defenceless, perpe-
trated on him the most brutal mutilation. Thus cast
down from his pinnacle of greatness into an abyss of
shame and misery, there was left to the brilliant master
only the life of a monk, Heloise, not yet twenty, con-
Summated her work of self-sacrifice at the call of his
jealous love, and took the veil.
It was in the Abbey of St. Denis that Abelard, now
aged forty, sought to bury himself with his woes out of
sight. Finding, however, in the cloister neither calm
mor, solitude, and having gradually turned again to
study, he yielded after a year to urgent entreaties from
without and within, and went forth to reopen his school
at the Priory of Maisoncelle (1120). The life in his
own monastery proving no more congenial than for-
merly, he fled frºm it in secret, and only waited for per-
mission to live away from St. I)enis before he chose the
one lot that suited his present mood. In a desert place
near Nogent-sur-Seine, he built himself a cabin of stub-
ble and reeds, and turned hermit. But there fortune
came back to him with a new surprise. His retreat
becoming known, students flocked from Paris, and cov-
ered the wilderness around him with their tents and
huts. When he began to teach again, he found consola-
tion, and in gratitude, he consecrated the new oratory
they built for him by the name of the Paraclete.
Upon the return of new dangers, or at least of fears,
Abelard left the Paraclete to make trial of another
refuge, accepting an invitation to preside over the
Abbey of St. Gildas-de-Rhuys, on the far-off shore of
Lower Brittany. It proved a wretched exchange. The
region was inhospitable, the domain a prey to lawless
exaction, the house itself savage and disorderly. Yet
for nearly ten years he continued to struggle with fate
before he fled from his charge, yielding in the end only
under peril of violent death. As far back as the Para-
clete days, he had counted as chief among his foes.
Bernard of Clairvaux, in whom was incarnated the prin-
ciple of fervent and unhesitating faith, from which
rational inquiry like his was sheer revolt, and now this
uncompromising spirit was moving, at the instance of
others, to crush the growing evil in the person of the
boldest offender. After preliminary negotiations, in
which Bernard was roused by Abelard's steadfastness to
put forth all his strength, a council met at Sens, before
which Abelard, formally arraigned upon a number of
heretical charges, was prepared to plead his cause.
When, however, Bernard had opened the case, Sud-
denly Abelard appealed to Rome. The stroke availed
him nothing; for Bernard, who had power, notwith-
standing, to get a condemnation passed at the council,
did not rest a moment till a second condemnation was
procured at Rome in the following year. Meanwhile,
on his way thither to urge his plea in person, Abelard
had broken down at the Abbey of Cluni, and there, an
utterly fallen man, with spirit of the humblest, and only
not bereft of his intellectual force, he lingered but a few
months before the approach of death. Removed by
friendly hands, for the relief of his sufferings, to the
Priory of St. Marcel, he died on the 21st of April, 1142.
The general importance of Abelard lies in his hav-
ing fixed more decisively than any one before him the
scholastic manner of philosophising, with its object of
giving a formally rational expression to the received
ecclesiastical doctrine. Through him was ;. in
the Middle Age the ascendency of the philosophical
authority of Aristotle, which became firmly established
in the half-century after his death, when first the com-
pleted Organon, and gradually all the other works of
the Greek thinker, came to be known in the schools:
before his time it was rather upon the authority of Plato
that the prevailing Realism sought to lean.
A B E
I I
*
ABENCERRAGES, a family or faction that is said
to have held a prominent position in the Moorish king-
dom of Granada in the 15th century. The hall of the
Abencerrages in the Alhambra takes its name from
being the reputed scene of the massacre of the family.
ABENEZRA, or IBN EzRA, is the name ordinarily
given to ABRAHAM BEN MEIR BEN EZRA (called also
Abenare or Æzemare), one of the most eminent of the
Jewish literati of the Middle Ages. He was born at
Toledo about 1090; left Spain for Rome about I 140 ;
resided afterward at Mantua (I I45), at Lucca (II.54),
at Rhodes (II.55 and I 166), and in England (1159); and
died probably in 1168. He was distinguished as a
philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet, but
especially as a grammarian and commentator.
ABENSBERG, a small town of Bavaria, 18 miles
S.W. of Regensburg, containing 1300 inhabitants.
A BERAVON, a parliamentary and municipal bor-
ough of Wales, in the county of Glamorgan, beauti-
fully situated on the Avon, near its mouth, 8 miles east
of Swansea.
ABERCONWAY. See CON WAY.
A BERCROMBIE, John, an eminent physician of
Edinburgh, was the son of the Rev. George Abercrom-
bie of Aberdeen, in which city he was born in 1781.
After attending the Grammar School and Marischal
College, Aberdeen, he commenced his medical studies at
Edinburgh in 1800, and obtained his degree of M. D.
there in 1803. Soon afterward he went to London,
and for about a year gave diligent attention to the
medical practice and lectures in St. George's Hospital.
In 1823, he became a Licentiate of the College of
Physicians; in 1824, a Fellow of that body; and from
the death of Dr. Gregory in 1822, he was considered
the first physician in Scotland. He died in 1844.
ABERCROMBY, DAVII), M. D. This Scottish
physician was sufficiently noteworthy half a century
after his (probable) decease to have his Woza Medicinæ
Praxis reprinted at Paris in 1749. Of this early meta-
physician nothing biographical has, however, come
down, save that he was a Scotchman (“Scotus ”)—born
at Seaton. He was living early in the 18th century.
ABERCROMBY, JAMEs, LORD DUNFERMLINE,
third son of the celebrated Sir Ralph Abercromby, was
born on the 7th Nov. 1776. Educated for the profes-
sion of the law, he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn
in 1801, but he was prevented from engaging to any con-
siderable extent in general practice by accepting appoint-
ments, first as commissioner in bankruptcy, and subse-
quently, as steward of the estates of the Duke of Devon-
shire. He commenced his political career in ISO7,
when he was elected member of Parliament for the
borough of Midhurst. His sympathies with the small
and struggling Opposition had already been declared,
and he at once attached himself to the Whig party, with
which he consistently acted throughout life. In 1834
Mr. Abercromby obtained a seat in the cabinet of Lord
Grey as Master of the Mint. In 1839 he resigned the
office, and received the customary honor of a peerage,
with the title of Lord Dunfermline. The evening of his
life was passed in retirement at Colinton, near Edin-
burgh, where he died on the 17th April 1858.
ABERCROMBY, PATRICK, M.D., was the third son
of Alexander Abercromby of Fetterneir in Aberdeenshire,
and brother of Francis Abercromby, who was created by
James II. Lord Glasford. He was born at Forfar in
1656. As throughout Scotland, he could have had there
the benefits of a good parish school; but it would seem
from after events that his family was Roman Catholic,
and hence, in all probability, his education was private.
This, and not the unproved charge of perversion from
Protestantism in subserviency to James II., explains his
Roman Catholicism and adhesion to the fortunes of that
king. But, intending to become a doctor of medicine.
he entered the University of St. Andrews, where he took
his degree of M.D. in 1685. The work with which
Abercromby’s name is permanently associated is his Maz-
tial Achaezlements of the Scots Mation, issued in two
noble folios, vol. i. 1711, vol. ii. 1716. The date of his
death is uncertain. It has been variously assigned to
1715, 1716, 1720 and 1726, and it is usually added that
he left a widow in great poverty. That he lived in 1716
is certain, as Crawford speaks of him (in his Peerage,
1716) “as my worthy friend.” Probably he died about
I 716.
'ºercromby, SIR RALPH, K.B., Lieutenant-
General in the British army, was the eldest son of George
Abercromby of Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, and was
born in October, 1734. After passing some time at an
excellent school at Alloa, he went to Rugby, and in
1752–53 he attended classes in Edinburgh Univer-
sity. In 1754 he was sent to Leipsic to study civil
law, with a view to his proceeding to the Scotch bar, of
which it is worthy of notice that both his grandfather and
his father lived to be the oldest members. On returning
from the Continent he expressed a strong preference for
the military profession, and a cornet’s commission was
accordingly obtained for him (March 1756) in the 3d
Dragoon Guards. He rose through the intermediate
gradations to the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the regi-
ment (1773), and in 1781 he became colonel of the Iogd
infantry. When that regiment was disbanded in 1783
he retired upon half-pay. That up to this time he had
scarcely been engaged in active service, was owing mainly
to his disapproval of the policy of the Government, and
especially to his sympathies with the American colonists
in their struggles for independence; and his retirement is
no doubt to be ascribed to similar feelings. But on
France declaring war against England in 1793, he has-
tened to resume his professional duties; and, being
esteemed one of the ablest and most intrepid officers in
the whole British forces, he was appointed to the com-
mand of a brigade under the Duke of York, for service
in Holland. He commanded the advanced guard in the
action on the heights of Cateau, and was wounded at
Nimeguen. The duty fell to him of protecting the Brit-
ish army in its disastrous retreat out of Holland, in the
winter of 1794-5. In 1795 he received the honor of
knighthood, the Order of the Bath being conferred on
him in acknowledgment of his services. At the battle in
the neighborhood of Alexandria (March 21, 1801), Sir R.
Abercromby was struck by a spent ball, which could not
be extracted, and died seven days after.
ABERDARE, a town of Wales, in the county of
Glamorgan, on the right bank of the river Cynon, four
miles S.W. of Merthyr-Tydvil. The district around is
rich in valuable mineral products, and coal and iron min-
ing are very extensively carried on in the neighborhood.
Important tir-works, too, have been recently opened.
Part of the coal is used at the iron-works, and large
quantities are sent to Cardiff for exportation.
ABERDEEN, a royal burgh and city, the chief part
of a parliamentary burgh, the capital of the county of
Aberdeen, the chief seaport in the north of Scotland,
and the fourth Scottish town in population, industry, and
wealth. It lies on the German Ocean, near the mouth
of the river Dee, and is 542 miles north of London, and
III miles north of Edinburgh, by the shortest railway
rOuteS. - s
Aberdeen, probably the Devana on the Diva of Ptol-
emy, was an important place in the 12th century. Will-
iam the Lion had a residence in the city, to which he
gave a charter in II 79, confirming the corporate rights
granted by David I. The city received many subsequent
I 2
A B E
royal charters. It was burned by Edward III. in 1336,
but it was soon rebuilt and extended, and called New
Aberdeen. The houses were of timber and thatched,
and many such existed till 1741. The burgh records are
the oidest of any Scotch burgh. They begin in 1398,
and are complete to the present time, with only a short
break. Extracts from them, extending from 1398 to 1570,
have been published by the Spalding Club. For many
centuries the city was subject to attacks by the barons of
the surrounding districts, and its avenues and six ports
had to be guarded. The ports had all been removed by
1770. Several monasteries existed in Aberdeen before
the Reformation. Most of the Scottish sovereigns visited
the city and received gifts from the authorities. In 1497
a blockhouse was built at the harbor mouth as a pro-
tection against the English. During the religious strug-
gle in the 17th century between the Royalists and Cove-
nanters the city was plundered by both parties. In 1715
Earl Marischal proclaimed the Pretender at Aberdeen.
In 1745 the Duke of Cumberland resided a short time in
the city. In the middle of the 18th century boys were
kidnapped in Aberdeen, and sent as slaves to America.
In 1817 the city became insolvent, with a debt of £225,-
7 Io, contracted by public improvements, but the debt was
soon paid off. The motto on the city arms is Bon-Accord.
It formed the watchword of the Aberdonians while aiding
King Robert the Bruce in his battles with the English.
Till 18oo the city stood on a few eminences, and had
steep, narrow, and crooked streets, but, since the Improve-
ment Act of that year, the whole aspect of the place has
been altered by the formation of two new spacious and
nearly level streets (Union Street and King Street, meet-
ing in Castle Street), and by subsequent laying out of
many others, besides Squares, terraces, &c., on nearly flat
ground. The city is above eight miles in circuit, and is
built on sand, gravel and boulder clay.
Aberdeen is now a capacious, elegant, and well-built
town, and from the material employed, consisting chiefly
of light grey native granite, is called the “granite city.”
It contains many fine public buildings
The University of Aberdeen was formed by the union
and incorporation, in 1860, by Act of Parliament, of the
University and King's College of Aberdeen, founded in
Old Aberdeen, in 1494, by William Elphinstone, Bishop
of Aberdeen, under the authority of a Papal bull ob-
tained by James IV., and of the Marischal College and
University of Aberdeen, founded in New Aberdeen, in
1593, by George Keith, Earl Marischal, by a charter rat-
ified by Act of Parliament.
Aberdeen has about 60 places of worship, with nearly
48,000 sittings. There are Io Established churches; 20
Free, 6 Episcopalian, 6 United Presbyterian, 5 Congre-
gational, 2 Baptist, 2 Methodist, 2 Evangelical Union, I
Unitarian, I of Roman Catholic, I of Friends, and I of
Original Seceders. There are also several mission
chapels. In 1843 all the Established ministers seceded,
with Io,000 lay members. The Established and Free
Church denominations have each about I I,000 members
in communion. The Established West and Eastchurches,
in the centre of the city, within St. Nicholas churchyard,
form a continuous building 220 feet long, including an
ºvering aisle, over which is a tower and spire 14o feet
1gn.
The Dee to the south of the city is crossed by three
bridges—the old bridge of Dee, an iron suspension
bridge, and the Caledonian Railway bridge. The first,
till 1832 the only access to the city from the south, con-
sists of seven semicircular ribbed arches, is about 30 feet
high, and was built early in the 16th century by Bishops
Elphinstone and Dunbar.
A defective harbor and a shallow sand and gravel bar
}
but, under various acts since 1773, they have been greatly
deepened. The navigation channel is being widened
and deepened, and the old pier or breakwater on the
north side of the river mouth is to be lengthened at least
5OO feet seaward. A body of 31 commissioners manage
the harbor affairs.
Aberdeen Bay affords safe anchorage with off-shore
winds, but not with those from the N.E., E. and S. E.
The manufactures, arts, and trade of Aberdeen
and vicinity are large and flourishing. Woollens were
made as early as 1703, and knitting of stockings was a
great industry in the 18th century. There are two large
firms in the woollen trade, with 1550 hands, at 4 IOOO
weekly wages, and making above 1560 tons wool in the
year into yarns, carpets, hand-knit hosiery, cloths, and
tweeds. The linen trade, much carried on since 1749,
is now confined to one firm, with 26oo hands, at £1200
wages weekly, who spin, weave, and bleach 50 tons flax
and 60 tons tow weekly, and produce yarns, floorcloths,
sheeting, dowlas, ducks, towels, sail canvas, &c. The
cotton manufacture, introduced in 1779, employs only
one firm, with 5 fº hands, at £220 weekly wages, who
spin 5000 bales of cotton a-year into mule yarn. The
wincey trade, begun in 1839, employs 4oo hands, at
£2OO weekly wages, who make 2, 100,000 yards cloth, 27
to 36 inches broad, in the year. Paper, first made here
in 1696, is now manufactured by three firms in the
vicinity. The largest has 2000 hands, at £1250 weekly
wages, and makes weekly 75 to 80 tons of writing paper,
and 6% millions of envelopes, besides much cardboard
and stamped paper; another firm makes weekly 77 tons
coarse and card paper; and a third, 20 tons printing and
other paper. The comb works of Messrs. Stewart & Co.,
begun in 1827, are the largest in the world, employing
900 hands, at £500 weekly wages, who yearly convert
I Ioo tons horn, hoofs, india-rubber, and tortoise-shells
into I 1 millions of combs, besides spoons, cups, Scoops,
paper-knives, &c. Seven iron foundries and many
engineering works employ IOOO men, at £925 weekly
wages, and convert 6000 tons of iron a-year into marine
and land steam engines and boilers, corn mills, wood-
preparing machinery, machinery to grind and prepare
artificial manures, besides sugar mills and frames and
coffee machinery for the colonies.
Very durable grey granite has been quarried near
Aberdeen for 300 years, and blocked and dressed paving,
curb and building granite stones have long been exported
from the district. In 1764, Aberdeen granite pavement
was first used in London. About the year 1795, large
granite blocks were sent for the Portsmouth docks.
The chief stones of the New Thames Embankment,
London, are from Kemnay granite quarries, 16 miles
northwest of the city. Aberdeen is almost entirely built
of granite, and large quantities of the stone are exported
to build bridges, wharfs, docks, lighthouses, &c., else-
where. Aberdeen is famed for its polishing works of
granite, especially grey and red. They employ about
1500 hands in polishing vases, tables, chimney-pieces,
fountains, monuments, columns, &c., for British and
foreign demand.
Aberdeen has been famed for shipbuilding, especially
for its fast clippers. Since 1855 nearly a Scole of vessels
have been built of above IOOO tons each. The largest
vessel (a sailing one) ever built here was one in 1855, of
24OO tons.
The introduction of steamers in 1821 greatly pro-
moted industry and traffic, and especially the attle
trade of Aberdeenshire with London. These benefits
have been much increased by the extension of railways.
Commodious steamers ply regularly between Aberdeen
and London, Hull, Newcastle, Leith, Wick, Kirkwall,
at its entrance, long retarded the trade of \bºrdeen, and Lerwick.
A B E
The joint railway station for the Caledonian, Great
North of Scotland, and Deeside limes, was opened 1867,
and is a very handsome erection, costing about 4,26,OOO.
It is 5oo feet long, and 102 feet broad, with the side
walls 32 feet high. The arched roof of curved lattice-
iron ribs, covered with slate, zinc, and glass, is all in one
span, rising 72 feet high, and is very light and airy.
The city is governed by a corporation, the magistrates
and town council, consisting of twenty-five councillors,
including a provost, six bailies, a dean of guild, a
treasurer, &c. The corporation revenue in the year
1871–72, was £11,498. The police, water, and gas are
managed by the council. The municipal and police
burgh has an area of nearly three square miles, with
12,514 municipal electors, and with assessable property
valued at 4,230,000 in 1873. The Parliamentary burgh
has an area of nine square miles, including Old Aber-
deen and Woodside, with 14,253 Parliamentary electors,
and real property to the value of £309,328 in 1873.
It returns one member to Parliament. The population
of Aberdeen in 1396 was about 3OOO ; in 1643, 87.50;
in 1708, 5556; in 1801, 26,992; in 1841, 63,262; and in
1871, 88,125; in the next decade it trebled its popula-
tion, reaching 267,000 in 1881.
AB ERDEEN, OLD, is a small, quiet, ancient town, a
burgh of barony and regality, a mile north of Aber-
deen, and as ſar south-west of the mouth of the Don.
The town was formerly the see of a bishop, and had
a large cathedral dedicated to St. Machar. In I 137
David I. translated to Old Aberdeen the bishopric,
founded at Mortlach in Banffshire in IOO4 by Malcolm
II. in memory of his signal victory there over the
º: In 1153 Malcolm IV. gave the bishop a new
Charter.
ABER DEEN, situated in Brown county, S. Dak.,
is a prominent trade and railway center, and one
of the most prosperous and thriving municipalities in
the State. It is on the Chicago, Milwaukee and
St. Paul, Chicago and North-Western, and Great North-
ern railroads, 588 miles from Chicago, and 290 miles
from St. Paul, and is the shipping point for a large ag-
ricultural country. The city has one daily and five
weekly papers, manufactures of agricultural imple-
ments, lumber, carriages, sash, doors and blinds, etc.,
and does a large jobbing trade. It is also the location
of a United States land office, and is well provided
with schools, churches, etc. Population in 1890 was
,500.
ABERDEEN, the capital of Monroe county, Miss.,
is situated at the head of navigation on the Tombigbee
river, being also located on the Illinois Central, Mobile
and Ohio, and Canton, Aberdeen and Nashville rail-
roads. The river at this point is crossed by a substan-
tial iron bridge. The city contains two banks, two
weekly papers, a court-house, the State military insti-
tute, two female colleges, and manufactures of a gen-
eral character. Population (1890), 5,OOO.
ABERDEENSHIRE, a maritime county in the
north-east of Scotland. It is bounded on the north and
east by the German Ocean ; on the South by the coun-
ties of Kincardine, Forfar, and Perth; and on the west
by those of Inverness and Banff Its greatest length is
Io2 miles, and breadth 50 miles. Its circuit with sinu-
osities is about 300 miles, 60 being sea-coast. It is the
fifth of Scotch counties in size, and is one-sixteenth of
the extent of Scotland.
The chief rivers are the Dee, 96 miles long ; Don, 78;
Ythan, 37, with mussel beds at its mouth ; Ugie. 20;
and Devéron, 58, partly on the boundary of Banffshire.
The climate of Aberdeenshire. except in the mount-
ainous districts, is comparatively mild.
The rocks are mostly granite, gneiss, with Small tracts
of syenite, mica slate, quartz rock, clay slate, grauwacke,
primary limestone, old red sandstone, serpentine, and
trap. Lias, greensand, and chalk flints occur.
The tops of the highest mountains have an arctic
flora. Trees, especially Scotch fir and larch, grow well
in the county, and Braemar abounds in natural timber,
said to surpass any in the north of Europe. Stumps of
Scotch fir and oak found in peat in the county are often
far larger than any now growing. Grouse, partridges,
and hares abound in the county, and rabbits are often
too numerous. Red deer abound in Braemar, the deer
forest being there valued at £5000 a year, and estimated
at 500,000 acres, or one-fourth the area of deer forests
in Scotland.
Poor, gravelly, clayey, and peaty soils prevail much
more in Aberdeenshire than good, rich loams, but tile
draining, bones and guano, and the best modes of
modern tillage, have greatly increased the produce.
Farm-houses and steadings have greatly improved, and
the best agricultural implements and machines are in
general use. About two-thirds of the population depend
entirely on agriculture, and oatmeal in various forms,
with milk, is the chief food of farm-servants. Farms
are generally small, compared with those in the South-
east counties. The fields are separated by dry-stone
dykes, and also by wooden and wire fences.
The great mineral wealth in Aberdeenshire is its long-
famed durable granite, which is largely quarried for
building, paving, causewaying and polishing.
A large fishing population in villages along the coast
engage in the white and herring fishery. Haddock are
salted and rock-dried (speldings), or smoked (finnans).
The rivers and coast yield many salmon. Peterhead
was long the chief British port for the north whale and
seal fishery, but Dundee now vies with it in this industry.
The manufactures and arts of the county are mainly
prosecuted in or near the town of Aberdeen, but
throughout the rural districts there are much milling of
corr, brick and tile making, stone-quarrying, Smith-
work, brewing and distilling, cart and farm implement
making, casting and drying of peat, timber ſelling,
especially on Deeside and Donside, for pit-props, rail-
way sleepers, lath, barrel staves, &c.
Aberdeenshire communicates with the south by the
Caledonian Railway, and five macadamised roads across
the east Grampians, the highest rising 2200 feet above
the sea.
The chief antiquities in Aberdeenshire are Picts'
houses or weems; stone foundations or circular dwell-
ings; monoliths, some being sculptured; the so-called
Druid circles; stone cists; stone and earthen enclosures;
the vitrified forts of Dunnideer and Noath; cairns;
crannoges; earthen mounds, as the Bass; flint arrow-
heads; clay funeral urns; stone celts and hammers.
Remains of Roman camps occur at Peterculter, Kin-
tore, and Auchterless, respectively IO7%, IOO, and I 15
acres. Roman arms have been found. Ruins of ancient
edifices occur. On the top of a comical hill called Dun-
mideer, in the Garioch district, are the remains of a cas-
tle, supposed to be 700 years old, and surrounded by a
vitrified wall, which must be still older. The founda-
tions of two buildings still remain, the one in Braemar,
and the other in the Loch of Cannor (the latter with
the remains of a wooden bridge between it and the
land), which are supposed to have belonged to Malcolm
Canmore, King of Scotland. The most extensive ruins
are the grand ones of Kildrummy Castle, evidently once
a princely seat, and still covering nearly an acre of
ground. . It belonged to David, Earl of Huntingdon, in
I 150, and was the seat of the Earls of Marr, attainted
in 1716. The Abbey of Deer, now in ruins, was begun
by Cumyn, Earl of Buchan, about 1219.
I 4
A "B E
In Roman times, Aberdeenshire formed part of Ves-
pasiana in Caledonia, and was occupied by the Taixali,
a warlike tribe. The local names are mostly Gaelic.
St. Columba and his pupil, Drostan, visited Buchan in
the 6th century. In Io;2 Macbeth fell near the Peel
Bog in Lumphanen, and a cairn which marks the spot
is still shown. In 1309 Bruce defeated Comyn, Earl of
Buchan, near Inverurie, and annihilated a powerful Nor-
man family. In 1411 the Earl of Marr defeated Donald
of the Isles in the battle of Harlaw, near Inverurie,
when Sir Robert Davidson, Provost of Aberdeen, was
killed. In 1562 occurred the battle of Corrichie on the
Hill of Fare, when the Earl of Murray defeated the
Marquis of Huntly. In 1715 the Earl of Marr pro-
claimed the Pretender in Braemar. In 1746 the Duke
of Cumberland with his army marched through Aber-
deenshire to Culloden. In 1817 a base line of verifica-
tion, 5 miles IOO feet long, was measured in connection
with the Trigonometrical Survey of the British Isles, on
the Belhelvie Links, 5 to Io miles north of Aberdeen.
Aberdeenshire contains Ios Established churches, 99
Free, 31 Episcopal, 15 United Presbyterian, 9 Roman
Catholic, and 31 of other denominations. This includes
detached parts of the two adjacent counties.
Aberdeenshire has one city, Aberdeen, a royal parlia-
mentary burgh ; three other royal parliamentary burghs,
Inverurie, Kintore, and Peterhead; and seven burghs of
barony, Old Aberdeen, Charleston of Aboyne, Fraser-
burgh, Huntly, Old Meldrum, Rosehearty, and Turriff.
The county sends two members to Parliament — one
for East Aberdeenshire, with 4341 electors, and the
other for West Aberdeenshire, with 3942 electors.
ABER DEEN, GEORGE HAMILTON GORDON,
FOURTH EARL OF, was born at Edinburgh on the 28th
January 1784. He was educated at Harrow School, and
at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated
in 1804. He succeeded his grandfather in the earldom
in 1801, and in the same year he made an extended tour
through Europe, visiting France, Italy, and Greece. On
his return he founded the Athenian Club, the member-
ship of which was confined to those who had travelled in
Greece. In 1806, having been elected one of the repre-
sentative peers for Scotland, he took his seat in the
House of Lords on the Tory side. Lord Aberdeen was
a member of the Cabinet formed by the Duke of Well-
ington in 1828, for a short time as Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster, and then as Foreign Secretary. He
was Colonial Secretary in the Tory Cabinet of 1834–5,
and again received the seals of the Foreign Office under
Sir Robert Peel's administration of 1841. The policy
of non-intervention, to which he steadfastly adhered in his
conduct of foreign affairs, was at once his strength and
his weakness. On the two chief questions of home poli-
tics which were finally settled during his tenure of office,
he was in advance of most of his party. While the other
members of the Government yielded Catholic Emanci-
pation and the repeal of the Corn Laws as unavoidable
concessions, Lord. Aberdeen spoke and voted for both
measures from conviction of their justice. He had been
regarded as the leader of the Peel party from the time of
Sir Robert's death, but his views on the two great ques-
tions of home policy above mentioned rendered him
more acceptable to the Liberals, and a more suitable
leader of a coalition government than any other member
of that party could have been. His administration will
chiefly be remembered in connection with the Crimean
war, which, it is now generally believed, might have
been altogether prevented by a more vigorous policy.
He died December 13, 1860.
ABERDOUR, a village in the county of Fife, in
Scotland, pleasantly situated on the north shore of the
Firth of Forth, and much resorted to for sea-bathing.
ABERFELDY, a village in Perthshire, celebrated in
Scottish song for its “birks” and for the neighboring
falls of Moness. t
ABERGAVENNY, a market town in Monmouth-
shire, 14 miles west of Monmouth, situated at the junction
of a small stream called the Gavenny, with the river Usk.
ABERNETHY, a town in Perthshire, situated in the
parish of the same name, on the right bank of the Tay,
7 miles below Perth.
ABERNETHY, JoHN,-a Protestant dissenting divine
of Ireland, was born at Coleraine, county Londonderry,
Ulster, where his father was minister (Nonconformist), on
the 19th October 1680. In his thirteenth year he entered
a student at the University of Glasgow. On concluding
his course at Glasgow he went to Edinburgh University,
where his many brilliant gifts and quick and ready wit—
thought-born, not verbal merely—struck the most emi-
ment of his contemporaries and even his professors. In
1701 he was urgently invited to accept the ministerial
charge of an important congregation in Antrim; and,
after an interval of two years, he was ordained there on
8th August 1703. In 1717 he was invited to the con-
gregation of Usher's Quay, Dublin, as colleague with
Rev. Mr Arbuckle, and contemporaneously, to what was
called the Old Congregation of Belfast. He was nearly
a century in advance of his time. He had no reason
with those who denied that a Roman Catholic or Dis-
senter could be a “man of integrity and ability.” He
died in 1740, having been twice married.
ABERNETHY, JoHN, grandson of the preceding, an
eminent surgeon, was born in London on the 3d of April,
1764, . His father was a London merchant. Educated
at Wolverhampton Grammar School, he was apprenticed
in 1779 to Sir Charles Blicke, a surgeon in extensive
practice in the metropolis. He attended Sir William
Blizzard’s anatomical lectures at the London Hospital,
and was early employed to assist Sir William as “demon-
strator;” he also attended Pott’s surgical lectures at
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, as well as the lectures of the
celebrated John Hunter. On Pott's resignation of the
office of surgeon of St. Bartholomew’s, Sir Charles Blicke,
who was assistant-surgeon, succeeded him, and Abernethy
was elected assistant-surgeon in 1787. In this capacity
he began to give lectures in Bartholomew Close, which
were so well attended that the governors of the hospital
built a regular theatre (1790–91), and Abernethy thus
became the founder of the distinguished School of St.
Bartholomew's. The celebrity Abernethy attained in
his practice was due not only to his great professional
skill, but also in part to the singularity of his manners.
He used great plainness of speech in his intercourse with
his patients, treating them often brusquely, and sometimes
even rudely. In the circle of his family and friends he
was courteous and affectionate; and in all his dealings he
was strictly just and honorable. He resigned his surgery
at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1827, and his professor-
ship at the College of Surgeons two years later, on account
of failing health, and died at his residence at Enfield on
the 20th of April, 1831.
ABERRATION, or (more correctly) THE ABERRA-
TION OF LIGHT, is a remarkable phenomenon, by which
stars appear to deviate a little, in the course of a year,
from their true places in the heavens. It results from
the eye of the observer being carried onwards by the
motion of the earth on its orbit, during the time that
light takes to travel from the star to the earth. .
^ Aberration always takes place in the direction of the
earth’s motion; that is, it causes the stars to appear
nearer than they really are to the point towards which
the earth is at the moment moving. That point is
necessarily on the ecliptic, and 90° in advance of the
earth in longitude. |
A B E — A B O
I 5
For the discovery of the aberration of light, one of
the finest in modern astronomy, we are indebted to the
distinguished astronomer Dr. Bradley.
The observed effects of aberration are of importance
as supplying an independent method of measuring the
velocity of light, but more particularly as presenting one
of the few direct proofs that can be given of the earth's
motion round the sun.
A BERYSTWITH, a municipal and parliamentary
borough, market town, and seaport of Wales, in the
county of Cardigan, is situated at the western end of
the Vale of Rheidol, near the confluence of the rivers
Ystwith and Rheidol, and about the centre of Cardigan
Bºx Population in 1889, Io,000.
BETTOR, a law term implying one who instigates,
encourages, or assists another to perform some criminal
action. See ACCESSORY.
A BEYANCE, a law term denoting the expectancy of
an estate. Thus, if lands be leased to one person for
life, with reversion to another for years, the remainder
for years is in abeyance till the death of the lessee.
ABGAR, the name or title of a line of kings of Edessa,
in Mesopotamia. One of them is known from a corre-
spondence he is said to have had with Jesus Christ.
ABIAD, BAHR-EL-, a name given to the western
branch of the Nile, above Khartoum. It is better
known as the White Nile. See NILE.
A BIES. See FIR.
A BILA, a city of ancient Syria, the capital of the
tetrarchy of Abilene, a territory whose limit and extent
it is impossible now to define.
ABILDGAARD, NIKola J, called “the Father of
Danish Painting,” was born in 1744. He formed his
style on that of Claude and of Nicolas Poussin, and was
a cold theorist. He died in 1809.
ABILENE, a city of Kansas, the capital of Dickin-
son county, is situated on the Kansas, or Kaw, river,
at a point ninety-five miles west of Topeka, the State
capital. It has extensive railroad connections, and
is an important cattle-trading center, large ship-
ments of cattle in all directions being made here. It
has good banking facilities and telegraph connections.
The town contains six churches and an opera house, and
its educational facilities are ample. It has one newspa-
per. This town is one of the outlying distributing points
which have had such an effect in the upbuilding of both
Kansas City and St. Joseph. Pop., 5,500.
ABIMELECH (father of the King, or rather, per-
haps, King-father), occurs first in the Bible as the name
of certain kings of the Philistines, and is supposed to
be their official title. w *
ABINGDON, a parliamentary and municipal borough
and market town of England, in Berkshire, on a branch
of the Thames, 7 miles south of Oxford, and 51 miles
W. N.W. of London. Population (1889), 9,000.
ABINGDON, a town of South-Side Virginia, note-
worthy as a tobacco market and the seat of a female
college, and also as the scene of some important op-
erations of the late civil war (1861-5). Population
,OOO.
3 ABIOGENESIS, as a name for the production of
living by non-living matter, has of late been supersed-
ing the less accurate phrase “Spontaneous Generation.”
Professor Huxley, who made use of the word in his
presidential address to the British Association in 1870,
distinguished Abiogenesis from “Xenogenesis” or
“Heterogenesis,” which occurs, or is supposed to
occur, not when dead matter produces living matter,
but when a living parent gives rise to offspring which
passes through a totally different series of states from
those exhibited by the parent, and does not return into
the parent’s cycle of changes. When a “living parent
gives rise to offspring which passes through the same
cycle of changes as itself,” there occurs “Homogenesis.”
“Biogenesis" includes both of these. The question of
Abiogenesis—whether under certain conditions living
matter is produced by not-living matter—as it is one of
the most fundamental, is perhaps also the oldest in
Biology; but within recent years— partly because the
means of accurate experimentation have been ificreased
and the microscope improved, and partly because the
question has been recognized in its important bearings
on evolution, the correlation of forces, and the theory
of infectious diseases—naturalists have been led to
bestow more attention upon it than at any previous
period.
The defenders of Abiogenesis, on the other hand,
while interpreting the results of past observation and
experiment in their own favor, are yet less disposed to
rest on these, rather preferring to argue from those
wide analogies of evolution and correlation which seem
to support their doctrine. The fullest discussion of the
subject of Abiogenesis, from the Abiogenist’s point of
view, is to be found in Dr. Bastian's Beginnings of
Life.
ABIPONES, a tribe of South American Indians,
inhabiting the territory-lying between Santa Fé and St.
Iago. They originally occupied the Chaco district of
Paraguay, but were driven thence by the hostility of the
Spaniards. *
ABJURATION. See ALLEGIANCE, OATH OF.
ABKHASIA, or ABASIA, a tract of Asiatic Russia,
on the border of the Black Sea. The high mountains
of the Caucasus on the N. and N.E. divide it from
Circassia; on the S.E. it is bounded by Mingrelia ; and
on the S.W. by the Black Sea. Though the country is
| generally mountainous, there are some deep, well-watered
valleys, and the climate is mild. The population of
Abkhasia is variously stated at from 50,000 to 250,000.
ABLUTION, a ceremonial of purification, practiced in
nearly every age and nation. It consisted in washing
the body in whole or part, so as to cleanse it symbolic-
ally from defilement, and to prepare it for religious
observances. Various forms of ablution practised by
different nations are mentioned in the sixth book of the
AEmeid, and we are told that AEneas washed his ensan-
guined hands after the battle before touching his Penates.
Symbolic ablution finds a place under the New Testa-
ment dispensation in the rite of baptism, which is
observed, though with some variety of form and circum-
stances, throughout the whole Christian Church. By
Roman Catholics and Ritualists, the term ablution is
applied to the cleansing of the chalice and the fingers of
the celebrating priest after the administration of the
Lord’s Supper.
ABNER (father of light), first cousin of Saul and
commander-in-chief of his army. The chief references
to him during the lifetime of Saul are found in I Sam.
xvii. 55, and xxvi. 5.
ABO, a city and seaport, and chief town of the dis-
trict of the same name in the Russian province of Fin-
land, is situated in N. lat. 60° 26', E. long. 22° 19', on
the Aurajoki, about 3 miles from where it falls into the
Gulf of Bothnia.
ABOLITIONIST. See SLAVERY.
ABOMASUM, cat/lette, the fourth or rennet stom-
ach of Ruminantia. From the omaszemz the food is
finally deposited in the abomasum, a cavity consider-
ably larger than either the second or third stomach,
although less than the first.
ABOMEY, the capital of Dahomey, in West Africa,
is situated in N. lat. 79, E. long. 2° 4', about 60 miles
N. of Whydah, the port of the kingdom. It is a clay-
built town, surrounded by a moat and mud walls, and
I6
A B O – A B R
occupies a large area, part of which is cultivated. Pop-
ulation, about 30,000. See DAHOMEY.
ABORIGINES, originally a proper name given to an
Italian people who inhabited the ancient Latium, or
country now called Campagna di A'oma. Various
derivations of this name have been suggested; but there
can be scarcely any doubt that the usual derivation (ab
origine) is correct, and that the word simply indicated
a settled tribe, whose origin and earlier history were
unknown. In modern times the term Aborigines has
been extended in signification, and is used to indicate
the inhabitants found in a country at its first discovery,
in contradistinction to colonies or new races, the time of
whose introduction into the country is known.
ABORTION, in Midwifery (from aborior, I perish),
the premature separation and expulsion of the contents of
the pregnant uterus. When occurring before the seventh
lunar month of gestation, abortion is the term ordinarily
employed, but subsequent to this period it is designated
premature labor. The present notice includes both
these terms. As an accident of pregnancy, abortion is
far from uncommon, although its relative frequency, as
compared with that of completed gestation, has been
very differently estimated by accoucheurs. It is more
liable to occur in the earlier than in the later months of
pregnancy, and it would also appear to occur more
readily at the periods corresponding to those of the
menstrual discharge. Abortion may be induced by
numerous causes, both of a local and general nature.
Malformation of the pelvis, accidental injuries, and the
diseases and displacements to which the uterus is liable,
on the one hand; and, on the other, various morbid
conditions of the ovum or placenta leading to the death
of the foetus, are among the direct local causes of abortion.
The tendency, however, to the recurrence of abortion in
persons who have previously miscarried is well known,
and should ever be borne in mind with the view of avoiding
any cause likely to lead to a repetition of the accident.
The treatment of abortion embraces the means to be
used by rest, astringents and sedatives, to prevent the
occurrence when it merely threatens; or when, on the
contrary, it is inevitable, to accomplish, as speedily as
possible, the complete removal of the entire contents of
the uterus. For Criminal Abortion, see MEDICAL
JURISPRUDENCE.
ABOUKIR, a small village on the coast of Egypt,
13 miles N. E. of Alexandria, containing a castle which
was used as a state prison by Mehemet Ali.
ABRABANEL, ISAAC, a celebrated Jewish states-
man, philosopher, theologian, and commentator, was
born at Lisbon in 1437. He belonged to an ancient
family that claimed descent from the royal house of
David, and his parents gave him an education becoming
so renowned a lineage. He held a high place in the favor
of King Alphonso V., who intrusted him with the man-
agement of important state affairs.
ABRAC ADABRA, a meaningless word once supposed
to have a magical efficacy as an antidote against agues
and other ſevers. Ridiculously minute directions for the
proper use of the charm are given in the Praecepta de
Medicina of Serenus Sammonicus.
ABRAHAM or ABRAM, father of the Israelite race,
was the first-born son of Terah, a Shemite, who left Ur
of the Chaldees, in the north-east of Mesopotamia, along
with Abram, Sarai, and Lot, and turned westwards in
the direction of Canaan. Abram had married his half-
sister, Sarai, who was ten years younger than himself;
and though such relationship was afterwards forbidden
by the law, it was common in ancient times, both among
other peoples, and among the Hebrews themselves, at
least before Moses. The cause of Terah's removing
from his native country is not given. Having come to
Haran, he abode there till his death, at the age of 205
According to Genesis xii., Abram left Haran when he
was 75 years of age, that is, before the death of his
father, in consequence of a divine command, to which
was annexed a gracious promise, “And I will make of
thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy
name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will
bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth
thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be
blessed.” How long the patriarch remained in Egypt
is not related; nor are the influences which the religion,
Science, and learning of that civilized land had upon him
alluded to. That they acted beneficially upon his mind,
enlightening and enlarging it, can scarcely be doubted.
His religious conceptions were transformed. The
manifold wisdom of Egypt impressed him. Intercourse
with men far advanced in civilization taught him much.
Later tradition speaks of his communicating to the
Egyptians the Sciences of arithmetic and astronomy
(Josephus i. 7); but this is founded upon the notion
entertained at the time of the civilized Chaldeans of
Babylon, whereas Ur of the Chaldees was a district remote
from the subsequent centre of recondite knowledge.
Abram received more than he imparted, for the Egyp-
tians were doubtless his superiors in science. He found
the rite of circumcision in use. There, too, he acquired
great substance—flocks and herds, male and female
slaves. After returning to Canaan, to his former local-
ity, Abram and Lot separated, because of disputes be-
tween their herdsmen, there not being sufficient room for
all their cattle in common. After this separation the
possession of Canaan was again assured to Abram and to
his seed, who should be exceedingly numerous.
Jehovah again promised to Abram a numerous off-
spring, with the possession of Canaan. He also con-
cluded a covenant with him in a solemn form, and
revealed the fortunes of his posterity in Egypt, with
their deliverance from bondage. In consequence of
the barrenness of Sarai, she gave her handmaid Hagar
to Abram, who, becoming pregnant by him, was
haughtily treated by her mistress, and fled towards
Egypt. But an angel met her in the desert and sent her
back, telling of a numerous race that should spring from
her. Having returned, she gave birth to Ishmael, in the
86th year of Abram’s age.
Again did Jehovah appear to the patriarch, promising
as before a multitudinous seed, and changing his name
in conformity with such promise. He assured him and
his posterity of the possession of Canaan, and concluded
a covenant with him for all time. At the institution of
circumcision on this occasion, Sarai’s name was also
changed, because she was to be the maternal progenitor
of the covenant people through Isaac her son. Abram,
and all the males belonging to him, were then circum-
cised. He had become acquainted with the rite in
Egypt, and transferred it to his household, making it a
badge of distinction between the worshippers of the true
God and the idolatrous Canaanites — the symbol of the
flesh's subjection to the spirit. Its introduction into the
worship of the colony at Mamre indicated a decided
advance in Abram’s religious conceptions. He had got
beyond the cruel practice of human sacrifice. The
gross worship of the Canaanites was left behind; and
the small remnant of it which he retained comported
with a faith approaching monotheism. Amid Fº:
idolatry this institution was a protection to his family
and servants — a magic circle drawn around them.
But, though powerful and respected wherever his name
was known, he confined the rite to his own domestics,
without attempting to force it on the inhabitants of the
land where he sojourned. The punishment of death for
neglecting it, because the uncircumcised person was
+ A B R —
A B S 17
thought to be a breaker of the covenant and a despiser
of its Author, seems a harsh measure on the part of
Abram ; yet it can hardly be counted an arbitrary trans-
ference of the later Levitical severities to the progenitor
of the race, since it is in the Elohist.
Accompanied by two angels, Jehovah appeared again
to Abram at the oak of Mamre, accepted his proposed
hospitality, and promised him a son by Sarai within a year.
Though she laughed incredulously, the promise was defi-
nitely repeated. When the angels left, Jehovah com-
municated to Abram the divine purpose of destroying the
dwellers in Siddim because of their wickedness, but
acceded to the patriarch's intercession, that the cities of
the plain should be spared if ten righteous men could be
found in them. The two angels who had gone before,
arrived at Sodom in the evening, and were entertained by
Lot, but threatened with shameful treatment by the
depraved inhabitants. Seeing that the vengeance of
Heaven was deserved, they proceeded to execute it, sav-
ing Lot with his wife and two daughters, and sparing
Zoar as a place of refuge for them. Jehovah rained
down fire and brimstone from Heaven, turning all the
Jordan district to desolation, so that, when Abram looked
next morning from the spot where Jehovah and himself
had parted, he saw a thick smoke ascend from the ruins.
Abram then journeyed from Hebron to the Negeb,
Settled between Kadesh and Shur in Gerar, where Sarai
is said to have been treated as a prior account makes her
to have been in Egypt.
Abram was now commanded by God to offer up Isaac
in the land of Moriah. Proceeding to obey, he was pre-
vented by an angel just as he was about to slay his son,
and sacrificed a ram that presented itself at the time. In
reward of his obedience he received the promise of a
numerous seed and abundant prosperity. Thence he
returned to Beersheba.
Sarah died and was buried in the cave of Machpelah
near Hebron, which Abram purchased, with the adjoin-
ing field, from Ephron the Hittite.
We cannot adopt the opinion of Von Bohlen and
Dozy that Abram is a mythical person. He must be
regarded as a historical character, though the accounts
of his life have mythical elements intermingled with
much that is traditional or legendary.
The religion of Abram was not pure Jehovism.
According to Exodus vi. 3, the name Jehovah was
unknown before Moses. Pure Jehovism was a growth
not reached before the prophets. It was a late develop-
ment, the creed of most spiritual teachers, not of the
people generally.
It is impossible to get chronological exactness in
Abram’s biography, because it is composed of different
traditions incorporated with one another, the product of
different times, and all passing through the hands of a
later redactor for whom the true succession of events
was not of primary importance.
ABRAHAM-A-SANCTA-CIARA, was born at
Krähenheimstetten, a village in Suabia, on the 4th of
June 1642. In 1662 he joined the order of Barefooted
Augustinians. In this order he rose step by step until
he became prior provincialis and definitor of his
province. He was appointed court preacher at Vienna
in 1669. There the people flocked in crowds to hear
him, attracted by the force and homeliness of his lan-
guage, the grotesqueness of his humor, and the impar-
tial severity with which he lashed the follies of all
classes of society. The vices of courtiers and court-
life in particular were exposed with an admirable
intrepidity. He died in Vienna on the 1st of Decem-
ber 1709.
ABRANTES, a town of Portugal, Estremadura
province, on the Tagus, about 70 miles N.E. of Lisbon,
delightfully situated on the brow of a hill, of which the
slopes are covered with olive trees, gardens and vine-
yards. Population about 6000. -
ABRANTES, DUKE AND DUCHESS OF. See JU-
NOT.
ABRAXAS, or ABRASAX, a word engraved on cer-
tain antique stones, which were called on that account
Abraxas stones, and were used as amulets or charms.
The Basilidians, a Gnostic sect, attached importance to
the word, if, indeed, they did not bring it into use. The
letters of cºſłocrédés, in the Greek notation, make up the
number 365, and the Basilidians gave the name to the
365 orders of spirits, which, as they conceived, emanated
in succession from the Supreme Being. The Abraxas
stones, which are frequently to be met with in the cabi-
nets of the curious, are of very little value. -
ABRUZZO, originally one of the four provinces of
the continental part of the kingdom of the two Sicilies,
afterward subdivided into Abruzzd Ulteriore I., Abruzzo
Ulteriore II., and Abruzzo Citeriore, which were so
named from their position relative to Naples, and now
form three of the provinces of the kingdom of Italy.
Though presenting to the Adriatic a coast of about 8o
miles in length, they have not a single good port. This
territory is mostly rugged, mountainous, and covered
with extensive forests, hut contains also many fertile and
well-watered valleys. The Apennines traverse its whole
extent, running generally from N. W. to S.E., and here
attaining their greatest elevation. The country is
watered by numerous small rivers, most of which fall
into the Adriatic. The climate varies with the elevation,
but, generally speaking, is temperate and healthy. , Agri-
culture is but little understood or attended to, although
in many of the lower parts of the country the land is
fertile. The principal productions are corn, hemp, flax,
almonds, olives, figs, grapes, and chestnuts. The rear-
ing and tending of sheep is the chief occupation of the
inhabitants of the highlands, the wool being of a superior
quality. Bears, wolves, and wild boars inhabit the
mountain fastnesses; and in the extensive oak forests
numerous herds of swine are fed, the hams of which are
in high repute. The manufactures are very inconsider-
able, being chiefly woollen, linen, and silk stuffs, and
earthen and wood wares. Abruzzo was of great importance
to the kingdom of Naples, being its chief defence to the
north, and presenting almost insurmountable difficulties
to the advance of an enemy.
ABSALOM (father of peace), the third son of
David, king of Israel. He was deemed the handsomest
man in the kingdom. His sister Tamar having been
violated by Amnon, David’s eldest son, Absalom
caused his servants to murder Amnon at a feast, to
which he had invited all the king’s sons. After this
deed he fled to the kingdom of his maternal grandfather,
where he remained three years; and it was not until two
years after his return that he was fully reinstated in his
father’s favor. Absalom seems to have been by this
time the eldest surviving son of David, but he was not
the destined heir of his father’s throme. The suspicion
of this excited the impulsive Absalom to rebellion. For
a time the tide of public opinion ran so strong in his
favor that David found it expedient to retire beyond
the Jordan. But, instead of adopting the prompt
measures which his sagacious counselor Ahithophel
advised, Absalom loitered at Jerusalem till a large force
was raised against him, and when he took the field his
army was completely routed. The battle was fought in
the forest of Ephraim; and Absalom, caught in the
boughs of a tree by the superb hair in which he gloried,
was run through the body by Joab. The king’s grief for
his worthless son vented itself in the touching lamenta-
tion — “O my son Absalom, my Son, my son Absalom:
2A
I8
A B S – A B U
would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son,
my Son | *
ABSALON, Archbishop of Lund, in Denmark, was
born in 1128, near Soroë, in Zealand, his family name
being Axel. In 1148 he went to study at Paris, where a
college for Danes had been established. In 1157 he was
chosen Bishop of Roeskilde or Rothschild. In that age
warlike pursuits were not deemed inconsistent with the
clerical office, and Absalon was a renowned warrior by
Sea and land, as well as a zealous ecclesiastic, his avowed
principle being that “both swords, the spiritual and the
temporal, were intrusted to the clergy.” To his exer-
tions as statesman and soldier Waldemar was largely
indebted for the independence and consolidation of his
kingdom. A tower or castle which the archbishop
caused to be built as a defence against the Wendish
pirates, was the commencement of the present capital,
Copenhagen, which from this circumstance is sometimes
known in history as Axelstadt. The archbishop died in
I2O I.
ABSCESS, in Surgery (from abscedo, to separate), a
collection of pus among the tissues of the body, the
result of inflammation. Abscesses are divided into
acute and chronic. See SURGERY.
ABSINTHE, a liqueur or aromatised spirit, prepared
by pounding the leaves and flowering tops of various
species of wormwood, with angelica root, sweet flag
root, the leaves of dittany of Crete, star-anise fruit, and
other aromatics, and macerating these in alcohol. After
soaking for about eight days the compound is distilled,
yielding an emerald-colored liquor, to which a propor-
tion of an essential-oil, usually that of anise, is added.
The liqueur thus prepared constitutes the genuine AEx-
trait d’Absin the of the French. The chief seat of the
manufacture is in the canton of Neufchâtel, in Switzer-
land, although absinthe distilleries are scattered gener-
erally throughout Switzerland and France. The liqueur
is chiefly consumed in France, but there is also a con-
siderable export trade to the United States of America.
In addition to the quantity distilled for home consump-
tion in France, the amount imported from Switzerland
in recent years has not been less than 2,000,000 gallons
yearly. The introduction of this beverage into general
use in France is curious. During the Algerian war
(1844–47) the soldiers were advised to mix absinthe with
their wine as a febrifuge. On their return they brought
with them the habit of drinking it, which is now so
widely disseminated in French society, and with such
disastrous consequences, that the custom is justly
esteemed a grave national evil.
ABSOLUTE (from the Latin absolvere), having the
general meaning of loosened from, or zemrestricted, in
which sense it is popularly used to qualify such words as
“monarchy" or “power,” has been variously employed
in philosophy. For absolute in its more strictly meta-
physical use, see METAPHYSICs.
ABSOLUTION, a term used in civil and ecclesiasti-
cal law, denotes the act of setting free or acquitting.
In a criminal process it signifies the acquittal of an
accused person on the ground that the evidence has
either disproved or failed to prove the charge brought
against him. The ecclesiastical usage of the word is
essentially different from the civil. It refers to sin
actually committed, and denotes the setting of a person
free from its guilt, or from its penal consequences, or
from both. . It is invariably connected with penitence,
and some form of confession, the Scripture authority,
to which the Roman Catholics, the Greek Church, and
Protestants equally appeal, being found in John xx. 23,
James v. 16, &c. In the primitive church the injunction,
of James was literally obeyed, and confession was made
before the whole congregation, whose presence and
up nutritive and other fluids.
concurrence were reckoned necessary to the validity of
the absolution pronounced by the presbyter. In the 4th
century the bishops began to exercise the power of
absolution in their own right, without recognising the
congregations. In consequence of this the private con-
fession (confessio auricularis) was established, and
became more and more common, until it was rendered
imperative once a year by a decree of the fourth Lateran
Council (1215). A change in the form of absolution
was almost a logical sequence of the change in the nature
of the confession. At first the priest acted ministerially
as an intercessor.
ABSORPTION, in the animal economy, the function
possessed by the absorbent system of vessels of taking
See PHYSIOLOGY.
ABSTEMII, a name formerly given to such persons
as could not partake of the cup of the eucharist on
account of their natural aversion to wine. Calvinists
allowed these to commune in the species of bread, only
simply touching the cup to their lips; which was by the
Lutherans deemed a profanation. Among several Prot-
estant sects, both in Great Britain and America,
abstemail on a somewhat different principle have recently
appeared. These are total abstainers, who maintain
that the use of stimulants is essentially sinful, and allege
that the wine used by Christ and his disciples at the
supper was unfermented.
ABSTRACTION, in Psychology and Zogic, is a
word used in several distinguishable but closely allied
senses. First, in a comprehensive sense, it is often
applied to that process by which we fix the attention
upon one part of what is present to the mind, to the
exclusion of another part ; abstraction thus conceived
being merely the negative of ATTENTION (q.v.) In
this sense we are able in thought to abstract one object
from another, or an attribute from an object, or an attri-
bute perceived by one sense from those perceived by
other senses. &
ABSURDUM, REDUCTIO AD, a mode of demon-
strating the truth of a proposition, by showing that its
contradictory leads to an absurdity. It is much em-
ployed by Euclid.
ABU, a celebrated mountain of Western India, between
5000 and 6000 feet in height, situated in 42°40' N. lat.,
and 72° 48' E. long., within the Rájputóná State of
Sirohí. It is celebrated as the site of the most ancient
Jain temples in India, and attracts pilgrims from all parts
of the country. The Jains are the modern Indian rep-
resentatives of the Buddhists, and profess the ancient
theistic doctrines of that sect, modified by Saint worship
and incarnations. The elevations and platforms of the
mountains are covered with elaborately sculptured
shrines, temples and tombs. On the top of the hill is a
small round platform containing a cavern, with a block
of granite, bearing the impression of the feet of Dátá-
Bhrigu, an incarnation of Vishnu. The Emperor Akbar,
by a fiarmán dated in the month of Rabi-ul-ául, in the
37th year of his reign, corresponding with 1593, made a
grant of the hill and temples of Abu, as well as of the
other hills and places of Jain pilgrimage in the empire,
to Harbijai Sur, a celebrated preceptor of the Setám-
bari sect of the Jain religion. He also prohibited the
slaughter of animals at these places. The fiarmán of
this enlightened monarch declared that, “it is the rule of
the worshippers of God to preserve all religions.”.
ABU-BEKR (father of the virgin), was originally
called Abd-el-Caaba (servant of the temple), and
received the name by which he is known historically
in consequence of the marriage of his virgin daughter
Ayesha to Mohammed, . He was born at Mecca in the
year 573 A.D., a Koreishite of the tribe of Benn-Taim.
possessed of immense wealth, which he had himself
A B U – A B Y
I9
acquired in commerce, and held in high esteem as judge,
an interpreter of dreams, and a depositary of the tradi-
tions of his race, his early accession to Islamism was a
fact of great importance. On his conversion he assumed
the name of Abd-Alla (servant of God). His own
belief in Mohammed and his doctrines was so thorough
as to procure for him the title El Siddik (the faithful),
and his success in gaining converts was correspondingly
great. In his personal relationship to the prophet he
showed the deepest veneration and most unswerving
devotion. When Mohammed fled from Mecca, Abu-
Bekr was his sole companion, and shared both his
hardships and his triumphs, remaining constantly with
him until the day of his death. During his last illness
the prophet indicated Abu-Bekr as his successor, by
desiring him to offer up prayer for the people. Omar,
fearing that the sayings of the prophet would be entirely
forgotten when those who had listened to them had all
been removed by death, induced Abu-Bekr to see to
their preservation in a written form. The record,
when completed, was deposited with Hafsu, daughter of
Omar, and one of the wives of Mohammed. It was
held in great reverence by all Moslems, though it did
not possess canonical authority, and furnished most of the
materials out of which the Koran, as it now exists, was
prepared. Abu-Bekr died on the 23d of August 634,
having reigned as Khalif fully two years.
ABULFARAGIUS, GREGOR ABULFARAJ (called
also BARHEBRAEUs, from his Jewish parentage), was
born at Malatia, in Armenia, in 1226. His father,
Aaron, was a physician, and Abulfaragius, after studying
under him, also practised medicine with great success.
Abulfaragius wrote a large number of works on various
subjects, but his fame as an author rests chiefly on his
Aſistory of the World, from the creation to his own
day. It was written in Syriac, and then, after a con-
siderable interval, an abridged version in Arabic was
published by the author at the request of friends.
ABULFAZL, vizier and historiographer of the great
Mongol emperor, Akbar, was born about the middle of
the 16th century, the precise date being uncertain. His
career as a minister of state, brilliant though it was,
would probably have been by this time forgotten but
for the record he himself has left of it in his celebrated
history, the AAEóar Mameh, or Book of Akbar. Abulfazl
died by the hand of an assassin, while returning from a
mission to the Deccan in 16O2. *
ABULFEDA, ISMAEL BEN-ALI, EMAD-EDDIN, the
celebrated Arabian historian and geographer, born at
Damascus in the year 672 of the Hegira (1273 A.D.),
was directly descended from Ayub, the father of the
emperor Saladim. In his boyhood he devoted himself to
the study of the Koran and the sciences, but, from his
twelfth year, he was almost constantly engaged in mili-
tary expeditions, chiefly against the crusaders. In 1285
he was present at the assault of a stronghold of the
Knights of St. John, and he took part in the sieges of
Tripoli, Acre and Roum. For twenty years, till his
death, in October 1331, he reigned in tranquillity and
splendor, devoting himself to the duties of govern-
ment and to the composition of the works to which he
is chiefly indebted for his fame. He was a munificent
patron of men of letters, who repaired in large numbers
to his court. Abulfeda’s chief historical work is Azu
Abridgement of the A'istory of the Human Race, in
the form of annals, extending from the creation of the
world to the year 1328. MSS. of Abulfeda's great
works are preserved in the Bodleian Library and in the
National Library of France.
ABULGHAZI-BAHADUR (1605–1663), a khan of
Kiva, of the race of Genghis-Khan, who, after abdi-
cating in favor of his son, employed his leisure in
N.
writing a history of the Mongols and Tartars. He pro-
duced a valuable work, which has been translated into
German, French, and Russian.
ABUNA, the title given to the archbishop or metro-
politan of Abyssinia.
ABUSHEHR. See BUSHIRE.
ABU-SIMBEL, or IPSAMBUL, the ancient Abocci's or
Aðuncis, a place in Nubia, on the left bank of the Nile,
about 50 miles S.W. of Derr, remarkable for its ancient
Egyptian temples and colossal figures hewn out of the
solid rock. For a description of these see NUBIA.
ABU-TEMAN, one of the most highly esteemed of
Arabian poets, was born at Djacem in the year 190 of
the Hegira (806 A.D.) Arabian historians assert that
a single poem frequently gained for him many thousand
pieces of gold. Abu-Teman died 845 A.D.
ABYDOS (I), in Ancient Geography, a city of Mysia,
in Asia Minor, situated on the Hellespont, which is here
scarcely a mile broad. It was here that Xerxes crossed
the straits on his celebrated bridge of boats when he
invaded Greece. Abydos was celebrated for the vigor.
ous resistance it made when besieged by Philip II. of
Macedonia, and is famed in story for the loves of Hero
and Leander.
ABYDOS (2), in Ancient Geography, a town of Upper
Egypt, a little to the west of the Nile, between Ptole-
mais and Diospolis Parva, famous for the palace of Mem-
non and the temple of Osiris.
ABYSSINIA is an extensive country of Eastern Africa,
the limits of which are not well defined, and author-
ities are by no means agreed respecting them. It may,
however, be regarded as lying between 7° 30' and 15° 4o'
N. lat., and 35° and 40° 30' E. long., having, N. and
N.W., Nubia; E., the territory of the Danakils; S.,
the country of the Gallas; and W., the regions of the
Upper Nile. It has an area of about 200,000 square
miles, and a population of from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000.
The name Abyssinia, or more properly Habessinia, is
derived from the Arabic word Habesch, which signifies
mixture or confusion, and was applied to this country by
the Arabs on account of the mixed character of the
people.
The country of Abyssinia rises rather abruptly from
the low arid district on the borders of the Red Sea in
lofty ranges of mountains, and slopes away more gradu-
ally to the westward, where the tributaries of the Nile
have formed numerous deep valleys. It consists for the
most part of extensive and elevated table-lands, with
mountain ranges extending in different directions, and
intersected by numerous valleys. The table-lands are
generally from 6000 to 9000 feet above the level of the
sea, but in the south there are some of considerable
extent, which attain a height of Io,000 feet. The mount-
ains in various parts of the country rise to 12,000 and
I3,000 feet above the sea, and some of the peaks of
Samen are said to reach to 15,000 feet, and to be always
covered with snow. The whole country presents the
appearance of having been broken up and tossed about
in a remarkable manner, the mountains assuming wild
and fantastic forms, with sides frequently abrupt and pre-
cipitous, and only accessible by very difficult passes. The
Samen range of mountains are the highest in Abyssinia,
and together with the Lamalmon and Lasta mountains
form a long, but not continuous chain, running from
north to south.
The principal rivers of Abyssinia are tributaries of the
Nile. The western portion of the country may be
divided into three regions, drained respectively by the
Mareb, the Atbara, and the Abai. The most northern
of these rivers is the Mareb, which rises in the mountains
of Taranta, flows first south, then west, and afterwards
turns to the north, where it is at length, after a course
2O
A B Y S S I N I A
of upwards of 500 miles, lost in the sand, but in the rainy
Season it falls into the Atbara.
Abyssinia is said to enjoy “probably as salubrious a
climate as any country on the face of the globe.”—
Aaréyns. The heat is by no means oppressive, a fine
light air counteracting the power of the sun; and dur-
ing the rainy season, the sky being cloudy, the weather
is always agreeable and cool, while the rain itself is not
very severe. In certain of the low valleys, however,
malarious influences prevail before and after the rainy
Season, and bring on dangerous fevers. On the higher
parts the cold is sometimes intense, particularly at
might. The natural division of the seasons is into a
cold, a hot, and a rainy season. The cold season may
be said to extend from October to February, the hot
from the beginning of March to the middle of June,
and the wet or monsoon period from this time to the
end of September.
On the summits and slopes of the highest mountains
the vegetation is of a thoroughly temperate and even
English character; the plateaux have a flora of the same
character; while on the lower slopes of the hills and in
the ravines occur many trees and shrubs of warmer
climes. “The general appearance of the plateaux and
plains is that of a comparatively bare country, with
trees and bushes thinly scattered over it, and clumps and
groves only occurring round villages and churches. But
the glens and ravines in the plateau sides, each with its
little bright spring, are often thickly wooded, and offer a
delicious contrast to the open country. The low
grounds produce also a kind of corn called focussa, of
which a black bread is made, which constitutes the food
of the lower classes. Coffee grows wild on the western
mountains, and the vine and sugar-cane are cultivated in
favorable localities. Cotton is also grown to a consid-
erable extent. Among the fruit-trees are the date,
orange, lemon, pomegranate, and banana. Myrrh,
balsam, and various kinds of valuable medicinal plants
are COIIllin OI).
Most of the domestic animals of Europe are found
here. The cattle are in general small, and the oxen
belong to the humped race. The famous Galla oxen
have horns sometimes four feet long. The sheep belong
to the short and fat-tailed race, and are covered with
wool. Goats are very common, and have sometimes
horns two feet in length. The horses are strong and
active. Of wild animals the spotted hyaena is among
the most numerous, as well as the fiercest and most
destructive, not only roaming in immense numbers over
the country, but frequently entering the towns, and even
the houses of the inhabitants.
The birds of Abyssinia are very numerous, and many
of them remarkable for the beauty of their plumage.
Great numbers of eagles, vultures, hawks, and other
birds of prey are met with ; and partridges, snipes,
pºons, parrots, thrushes, and swallows are very plenti-
Ull.
The inhabitants of Abyssinia form a number of dif-
ferent tribes, and evidently belong to several distinct
races. The majority are of the Caucasian race, and are
in general well-formed and handsome, with straight and
regular features, lively eyes, hair long and straight or
somewhat curled, and color dark olive, approaching to
black. Rüppell regards them as identical in features
with the Bedouin Arabs. The tribes inhabiting Tigré,
Amhara, Agow, &c., belong to this race. The Galla
race, who came originally from the south, have now
overrun the greater part of the country, constituting a
large portion of the soldiery, and, indeed, there are few
of the chiefs who have not an intermixture of Galla
blood in their veins. They are fierce and turbulent in
character, and addicted to cruelty. Many of them are
still idolaters, but most of them have now adopted the
Mohammedan faith, and not a few of them the Chris-
tianity of the Abyssinians. They are generally large and
well-built, of a brown complexion, with regular features,
small deeply-sunk but very bright eyes, and long black
hair. A race of Jews, known by the name of Falashas,
inhabit the district of Samen.
The prevailing religion of Abyssinia is a very corrupted
form of Christianity. This is professed by the majority
of the people, as well as by the reigning princes of the
different states. There are also scattered over the
country many Mohammedans and some Falashas or Jews.
Christianity was introduced into this country about
the year 330, but since that time it has been so corrupted
by errors of various kinds as to have become little more
than a dead formality mixed up with much superstition
and Judaism.
In manners the Abyssinians are rude and barbarous.
Engaged as they are in continual wars, and accustomed
to bloodshed, human life is little regarded among them.
Murders and executions are frequent, and yet cruelty is
said not to be a marked feature of their character; and
in war they seldom kill their prisoners. When one is
convicted of murder, he is handed over to the relatives
of the deceased, who may either put him to death or
accept a ransom. When the murdered person has no
relatives, the priests take upon themselves the office of
avengers. The Abyssinians are irritable, but easily
appeased ; and are a gay people, fond of festive indul-
gences. On every festive occasion, as a Saint’s day,
birth, marriage, &c., it is customary for a rich man to
collect his friends and neighbors, and kill a cow and one
or two sheep.
Abyssinia is one of the most ancient monarchies in the
world, and has been governed from time immemorial by
an emperor. For many years, however, until the acces-
sion of the late Emperor Theodore, he had been a mere
puppet in the hands of one or other of his chiefs. Each
chief is entire master of all sources of revenue within his
territory, and has practically full power of life and death.
His subjection consists in an obligation to send from time
to time presents to his superior, and to follow him to war
with as large a force as he can muster.
The three principal provinces of Abyssinia are Tigré in
the north, Amhara (in which Gondar the capital is situ-
ated) in the centre, and Shoa in the south. The geo-
graphical position of Tigré enhances its political impor-
tance, as it lies between Gondar and the sea at Massowah,
and thus holds, as it were, the gate of the capital.
The principal towns are Gondar in Amhara, the former
capital of the kingdom, and containing about 7000 inhab-
itants. Debra Tabor in Amhara, formerly a small village,
but which rose to be a place of considerable size in conse-
quence of the Emperor Theodore having fixed upon it as
his residence, and near it was Gaffat, where the European
workmen reside. The capital of Shoa is Ankobar, and
near it is Angolala, also a place of considerable size. The
capital of Agamé s Adigerat.
The language of the religion and literature of the country
is the Geez, which belongs to the Ethiopic class of lan-
guages, and is the ancient language of Tigré; of this the
modern Tigré is a dialect. The Amharic, the language
of Amhara, is that of the court, the army, and the mer-
chants, and is that too which travellers who penetrate
beyond Tigré have occasion to use. But the Agow in its
various dialects is the language of the people in some
provinces almost exclusively, and in others, where it has
been superseded by the language of the dominant race, it
still exists among the lowest classes. This last is believed
to be the original language of the people; and from the
affinity of the Geez, Amharic, and cognate dialects, to
the Arabic, it seems probable that they were introduced
A B Y S S I N I A
2 I
by conquerors or settlers from the opposite shores of the
Red Sea.
The trade and manufactures of Abyssinia are insignifi-
cant, the people being chiefly engaged in agriculture and
pastoral pursuits. Cotton cloths, the universal dress of
the country, are made in large quantities. The prepara-
tion of leather and parchment is also carried on to some
extent, and manufactures of iron and brass.
Abyssinia, or at least the northern portion of it, was
included in the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. The con-
nection between Egypt and Ethiopia was in early times
very intimate, and occasionally the two countries were
under the same ruler, so that the arts and civilisation of
the one naturally found their way into the other. In
early times, too, the Hebrews had commercial intercourse
with the Ethiopians; and according to the Abyssinians,
the Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon, was a mon-
arch of their country, and from her son Menilek the kings
of Abyssinia are descended. During the captivity many
of the Jews settled here, and brought with them a knowl-
edge of the Jewish religion. Under the Ptolemies, the
arts as well as the enterprise of the Greeks entered Ethi-
opia, and led to the establishment of Greek colonies.
Christianity was introduced into the country by Frumen-
tius, who was consecrated first bishop of Abyssinia by
St. Athanasius of Alexandria about A.D. 330. Subse-
quently the monastic system was introduced, and between
47O and 48o a great company of monks appear to have
entered and established themselves in the country. Since
that time Monachism has been a power among the people,
and not without its influence on the course of events. In
522 the king of the Homerites, on the opposite coast of
the Red Sea, having persecuted the 8. the
Emperor Justinian requested the king of Abyssinia, Caleb
or Elesbaan, to avenge their cause. He accordingly col-
lected an army, crossed over into Arabia, and conquered
Yemen, which remained subject to Abyssinia for 67 years.
This was the most flourishing period in the annals of the
country. The Ethiopians possessed the richest part of
Arabia, carried on a large trade, which extended as far as
India and Ceylon, and were in constant communication
with the Greek empire.
Towards the close of the 15th century the Portuguese
missions into Abyssinia commenced. A belief had long
prevailed in Europe of the existence of a Christian king-
dom in the far east, whose monarch was known as Pres-
ter John, and various expeditions had been sent in quest
of it. Among others who had engaged in this search was
Pedre de Covilham, who arrived in Abyssinia in 1490,
and, believing that he had at length reached the far-famed
kingdom, presented to the Negus, or emperor of the
country, a letter from his master the king of Portugal,
addressed to Prester John.
country, but in 1507 an Armenian named Matthew was
sent by the Negus to the king of Portugal to request his
aid against the Turks. In 1520 a Portuguese fleet, with
Matthew on board, entered the Red Sea in compliance
with this request, and an embassy from the fleet visited
the country of the Negus, and remained there for about
six years.
It was about the middle of the 16th century that the
Galla tribes first entered Abyssinia from the south; and
notwithstanding frequent efforts to dislodge them, they
gradually extended and strengthened their positions till
they had overrun the greater part of the country. The
power of the emperor was thus weakened, independent
chiefs set themselves up in different parts, until at
length he became little better than a puppet in the
hands of the most powerful of his chiefs. In 1805 the
country was visited by Lord Valentia and Mr. Salt, and
again by Salt in 1810. In 1829 Messrs. Gobat and
Kugler were sent out as missionaries by the Church
Covilham remained in the,
Missionary Society, and were well received by the Ras of
Tigré, Mr. Kugler died soon after his arrival, and his
place was subsequently supplied by Mr. Isenberg, who
was followed by Messrs. Blumhardt and Krapf. In
1830 Mr. Gobat proceeded to Gondar, where he also
met with a favorable reception. In 1833 he returned to
Europe, and published a journal of his residence here.
In the following year he went back to Tigré, but in
1836 he was compelled to leave from ill health. In
1838 other missionaries were obliged to leave the
country, owing to the opposition of the native priests.
Lij Kassa, who came subsequently to be known as
the Emperor Theodore, was born at Kuara, a western
province of Abyssinia, about the year 1818. His
father was of noble family, and his uncle was governor
of the provinces of Dembea, Kuara, and Chelga. He
was educated in a convent, but, preferring a wandering
life, he became leader of a band of malcontents. On
the death of his uncle he was made governor of Kuara,
but, not satisfied with this, he seized upon Dembea, and
having defeated several generals sent against him, peace
was restored on his receiving Tavavitch, daughter of
Ras Ali, in marriage. This lady is said to have been
his good genius and counsellor, and during her life his
conduct was most exemplary. He next turned his arms
against the Turks, but was defeated ; and the mother of
Ras Ali having insulted him in his fallen condition, he
proclaimed his independence. The troops sent against
him were successively defeated, and eventually the
whole of the possessions of Ras Ali fell into his hands.
He next defeated the chief of Godjam, and then turned
his arms against the governor of Tigré, whom he totally
defeated in February, 1855. In March of the same
year he took the title of Theodore III., and caused
himself to be crowned king of Ethiopia by the Abuna.
Theodore was now in the zenith of his career. He
reduced the kingdom of Shoa, and took Ankobar, the
capital; but in the meantime his own people were
groaning under his heavy exactions, rebellions were
breaking out in various parts of his provinces, and his
good queen was now dead. He lavished vast sums of
money upon his army, which at one time amounted to
IOO,Ooo or 150,000 fighting men ; and in order to meet
this expenditure, he was forced to exact exorbitant
tributes from his people. The British consul, Plowden,
who was so strongly attached to Theodore, having
been ordered by his Government in 1860 to return to
Massowah, was attacked on his way by a rebel named
Garred, mortally wounded, and taken prisoner. Theo-
dore attacked the rebels, and in the action the murderer
of Mr. Plowden was slain by his friend and companion
Mr. Bell, but the latter lost his life in preserving that of
Theodore. The deaths of the two Englishmen were
terribly avenged by the slaughter or mutilation of
nearly 2000 rebels. Theodore soon after married his
second wife Terunish, the proud daughter of the late
governor of Tigré, who felt neither affection nor respect
for the upstart who had dethroned her father, and the
union was by no means a happy one. In 1862 he made
a second expedition against the Gallas, which was
stained with atrocious cruelties. Theodore had now
given himself up to intoxication and lust. When the
news of Mr. Plowden's death reached England, Captain
Cameron was appointed to succeed him as consul, and
arrived at Massowah in February, 1862. He proceeded
to the camp of the king, to whom he presented a rifle,
a pair of pistols, and a letter in the Queen’s name. In
October Captain Cameron was dismissed by Theodore,
with a letter to the Queen of England, which reached
the Foreign Office on the 12th of February, 1863. For
some reason or other this letter was put aside and no
answer returned, and to this in no small degree is to be
22 a
A C A D E M Y
attributed the difficulties that subsequently arose with
that country. After forwarding the letter, Captain Cain-
eron went to Kassala, the seat of the Egyptian adminis-
tration in that quarter. Thence he went to Metemeh,
where he was taken ill, and in order to recruit his health
he returned to Abyssinia, and reached Jenda in August,
1863. In November despatches were received from
England, but no answer to the emperor's letter, and
this, together with the consul’s visit to Kassala, greatly
offended him, and in January, 1864 Captain Cameron
and his suite, with Messrs. Stern and Rosenthal, were
cast into prison.
In July 1867, it was resolved to send an army into
Abyssinia to enforce the release of the captives, and Sir
Robert Napier was appointed commander-in-chief.
The force amounted to upwards of 16,000 men, besides
I2,640 belonging to the transport service, and followers,
making in all upwards of 32,000 men. The task to be
accomplished was to march over 400 miles of a mount-
ainous and little-known country, inhabited by savage
tribes, to the camp or fortress of Theodore, and compel
him to deliver up his captives. The commander-in-chief
landed on 7th January, 1868, and soon after the troops
began to move forward. In the meantime Theodore
had been reduced to great straits. His army was rapidly
deserting him, and he could hardly obtain food for his
followers. He resolved to quit his capital Debra Tabor,
which he burned, and set out with the remains of his
army for Magdala. On the afternoon of the Ioth of
April a force of about 3OOo men suddenly poured down
upon the English in the plain of Arogié, a few miles
from Magdala. They advanced again and again to the
charge, but were each time driven back, and finally
retired in good order. Early next morning Theodore
sent Lieut. Prideaux, one of the captives, and Mr. Flad,
accompanied by a native chief, to the English camp to
Sue for peace. Answer was returned, that if he would
deliver up all the Europeans in his hands, and submit to
the Queen of England, he would receive honorable
treatment. The captives were liberated and sent away,
and along with a letter to the English general was a
present of IOOO cows and 500 sheep, the acceptance of
which would, according to Eastern custom, imply that
peace was granted. Through some misunderstanding,
word was sent to Theodore that the present would be
accepted, and he felt that he was now safe; but in the
evening he learned that it had not been received, and
despair again seized him. Early next morning he
attempted to escape with a few of his followers, but sub-
sequently returned. The same day (13th April) Mag-
dala was stormed and taken, and within they found the
dead body of the emperor, who had fallen by his own
hand. In 1872 Kassai was crowned king of Abyssinia
with great ceremony at Axam, under the title of King
Johannes. In that year the governor of Massowah,
Munzinger Bey, a Swiss, by command of the Viceroy of
Egypt, marched an armed force against the Bogos coun-
try. The king solicited the aid of England, Germany,
and Russia against the Egyptians, whose troops, how-
ever, were after a time withdrawn. Sir Bartle Frere,
in the blue-book published respecting his mission to
Zanzibar, is of the opinion that England, having regard
to the passage to India by the Red Sea, should not have
wholly abandoned Abyssinia.
ACACIA, a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to
the natural family Leguminosae and the section Mimosae.
The flowers are small, arranged in rounded or elongated
clusters. The leaves are compound pinnate in general.
In some instances, however, more especially in the
Australian species, the leaf-stalks become flattened, and
serve the purpose of leaves. . From some of the spe-
cies a mucilaginous gum is obtained, which is largely
used in medicine as a demulcent and for mixing drugs
in a mass, so as to enable the pharmacist to make pills
of a proper consistency and solubility. There are about
| Ze 420 species of Aca-
H cias widely scattered
over the warmer re-
ſ sº of the globe.
27 aſ ACADEMY, a
W Ş § s- ſ 2suburb of Athens to

==\ \ ſº
==AN | º
ſ
SS Sº sº ſº the north, forming
Seº | W. § - part of the Ceram-
| | \ ºf icus, about a mile
SEASH WA. | yº beyond the gate
named Dypilum. It
was said to have be-
longed to the hero
of Academus, but
the derivation of the
word is unknown.
| It was surrounded
with a wall by Hip-
. Leaf of Acacia heterophylla. º i. º:
groves and fountains by Cimon, the son of Miltiades,
who at his death bequeathed it as a public pleasure-
ground to his fellow-citizens. The Academy was the
resort of Plato, who possessed a small estate in the
neighborhood. Here he taught for nearly fifty years,
till his death, 348 B.C.; and from these “groves of the
Academy where Plato taught the truth,” his school, as
distinguished from the Peripatetics, received the name
of academies. y
The same name (Academia) was in after times given
by Cicero to his villa or country-house hear Puteoli.
There was composed his famous dialogue, Z'he Aca-
demic Questions.
Of the academic school of philosophy, in so far as it
diverged from the doctrines of its great master (see
PLATO), we must treat very briefly, referring the reader
for particulars to the founders of the various schools,
whose names we shall have occasion to mention.
The Academy lasted from the days of Plato to those
of Cicero. As to the number of successive schools, the
critics are not agreed. Cicero himself and Varro rec-
ognized only two, the old and the new ; Sextus Empir-
icus adds a third, the middle ; others a fourth, that of
Philo and Charmidas; and some even a fifth, the
Academy of Antiochus.
Of the old Academy, the principal leaders were
Speusippus, Plato's sister’s son, and his immediate suc-
cessor, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, who with Speusip-
pus accompanied Plato in his journey to Sicily;
Polemo, a dissolute young Athenian, who came to
laugh at Xenocrates, and remained to listen (Horace,
Sat., ii. 3, 253); Crates and Crantor, the latter of
whom wrote a treatise, praised by Cicero.
Arcesilaus, the successor of Crates, the disciple of
Theophrastus and Polemo, was the founder of the second
or middle academy. He professed himself the strict fol-
lower of Plato, and seems to have been sincerely of opin-
ion that his was nothing but a legitimate development of
the true Platonic system. He followed the Socratic
method of teaching in dialogues; and, like Socrates, left
no writings — at least the ancients were not acquainted
with any.
On the fourth and fifth Academies, we need not dwell
long. Philo and Antiochus both taught Cicero, and
without doubt communicated to him that mild Scepticism,
that eclecticism compounded of almost equal sympathy
with Plato and Zeno, which is the characteristic of his
philosophical writings. The Academy exactly corre-
sponded to the moral and political wants of Rome,
\
ë)|\};
A C A D E M Y
23
With no genius for speculation, the better Romans of
that day were content to embrace a system which, though
resting on no ºp. basis, and compounded of
heterogeneous dogmas, offered, notwithstanding, a secure
retreat from religious scepticism and political troubles.
AcADEMY, in its modern acceptation, signifies a soci-
ety or corporate body of learned men, established for the
advancement of Science, literature, or the arts.
The first institution of this sort we read of in history
was that ſounded at Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter, which
he named the Museum, Auovo 87 ov. After completing
his conquest of Egypt, he turned his attention to the
cultivation of letters and science, and gathered about him
a large body of literary men, whom he employed in col-
lecting books and treasures of art. This was the origin
of the library of Alexandria, the most famous of the
ancient world. Passing by the academies which were
founded by the Moors at Grenada, Corduba, and as far
east as Samarcand, the next instance of an academy is
that founded by Charlemagne at the instigation of the
celebrated Alcuin, for promoting the study of grammar,
orthography, rhetoric, poetry, history and mathematics.
In order to equalize all ranks, each member took the
pseudonym of some ancient author or celebrated person
of antiquity. For instance, Charlemagne himself was
David, Alcuin became Flaccus Albinus. Though none
of the labors of this academy have come down to us, it
undoubtedly exerted considerable influence in modeling
the language and reducing it to rules.
In the following century Alfred founded an academy at
Oxford. This was rather a grammar School than a soci-
ety of learned men, and from it the University of Oxford
originated.
But the academy which may be more justly considered
as the mother of modern European academies is that of
F/oral Games, founded at Toulouse in the year 1325, by
Clemens Isaurus. Its object was to distribute prizes and
rewards to the troubadours. The prizes consisted of
flowers of gold and silver. It was first recognised by the
state in 1694, and confirmed by letters-patent from the
king, and its numbers limited to thirty-six. It has,
except during a few years of the republic, continued to
the present day, and distributes annually the following
prizes: An amaranth of gold for the best ode, a silver
violet for a poem of sixty to one hundred Alexandrine
lines, a silver eglantine for the best prose composition,
a silver marigold for an elegy, and a silver lily presented
in the last century by M. de Malpeyre for a hymn to the
Virgin.
It was the Renaissance which was par excellence the
era of academies, and as the Italians may be said to
have discovered anew the buried world of literature, so it
was in Italy that the first and by far the most numer-
ous academies arose. The earliest of these was the Pla-
tonic Academy, founded at Florence by Cosmo de Medici
for the study of the works of Plato, though subsequently
they added the explanation of Dante' and other Italian
authors.
I. SCIENTIFIC ACADEMIES.— Italy.—The first Society
for the prosecution of physical science was that established
at Naples, 1560, under the presidency of Baptista Porta.
It was called Academia Secretorum Matura or, de
Secreti. It arose from a meeting of Some Scientific
friends, who assembled at Porta’s house and called them-
selves the Ofiosi. No member was admitted who had
not made some useful discovery in medicine or natural
philosophy.
The Royal Academy of Sciences at Turin originated
in 1757 as a private society; in 1759 it published a vol-
ume of Miscellamed Philosophico-Mathematica Societa-
tis prizata Taurimensis ; shortly after it was consti-
tuted a Royal Society by Charles Emanuel III., and in
1783 Victor Amadeus III. made it a Royal Academy of
Sciences.
Arazıce.—The Old Academy of Sciences originated in
much the same way as the French Academy. A private
society of scientific men had for some thirty years been
accustomed to meet first at the house of Montmort, the
măitre des requêtes, afterwards at that of Thevenot, a
great traveller and man of universal genius, in order to
converse on their studies, and communicate their dis-
coveries. To this society belonged, among others, Des-
cartes, Gassendi, Blaise Pascal, and his father.
On 21st December 1792, the old Academy of Sciences
met for the last time. Many of the members fell by the
guillotine, many were imprisoned, more reduced to indi-
gence. The aristocracy of talent was almost as much
detested and persecuted by the Revolution as that of rank.
In 1795 the Convention decided on founding an
Institute, which was to replace all the academies. The
first class of the Institute corresponded closely to the
old academy. See INSTITUTE.
In 1816 the Academy was reconstituted as a branch of
the Institute. The new academy has reckoned among
its members, besides many other brilliant names, Carnot,
the engineer, the physicians Fresnel, Ampère, Arago,
Biot, the chemists Gay-Lussac and Thénard, the zool-
ogists G. Cuvier and the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires.
The French had also considerable academies in most
of their large towns. Montpellier, for example, had a
Royal Academy of Sciences, founded in 1706 by Louis
XIV., on nearly the same footing as that at Paris, of
which, indeed, it was in some measure the counterpart.
Germany.—The Collegium Curioszemz was a scientific
Society, founded by J. C. Sturm, professor of mathe-
matics and natural philosophy in the University of
Altorff, in Franconia, in 1672, on the plan of the
Accademia del Cimento. It originally consisted of 20
members, and continued to flourish long after the death
of its founder. The early labors of the society were
devoted to the repetition (under varied conditions) of the
most notable experiments of the day, or to the discussion
of the results. -
The Royal Academy of Sciences at Berliz, was founded
in 1700 by Frederic I., after Leibnitz's comprehensive
plan, but was not opened till 1711. Leibnitz was the first
president. Under Maupertuis, who succeeded him, it
did good Service. Its present constitution dates from
January 24, 1812.
The Academy of Sciences at Mann/heim was estab-
lished by Charles Theodore, Elector Palatine, in the
year 1755. The plan of this institution was furnished
by Schaepflin, according to which it was divided into two
classes, the historical and physical.
The Electoral Aavarian Academy of Sciences at
Munich was established in 1759, and publishes its
memoirs under the title of Ab/and/ungen der
Baierischeme Akademie.
The Electoral Academy at Ærfurt was established by
the Elector of Mentz, in the year 1754. It consists of
a protector, president, director, assessors, adjuncts and
associates. Its object is to promote the useful sciences.
Russia. — The Zmperial Academy of Sciences at St.
Petersburg was projected by the Czar Peter the Great.
Having in the course of his travels observed the advan-
tage of public Societies for the encouragement and pro-
motion of literature, he formed the design of founding
an academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg.
During the short reign of Peter II, the salaries of the
members were discontinued, and the academy utterly
neglected by the Court; but it was again patronized by
the Empress Anne, who even added a seminary for the
education of youth, under the superintendence of the
professors.
24
A C A D E M Y
The Empress Catharine II., with her usual zeal for
promoting the diffusion of knowledge, took this useful
society under her immediate protection. She altered
the court of directors greatly to the advantage of the
whole body, corrected many of its abuses, and infused a
new vigor and spirit into their researches.
Szweden. — The Academy of Sciences at Stockholm,
or the Royal Szwedish Academy, owes its institution to
six persons of distinguished learning, among whom was
the celebrated Linnaeus. They originally met on the 2d
of June 1739, when they formed a private society, in
which some dissertations were read ; and in the end of
the same year their first publication made its appearance.
As the meetings continued and the members increased,
the society attracted the notice of the king; and,
accordingly, on the 31st of March 1741, it was incor-
porated under the name of the Royal Swedish Academy.
Not receiving any commission from the crown, it is
merely under the protection of the king, being directed,
as the English Royal Society, by its own members.
It has now, however, a large ſund, which has chiefly
arisen from legacies and other donations; but a profes-
sor of experimental philosophy, and two secretaries,
are still the only persons who receive any salaries.
Alenmark.- The Roya/Academy of Science at Copen-
Aagen owes its institution to the zeal of six individuals,
whom Christian VI., in 1742, ordered to arrange his
cabinet of medals. The Count of Holstein, its first
president, warmly patronized this society, and recom-
mended it so strongly to Christian VI. that, in 1743, his
Danish majesty took it under his protection, called it the
Royal Academy of Science, endowed it with a fund, and
ordered the members to join to their former pursuits
natural history, physics, and mathematics.
England.— In 1616 a scheme for founding a Royal
Academy was started by Edmund Bolton, an eminent
scholar and antiquary. Bolton, in his petition to King
James, which was supported by George Villiers, Marquis
of Buckingham, proposed that the title of the academy
should be “King James, his Academy or College of
honour.” About 1645 some of the more ardent fol-
lowers of Bacon used to meet, some in London, some at
Oxford, for the discussion of subjects connected with
experimental science. This was the origin of the Royal
Society, which received its charter in 1662. See
ROYAL SOCIETY.
Ireland. — The Royal Irish Academy arose out of a
Society established at Dublin about the year 1782, and
consisting of a number of gentlemen, most of whom
belonged to the university. They held weekly meetings,
and read essays in turn on various subjects.
Holland.— The Royal Academy of Sciences at Ams-
terdam, erected by a royal ordinance 1852, succeeded
the Royal Institute of the Low Countries, founded by
Louis Napoleon, King of Holland, 1808.
Spain. — The Academy of Sciences at Madrid, found-
ed 1774, after the model of the French Academy.
Portugal.— The Academy of Sciences at Lisbon is
divided into three classes—natural history, mathematics,
and national literature. It consists of 24 ordinary and
36 extraordinary members.
II. ACADEMIES OF BELLES LEttREs. –Italy.—
Italy in the 16th century was remarkable for the number
of its literary academies. Tiraboshi, in his History of
Italian Ziterature, has given a list of 171; and Jarkius,
in his Specimen. Aſistoria Academarium Canditarum,
enumerates nearly 700. Many of these, with a sort of
Socratic irony, gave themselves names expressive of
ignorance or simply ludicrous. “The first academies of
Italy chiefly directed their attention to classical litera-
ture; they compared manuscripts; they suggested new
readings, or new interpretations; they deciphered in-
scriptions or coins; they sat in judgment on a Latin ode,
or debated the propriety of a phrase. Their own poetry
had, perhaps, never been neglected; but it was not till
the writings of Bembo furnished a new code of criticism
in the Italian language, that they began to study it with
the same minuteness as modern Latin.” “They were
encouragers of a numismatic and lapidary erudition,
elegant in itself, and throwing for ever little specks of
light on the still ocean Óf the past, but not very favor-
able to comprehensive observation, and tending to
bestow on an unprofitable pedantry the honors of real
learning.”
Among the numerous other literary academies of Italy
we may mention the Academy of Naples, founded about
1440 by Alfonso, the king; the Academy of Florence,
founded 1540, to illustrate and perfect the Tuscan
tongue, especially by a close study of Petrarch; the
Zutronati of Siena, 1525; the Zn/iammati of Padua,
1534; the A'ozzi of Siena, suppressed by Cosmo, 1568.
The Academy of Æumorists, Omoristi, had its origin
at Rome in the marriage of Lorenzo Marcini, a Roman
gentleman, at which several persons of rank were guests.
In 1690 the Academy or Society of Acadians was estab-
lished at Rome, for the purpose of reviving the study of
poetry.
The Royal Academy of Savoy dates from 1719, and
was made a royal academy by Charles Felix in 1848.
Germany. — Of the German literary academies, the
most celebrated was Die Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft,
the Fruitful Society, established at Weimar 1617. Five
princes enrolled their names among the original mem-
bers. The object was to purify the mother tongue.
France. — The French Academy was established by
order of the king in the year 1635, but in its original
form it came into existence some four or five years ear-
lier. About the year 1629 certain literary friends in
Paris agreed to meet weekly at the house of one of their
number. The fame of the meetings, though the mem:
bers were bound over to secrecy, reached at length the
ears of Cardinal Richelieu, who conceived so high an
opinion of them that he at once promised them his pro-
tection, and offered to incorporate them by letters
patent. The cardinal was ex officio protector. The
meetings were weekly as before.
The letters patent were at once granted by the king,
but it was only after violent opposition and long delay
that the president, who was jealous of the cardinal’s
authority, consented to grant the verification required by
the old constitution of France.
Their numbers were fixed at forty. The original
members who formed the nucleus of the body were
eight, and it was not till 1639 that the full number was
completed. Their first undertaking consisted of essays
written by all the members in rotation. To judge by
the titles and specimens which have come down to us,
these possessed no special originality or merit, but resem-
bled the 37tvösić815 of the Greek rhetoricians. They
next, at the instance of Cardinal Richelieu, undertook
a criticism of Corneille’s Cid, the most popular work of
the day. It was a rule of the academy that no work
could be criticised except at the author’s request. It
was only the fear of incurring the cardinal’s displeasure
which wrung from Corneille an unwilling consent.
We have next to consider the influence of the French
Academy on the language and literature, a subject on
which the most opposite opinions have been advanced.
On the one hand, it has been asserted that it has cor-
rected the judgment, purified the taste, and formed the
language of French writers, and that to it we owe the
most striking characteristics of French literature, its
purity, delicacy, and flexibility. Thus Mr. Matthew
Arnold, in his well-known Essay on the Literary Influ-
A C A D E M Y
25
ence of Academies, has pronounced a glowing panegyric
on the French Academy as a high court of letters, and
rallying point for educated opinion, as asserting the
authority of a master in matters of tone and taste. To
it he attributes in a great measure that thoroughness,
that openness of mind, that absence of vulgarity, which
he finds everywhere in French literature; and to the want
of a similar institution in England he traces that eccen-
tricity, that provincial spirit, that coarseness, which, as
he thinks, is barely compensated by English genius. On
the other hand, its inherent defects have been so well
Summed up by M. Lanfrey, that we cannot do better
than quote from his recent History of AWapoleon. “This
institution,” he says, speaking of the French Academy,
“had never shown itself the enemy of despotism.
Founded by the monarchy and for the monarchy, emi-
nently favorable to the spirit of intrigue and favoritism,
incapable of any sustained or combined labor, it has
substituted pomp for grandeur, School routine for indi-
vidual inspiration, elaborateness for simplicity, fadeur
and the monotony of literary orthodoxy for variety, the
Source and spring of intellectual life; and in the works
produced under its auspices we discover the rhetorician
and the writer, never the man. By all its traditions the
academy was made to be the natural ornament of a mon-
archical society. Richelieu conceived and created it as
a sort of Superior centralization applied to intellect, as a
high literary court to maintain intellectual unity, and
protest against innovation. Bonaparte, aware of all
this, had thought of re-establishing its ancient privileges;
but it had in his eyes one fatal defect— esprit.”
Spain.— The Royal Spanish Academy at Madrid
held its first meeting in July 1713, in the palace of its
founder, the Duke d’Escalona. It consisted at first of
8 academicians, including the duke; to which number 14
others were afterwards added, the founder being chosen
president or director.
Sweden.—The Aoyal Swedish Academy was founded
in the year 1786, for the purpose of purifying and per-
fecting the Swedish language.
Aelgium.—Belgium has always been famous for its
literary societies. The little town of Diest boasts that
it possessed a society of poets in 1302, and the Cather-
inists of Alost date from IIo'7.
The present Royal Academy of Belgium was founded
by the Count of Coblentz at Brussels, 1769. Count
Stahrenberg obtained for it in 1772 letters patent from
Maria Theresa, who also granted pensions to all the
members, and a fund for printing their works.
III. ACADEMIES OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND HIS-
TORY..—Italy.—Under this class the Academy of Hercu-
Janeum properly ranks. It was established at Naples
about 1755, at which period a museum was formed of
the antiquities found at Herculaneum, Pompeii, and other
places, by the Marquis Tanucci, who was then minister
of state. A grand meeting was to be held every year,
when the prizes were to be distributed, and analyses of
the works read. The first meeting took place on the
25th of April 1807; but the subsequent changes in the
political state of Naples prevented the full and perma-
ment establishment of this institution.
Aºrance.— The old Academy of Inscriptions and
Ae/les Zettres was an off-shoot from the French Acad-
emy, which then at least contained the élite of French
learning. Louis XIV. was of all French kings the one
most occupied with his own aggrandisement. Litera-
ture, and even science, he only encouraged as far as they
redounded to his own glory. Nor were literary men
inclined to assert their independence. Boileau well rep-
resented the spirit of the age when, in dedicating his
tragedy of Berenice to Colbert, he wrote—“The least
things become important if in any degree they can serve
the glory and pleasure of the king.” Thus it was that
the Academy of Inscriptions arose. At the suggestion
of Colbert, a company (a committee we should now call
it) had been appointed by the king, chosen from the
French Academy, charged with the office of furnishing
inscriptions, devices, and legends for medals.
But it was to M. de Pontchartrain, comptroller-gen-
eral of finance and Secretary of state, that the academy
owed its institution.
By a new regulation, dated the 16th July 1701, the
Aoyal Academy of Inscriptions and Medals was insti-
tuted, being composed of ten honorary members, ten
pensioners, ten associates, and ten pupils.
Among the first honorary members we find the inde-
fatigable Mabillon (excluded from the pensioners by
reasºn of his orders), Père La Chaise, the king's confes-
Sor, and Cardinal Rohan; among the associates Fonte-
melle, and Rollin, whose Ancient History was submitted
to the academy for revision. In 1716 the regent changed
its title to that of the Academy of Inscriptions and
Belles Zettres, a title which better suited its new charac-
ter.
In the great battle between the Ancients and the
Moderns which divided the learned world in the first
half of the 18th century, the Academy of Inscriptions
naturally espoused the cause of the Ancients, as the
Academy of Sciences did that of the Moderns. During
the earlier years of the French Revolution the academy
continued its labors uninterruptedly; and on the 22d of
January 1793, the day after the death of Louis XVI.,
we find in the Proceedings that M. Bréquigny read a
paper on the projects of marriage between Queen
Elizabeth and the Dukes of Anjou and Alençon.
In 1816 the academy received again its old name.
The Proceedings of the Society embrace a vast field,
and are of very various merits.
Celtic Academy. —In consequence of the attention of
several literary men in Paris having been directed to
Celtic antiquities, a Celtic Academy was established in
that city in the year 1800.
IV. AcADEMIES OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY.—
Germany.—The Academy of Matura Curiosi called
also the Zeopoldine Academy, was founded in 1662, by
J. L. Bausch, a physician of Leipsic, who, imitating the
example of the English, published a general invitation
to medical men to communicate all extraordinary cases
that occurred in the course of their practice. The
works of the Natura Curiosi were at first published
separately; but this being attended with considerable
inconvenience, a new arrangement was formed, in 1770,
for publishing a volume of observations annually.
The Academy of Surgery at Vienna was instituted
by the present emperor, under the direction of the
celebrated Brambella. In it there were at first only two
professors; and to their charge the instruction of a
hundred and thirty young men were committed, thirty
of whom had formerly been surgeons in the army. But
latterly the number both of teachers and pupils was con-
siderably increased.
Aºrance.—Aoyal Academy of Medicine.— Medicine is
a science which has always engaged the attention of the
kings of France. Charlemagne established a school of
medicine in the Louvre, and various societies have been
founded, and privileges granted to the faculty by his
SulcCeSSOTS.
V. ACADEMIES OF THE FINE ARTS.— Russia.-
The academy of St. Petersburg was established by the
Empress Elizabeth, at the suggestion of Count Shuvaloff,
and annexed to the Academy of Sciences. Catharine II.
formed it into a separate institution, augmented the
annual revenue to A, 12,000, and increased the number
of scholars to three hundred; she also constructed, for
26
A C A — A C C
the use and accommodation of the members, a large
circular building, which fronts the Neva. The scholars
are admitted at the age of six, and continue until they
have attained that of eighteen. g
France.— The Academy of Painting and Sculpture
at Paris was founded by Louis XIV. in 1648, under the
title of Académie Royale des Beaux Arts, to which was
afterward united the Academy of Architecture, erected
1671.
The Royal Academy of Music is the name which, by
a strange perversion of language, is given in France to
the grand opera.
Italy.— In 1778 an Academy of Painting and Sculp-
ture was established at Turin. The meetings were held
in the palace of the king, who distributed prizes among
the most successful members. In Milan an Academy
of Architecture was established so early as the year
1380, by Galeos Visconti. About the middle of the
last century an Academy of the Arts was established
there, after the example of those at Paris and Rome.
Spain.—In Madrid an Academy for Painting, Sculp-
ture, and Architecture, was founded by Philip V.
Sweden.—An Academy of Fine Arts was founded at
Stockholm in the year 1733 by Count Tessin.
Bagland.—The Aoyal Academy of Arts in London
was instituted for the encouragement of designing, paint-
ing, sculpture, &c., in the year 1768, with Sir J. Rey-
nolds for its president. This academy is under the imme-
diate patronage of the queen, and under the direction of
forty artists of the first rank in their several professions.
The Academy of Ancient Music was established in
London in 17 Io, by several persons of distinction, and
other amateurs, in conjunction with the most eminent
masters of the time, with the view of promoting the
study and practice of vocal and instrumental harmony.
The Royal Academy of Music was formed by the princi.
pal nobility and gentry of the kingdom, for the perform-
ance of operas, composed by Handel, and conducted by
him at the theatre in the Haymarket. The subscription
amounted to 4,50,000, and the king, besides subscribing
A, IOOO, allowed the society to assume the title of Roya/
Academy. (See Musical Directory published by Rudall,
Carte and Co.)
ACADEMY is a term also applied to those royal collegi-
ate Seminaries in which young men are educated for the
navy and army. 3.
ACADIE, or ACADIA, the name borne by Nova Scotia
while it remained a French settlement.
ACALEPHAE (a nettle), a name given to the animals
commonly known as jelly-fish, sea-blubber, sea-zzettles,
C.
ACANTHOCEPHALA, (a thorn, and the head), a
group of parasitic worms, having the heads armed with
spines or hooks.
ACANTHOPTERYGII, an order of fishes, having"
bony skeletons with prickly spinous processes in the dor-
sal fins.
ACANTHUS, a genus of plants belonging to the natu-
ral order Acanthaceae. The species are natives of the
southern parts of Europe. It has large, deeply-cut, hairy,
shining leaves, which are supposed to have suggested the
decoration of the Corinthian column.
. . ACAPULCO, a town and port in Mexico, on a bay of
the Pacific Ocean, about 190 miles S.S.W. of Mexico, in
N. lat. 16° 50', W. long. 99° 46'. The harbor, which is
the best on the Pacific coast, is almost completely land-
locked. The town lies north of the harbor, and is de-
fended by the castle of San Diego, which stands on an
eminence. Acapulco was in former times the great
depôt of the trade of Spain with the East Indies. The
trade between Acapulco and Manilla was annihilated
when Mexico became independent; and, from this cause,
and also on account of the frequent earthquakes by
which the town has been visited, it had sunk to com-
parative insignificance, when the discovery of gold in
California gave its trade a fresh impetus. It is now the
most important seaport in Mexico, and is regularly
touched at by the Pacific mail steamers. Population
about 5000.
ACARN ANIA, a province of ancient Greece, now
called Carnia. It was a hilly country, with numerous
lakes and tracts of rich pasture, and its hills are to the
present day 3rowned with thick wood. It was cele-
brated for its excellent breed of horses. Up to the time
of the Peloponnesian war, they are mentioned only as
a race of rude shepherds, divided into numerous petty
tribes, and engaged in continual strife and rapine. They
were, however, favorably distinguished from their AEto-
lian neighbors by the fidelity and steadfastness of their
character.
ACARUS, a genus of Arachnides, represented by the
cheese mite and other forms.
ACCELERATION is a term employed to denote
generally the rate at which the velocity of a body, whose
motion is not uniform, either increases or decreases.
As the velocity is continually changing, and cannot
therefore be estimated, as in uniform motion, by the
space actually passed over in a certain time, its value at
any instant has to be measured by the space the body
would describe in the unit of time, supposing that at
and from the instant in question the motion became and
continued uniform. If the motion is such that the ve-
locity, thus measured, increases or decreases by equal
amounts in equal intervals of time, it is said to be zemi-
formly accelerated or retarded.
We have a familiar instance of uniformly accelerated
and uniformly retarded motion in the case of bodies fall-
ing and rising vertically near the earth's surface, where,
if the resistance of the air be neglected, the velocity of
the body is increased or diminished, in consequence of the
earth's attraction, by a uniform amountin each second of
time.
ACCENT, in reading or speaking, is the stress or
pressure of the voice upon a syllable of a word. The
derivation of the term (Lat. accentus, 7uasi adoantus)
clearly shows that it was employed by the classical gram-
marians to express the production of a musical effect. Its
origin is therefore to be sought in the natural desire of
man to gratify the ear by modulated sound, and probably
no language exists in which it does not play a more or
less important part. The statement sometimes made,
that the French have no accent in their words, can only
mean that their accent is less emphatic or less variously
so than that of certain other nations. If it means more,
it is not merely an error, but an absurdity. From this
conception of the subject, it is obvious that accent must
be fundamentally the same thing in all languages, and
must aim more or less successfully at the same results,
however diverse the rules by which it is governed.
Passing over the consideration of the accentual system
of the Hebrews with the single remark, that it exhibits,
though with more elaborate and complicated expression,
most of the characteristics both of Greek and English
accent, we find that the Greeks employed three gram-
matical accents, viz., the acute accent ('), which shows
when the tone of the voice is to be raised; the graze
accent ('), when it is to be depressed; and the circumſter
accent (), composed of both the acute and the grave,
and pointing out a kind of undulation of the voice. The
Latins have made the same use as the Greeks of these
three accents, and various modern nations, French,
English, etc., have also adopted them. As to the Greek
accents, now seen both in manuscripts and printed books,
there has been great dispute about their antiquity and use.
A C C
27
But the following things seem to be undoubtedly taught
by the ancient grammarians and rhetoricians : — (1.)
That by accent (7tpod Goðia, rovos) the Greeks under-
stood the elevation or falling of the voice on a particular
syllable of a word, either absolutely, or in relation to .ts
position in a sentence, accompanied with an intension or
remission of the vocal utterance on that syllable (87tira-
615, & vega;), occasioning a marked predominance of that
syllable over the other syllables of the word. The pre-
dominance thus given, however, had no effect whatever
on the quantity — long or short — of the accented syllable.
The accented syllable in Greek as in English, might be
long or it, might be short ; elevation and emphasis of
utterance being one thing, and prolongation of the vocal
Sound quite another thing, as any one acquainted with
the first elements of music will at once perceive. The
difficulty which many modern scholars have experienced
in conceiving how a syllable could be accented and not
lengthened, has arisen partly from a complete want of
distinct ideas on the nature of the elements of which
human speech is composed, and partly also from a vicious
practice which has long prevailed in English schools of
reading Greek not according to the laws of its own
accentuation, but according to the accent of Latin
handed down to us through the Roman Catholic Church.
If there is any perplexity regarding the nature or influ-
ence of classical accent, there is none about English. It
does not conflict or combine with the modulations of
quantity. It is the sole determining element in our
metrical system. Almost the very earliest of our authors,
the Venerable Bede, notices this.
Originally English accent was upon the root, and not
upon inflectional syllables. Gottling finds the same
principle operating in Greek, but in that language it
certainly never exercised the universal sway it does in the
earlier forms of English.
But no matter how irregular the time elapsing between
the recurrence of the accents, they are always on the
root-syllables.
The Norman Conquest, however, introduced a different
system, which gradually modified the rigid uniformity of
the native English accentuation. The new mode of
accentuation soon began to affect even words of pure
English origin— e.g., in Robert of Gloucester we find
fals/lede instead of falshede, tidinge instead of tidinge,
treweſtede instead of tre, vehede. gladdore instead of
gladdore, wis/ic/e instead of wisliche, begynnyng in-
stead of begyn myng, endyng instead of endyng. In the
A roverbs of Hendlyng we have not/yng for mothing,
habben for habben, fomon for ſomon ; in Robert of
Brunne, halyalom for halydom, clothyng for clothing,
gretand for gretand.
A change in the position of the accent serves a
variety of purposes in English. It distinguishes (1.)
a nozart from a zeró, as ac'cent, accent"; augment,
augment'; tor’ment, torment'; com’ment, comment';
con'sort, consort'; con'test, contest"; conſtrast, contrast';
di'gest, digest"; discount, discount'; in'sult, insult";
&c.; (2.) an adjectize from a zeró, as ab'sent, absent";
fre'quent, frequent"; pre'sent, present"; com/pound,
compound', &c.; (3.) an adjective from a noun, as
expert; expert'; compact, compact'. It also denotes a
difference of meaning, e.g., conjure, conjure'; inſcense,
incense'; au'gust, august'; su'pine, Supine'.
Accent has exercised a powerful influence in changing
the forms of words. The unaccented syllables in the
course of time frequently dropped off.
ACCEPTANCE is the act by which a person binds
himself to comply with the request contained in a bill of
exchange addressed to him by the drawer. In all cases
it is understood to be a promise to pay the bill in
weoney, the law not recognising an acceptance in which
the promise is to pay in some other way, as, for
example, partly in money and partly by another bill.
Acceptance may be absolute, conditional, or partial.
ACCESSION is applied, in a historical or constitu-
tional sense, to the coming to the throne of a dynasty
or line of sovereigns, as the accession of the House of
Hanover.
ACCESSORY, a person guilty of a felonious offence,
not as principal, but by participation ; as by advice,
command, aid, or concealment. In treason, accessories
are excluded, every individual concerned being consid-
ered as a principal. In crimes under the degree of
felony, also, all persons concerned, if guilty at all, are
regarded as principals.
ACCIAJUOLI, DoNATO, was born at Florence in
1428. He was famous for his learning, especially in
Greek and mathematics, and for his services to his native
state. Having previously been intrusted with several
important embassies, he became Gonfalonier of Florence
in 1473. He died at Milan in 1478, when on his way to
Paris to ask the aid of Louis XI. on behalf of the Flor-
entines against Pope Sixtus IV.
ACCIDENT. An attribute of a thing or class of
things, which neither belongs to, nor is in any way deduci-
ble from, the essence of that thing or class, is termed its
accident. An accident may be either inseparable or sep-
arable: the former, when we can conceive it to be absent
from that with which it is found, although it is always,
as far as we know, present, i.e., when it is not neces-
sarily but is universally present ; the latter, when, it is
neither necessarily nor universally present.
ACCIUS, a poet of the 16th century, to whom is
attributed A Paraphrase of Æsop’s Fables, of which
Julius Scaliger speaks with great praise.
ACCIUS (or ATTIUs) LUCIUS, a Latin tragic poet,
was the son of a freedman, born, according to St.
Jerome, in the year of Rome 583, though this appears
somewhat uncertain.
ACCLAMATION, the expression of the opinion,
favorable or unfavorable, of any assembly by means of
the voice. Applause denotes strictly a similar expression
by clapping of hands, but this distinction in the usage of
the words is by no means uniformly maintained. Among
the Romans acclamation was varied both in form and
purpose. At marriages it was usual for the spectators to
shout ſo Aymen, Aymenace, or Zalassio; a victorious
army or general was greeted with ſo triumphe, in the
theatre acclamation was called for at the close of the play
by the last actor, who said, P/audite ; in the senate
opinions were expressed and votes passed by acclamation
in such forms as Omºtes, omnes, Æ7ztum est, just um
est, etc.; and the praises of the emperor were celebrated
in certain pre-arranged sentences, which seem to have
been chanted by the whole body of senators.
ACCLIMATISATION is the process of adapta-
tion by which animals and plants are gradually rendered
capable of surviving and flourishing in countries remote
from their original habitats, or under meteorological
conditions different from those which they have usually
to endure, and which are at first injurious to them.
The subject of acclimatisation is very little under-
stood, and some writers have even denied that it can
ever take place. It is often confounded with domestica-
tion or with naturalisation ; but these are both very
different phenomena. A domesticated animal or a culti-
vated plant need not necessarily be acclimatised'; that
is, it need not be capable of enduring the severity of
the seasons without protection. The canary bird is
domesticated, but not acclimatised, and many of our
most extensively cultivated plants are in the same
category. A natura/ised animal or plant, on the other
hand, must be able to withstand all the vicissitudes of the
28
A C C
seasons in its new home, and it may therefore be
thought that it must have been acclimatised. But in
many, perhaps most, cases of naturalisation, there is no
evidence of a gradual adaptation to new conditions
which were at first injurious, and this is essential to the
idea of acclimatisation. On the contrary, many spe-
cies, in a new country and under somewhat different
climatic conditions, seem to find a more congenial abode
than in their native land, and at once flourish and
increase in it to such an extent as often to exterminate
the indigenous inhabitants. Thus Agassiz (in his work
on Lake Superior) tells us that the road-side weeds of
the north-eastern United States, to the number of 13o .
species, are all European, the native weeds having dis-
appeared westwards; while in New Zealand there are,
according to Mr. T. Kirk (Transactions of the AVew
Zealand Znstitute, vol. ii. p. 131), no less than 250
species of naturalised plants, more than 100 of which
spread widely over the country, and often displace the
native vegetation. Among animals the European rat,
goat, and pig, are naturalised in New Zealand, where
they multiply to such an extent as to injure and prob-
ably exterminate many native productions. In neither
of these cases is there any indication that acclimatisa-
tion was necessary or ever took place.
On the other hand, the fact that an animal or plant
cannot be naturalised is no proof that it is not
acclimatised. It has been shown by Mr. Darwin that,
in the case of most animals and plants in a state of
nature, the competition of other organisms is a far
more efficient agency in limiting their distribution than
the mere influence of climate.
Different Degrees of Climatal Adaptation in Animals
and A'lants. – Plants differ greatly from animals in the
closeness of their adaptation to meteorological conditions.
Not only will most tropical plants refuse to live in a
temperate climate, but many species are seriously injured
by removal a few degrees of latitude beyond their natural
limits.
Animals, especially the higher, forms, are much less
sensitive to change of temperature, as shown by the
extensive range from north to south of many species.
Acclimatisation by Indizidual Adaptation.— It is
evident that acclimatisation may occur (if it occurs at all)
in two ways, either by modifying the constitution of the
individual submitted to the new conditions, or by the
production of offspring which may be better adapted to
those conditions than their parents. The alteration of
the constitution of individuals in this direction is not
easy to detect, and its possibility has been denied by
many writers.
Acclimatisation by Variation.— A mass of evidence
exists showing that variations of every conceivable kind
occur among the offspring of all plants and animals, and
that, in particular, constitutional variations are by no
means uncommon. Among cultivated plants, for exam-
ple, hardier and more tender varieties often arise.
Constitutional Adaptation often accompanied by
Axterzeal Modification.— Although in Some cases no
perceptible alteration of form or structure occurs when
constitutional adaptation to climate has taken place, in
others it is very marked. Mr. Darwin has collected a
large number of cases in his Animals and Plants under
Aomestication (vol. ii., p. 277), of which the following
are a few of the most remarkable. Dr. Falconer
observed that several trees, natives of cooler climates,
assumed a pyramidal or fastigiate form when grown in
the plains of India; cabbages rarely produce heads in
hot climates; the quality of the wood, the medicinal
products, the odor and color of the flowers, all change
in many cases when plants of one country are grown in
another.
In his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selec-
tion, Mr. Wallace has recorded cases of simultaneous
variation among insects, apparently due to climate or
other strictly local causes. He finds that the butter-
flies of the family Papi/ionidae, and some others,
become similarly modified in different islands and groups
of islands.
The Influence of Heredity.—Adaptation by variation
would, however, be a slow and uncertain process, and
might for considerable periods of time cease to act, did
not heredity come into play. This is the tendency of
every organism to produce its like, or more exactly, to
produce a set of new forms varying slightly from it in
many directions—a group of which the parent form is
the centre. If now one of the most extreme of these
variations is taken, it is found to become the centre of a
new set of variations; and by continually taking the
extreme in the same direction, an increasing variation in
that direction can be effected, until checked by becom-
ing so great that it interferes with the healthy action of
the organism, or is in any other way prejudicial. It is
also found that acquired constitutional peculiarities are
equally hereditary; so that by a combination of those
two modes of variation any desired adaptation may be
effected with greater rapidity.
Evidence has been adduced by Mr. Darwin to show
that the tendency to vary is itself hereditary; so that, so
far from variations coming to an end, as some persons
imagine, the more extensively variation has occurred in
any species in the past, the more likely it is to occur in
the future.
Selection and Survival of the Fittest as Agents in
Maturalisation.— We may now take it as an established
fact, that varieties of animals and plants occur, both in
domesticity and in a state of nature, which are better or
worse adapted to special climates. There is no positive
evidence that the influence of new climatical conditions
on the parent has any tendency to produce variations in
the offspring better adapted to such conditions, although
some of the facts mentioned in the preceding sections
render it probable that such may be the case. Neither
does it appear that this class of variations is eyery fre-
quent. It is, however, certain that whenever any ani-
mal or plant is largely propagated constitutional varia-
tions will arise, and some of these will be better adapted
than others to the climatal and other conditions of the
locality.
The Method of Acclimatisation.— Taking into con-
sideration the foregoing facts, it may be considered as
proved—1st, That habit has little (though it appears to
have some) definite effect in adapting the constitution of
animals to a new climate; but that it has a decided,
though still slight, influence in plants when, by the process
of propagation by buds, shoots, or grafts, the individual
can be kept under its influence for long periods; 2d,
That the offspring of both plants and animals vary in
their constitutional adaptation to climate, and that this
adaptation may be kept up and increased by means of
heredity; and, 3d, That great and sudden changes of
climate often check reproduction even when the health
of the individuals does not appear to suffer. In order,
therefore, to have the best chances of acclimatising
any animal or plant in a climate very dissimilar from
that of its native country, and in which it has been
proved that the species in question cannot live and main-
tain itself without acclimatisation, we must adopt some
such plan as the following:—
1. We must transport as large a number as possible of
adult healthy individuals to some intermediate station,
and increase them as much as possible for some years.
2. As soon as the stock has been kept a sufficient
time to pass through all the ordinary extremes of cli-
*
A C C
29
mate, a number of the hardiest may be removed to the
more remote station, and the same process gone through,
giving protection if necessary while the stock is being
increased, but as soon as a large number of healthy indi-
viduals are produced, subjecting them to all the vicissi-
tudes of the climate.
Acc/imatisation of Man.—On this subject we have,
unfortunately, very little direct or accurate information.
The general laws of heredity and variation have been
proved to apply to man as well as to animals and plants;
and numerous facts in the distribution of races show that
man must, in remote ages at least, have been capable of
constitutional adaptation to climate. If the human race
constitutes a single species, then the mere fact that man
now inhabits every region, and is in each case constitu-
tionally adapted to the climate, proves that acclimatisa-
tion has occurred. But we have the same phenomenon
in single varieties of man, such as the American, which
inhabits alike the frozen wastes of Hudson's Bay and
Terra del Fuego, and the hottest regions of the tropics,
—the low equatorial valleys and the lofty plateaux of the
Andes. No doubt a sudden transference to an extreme
climate is often prejudicial to man, as it is to most ani-
mals and plants; but there is every reason to believe
that, if the migration occurs step by step, man can be
acclimatised to almost any part of the earth’s surface in
comparatively few generations. Some eminent writers
have denied this. Sir Ronald Martin, from a considera-
tion of the effects of the climate of India on Europeans
and their offspring, believes that there is no such thing
as acclimatisation. Dr. Hunt, in a report to the British
Association in 1861, argues that “time is no agent,” and
—“if there is no sign of acclimatisation in one genera-
tion, there is no such process.” But he entirely ignores
the effect of favorable variations, as well as the direct
influence of climate acting on the organization from
infancy.
Professor Waitz, in his Introduction to Anthropology,
adduces many examples of the comparatively rapid con-
stitutional adaptation of man to climatic conditions.
Negroes, for example, who have been for three or four
generations acclimatised in North America, on returning
to Aſrica become subject to the same local diseases as
other unacclimatised individuals. He well remarks, that
the debility and sickening of Europeans in many tropical
countries are wrongly ascribed to the climate, but are
rather the consequences of indolence, sensual gratification,
and an irregular mode of life. Thus the English, who
cannot give up animal food and spirituous liquors, are less
able to sustain the heat of the tropics than the more
sober Spaniards and Portuguese.
The Jews are a good example of acclimatisation, be-
cause they have been established for many centuries in
climates very different from that of their native land;
they keep themselves almost wholly free from intermix-
ture with the people around them ; and they are often so
populous in a country that the intermixture with Jewish
immigrants from other lands cannot seriously affect the
local purity of the race. --
In some of the hottest parts of South America Euro-
peans are perfectly acclimatised, and where the race is
kept pure it seems to be even improved. Some very
valuable notes on this subject have been furnished to the
present writer by the well-known botanist, Dr. Richard
Spruce, who resided many years in South America, but
who has hitherto been prevented by ill health from giv-
ing to the world the results of his researches. -
“The white inhabitants of Guayaquil (lat. 2° 13' S.)
are kept pure by careful selection. The slightest tinc-
ture of red or black blood bars entry into any of the old
families who are descendants of Spaniards from the
Provincias Vascongadas, or those bordering the Bay of
Biscay, where the morals are perhaps the purest (as
regards the intercourse of the sexes) of any in Europe,
and where for a girl, even of the poorest class, to have
a child before marriage is the rarest thing possible. The
consequence of this careful breeding is, the women of
Guayaquil are considered (and justly) the finest along
the whole Pacific coast.” -
“The oldest Christian town in Peru is Piura (lat. 5° S.),
which was founded by Pizarro himself. The climate is
very hot, especially in the three or four months follow-
ing the southern solstice. In March 1843 the tempera-
ture only once fell as low as 839, during the whole
month, the usual lowest night temperature being 85°.
Yet people of all colors find it very healthy, and the
whites are very prolific.”
The following example of divergent acclimatisation of
the same race to hot and cold zones is very interesting,
and will conclude our extracts from Dr. Spruce's valu-
able notes: —
“One of the most singular cases connected with this
subject that have fallen under my own observation, is
the difficulty, or apparent impossibility, of acclimatising
the Red Indian in a certain zone of the Andes.
“Now, there is a zone of the equatorial Andes, ranging
between about 4000 and 6ooo feet altitude, where the
very best flavored coffee is grown, where cane is less
luxuriant but more saccharine than in the plains, and
which is therefore very'desirable to cultivate, but where
the red man sickens and dies.
“In what is now the republic of Ecuador, the only
peopled portions are the central valley, between the two
ridges of the Andes — height 7000 to 12,000 feet—and
the hot plain at their western base; nor do the wooded
slopes appear to have been inhabited, except by scat-
tered savage hordes, even in the time of the Incas. The
Indians of the highlands are the descendants of others
who have inhabited that region exclusively for untold
ages; and a similar affirmation may be made of the
Indians of the plain. Now, there is little doubt that
the progenitors of both these sections came from a tem-
perate region (in North America); so that here we have
one moiety acclimatised to endure extreme heat, and the
other extreme cold; and at this day exposure of either
to the opposite extreme (or even, as we have seen, to
the climate of an intermediate zone) is always pernicious
and often fatal. But if this great difference has been
brought about in the red man, might not the same have
happened to the white man P”
The observations of Dr. Spruce are of themselves
almost conclusive as to the possibility of Europeans
becoming acclimatised in the tropics; and if it is objected
that this evidence applies only to the dark-haired south-
ern races, we are fortunately able to point to facts,
almost equally well authenticated and conclusive, in the
case of one of the typical Germanic races. At the Cape
of Good Hope the Dutch have been settled and nearly
isolated for about 200 years, and have kept themselves
almost or quite free from native intermixture. They
marry young, and have large families. The population,
according to a census taken in 1798, was under 22, Qoo.
In 1865 it was near 182,000, the majority being (accord-
ing to the Statesman's Year Book for 1873) of “Dutch,
German, or French origin, mostly descendants of origi-
nal settlers.” In the Moluccas, where the Dutch have
had settlements for nearly 250 years, some of the inhab-
itants trace their descent to early immigrants; and these,
as well as most of the people of Dutch descent in the
East, are quite as fair as their European ancestors, enjoy
excellent health, and are very prolific. In addition to
these examples, it may be maintained that the rapid
increase of English-speaking populations in the United
States and in Australia, only a comparatively small por-
3O
A C C — A C E
tion of which can be due to direct immigration, is far
from supporting the view of Dr. Knox, that Europeans
cannot permanently maintain themselves in those coun-
tries. Mr. Brace expressly denies that the American
physique has degenerated from the English type. He
asserts that manufacturers and others find that, “for
labors requiring the utmost physical endurance and mus-
cular power, such as iron-puddling and lumbering in the
forests and on the streams, and pioneer work, foreigners
are never so suitable as native Americans.”
ACCOLADE, a ceremony anciently used in confer-
ring knighthood; but whether it was an embrace or a
slight blow on the neck or cheek, is not agreed. Both
these customs appear to be of great antiquity.
ACCOLTI, BENEDICT, was born in 1415 at Arezzo,
in Tuscany, of a noble family, several members of
which were distinguished, like himself, for their attain-
ments in law. He was for some time professor of juris-
prudence in the University of Florence, and, on the
death of the celebrated Poggio, in 1459, became chan-
cellor of the Florentine Republic. He died in 1466.
ACCOLTI. BERNARD (1465–1535), son of the preced-
ing, known in his own day as / Unico Aretino, acquired
great fame as a reciter of impromptu verse.
ACCOLTI, PIETRO, brother of the preceding, was
born in Florence in 1455, and died there in 1549.
ACCOMMODATION, a term used in Biblical inter-
Fº to denote the presentation of a truth not abso-
utely as it is in itself, but relatively, or under some
modification, with a view of suiting it either to some
other truth or to the persons addressed.
ACCOMMODATION, in commerce, denotes gen-
erally temporary pecuniary aid given by one trader to
another, or by a banker to his customers, but it is used
more particularly to describe that class of bills of ex-
change which represents no actual exchange of real
value between the parties.
ACCORAMBONI, VITTORIA, an Italian lady re-
markable for her extraordinary beauty and her tragic
history. Her contemporaries regarded her as the most
captivating woman that had ever been seen in Italy.
She was sought in marriage by many of the nobility,
finally marrying Francesco Peretti, who was assas-
sinated in 1581, leaving his vast estates to his wife,
who was in turn assassinated in 1585 by a relative.
ACCORDION (from the French accord), a small
musical instrument in the shape of a bellows, which pro-
duces sounds by the action of wind on metallic reeds of
various sizes.
ACCORSO (in Latin Accursius), FRANCIS, an emi-
nent lawyer, born at Florence about 1182. After prac-
ticing for some time in his native city, he was appointed
professor at Bologna, where he had great success as a
teacher. He undertook the great work of arranging
into one body the almost innumerable comments and
remarks upon the Code, the Institutes, and Digests, the
confused dispersion of which among the works of dif-
ferent writers caused much obscurity and contradiction.
He died at Bologna in 1260.
ACCORSO (or AccuRSIUs), MARIANGELo, a learned
and ingenious critic, was born at Aquila, in the kingdom
of Naples, about 1490. He was a great favorite with
Charles V., at whose court he resided for thirty-three
years, and by whom he was employed on various foreign
missions. To a perfect knowledge of Greek and Latin
he added an intimate acquaintance with several modern
languages. He died about 1574.
ACCOUNT, a Stock Exchange term: e.g., “To Buy
or Sell for the Account,” etc. The word has different,
though kindred, significations, all derived from the
making up and settling of accounts on particular days,
in which stricter sense the word “Settlement” is more
specially used. In America, each stock exchange has
its own particular rules, and the times of settling ac-
counts are left entirely to arrangement between brokers.
All kinds of deals are made, and no one statement can
cover the entire ground.
In English and Indian Government securities, the
Settlements are monthly, and for foreign, railway,
and other securities, generally speaking, they are fort-
nightly.
The account in consols, or other English Govern-
ment securities, or in the securities of the Government
of India, or in Bank of England stock, or other stocks
transferrible at the Bank of England, extends over a
month, the settlement being monthly, and in them the
committee of the stock exchange does not take cog-
nizance of any bargain for a future account, if it shall
have been effected more than eight days previously to
the close of the existing account.
The account in securities to bearer, and, with the
above exceptions, in registered securities also, extends
over a period of from twelve to nineteen days.
ACCOUNTANT, earlier form AccompTANT, in the
most general sense, is a person skilled in accounts.
ACCOUNTANT—GENERAL, an officer in the
English Court of Chancery, who receives all moneys
lodged in court, and by whom they are deposited in bank
and disbursed.
ACCRA, or ACRA, a town, or rather a collection of
forts, in a territory of the same name, on the Gold
Coast of Africa, about seventy-five miles east of Cape
Coast Castle. It belongs to Great Britain.
ACCRINGTON, an important manufacturing town
of England, in Lancashire, lies on the banks of a stream
called the Hindburn, in a deep valley, nineteen miles
north from Manchester. It has increased rapidly in
recent years, and is the center of the Manchester cot-
tom-printing trade. Population (1889), 35,000.
ACCUM, FREDERICK, chemist, born at Bückeburg,
in 1769, came to London in 1793, and was appointed
teacher of chemistry and mineralogy at the Surrey In-
stitution in 1801. He died in Berlin in 1838.
ACCUMULATOR is (1) a part of a hydraulic lift,
whereby constant pressure is obtained; (2) a part of an
electric apparatus by which a current is stored for
future use.
ACE, the received name for the single point on cards
or dice—the unit.
ACEPHALA, a name sometimes given to a section
of the molluscous animals, which are divided into
emcephala and acephala, according as they have or want
a distinctly differentiated head. -
ACEPHALI, a term applied to several sects as hav-
ing no head or leader; and in particular to a sect that
separated itself, in the end of the 5th century, from the
rule of the patriarchs of Alexandria, and remained with-
out king or bishop for more than 300 years.
ACEPHALI was also the name given to the levelers in
the reign of Henry I., who are said to have been so poor
as to have no tenements, in virtue of which they might
acknowledge a superior lord.
AcEPHALI, or Acephalous Persons, fabulous mon-
sters, described by some ancient naturalists and geogra-
phers as having no heads.
ACER. See MAPLE.
ACERBI, GIUSEPPE (Joseph), an Italian traveler,
born at Castel-Goffredo, near Mantua, on the 3d May,
1773. After traveling in Europe and Africa he took
up his residence in his native place, where he occupied
himself with natural science till his death, in August,
1846.
ĀcERNUs, the Latinized name by which SEBASTIAN
FABIAN KLoNowicz, a celebrated Polish poet, is gen-
A C E — A C H
3 I
erally known, was born at Sulmierzyce in 1551, and died
at Lublin in 1608.
ACERRA, in Antiquity, a little box or pot, wherein
were put the incense and perfumes to be burned on the
altars of the gods, and before the dead.
The name acerra was also applied to an altar erected
among the Romans, near the bed of a person recently
deceased, on which his friends offered incense daily till
his burial.
ACERRA, a town of Italy, in the province of Terra
di Lavoro, situated on the river Agno, 7 miles N.E. of
Naples, with which it is connected by rail.
ACETIC ACID, one of the most important organic
acids. It occurs naturally in the juice of many plants,
and in certain animal secretions, but is generally
obtained, on the large scale, from the oxidation of spoiled
wines, or from the destructive distillation of wood.
For its properties, etc., see any work on chemistry.
ACHAIA, in Ancient Geography, a name differently
applied at different periods. In the earliest times the
name was borne by a small district in the south of Thes-
Saly, and was the first residence of the Achaeans. When
Greece was subdued by the Romans, Achaia was the
name given to the most southerly of the provinces into
which they divided the country, and included the Pe/o-
£onnesus, the greater part of Greece Proper, and the
islands.
Achaeans and the Achaean League. — The early
inhabitants of Achaia were called Achaeans. The name
was given also in those times to some of the tribes occupy-
ing the eastern portions of the Peloponnesus, particularly
Argos and Sparta. Afterwards the inhabitants of
Achaia Propria appropriated the name. This republic
was not considerable, in early times, as regards either
the number of its troops, its wealth, or the extent of its
territory, but was famed for its heroic virtues. The
Achaean commonwealth consisted of twelve inconsider-
able towns in Peloponnesus. About 280 years before
Christ the republic of the Achaeans recovered its old
institutions and unanimity. This was the renewal of the
ancient confederation, which subsequently became so
famous under the name of the ACHAEAN LEAGUE —
having for its object, not as formerly a common worship,
but a substantial political union. Though dating from
the year B.C. 280, its importance may be referred to its
connection with Aratus of Sicyon, about 30 years later,
as it was further augmented by the splendid abilities of
Philopoemen.
ACHAN, the son of Carmi, of the tribe of Judah, at
the taking of Jericho concealed a considerable amount
of plunder, contrary to the command of God, for which
offense he was stoned to death.
ACHARD, FRANZ CARL, a Prussian chemist, born
at Berlin on the 28th April, 1753, was the first to turn
Marggraff’s discovery of the presence of sugar in beet-
root to commercial account. He died in 1821.
ACHARIUS, ERIK, a Swedish physician and bota-
nist, born at Gefle in 1757. He was educated at Upsal,
where Linnaeus was one of his teachers. He confined
his researches and writings almost entirely to the cryp-
togamous plants. He died in 1819.
ACHATES, the faithful friend and companion of
AEneas, celebrated in Virgil's Aneid as fidus Achates.
ACHEEN. See ACHíN.
ACHELOUS, the largest river in Greece, rises in
Mount Pindus,and, dividing Ætolia from Acarnania, falls
into the Ionian Sea. The river is now called Aspro
Aoſamo.
ACHENWALL, GoTTFRIED, a German writer,
celebrated as having formulated and developed the
science of statistics. He was born in 1719, and died
In 1772.
ACHERON, in Classical Mythology, the son of
Ceres, who, for supplying the Titans with drink when
they were in contest with Jupiter, was turned into a
river of Hades, over which departed souls were ferried
on their way to Elysium.
ACHILL, or “Eagle” Island, off the west coast of
Ireland, forms part of the county of Mayo.
ACHILLES, the son of Peleus and Thetis, the
beautiful mereid, who, after giving birth to the hero,
returned to her life beneath the sea. He was educated
by the centaur Qhiron until he reached his ninth year,
when he was placed (disguised as a girl to shield him
from danger) among the daughters of Lycomedes. His
mother used various means to render him invulnerable,
dipping him into the river Styx, which protected the
parts it touched. All portions of his body were envel-
oped by the water except the heel, by which his mother
held him during the operation of dipping. This left his
heel vulnerable, and, after he had slain Hector before
Troy, he was himself slain by an arrow from the bow
of Paris striking his heel.
ACHILLES TATIUS, a Greek writer, born at
Alexandria. The precise time when he flourished is
uncertain, but it cannot have been earlier than the 5th
century, as in his principal work he evidently imitates
Heliodorus. Suidas, who calls him Achilles Statius,
says that he was converted from heathenism and became
a Christian bishop, but this is doubtful, the more so that
Suidas also attributes to him a work on the sphere which
is referred to by Firmicus (330–50), and must, therefore,
have been written by another person.
ACHILLINI, ALEXANDER (1463-1512), a native of
Bologna, was celebrated as a lecturer both in medicine
and in philosophy, and was styled the second Aristotle.
ÁCHIN, a town and also a state of Northern Suma-
tra; the one state of that island which has been power-
ful at any time since the discovery of the Cape route to
the East, and the only one that still remains independent
of the Dutch, though that independence is now menaced.
The present limits of Achin supremacy in Sumatra
are reckoned to be, on the east coast the River Tamiang,
in about 4° 25' N. lat., which forms the frontier of ter-
ritories tributary to Siâk; and on the west coast a line
in about 2° 48' N., the frontier of Trumon, a small
modern state lying between Áchín and the Dutch gov-
ernment of Padang. Even within these limits the actual
power of Áchin is precarious, and the interior boundary
can be laid down only from conjecture. This interior
country is totally unexplored. It is believed to be
inhabited by tribes kindred to the Battas, that remarka-
ble race of anthropophagi who adjoin on the south.
The whole area of Áchin territory, defined to the best
of our ability, will contain about 16,400 English square
miles. A rate of 20 per square mile, perhaps somewhat
too large an average, gives a probable population of
328,000.
The production of rice and pepper forms the chief
industry of the Áchin territory. From Pedir and other
ports on the north coast large quantities of betel-nut
are exported to continental India, Burmah, and to
Penang ſor China. Some pepper is got from Pedir, but
the chief export is from a number of small ports and
anchorages on the west coast, where vessels go from
port to port making up a cargo. Áchin ponies are of
good repute, and are exported. Minor articles of export
are sulphur, iron, Sappan-wood, gutta-percha, damzmer,
rattans. bamboos, benzoin, and camphor from the
interior forests. The camphor is that from the ZOrya-
&a/anofs camp/lora, for which so high a price is paid in
China, and the whole goes thither, the bulk of that
32
A C H — A C O
whole being, however, extremely small. Very little silk
is now produced, but in the 16th century the quantity
seems to have been considerable.
The chief attraction to the considerable trade that
existed at Áchin two centuries ago must have been gold.
The great repute of Áchin at one time as a place of
trade is shown by the fact, that to this port the first
Dutch (1599) and first English (1602) commercial ven-
tures to the Indies were directed.
The French made one great effort under Beaulieu
(1621) to establish relations with Áchin, but nothing
came of it. .*
Still the foreign trade of Achin, though subject to
spasmodic interruptions, was important. Dampier and
others speak of the number of foreign merchants settled
there, English, Dutch, Danes, Portuguese, Chinese,
Banyans from Guzerat, &c. -
The Achinese are not identical with the Malays proper
either in aspect or language. They are said to be taller,
handsomer, and darker, as if with a mixture of blood
from India proper. Their language is little known; but
though it has now absorbed much Malay, the original
§ of it is said to have characteristics connecting it
oth with the Batta and with the Indo-Chinese tongues.
The name of the state is properly Acheh. This the
Portuguese made into Acheme ; whilst we, with the
Dutch, learned to call it Achim. The last appears to
have been a Persian or Indian form, suggested by jing-
ling analogy with Máchín (China). 4
The town itself lies very near the north-west extremity
of Sumatra, known in charts as Āchin Head. Here a
girdle of ten or twelve small islands affords protection to
the anchorage. *
The valley or alluvial plain in which Achin lies is low,
and subject to partial inundation; but it is shut in at a
short distance from the town, on the three landed sides,
by hills. It is highly cultivated, and abounds in small
villages and kampongs, with white mosques interspersed.
The court of Áchin, in the 17th century, maintained
a good deal of pomp; and, according to Beaulieu, the
king had always 90o elephants. These animals, though
found throughout Sumatra, are now no longer tamed or
kept. s
Hostilities with the Portuguese began from the time
of the first independent king of Áchin; and they had
little remission till the power of Portugal fell with the
loss of Malacca (1641). Not less than ten times before
that event were armaments despatched from Áchin to
reduce Malacca, and more than once its garrison was
very hard pressed. * *
A Dutch force landed at Achin in April 1873, and
attacked the palace. It was defeated with considerable
loss, including that of the general (Köhler). The ap-
proach of the south-west monsoon was considered to
i. the immediate renewal of the attempt, but
ostilities were resumed, and Achin fell in January
1874. -
ACHMET, or AHMED, the name of three emperors
or sultans of Turkey, the first of the name reigning from
1603 to 1617, the second from 1691 to 1695, and the
third from 1703 to 1736.
ACHRAY, a small picturesque lake in Perthshire,
near Loch Katrine, twenty miles west of Stirling, Scot-
land, which has obtained notoriety from Scott’s allusion
...to it in the Zady of the Zºée.
ACHROMATIC GLASSES are so named from be-
ing specially constructed with a view to prevent the con-
fusion of colors and distortion of images that result
from the use of lenses in optical instruments.
ACI REALE, a city and seaport of Sicily, in the
Italian province of Catania, near the base of Mount
Etna. Aci Reale has a population of 24,151.
ACID, a general term in chemistry, applied to a
group of compound substances, possessing certain very
distinctive characteristics.
The majority of acids possess the following contingent
properties: —
I. When applied to the tongue, they excite that sen-
sation which is called sour or acid.
2. They change the blue colors of vegetables to a
red. The vegetable blues employed for this purpose
are generally tincture of litmus and syrup of violets or
of radishes, which have obtained the name of re-agents
or tests. If these colors have been previously converted
to a green by alkalies, the acids restore them.
All these secondary properties are variable; and, if we
attempted to base a definition on any one of them, many
important acids would be excluded. The full importance
of the definition of an acid will be learned only by a
study of the science of chemistry.
ACIDALIUS, VALENs, a very distinguished scholar
and critic, born in 1567 at Wittstock, in Brandenburg;
died in 1595. - /
ACINACES, an ancient Persian sword, short and
straight, and worn on the right side, or sometimes in
front of the body, as shown in the bas-reliefs found at
Persepolis.
ACIS, in Mythology, the son of Faunus and the
nymph Symaethis, was a beautiful shepherd of Sicily,
who being beloved by Galatea, Polyphemus the giant
was so enraged that he crushed his rival with a rock,
and his blood, gushing forth from under the rock, was
metamorphosed into the river bearing his name.
ACKERMANN, JOHN CHRISTIAN GOTTLIEB, a
learned physician and professor of medicine, born at
Zeulenroda, in Upper Saxony, in 1756. In 1786 he
became professor of medicine at the university of Altorf,
in Franconia, occupying first the chair of chemistry, and
then, from 1794 till his death in 1801, that of pathology
and therapeutics. &
ACCEMETAF (sleepless), an order of monks which
celebrated divine service night and day, being for that
purpose divided into three relays or watches.
ACOLYTE (an attendant), one of a minor order of
clergy in the ancient church, ranking next to the sub-
deacon. The name and office still exist in the church.
ACONCAGUA, a province of Chile, South America,
is about Ioo miles long by 40 miles wide, and lies
between 31° 30' and 33° 20' S. lat., and 70° and 71°30'
W. long., between the provinces of Valparaiso and
Santiago on the N., and Coquimbo on the S. Popula-
tion, 134, 178.
ACONITE, Acon ITUM, a genus of plants commonly
known as Aconite, Monkshood, Friar's Cap, or Helmet
flower, and embracing about 18 species, chiefly natives
of the mountainous parts of the northern hemisphere.
They are distinguished by having one of the five blue or
yellow colored sepals in the form of a helmet; hence
the English name. Many species of Aconite are culti-
vated in gardens, some having blue and others yellow
flowers. Acozzizum Lycoctonum, Wolfsbane, is a yellow-
flowered species common on the Alps of Switzerland.
One species, Acomitum heterophyllum, found in the East
Indies, and called Butees, has tonic properties in its
roots. The roots of Acomitum ferox supply the famous
Indian (Nipal) poison called Bikh, Bish, or Nabee. . The
active principle, aconitine, is useful in allaying violent
heart action and fever, and as a remedy for neuralgia.
It is usually administered in doses of 1 to 5 drops of
the tincture of leaves or roots of Aconitum Lycocto-
/??????.
A C O U S T I C S
33
ACONTIUS, the Latinised form of the name of
GIACOMO ACONCIO, a philosopher, jurisconsult, engi-
neer and theologian, born at Trent on the 7th September
1492. He embraced the reformed religion, and, after
having taken refuge for a while in Switzerland and Stras-
burg, he came to England about 1558. He died in Lon-
don about the year 1566.
ACORUS, a genus of monocotyledonous plants,
belonging to the natural order Aroideae, and the sub-
order Orontiaceae. Acorus Calamus, sweet-sedge, or
sweet-flag, is a native of Britain.
ACOSTA, CHRIStov AL D’, a Portugese naturalist,
born at Mozambique in the early part of the 16th century.
On a voyage to Asia he was taken captive by pirates, who
exacted from him a very large ransom. He died in
1580.
ACOSTA, Joseph D', a celebrated Spanish author,
was born at Medina del Campo about the year 1539.
In 1571 he went to Peru as a provincial of the Jesuits;
and, after remaining there for seventeen years, he
returned to his native country, where he became, in suc-
cession, visitor for his order of Aragon and Andalusia,
superior of Valladolid and rector of the university of
Salamanca, in which city he died in February 1600.
About ten years before his death he published, at Seville,
his valuable Aſistoria Matural y Moral de las Zndias,
part of which had previously appeared in Latin, with the
title De Natura Mozyż Orbis, libri duo.
ACOSTA, URIEL D', a Portuguese of noble family,
was born at Oporto towards the close of the 16th cen-
tury. His father being a Jewish convert to Christianity,
he was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, and
strictly observed therites of the church tiſſ the course of
his inquiries led him, after much painful doubt, to aban-
don the religion of his youth for Judaism. Having
recanted his heresies, he was re-admitted after an excom-
munication of fifteen years, but was soon excommunicated
a second time. After seven years of miserable exclusion,
he once more sought admission, and, on passing through
a humiliating penance, was again received.
ACOTYLEDONES, the name given to one of the
Classes of the Natural System of Botany, embracing
flowerless plants, such as ferns, lycopods, horse-tails,
mosses, liverworts, lichens, sea-weeds, and mushrooms.
The name is derived from the character of the embryo,
which has no cotyledon. In the article BOTANY these
g. will be noticed under Class III. of the Natural
Stem.
ºustics (to hear) is that branch of Natural Phi-
losophy which treats of the nature of sound, and the
laws of its production and propagation, in so far as these
depend on physical principles. The description of the
mechanism of the organ of voice and of the ear, and the
difficult questions connected with the processes by which,
when sound reaches the drum of the ear, it is trans-
mitted to the brain, must be dealt with in separate arti-
cles of this work. It is to the physical part of the science
of acoustics that the present article is restricted.
PART I.
General motions as to Vibrations, Waves, &c.
We may easily satisfy ourselves that, in every instance
in which the sensation of Sound is excited, the body,
whence the sound proceeds, must have been thrown, by
a blow or other means, into a state of agitation or
tremor, implying the existence of a vibratory motion, or
motion to and fro, of the particles of which it consists.
It is, moreover, essential, in order that the ear may be
affected by a sounding body, that there be interposed
between it and the ear one or more intermediate bodies
(media), themselves capable of molecular vibration, which
shall receive such motion from the source of Sound, and
transmit it to the external parts of the ear, and especially
to the membrazza tympani or drum of the ear. This
statement is confirmed by the well-known effect of stop.
ing the ear with soft cotton, or other substance possess-
ing little elasticity.
Inasmuch, then, as sound necessarily implies the
existence in the Sounding body, in the air, &c., and (we
may add) in the ear itself, of vibratory motion of the
particles of the various media concerned in the phenom-
enon, a general reference to the laws of such motion is
essential to a right understanding of the principles of
acoustics.
The most familiar instance of this kind of motion is
afforded by the pendulum, a small heavy ball, for instance,
attached to a fine string, which is fixed at its other end.
There is but one position in which the ball will remain
at rest, viz., when the string is vertical, there being then
equilibrium between the two ſorces acting on the body,
the tension of the string and the earth's attractive force
or gravity.
The particle is a solitary particle acted on by external
forces. But, in acoustics, we have to do with the motion
of particles forming a connected system or medium, in
which the forces to be considered arise from the mutual
actions of the particles. These forces are in equilibrium
with each other when the particles occupy certain relative
positions. But, if any new or disturbing force act for a
short time on any one or more of the particles, so as to
cause a mutual approach or a mutual recession, on the
removal of the disturbing force, the disturbed particles
will, if the body be elastic, forthwith move towards their
respective positions of equilibrium. Hence arises a vibra-
tory motion to and fro of each about a given point,
analogous to that of a pendulum, the velocity at that
point being always a maximum, alternately in opposite
directions.
PART II. ,
Velocity of propagation of zwaves of Zongitudinal dis-
turbances through any elastic medium.
Sir Isaac Newton was the first who attempted to de-
termine, on theoretical grounds, the velocity of sound in
air and other fluids. The formula obtained by him
gives, however, a numerical value, as regards air, falling
far short of the result derived from actual experiment;
and it was not till long afterwards, when Laplace took
up the question, that complete coincidence was arrived at
between theory and observation.
The experimental determination of the velocity of
sound in air has been carried out by ascertaining accu-
rately the time intervening between the flash and report
of a gun as observed at a given distance, and dividing
the distance by the time. A discussion of the many
experiments conducted on this principle in various coun-
tries and at various periods, by Van Der Kolk (Zond.
and Ædizz. Phil. Mag., July 1865), assigns to the veloc-
ity of sound in dry air at 32°Fahr., Io91 ft. 8 in. per
second, with a probable error of = 37 ft.; and stillmore
recently (in 1871) Mr. Stone, the Astronomer Royal at
the Cape of Good Hope, has found 1090.6 as the result
of careful experiments by himself there. The coinci-
dence of these numbers, with that we have already
obtained theoretically sufficiently establishes the general
accuracy of the theory.
Biot, about 50 years ago, availed himself of the great
difference in the velocity of the propagation of sound
through metals and through air, to determine the ratio
of the one velocity to the other. A bell placed near one
extremity of a train of iron pipes forming a joint length
of upwards of 3000 feet, being struck at the same instant
as the same extremity of the pipe, a person placed at the
3. A
34
A C O U S T I C S
other extremity heard first the sound of the blow on the
pipe, conveyed through the iron, and then, after an in-
terval of time, which was noted as accurately as possible,
the sound of the bell transmitted through the air. The
result was a velocity for the iron of Io.5 times that in
air. Similar experiments on iron telegraph wire, made
more recently near Paris by Wertheim and Brequet,
had led to an almost identical number. Unfortunately,
owing to the metal in these experiments not forming a
continuous whole, and to other causes, the results ob-
tained, which fall short of those otherwise found, can-
not be accepted as correct.
It is a well known fact that, in all but very exceptional
cases, the loudness of any sound is less as the distance
increases between the source of sound and the ear. The
law according to which this decay takes place is the
same as obtains in other natural phenomena, viz., that
in an unlimited and uniform medium the loudness or
intensity of the sound proceeding from a very small sound-
ing body (strictly speaking, a point) varies inversely as
the square of the distance. Where the vibrations are
transmitted through a wire by means of electricity, as in
the telephone, the decrease in intensity is very small for
very considerable distances; and experiment shows that
where the medium of transmission is continuous and not
pieced or coupled the distance can be greatly increased,
without diminution of volume in the sound. [See TELE-
PHONE..]
In order to verify the above law when the atmosphere
forms the intervening medium, it would be necessary to
test it at a considerable elevation above the earth's sur-
face, the ear and the source of the sound being separated
by air of constant density. As the density of the air
diminishes, we should then find that the loudness of the
sound at a given distance would decrease, as is the case
with a sound produced in a partial vacuum. This arises
from the decrease of the quantity of matter impinging
on the ear, and the consequent diminution of its zyżs
ziza. The decay of Sound due to this cause is observ-
able in the rarefied air of high mountainous regions.
De Saussure, the celebrated Alpine traveler, men-
tions that the report of a pistol at a great elevation
appeared no louder than would a small cracker at a
lower level.
But it is to be remarked that, according to Poisson,
when air-strata of different densities are interposed be-
tween the source of sound and the ear placed at a given
distance, the intensity depends only on the density of the
air at the sourceitself; whence it follows that the sounds
proceeding from the surface of the earth may be heard
at equal distances as distinctly by a person in a floating
balloon as by one situated on the surface itself; whereas
any noise originating in the balloon would be heard at
the surface as faintly as if the ear were placed in the rare-
fied air on a level with the balloon.
PART III.
A'effection and Refraction of Sound.
When a wave of sound traveling through one medium
meets a second medium of a different kind, the vibra-
tions of its own particles are communicated to the par-
ticles of the new medium, so that a wave is excited in
the latter, and is propagated through it with a velocity
dependent on the density and elasticity of the second
medium, and therefore differing in general from the
previous velocity. The direction, too, in which the
new wave travels is different from the previous one.
This change of direction is termed refraction, and
takes place according to the same laws as does the
refraction of light, viz.: (1) The new direction or
refracted ray lies always in the plane of incidence, or
plane which contains the incipient ray (i.e., the direc-
tion of the wave in the first medium), and the normal
to the surface separating the two media, at the
point in which the incident ray meets it ; (2) the
sine of the angle between the normal and the incident
ray bears to the sine of the angle between the normal
and the refracted ray, a ratio which is constant for the
same pair of media.
As light is concentrated into a focus by a convex
glass (for which the velocity of light is less than for
the air), so sound ought to be made to converge by
passing through a convex lens formed of carbonic acid
gas. On the other hand, to produce convergence with
water or hydrogen gas, in both which the velocity of
Sound exceeds its rate in air, the lens ought to be con-
cave. The practicability of focusing the sound waves
has been demonstrated by the microphone, in which it is
done with such intense effect that a “fly can be heard
crawling on the wall.” [See MICROPHONE..]
When a wave of sound falls on a surface separating
two media, in addition to the refracted wave transmit-
ted into the new medium, there is also a fresh wave
formed in the new medium, and traveling in it in a dif-
ferent direction, but, of course, with the same velocity.
This reflected wave is subject to the same laws as regu-
late the reflection of light, viz., (1) the coincidence of
the planes of incidence and of reflection, and (2) the
equality of the angles of incidence and reflection, that
is, of the angles made by the incident and reflected rays
with the normal. º
On principles of repeated reflection may be explained
the well-known fact that sounds may be conveyed to
great distances with remarkably slight loss of intensity,
on a level piece of ground or smooth sheet of water or
ice, and still more so in pipes, chimneys, tunnels, &c.
Thus, in one of Captain Parry's Polar expeditions, a
conversation was on one occasion carried on, at a dis-
tance of 1% mile, between two individuals separated by
a frozen sheet of water. M. Biot heard distinctly from
one end of a train of pipes 3 of a mile long, previously
referred to, a low whisper proceeding from the opposite
end.
The prolonged roll of thunder, with its manifold
varieties, is partly to be ascribed to reflection by mount-
ains, clouds, &c.; but is mainly accounted for on a differ-
ent acoustic principle, viz., the comparatively low rate
of transmission of sound through air, as was first shown
by Dr. Hook at the close of the 17th century. The ex-
planation will be more easily understood by adverting
to the case of a volley fired by a long line of troops. A
person situated at a point in that line produced, will first,
it is evident, hear the report of the nearest musket, fol-
lowed by that of the one following, and so down to the
last one in the line, which will close the prolonged roll
thus reaching the ear; and as such single report will ap-
pear to him less intense according as it proceeds from a
greater distance, the roll of the musketry thus heard will
be one of gradually decreasing loudness. But if he were
to place himself at a relatively great distance right op-
posite to the centre of the line, the separate reports from
each of the two wings would reach him nearly at the
same moment, and hence the sound of the volley would
now approach more nearly to that of a single loud crash.
If the line of soldiers formed an arc of a circle having its
centre in his position, then the distance gone over by the
separate reports being equal, they would reach his ear at
the same absolute instant of time, and with exactly equal
intensities; and the effect produced would be strictly the
same as that of a single explosion, equal in violence to
the sum of all separate discharges, occuring at the same
distance. It is easy to see that by varying the form
of the line of troops and the position of the observer, the
A C Q —
A C R. 35
sonorous effect will be diversified to any extent desired.
If,then, we keep in view the great diversity of form ex-
hibited by lightning-flashes, which may be regarded as
being lines, at the points of which are generated explo-
sions at the same instant of time, and the variety of dis-
tance and relative position at which the observer may be
placed, we shall feel no difficulty in accounting for all
those acoustic phenomena of thunder to which Hooke's
theory is applicable.
PART IV.
Z'he Principles of Musical Aſarmony.
A few words on the subject of musical harmony must
be introduced here for the immediate purposes of this
article, further details being reserved for the special arti-
cle on that subject. &
Sounds in general exhibit three different qualities, so
far as their effect on the ear is concerned, viz., loudness,
pitch, and timbre.
Loudness depends, cat. Zar., on the violence with
which the vibrating portions of the ear are excited; and
therefore on the extent or amp/itude of the vibrations of
the body whence the sound proceeds. Hence, after a
bell has been struck, its effect on the ear gradually di-
minishes as its vibration becomes less and less extensive.
By the theory of vibrations, loudness or intensity is
measured by the vis ziza of the vibrating particles, and
is consequently proportional to the square of their maxi-
mum velocity or to the square of their maximum dis-
placement. Helmholtz, however, in his remarkable
work on the perception of tone, observes that notes
differing in pitch differ also in loudness, where their vis-
ziza is the same, the higher note always exhibiting the
greater intensity.
Difference of pitch is that which finds expression in
the common terms applied to notes: Acute, shrill, high,
3/aré, graze, deep, Zozo, flat.
Besides the three qualities above mentioned, there
exists another point in which sounds may be distin-
guished among each other, and which, though perhaps
reducible to difference of timbre, requires some special
remarks, viz., that by which sounds are characterised,
either as zeoiſes or as musical modes. A musical note is
the result of regular, periodic vibrations of the air-par-
ticles acting on the ear, and therefore also of the body
whence they proceed, each particle passing through the
same phase at stated intervals of time. On the other
hand, the motion to which moise is due is irregular and
flitting, alternately fast and slow, and creating in the
mind a bewildering and confusing effect of a more or less
unpleasant character. Noise may also be produced by
combining in an arbitrary manner several musical notes.
ACOYAPA, a town of the republic of Nicaragua,
Central America, of some importance as a trade cen-
ter. Population, 6,000. It is a telegraph and railroad
station, and is recently improving rapidly.
ACQUI, a town of Northern Italy, in the province
of Alessandria, 18 miles S.S.W. of the city of that
name, on the left bank of the Bormida. It is a place of
great antiquity; and its hot sulphur baths, which are
still much frequented, were known to the Romans, who
gave the place the name of Aquae Statiellae. Popu-
lation, 8600.
ACRE, a measure of surface, being the principal
denomination of land-measure used in Great Britain.
The word (akin to the Saxon acer, the German acker,
and the Latin ager, a field) did not originally signify a
determinate quantity of land, but any open ground.
ACRE, AKKA, or St. JEAN D’ACRE, a town and
seaport of Syria, and in ancient times a celebrated city.
No town has experienced greater changes from political
revolutions and the calamities of war. According to
º
some, this was the Accho of the Scriptures; and its great
antiquity is proved by fragments of houses that have
been found, consisting of that highly sun-burnt brick,
with a mixture of cement and sand, which was only used
in erections of the remotest ages. It is menorable in
modern history for the gallantry with which it was
defended in 1799 by the Turks, assisted by Sir Sydney
Smith, against Bonaparte, who, after spending sixty-one
days before it, was obliged to retreat. It continued to
enjoy an increasing degree of prosperity till 1832.
Though fettered by imposts and monopolies, it carried
on a considerable foreign trade, and had resident consuls
from most of the great states of Europe. On the revolt
of Mehemet Ali, the Pacha of Egypt, Acre was be-
sieged by his son, Ibrahim Pacha, in the winter of 1831–32.
The siege lasted five months and twenty-one days,
and, before the city was taken, its public and private
buildings were mostly destroyed. Its fortifications were
subsequently repaired and improved by the Egyptians,
in whose hands it remained until 3d November 1840,
when the town was reduced to ruins by a three hours'
bombardment from the British fleet, acting as the allies
of the sultan. The Turks were again put in possession
of it in 1841.
Acre is situated on a low promontory, at the northern
extremity of the Bay of Acre. Population, Io,000.
ACROBAT (to walk on tiptoe), a rope-dancer.
Evidence exists that there were very skilful performers
on the tight-rope (ſunambuli) among the ancient
Romans.
ACROCERAUNIA, in Ancient Geography, a prom-
ontory in the N.W. of Epirus, which terminates the
Montes Ceraunii, a range that runs S.E. from the
promontory along the coast for a number of miles, and
is supposed to have derived its name from being often
struck with lightning. -
ACROGENAE is the name applied to a division of
acotyledonous or cryptogamous plants, in which leaves
are present along with vascular tissues.
ACROLITH, statues of a transition period in the
history of plastic art, in which the trunk of the figure
was of wood, and the head, hands and feet of marble.
ACRON, a celebrated physician, born at Agrigen-
tum, in Sicily, who was contemporary with Empedo-
cles, and must therefore have lived in the 5th century
before Christ.
ACROPOLIS, a word signifying the upper town, or
chief place of a city, a citadel, usually on the summit of
a rock or hill.
ACROSTIC (meaning literally the extremity of a
verse), is a species of poetical composition, so con-
structed that the initial letters of the lines, taken con-
secutively, form certain names or other particular words.
This fancy is of considerable antiquity, one of the most
remarkable examples of it being the verses cited by Lac-
tantius and Eusebius in the 4th century, and attributed
to the Erythraean sibyl, the initial letters of which form
the words, “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour,”
with the addition, according to some, of “the cross.”
The arguments of the comedies of Plutus, with acrostics
on the names of the respective plays, are probably of
still earlier date. Sir John Davies (1570–1626) wrote
twenty-six elegant Hymns to Astraa, each an acrostic
on “Elizabetha Regina ; ” and Mistress Mary Fage, in
Fame’s Rozele, 1637, commemorated 420 celebrities of
her time in acrostic verses. The same form of compo-
sition is often to be met with in the writings of more
recent versifiers. Sometimes the lines are so combined
that the final letters as well as the initials are signifi-
cant. Edgar Allan Poe, with characteristic ingenuity,
worked two names— one of them that of Frances Sar-
gent Osgood — into verse in such a way that the letters
36
A CT
of the names corresponded to the first letter of the first
line, the second letter of the second, the third letter of
the third, and so on. Generally speaking, acrostic verse
is not of much value, and is held in slight estimation.
The name acrostic is also applied to alphabetical or
“abecedarian * verses. Alphabetical verses have been
constructed with every wººf of the successive lines begin-
ning with the successive letters of the alphabet.
ACT, in Dramatic Literature, signifies one of those
parts into which a play is divided to mark the change of
time or placé, and to give a respite to the actors and to
the audience. In Greek plays #. are no separate acts,
the unities being strictly observed, and the action being
continuous from beginning to end. If the principal act-
ors left the stage the chorus took up the argument, and
contributed an integral part of the play, though chiefly in
the form of comment upon the action. In comedy the
rule as to the number of acts has not been so strictly ad-
hered to as in tragedy, a division into two acts or three
acts being quite usual since the time of Molière, who
first introduced it.
ACT, in Zazº, is an instrument in writing for declaring
or justifying the truth of anything; in which sense records,
decrees, Sentences, reports, certificates, &c., are called
acts. *
ACT OF CONGRESS. The various legislative en-
actments of congress, when they have received the
sanction of both houses and the approval of the presi-
dent, become portions of the statutes of the United
States, and take effect from the date of their approval,
unless otherwise specified in the acts themselves. If
the president fails to approve or veto within ten days
after passage, the act becomes a law without further
preliminaries. An act may originate in either house
(except in the case of financial appropriations), and before
its passage is termed a bill. Acts of congress require no
formal publication to give them force.
ACT OF PARLIAMENT. An act of parliament
may be regarded as a declaration of the legislature, en-
forcing certain rules of conduct, or defining rights, and
conferring them upon or withholding them from certain
persons or classes of persons. The collective body of
such declarations constitutes the statutes of the realm or
written law of the nation, in the widest sense, from
Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. It is not, how-
ever, till Magna Charta, that, in a more limited constitu-
tional sense, the statute-book is generally held to open.
An act of the English parliament is complete whenever
it receives the royal assent, and takes effect from that
date, unless the act itself fix some other. British acts
require no formal promulgation.
ACT OF SEDERUNT, in Scotch Zaw, an ordinance
for regulating the forms of procedure before the Court
of Session, passed by the judges in virtue of a power
conferred by an act of the Scotch Parliament, 1540,
C. C.) X.
Ääts OF THE APOSTLES, the fifth among the
canonical books of the New Testament. What has to
be said on this book will naturally fall under the follow-
ing heads: The state of the text; the authorship; the
object of the work; the date and the place of its compo-
sition.
The State of the 7'ext.— The Acts is found in two
MSS., generally assigned to the 4th century, the Codex
Sinaiticus, in St. Petersburg, and the Codex Vaticanzas,
in Rome; in one MS., assigned to the 5th century, the
Codex Alexandrizzus, in the British Museum; in two
MSS. belonging to the 6th century, the Codex Bezae, in
Cambridge, and the Codex Zaudianus, in Oxford; and,
in one of the 9th century, the Codex Palimpsestus Por-
firianus, in St. Petersburg, with the exception of chap-
ter first and eight verses of chapter second. Large frag-
d
ments are contained in a MS. of the 5th century, the
Codex Aphroemi, in Paris. Fragments are contained in
five other MSS., none of which is later than the 9th
century. These are all the uncial MSS. containing the
Acts or portions of it.
The MSS. in Oxford and Cambridge differ widely from
the others. This is especially the case with the Cam-
bridge M.S., the Codex Bezae, which is said to contain
no less than six hundred interpolations. Scrivener, who
has edited this MS. with great care, says: “While the
general course of the history and the spirit of the work
remain the same as in our commonly received text, we
perpetually encounter long passages in Codex Bezae which
resemble that text only as a loose and explanatory para-
phrase recalls the original form from which it sprung;
save that there is no difference in the language in this
instance, it is hardly an exaggeration of the facts to
assert that Codex D [i. e., Codex Bezael reproduces the
textus receptus of the Acts, much in the same way that
one of the Chaldee Targums does the best Hebrew of the
Old Testament, so wide are the variations in the diction,
so constant and inveterate the practice of expanding the
narrative by means of interpolations.” Scrivener here
assumes that the additions of the Codex Bezae are inter-
polations, and this is the opinion of nearly all critics.
There is one, however, Bornemann, who thinks that the
Codex Bezde contains the original text, and that the
others are mutilated. But, even supposing that we were
quite sure that the additions were interpolations, the
Codex Beza makes it more difficult to determine what
the real text was. Scrivener, with good reason, sup-
poses that the Codex Bezae is derived from an original,
which would most likely belong to the third century at
the latest.
Authorship of the Woré.—In treating this subject we
begin with the external evidence.
The first mention of the authorship of the Acts in a
well-authenticated book occurs in the treatise of Irenaeus
against heresies, written between the years 182 and 188
A.D. Irenaeus names St. Luke as the author, as if the
fact were well known and undoubted. He attributes the
third Gospel to him, and calls him “a follower and dis-
ciple of apostles.” The next mention occurs in the
Stromata of Clemens Alexandrinus, written about I95
A.D., where part of St. Paul’s speech to the Athenians is
quoted with the words, “Even as Luke also, in the Acts
of the Apostles, records Paul as saying.” Origen speaks
of “Luke who wrote the Gospel and the Acts,” and
Eusebius includes the Acts of the Apostles in his sum-
mary of the books of the New Testament. The Mura-
torian canon, generally assigned to the end of the second
or beginning of the third century, includes the Acts of
the Apostles, assigns it to St. Luke, and says he was an
eye-witness of the facts recorded. There is thus unani-
mous testimony up to the time of Eusebius that St. Luke
was the author of the Acts.
After the time of Eusebius we find statements to the
effect that the Acts was little known. “The existence
of this book,” Chrysostom says, “is not known to many,
nor the person who wrote and composed it.” And
Photius, in the ninth century, says, “Some maintain that
it was Clement of Rome that was the writer of the Acts,
others that it was Barnabas, and others that it was Luke
the Evangelist.”
We turn to the internal evidence. And in the very
commencement we find the author giving himself out as
the person who wrote the third Gospel. This claim has
been almost universally acknowledged. . There is a
remarkable similarity in the style of both. The same
peculiar modes of expression continually occur in both ;
and throughout both there exist continual references
backward and forward, which imply the same authorship.
/ -- * - ––
A C T
37
There are some difficulties in the way of this conclusion.
Two of these deserve special notice. If we turn to the
last chapter of the Gospel, we find it stated there (ver. 13)
that two disciples met Jesus on the day of the resurrec-
tion, as they were going to Emmaus. Towards nightfall
(ver. 29) he entered the village with them; and as he
reclined with them, he became known to them, and dis-
º Whereupon “at that very hour” (ver. 33)
they rose up and returned to Jerusalem. They found the
eleven assembled, and told them what had happened.
“While they were saying these things, he himself stood
in the midst of them" (ver. 36). The apostles gave him
a piece of fish, and he ate it. “But he said to them.”
(ver. 44), so the narrative goes on, and it then relates his
speech ; and at ver. 50 it says, “He led them out to
Bethany,” and then disappeared from them. This dis-
appearance was final; and if the words used in the Gos-
pel make us hesitate in determining it to be his ascension,
º hesitation is removed by the opening words of the
CtS.
The Acts itself claims to be written by a companion
of St. Paul. In chap. xvi. Io, the writer, without any
previous warning, passes from the third person to the
first. St. Paul had reached the Troad. There he saw a
vision inviting him to go to Macedonia. “But when he
saw the vision, straightway we sought to go out into
Macedonia.”
The Acts is divided into two distinct parts. The first
deals with the church in Jerusalem, and especially nar-
rates the actions of St. Peter. We have no external
means of testing this portion of the narrative. The
Acts is the only work from which information is got in
regard to these events. The second part pursues the
history of the apostle Paul; and here we can compare
the statements made in the Acts with those made in
the Epistles. Now here again we have a general
harmony.
In regard to the first point, St. Paul himself says in
the Epistle to the Galatians, that after his conversion
straightway he held no counsel with flesh and blood, nor
did he go up to Jerusalem to the apostles who were
before him; but he went away to Arabia and returned to
Damascus; that then after three years he went up to
Jerusalem to seek for Cephas, and he remained with him
fourteen days. If St. Luke’s narrative of St. Paul’s con-
version be minutely examined, it will be perceived that
not only does he not mention that St. Paul saw Jesus,
but the circumstances as related scarcely permitted St.
Paul to see Jesus. He was at once dazzled by the light,
and fell to the ground. In this prostrate condition, with
his eyes shut, he heard the voice; but at first he did not
know whose it was. And when he opened his eyes, he
found that he was blind.
Furthermore, the point on which St. Paul specially
insists in the Epistle to the Galatians is, that he was
appointed the apostle to the Gentiles, as St. Peter was to
the circumcised, and that circumcision and the observ-
ance of the Jewish law were of no importance to. the
Christian. St. Paul’s words on this point in all his letters
are strong and decided. But in the Acts it is St. Peter
that opens up the way for the Gentiles. In St. Peter's
mouth occurs the strongest language in regard to the
intolerable mature of the law. Not a word is said of the
quarrel between St. Peter and St. Paul. The brethren
in Antioch send St. Paul and Barnabas up to Jerusalem
to ask the opinion of the apostles and elders. St. Paul
awaits the decision of the apostles, and St. Paul and
Barnabas carry back the decision to Antioch. And,
throughout the whole of the Acts, St. Paul never stands
forth as the champion of the Gentiles.
We may add to this, that while St. Luke gives a rather
minute account of the sufferings of St. Peter and the
church in Jerusalem, he has not brought prominently
forward the perils of St. Paul. St. Paul enumerates
some of his sufferings in the second Epistle to the
Corinthians (chap. xi. 23–28). St. Luke has omitted a
great number of these. Thus, for instance, St. Paul
mentions that he was thrice shipwrecked. St. Luke does
not notice one of these shipwrecks, that recorded in the
Acts having taken place after the Epistles to the Corin-
thians were written.
St. Luke occasionally alludes, in the Acts, to events
which took place outside of the church. We can test
his accuracy in recording these events by comparing his
narrative with the narratives of historians who treat of
the same period. These historians are Josephus, Tacitus,
and Suetonius. Now, here again we find that the
accounts in the Acts generally agree.
The second case relates to the Egyptian mentioned in
the question of the tribune to St. Paul, in Acts xxi. 38,
“You are not then the Egyptian who, some time ago,
made a disturbance, and led into the wilderness the four
thousand of the sicarii?” Josephus mentions this
Egyptian, both in his Antiquities (xx. 8, 6) and in the
Jewish War (ii. 13, 5). In the Jewish War (ii. 13, 3),
Josephus describes the sicarii, and then passes on, after
a short section, to the Egyptian. He states that he
collected thirty thousand people, led them out of the
wilderness “to the mount called the Mount of Olives,
which,” he says (Ant. xx. 8, 6) in words similar to those
in Acts i. 12, “lies opposite to the city five furlongs dis-
tant.” On this Felix attacked him, killed some, cap-
tured others, and scattered the band. The Egyptian,
however, escaped with some followers. Hence the
question in the Acts. There are some striking resem-
blances between the words used by both writers. The
numbers differ; but St. Luke gives the numbers of the
sicarii, Josephus the numbers of the entire multitude led
aStraV.
The third case is the one which has attracted most
attention. In the speech which Gamaliel delivers, in
Acts v. 35–39, it is said, “Some time before this,
Theudas rose up, saying that he was some one, to whom
a number of about four hundred men attached them-
selves, who was cut off, and all who followed him were
broken up and came to nought. After him rose up
Judas the Galilean, in the days of the registration, and
he took away people after him; and he also perished,
and all that followed him were scattered.”
Not the least important of the questions which influ-
ence critics in determining the authorship of the Acts is
that of miracles. Most of those who think that mir-
acles are impossible, come to the conclusion that the
narratives containing them are legendary, and accord-
ingly they maintain that the first portion of the Acts,
relating to the early church in Jerusalem and to St.
Peter, is in the highest degree untrustworthy. The
writer, it is maintained, had no personal knowledge of
those early days, and received the stories after they had
gone through a long process of transmutation. They
appeal, for instance, to the account of the Pentecost,
where the miracle of speaking with tongues is described.
They say that it is plain, on a comparison of the Epistle
to the Corinthians with the Acts, that St. Paul meant
one thing by the gift of tongues, and the writer of
the Acts another. And the inference is at hand that, if
the writer had known St. Paul, he would have known
what the gift of tongues was ; and the possibility of
such a mistake, it is said, implies a considerable distance
from the time of the apostles and the primitive church.
They point also to the curious parallelism between the
miracles of St. Peter and those of St. Paul. The par.
allclism between the miracles of St. Peter and St. Paul
is accounted for by the fact that they acted in similar
38
A CT
circumstances, and that actual events were at hand on
which to base the parallelism. At the same time, some
who believe in the possibility of miracles think that the
Acts presents peculiar difficulties in this matter.
We have thus given a general summary of the ques-
tions which come up in investigating the authorship of
the Acts, and of the arguments used in settling this
point. The conclusions based upon this evidence are
very different. Some join the traditional opinion of the
church to the modern idea of inspiration, and maintain
that St. Luke was the author of the work, that every
discrepancy is merely apparent, and that every speech
contains the real and genuine words of the speaker.
Others maintain that St. Luke is the writer, and that
the book is justly placed in the canon ; that the narra-
tive is, on the whole, thoroughly trustworthy, and that
neither its canonicity nor credibility is affected by the
existence of real discrepancies in the narrative. Others
hold that St. Luke is the author, but that we have got
in the book an ordinary narrative, with portions credi-
ble and portions incredible; that for the early portions
of the work he had to trust mainly to his memory,
dulled by distance from the scene of action and by lapse
of time, and that he has given what he knew with the
uncritical indifference to minute accuracy in time, cir-
cumstance, and word, which characterises all his con-
temporaries. Others maintain that St. Luke is the
author, but that, being a credulous and unscientific
Christian, he recorded indeed in honesty all that he
knew, but that he was deluded in his belief of miracles,
and is often inaccurate in his statement of facts. Others
think that St. Luke was not the author of the work.
He may have been the original author of the diary of the
Apostle Paul's travels in which the “we” occurs; but
the author of the Acts did not write the diary, but in-
serted it into his narrative after altering it for a special
purpose, and the narrative was written long after St.
Paul and St. Luke were dead. Others think that in
the Acts we have the work of Timothy or of Silas, or of
some one else. A considerable number imagine that St.
Luke had different written documents before him while
composing, and a very few think that the work is the
work of more than one writer.
Aurpose.— We have seen that the Acts of the Apos-
tles is the work of one author possessed of no inconsid-
erable skill. This author evidently omits many things
that he knew ; he gives a short account of others of
which he could have supplied accurate details, and, as
in the case of St. Paul, he has brought forward one side
of the character prominently, and thrown the other into
the shade. What motive could have led him to act
thus? What object had he in inserting what he has
inserted, and omitting what he has omitted P. Most of
the answers given to these questions have no important
bearing on the question of the authorship of the Acts.
But the case is different with the answer of the Tübingen
school. The Tübingen school maintains that St. Paul
taught that the law was of no avail to Jew and Gentile,
and that, therefore, the observance of it was unneces-
sary; that St. Peter and the other apostles taught that
the observance of the law was necessary, and that they
separated from St. Paul on this point; and that early
Christians were divided into two great classes—those
who held with St. Paul, or the Gentile Christians, and
those who held with St. Peter, or the Jewish Christians.
They further maintain that there prevailed a violent
controversy between these two parties in the church,
until a fusion took place towards the middle of the sec-
ond half of the second century, and the Catholic Church
arose. At what stage of this controversy was the Acts
written ? is the question they put. St. Peter, we have
seen, is represented in the Acts as opening the church to
the Gentiles. St. Peter and the rest of the apostles at
Jerusalem admit the Gentiles on certain gentle condi-
tions of refraining from things offered to idols, from
animals suffocated, from blood and from formication.
What could be the object of such statements but to con-
vince the Jewish Christians that they were wrong in
pertinaciously adhering to their entire exclusion of the
Gentiles, or insisting on their observance of the entire
law P But St. Paul is represented as observing the law,
as sent forth by St. Peter and the other apostles, as
going continually to the Jews first, and as appearing in
the temple and coming up with collections for the Jeru-
salem church. Was not this also intended to reconcile
the Jewish Christians to St. Paul ? Then the great
doctrines of St. Paul all but vanish—free grace, justifi-
cation by faith alone, redemption through the blood of
Christ — all that is characteristic of St. Paul disappears,
except his universalism, and that is modified by the decree
of the apostles, the circumcision of Timothy, and St.
Paul’s observance of the law. The object of all this,
they affirm, must be to reconcile the Jewish party by
concessions. But there is said to be also another object,
of minor importance indeed, but still quite evident and
falling in with the other. Throughout the Acts St. Paul
is often accused of turning the world upside down and
causing disturbances. The Jewish Christians may have
thought that St. Paul was to blame in this matter, and
that St. Paul's opinions were peculiarly calculated to
stir up persecution against the Christians. The stories
in the Acts were devised to convince them that they
were mistaken in this supposition. On every occasion
in which St. Paul is accused before magistrates, and
especially Roman magistrates, he is acquitted. Gallio,
the town clerk of Ephesus, Lysias, Felix and Festus, all
declare that St. Paul has done nothing contrary to the
law. And while the Romans thus free him from all
blame, it is the Jews who are always accusing him.
Alate.— There are no sure data for determining the
date. Appeal used to be made to Acts viii. 26, “Unto
the way which goeth down from Jerusalem to Gaza,
which is desert.” But most probably it is the way which
is here said to be desert or lonely. But even if the
word “desert” or “lonely ” be applied to Gaza, we get
nothing out of it. Accordingly, in the absence of data.
very various dates have been assigned. Some think that
it was written at the time mentioned in the last chapter of
Acts, when St. Paul had been two years in Rome. Some
think that it must have been written after the fall of Je-
rusalem, as they believe that the gospel was written after
that event. Irenaeus thought that it was written after
the death of St. Peter and St. Paul (H. iii. 1). Others
think that St. Luke must have written it at a late period
of his life, about the year 80 A.D. The Tübingen school
think that it was written some time in the second cen-
tury, most of them agreeing on the second or third
decade of that century, about 125 A.D. They argue that
a late date is proved by the nature of the purpose which
occasioned the work, by the representation which it
gives of the relation of the Christians to the Roman
state, and by the traces of Gnosticism and of a hierar-
chical constitution of the church to be found in the
Acts.
Alace. — There is no satisfactory evidence by which to
settle the place of composition. Later fathers of the
church and the subscriptions of late MSS. mention
Achaia, Attica, Alexandria, Macedonia, and Rome.
And these places have all had their supporters in modern
times. Some have also tried to show that it was
written in Asia Minor, probably at Ephesus. The
most likely supposition is that it was written at Rome;
Zeller has argued with great plausibility for this conclu-
S1 OIl,
A CT
39
There is a large literature on the subject of this arti-
cle, but the most important treatises are those of
Schwanbeck, Schneckedburger, Lekebusch, Zeller, Trip,
Klostermann, and CErtel.
There are various other treatises claiming to be Acts
of Apostles. One or two of these must have existed at
an early date, though, no doubt, they have since received
large interpolations. But most of them belong to a
late period, and all of them are acknowledged to be
apocryphal.
ACTA CONSISTORII, the edicts of the consistory
or council of state of the Roman emperors. These
edicts were generally expressed in such terms as these :
“The august emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, in
council declare, That the children of decurions shall not
be exposed to wild beasts in the amphitheatre.”
ACTA DIURNA, called also Acta Populi, Acta Pub-
lica, and simply Acta or Diurna, was a sort of Roman
gazette, containing an authorised narrative of the trans-
actions worthy of notice which happened at Rome — as
assemblies, edicts of the magistrates, trials, executions,
buildings, births, marriages, deaths, accidents, prodigies,
&c. Petronius has given us an imitation specimen of
the Acta ZXiurzza, one or two extracts from which may be
made to show their style and contents. The Acta were
drawn up from day to day, and exposed in a public place
to be read or copied by all who chose to do so. After
remaining there for a reasonable time they were taken
down and preserved with other public documents.
ACTA SENATUS, among the Romans, were min-
utes of the discussions and decisions of the Senate.
ACTAEON, in Fabzulous Aſistory, son of Aristaeus and
Autonoë, a famous hunter. He was torn to pieces by
his own dogs.
ACTIAN GAMES, in Roman Antiquity, solemn
games instituted by Augustus, in memory of his victory
over Antony at Actium. See ACTIUM.
ACTINIA, a genus of coelenterate animals, of which
the sea-anemone is the type. See ACTINOZOA.
ACTINISM (a ray), that property of the solar rays
whereby they produce chemical effects as in photography.
ACTINOMETER (measurer of solar rays), a ther-
mometer with a large bulb, filled with a dark-blue fluid,
and enclosed in a box, the sides of which are blackened,
and the whole covered with a thick plate of glass.
ACTINOZOA, a group of animals, of which the
most familiar examples are the sea-anemones and “coral
insects” of the older writers. The term was first
employed by de Blainville, to denote a division of the
Animal Kingdom, having somewhat different limits
from that to which its application is restricted in the
present article; in which it is applied to one of the two
great divisions of the COELENTERATA, the other being
the Hydrozoa.
Actinozoa agree with the Hydrozoa in the primitive
and fundamental constitution of the body of two mem-
branes, an ectoderm and an endoderm, - between which
a middle layer or mesoderm may subsequently arise, –
in the absence of a completely differentiated alimentary
canal, and in possessing thread cells, or nematocysts;
but they present a somewhat greater complexity of
Structure.
This is manifest, in the first place, in their visceral
tube, or “stomach,” as it is often called, which is con-
tinued from the margins of the mouth, for a certain dis-
tance into the interior cavity of the body, but which is
always open at its fundus into that cavity. And, sec-
ondly, in the position of the reproductive elements,
which, in the Aydrozoa, are always developed in parts
of the body wall which are in immediate relation with
the external surface, and generally form outward pro-
jections; while, in the Actinozoa, they are as constantly
situated in the lateral walls of the chambers into which
the body cavity is divided. In consequence of this
arrangement, the ova, or sexually generated embryos,
of the Actinozoa are detached into the interior of the
body, and usually escape from it by the oral aperture;
while those of the Hydrozoa are at once set free on the
exterior surface of that part of the body in which they
are formed.
The Actinozoa comprise two groups, which are very
different in general appearance and habit, though really
similar in fundamental structure. These are:
I. The Corallegena, or Sea-anemones, coral animals,
and sea-pens; and, 2. The Ctenophora. -
(I.) The Coral/igena.- A common sea-anemone
presents a subcylindrical body, terminated at each end
by a disk. The one of these discoidal ends serves to
attach the ordinarily sedentary animal; the other exhib-
its in the centre a mouth, which is usually elongated in
one direction, and, at each end, presents folds extending
down into the gastric cavity.
The question whether the Coralligena possess a
nervous system and organs of sense, hardly admits of a
definite answer at present. It is only in the Actinidae
that the existence of such organs has been asserted;
and the nervous circlet of Actinia, described by Spix,
has been seen by no later investigator, and may be safely
assumed to be non-existent. Subjacent to these Professor
Duncan finds ganglion cells and nerve plexuses. It
would seem, therefore, that these bodies are rudimen-
tary eyes.
At the breeding season the ova or spermatozoa are
evolved in the thickness of the mesenteries, and are
discharged into the intermesenteric spaces, the ova
undergoing their development within the body of the
parent. As the mesenteries increase in numbers, the
tenacles grow out as diverticula of the intermesenteric
Spaces.
In all the Coralligena, the development of which
has been observed, the embryo is converted into a simple
actinozoon in a similar manner; but from this point
they diverge in two directions. In these Hexacoral/a
(as they have been termed by Haeckel) the tentacles also
usually remain rounded and conical. In the other
group, the Octocoralla, the mesenteries and the tentacles
increase to eight, but do not surpass that number; and
the tentacles become flattened and serrated at the edges,
or take on a more or less pennatifid character.
There are no Octocora//a which retain the simple
individuality of the young actinozoon throughout life;
but all increase by gemmation, and give rise to com-
pound organisms, which may be aborescent, and fixed by
the root end of the common stem, as in the Alcyonidae
and Gorgonidae, or may possess a central stem which is
not fixed, and gives off lateral branches which undergo
comparatively little subdivision, as in the Pen natulidae.
In the Hexacoral/a, on the other hand, one large
group, that of the Actinidae, consists entirely of simple
organisms,— organisms that is, in which the primitive
actinozoon attains its adult condition without budding
or fission; or if it bud or divide, the products of the
operation separate from one another. No true skeleton
is formed, all are to some extent locomotive, and some
(Minyas) float freely by the help of their contractile
pedal region. The most remarkable form of this group
is the genus Cereamthus, which has two circlets, each
composed of numerous tentacles, one immediately around
the oral aperture, the other at the margin of the disk.
The Zoanthida differ from the Actinia'a in little more
than their multiplication by buds, which remain adherent,
either by a common connecting mass or coenosarc or by
stolons; and in the possession of a rudimentary, spicular
skeleton.
4O
A C T
On the other hand, the proper stone-corals (as contra-
distinguished from the red coral) are essentially Actinia,
which become converted into compound organisms by
gemmation or fission, and develope a continuous skeleton.
The skeleton appears, in all cases to be deposited
within the mesoderm, and in the intercellular substance
of that layer of the body. Even the definitely shaped
spicula of the Octocoral/a are not the result of the meta-
morphosis of cells.
In the Aporosa the theca and septa are almost inva-
riably imperforate; but in the Perforata they present
apertures, and in some madrepores the whole skeleton is
reduced to a mere network of dense calcareous sub-
stance. When the Hexacoralla multiply by gemmation
or fission, and thus give rise to compound massive or
aborescent aggregations, each newly-formed coral polype
developes a skeleton of its own, which is either con-
fluent with that of the others, or it is united with them
by calcification of the connecting substance of the com-
mon body. This intermediate skeletal layer is then
termed canenchyma.
The Octocora/la (excepting Tubipora) give rise to no
thecae and their dependencies, the skeleton of each polype,
and of the superficial portion of the polyparium, being
always composed of loose and independent spicula.
It has seemed advisable to say thus much concerning
the hard parts of the Actinozoa in this place, but the
details of the structure and development of the skeleton
of the Coralligena will be discussed under Cor ALs and
CORAL REEFs.
The Zabulata, or Millepores, and the Rugosa, an
extinct and almost exclusively Palaeozoic group of stone-
coral forming animals, are usually referred to the
Coral/igezza, Judging by the figures given by Agassiz
of living Millepores, the polypes which cover its surface
are undoubtedly much more similar to coryinform
Aydrozoa than they are to any Actinozoon.
Phenomena analogous to the “alternation of genera-
tions,” which is so common among the Hydrozoa, are
unknown among the great majority of the Actinozoa.
But Semper has recently described a process of sexual
multiplication in two species of Fungiae, which he ranks
under this head.
The Ctenophora. — These are all freely swimming,
actively locomotive, marine animals, which do not
multiply by gemmation, nor form compound organisms
such as the polyparies of the Coralligena.
In their development the Ctenophora resemble the
Coralligena in all essential respects, though they differ
from them in some details. Thus the process of yelk
division goes on at a different rate in the two moieties
of the egg, so that the vitellus becomes divided into
one set of small and another set of large cells, whereof
the latter become overlaid by the former, and give rise
to a large-celled hypoblast, enclosed within a small-
celled epiblast. But in the manner in which the body
cavity is formed, and the visceral tube (which becomes
the stomach) is developed, the Ctenophora resemble the
Actinia. The paddles make their appearance at four
points of the circumference of the body, in the form of
elevations beset with short cilia; but each of these
divºdes into two, and thus the eight definitive series are
constituted.
There is a general agreement among anatomists respect-
ing the structure of the Ctenophora thus far; but the
question whether they possess a nervous system and
Sensory organs or not, is, as in the case of the Coral/i-
gena, one upon which there exists great diversity of
opinion. Grant originally described a nervous ganglion-
ated ring, whence longitudinal cords proceed in Cydippe
(Pleurobrachia); but his observation has not been veri-
fied by subsequent investigations. According to Milne
Edwards, followed by others (among whom is included
Professor Huxley), the nervous system consists of a gang-
lion, situated at the aboral pole of the body, whence
nerves radiate, the most conspicuous of which are eight
cords which run down the corresponding series of pad-
dles; and a sensory organ, having the characters of an
otolithic sac, is seated upon the ganglion. Agassiz and
Kölliker, on the other hand, have denied that the
appearances described (though they really exist) are
justly interpreted. And again, though the body
described as an otolithic sac, undoubtedly exists in the
position indicated in all, or most, of the Ctenophora, the
question has been raised whether it is an auditory or a
visual organ.
These problems have been recently reinvestigated
with great care, and by the aid of the refined methods
of modern histology, by Dr. Eimer, who describes a ner-
vous system, consisting of extremely delicate varicose
ultimate nerve fibrils, which traverse the mesoderm in all
directions, and are connected here and there with gang-
lionic corpuscles. These nerves are only discernible
with high magnifying powers, as they are for the most
part isolated, and are connected into bundles only
beneath the longitudinal canals. The mass which lies
beneath the lithocyst is composed of cells, but these have
none of the special characters of nerve cells. Eimer
states that he has traced the filaments, which he considers
to be nerves, into direct continuity with muscular fibres;
and, around the mouth, into subepidermal bodies,
which he regards as rudimentary forms of tactile corpus-
cles.
Many Actinozoa (Pennatulidae Ctenophora) are phos-
phorescent; but the conditions which determine the evo-
lution of light have not been determined.
All Actinozoa are marine amimals, and the distribution
of many of the families (Actinidae, Turbineolidae, Penna-
tulidae, Beroide) is extremely wide, and bears no ascer-
tainable relation to climate.
ACTION, in Lazy, is the process by which redress is
sought in a court of justice for the violation of a legal
right. The word is used by jurists in three different
senses. Sometimes it is spoken of as a right—the right,
namely, of instituting the legal process; sometimes, and
more properly, it means the legal process itself; and
sometimes the particular form which it assumes. The
most universally recognized division of actions is the
division jºi by Roman lawyers in actions in reme
and in personam.
Action, in AEnglish Zazº, means the form of civil
process hitherto observed in the Courts of Common Law.
Action (under the Supreme Court of Judicature
Act, 1873). By this Act, which establishes one supreme
court in place of the Superior Courts of Common Law
and the High Court of Chancery, action is the name
given to the proceeding in the High Court of Justice,
which takes the place of the old actions at common
law, suits instituted by bill or information in the Court
of Chancery, causes in rem in the Court of Admiralty,
or by citation in the Court of Probate.
ACTIUM, in Ancient Geography, a promontory in
the north of Acarnania, at the mouth of the Sinus
Ambracius, opposite the town of Nicopolis, built by
Augustus on the north side of the strait.
ACTON, a large village in Middlesex, about eight
miles west of St. Paul’s, London. Population, I2,OOO.
ACTON, SIR John FRANCIS EDward, son of
Edward Acton, who practised as a physician at Besan-
çon, was born there in 1736, and succeeded to the title
and estates in 1791, on the death of his cousin in the
third degree, Sir Richard Acton. He served in the
navy of France, and afterwards in that of Tuscany; and
commanded a frigate in the joint expedition of Spain
A C T — A D A
4 I
and Tuscany against Algiers in 1774. His gallantry in
rescuing three or four thousand Spanish soldiers from
slavery led to his advancement. &
ACTUARY, in ancient Rome, was the name given to
the clerks who recorded the Acta AE’ublica of the Senate,
and also to the officers who kept the military accounts
and enforced the due fulfilment of contracts for military
supplies. In its English usage the word has undergone a
gradual limitation of meaning.
ACUNA, CHRISTOVAL D’, a Spanish Jesuit, born at
Burgos in 1597. He was admitted into the society in
I612, and, after some years spent in study, was sent as a
missionary to Chili and Peru, where he became rector of
the College of Cuença. After occupying the positions
of procurator of the Jesuits at Rome, and ca/ificador
(censor) of the Inquisition at Madrid, Acuña returned to
South America, where he died, probably soon after the
year 1675.
ACUPRESSURE in Surgery (acus, a needle, premo,
I press), a method of restraining haemorrhage, introduced
in 1869 by the late Sir J. Y. Simpson. The closure of
the vessel near the bleeding point is attained by the direct
pressure of a metallic needle, either alone or assisted by a
loop of wire.
ACUPUNCTURE, the name of a surgical operation
among the Chinese and Japanese, which is performed by
pricking the part affected with a silver needle.
ADA FUDIA, a large town of Western Africa, in the
country of the Felattahs, in 13° 6' N. lat., 193 E. long.,
about 400 miles S.E. of Timbuctoo.
ADAL, a region in Eastern Africa, with a coast line
extending, between II° 30' and 15° 40' N. lat., from the
Gulf of Tajurrah to the neighborhood of Massowah.
For about 300 miles it borders on the Red Sea, the coast
of which is composed of coral rock. It stretches inland
to the mountain terraces, to the west of which lie the
Abyssinian table-lands of Shoa and Tigré, with a breadth
near Massowah of only a few miles, but widening towards
the south to 200 or 300 miles. The northern portion of
this region, known as the Afar country, is traversed by
two routes to Abyssinia—the one from Zulla near Mas-
sowah, and the other from Amphilla Bay.
ADALBERT, SAINT, one of the founders of
Christianity in Germany, known as the Apostle of
the Prussians, was born of a noble family in Slavonia,
about 955; was educated at the monastery of Magde-
burg; and, in 983, was chosen Bishop of Prague.
ADALBERT, Archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg,
born of the noble Saxon family of the Counts of Wettin,
was one of the most remarkable ecclesiastics of the IIth
century. Through the friendship of the emperor Henry
III. he was elevated in IoA3, when only about thirty
years old, to the see of Bremen and Hamburg, which
included the whole of Scandinavia, and he accompanied
the monarch in his journey to Rome (1046). Here it
is said that he was offered and that he refused the papal
throne. He died at Goslar in Ioy2, having done much
during his last years to inflame the Saxons' hatred of
Henry, which resulted soon afterwards in their revolt.
ADAM, an appellative noun, meaning the first man.
In Genesis ii. 7, 25, iii. 8, 20, iv. I, &c., it assumes the
nature of a proper name, and has the article the man,
the only one of his kind; yet it is appellative, correctly
speaking. In Génesis i. 26, 27, v. 2, it is simply appel-
lative, being applied to both progenitors of the human
race; not to the first man alone as in the second, third,
and fourth chapters. The etymology of the word is
uncertain, but it is probably connected with a root
signifying red, so that the idea is one red or ruddy.
The early part of Genesis contains two accounts of
man’s creation. These narratives need not be exam-
ined at present farther than man’s origin is concerned.
In Genesis i. 26, 27, we read, “And God said, Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth,
and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the
earth. So God created man in his own image; in the
image of God created he him; male and female created
he them.” At the end of the sixth day of creation man
appears, the noblest of earth’s inhabitants. In Genesis
ii. 7, 8, we also read, “And the LORD formed man of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And
the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and
there he put the man he had formed.” The woman's
creation is thus narrated in subsequent verses of the
same chapter—2O, 21, 22, 23, “And Adam gave names
to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every
beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found
an helpmeet for him. And the LORD God caused a
deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took
one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man,
made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And
Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of
my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was
taken out of man.” Between these accounts some dis-
crepancy exists. The first represents the man and
woman to have been created together, after the various
creatures which the earth sustains on its surface; the
second makes Adam to have been created first, then the
various animals, with the woman last of all. The
creation of animals separates the origin of the man and
the woman. The first narrator states that man was
made in the image and form of God, without explaining
his meaning more particularly. Hence interpreters dif-
fer in attempting to define it.
The narrative in the first chapter is arranged accord-
ing to a definite plan. Six days are allotted to the
creation of the heavens and earth, with all their furniture,
animate and inanimate. After due preparation had been
made by the formation of light, atmosphere, and land
separated from water, life is called into existence, first
vegetable, then animal, terminating in man, the lord of
this lower world. The narrative in chapters ii.-iv. does
not present such orderly progress. In it man is the
central figure, to whom all is subordinated. He is created
first. For him plants and trees are made to spring up. .
He is placed in a delightful garden. The Lord God,
erceiving his solitary condition, creates the beasts of the
#j and the fowls of the air; but when brought to the
protoplast, they were insufficient to supply his mentai
void, so that woman was made, in whom he found a
suitable partner.
º: to the second narrative, Jehovah planted a
garden in Eden, eastward, and put the first man there.
A spring or stream rising in Eden, and flowing through
the garden, supplied it with water. In issuing from the
garden it divided itself into four rivers, each having its
own course. The writer gives their names, and the
countries washed by three of them.
The garden has two remarkable productions — the tree
of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The
former derives its name from the virtue of its fruit to
impart perpetual life or immortality. The fruit of the
latter communicates the knowledge of good and evil. It
awakens moral consciousness. The one had to do with
physical, the other with spiritual life. Such were the
miraculous powers of the two trees in the midst of the
garden.
Are these narratives of the creation, primal abode,
and fall of man, literal history? So some have always
believed, with Augustine and the Reformers. The dif-

42
A D A
ficulties in the way of this interpretation are great. As
it cannot be carried out consistently, its advocates
resort to various expedients. They forsake the literal
for the figurative wherever necessity demands. Thus
they put a figurative construction on the language of
the curse, because they allege that a literal one would
be frigid, utterly unworthy of the solemn occasion,
highly inconsistent with the dignity of the speaker and
the condition of the parties addressed. Sometimes
they even incline to regard the narrative as a sort of
poem, or give it a poetical character.
Are the narratives allegorical ? So Philo interprets
them, followed by the Greek fathers of Alexandria,
Clement and Origen, as well as by Ambrose. In mod-
ern times Coleridge read the whole as an allegory. So
did Donaldson in his jashar. There is no indication,
however, that allegories were intended.
The traditions of ancient nations present analogies to
the creation of man given in the first chapter of Genesis.
The Etrurian comes nearest to the Hebrew. There
creation takes place in six periods of a thousand years
each, and men appear in the last, after the earth, sun,
moon, and stars, with all living things on the surface of
the globe, had been brought into existence by God.
The Persian mythology, in like manner, makes Ormuzd,
the god of light, create by his word Honover the visible
world in six periods of a thousand years each, and man is
formed last. The name of the first man is Kaiomorts.
The Chaldee myth, given by Berosus, presents little
resemblance to the Hebrew narrative. Bel, the highest
god, divided the darkness, and cut the woman, who ruled
over the monstrous creatures found at first in the all,
into two halves, out of which heaven and earth were
formed. After that he cut off his own head. The blood
trickling down was taken by other gods and mixed with
earth, from which men were formed, who are therefo, a
wise, and partakers of the divine intelligence. The Phe-
nician myth is still more unlike the Hebrew account.
But Ovid’s teaching is that man was made in the
image of the gods, and was intended to be ruler of the
earth. The Egyptian theology has no point of contact
with the Hebrew. The Indian accounts are very numer-
ous, but often discrepant. Their likeness to the Hebrew
narrative is remote; for the play of imagination appears
in them to excess and absurdity.
The paradisiacal state of the first pair, and their loss
of it as described in the second and third chapters of
Genesis, have their parallels in the myths of ancient
nations. According to the Persian traditions, Meschia
and Meschiane, the progenitors of mankind, were created
for hiº. in this world and the next, on condition
that they were good, and did not worship Dews. At
first they acted according to their original nature, ac-
knowledging that all beings were derived from Ormuzd.
Ahriman is represented as a poisonous serpent, and
springs in this form from heaven to earth. Dews often
take the same form. *
The tree Hom among them is similar to the tree of
life. It imparts immortality, and is called the king of
treeS.
The holy mountain or paradise of Persian tradition is
Alboraj, the abode of Ormuzd and the good spirits,
which sends forth great rivers. This means the Hindu
Koosh mountains, where was Airjama weed/o, the first
seat of the Aryan race.
According to the religion of Lama or the Calmucks,
men lived in the first age of the world 80,000 years.
They were holy and happy. But their happiness came to
end. A plant, as sweet as honey, sprang out of the
earth, of which a greedy man tasted, and made others
acquainted with it. A sense of shame was awakened,
and therefore they began to make themselves coverings
of the leaves of trees. Their age and size decreased.
Virtue fled, and all manner of vice prevailed.
The Greek myths are remotely parallel. Hesiod
describes the primitive state as one free from toil, sick-
ness, and all kinds of evil. Mortals were contented
with easily obtained, though poor, sustenance. But
cunning Prometheus deceived Zeus, and stole fire from
heaven. . The latter, by way of punishment, sent a
beautiful woman, Pandora, whom Epimetheus accepted
as a gift. Having with her a vessel into which all sorts
of misery had been put, she opened it out of curiosity,
and evils flew forth in abundance, filling the earth.
Hope alone remained at the bottom.
The points of similarity between the Old Testament
and this Greek representative of man's fall are tolerably
plain. In both there is an original state marked by
freedom from sorrow, by complete earthly enjoyment
and undisturbed peace with God. Both attach the origin
of evil to the act of a free being putting himself in
opposition to God — evil being the punishment of that
act, arising by means of a woman. As the Old
Testament narrative implies that the step taken by
man was not a mere degeneracy, so AEschylus's
description admits that it was for humanity the
beginning of a richer and higher life, since man’s
proper destiny could not be worked out in a condition
of childlike incapacity. Pandora reminds us of Eve;
Epimetheus of Adam. Prometheus and the serpent both
wish to make men like God in knowledge and happiness.
The tragic poet seems to regard Prometheus as the
archetype of man, so that his fate is theirs. Like
every strong-willed mortal, Prometheus flounders on the
rock of presumption. He persists in acting contrary to
the commands of Deity, and endures torture till he sub-
mits to a higher will, accepting the symbols of repent-
ance and restraint with certain limits. Thus, like Adam,
he is the representative of humanity.
The fundamental difference between the Hebrew and
Greek narratives is, that the distinction between God
and the world, spirit and nature, maintained with all
sharpness in the one, is not carried out in the other. On
the contrary, the Greek myth mixes the two spheres, so
that the world appears as the original, independent ele-
ment, of which spirits and deity are mere products. In
the Hebrew narrative the spiritual features are presented
clearly and simply; in the Greek they are indistinct,
because transferred to the sensuous world, and covered
with a luxuriant growth of outer nature.
A number of absurd fables, the fancies of Jewish
‘writers, have gathered round the simple narratives of the
Old Testament, and are incorporated in the Talmud.
In these Adam is said to have been made as a man-
woman out of dust collected from every part of the earth;
his head reached to heaven, and the splendor of his face
surpassed the sun. The very angels feared him, and all
creatures hastened to pay him devotion. The Lord, in
order to display his power before the angels, caused a
sleep to fall upon him, took away something from all
his members, and when he awoke, commanded the parts
that had been removed to be dispersed over the globe,
that the whole earth might be inhabited by his seed.
Thus Adam lost his size, but not his completeness. His
first wife was Lilith, mother of the demons. But she
flew away through the air; and then the Lord created
Eve from his rib, brought her to Adam in the most
beautiful dress, and angels descending from heaven played
on heavenly instruments; Sun, moon, and stars dancing.
He blessed the pair, and gave them a feast upon a table
of precious stone. Angels prepared the most costly
viands. But Adam's glory was envied by the angels;
and the seraph Sammael succeeded in seducing him. The
A D A
43
pair were driven out of paradise into the place of dark-
mess, and wandered through the earth.
In the emanation systems of the Christian Gnostics
and Manichaeans, as well as in the gnosis of the Man-
daeans, Adam is represented as one of the first and holi-
est aeons. Both catholic and heretical literature indulged
in fictions respecting Adam.
ADAM OF BREMEN, ecclesiastical historian, was
born in Upper Saxony, and in 1067, probably on the
invitation of Archbishop Adalbert, came to Bremen,
where he was appointed canon and magister scholarum.
He died in Io'76.
ADAM, ALEXANDER, Rector of the High School,
Edinburgh, was born on the 24th of June 1741, near
Forres, in Scotland. From his earliest years he
showed uncommon diligence and perseverance in classi-
cal studies, notwithstanding many difficulties and priva-
tions. He died on the 18th of December 1809, after
an illness of five days, during which he occasionally
imagined himself still at work, his last words being,
“But it grows dark; you may go.”
ADAM, MELCHIOR, German divine and biographer,
was born at Grottkaw in Silesia after 1550, and educated
in the college of Brieg, where he became a Protestant.
He was enabled to pursue his studies there by the liber-
ality of a person of quality, who had left several exhibi-
tions for young students. In 1598 he went to Heidel-
berg, where he became conrector of the gynasium and
died in 1622.
ADAM, ROBERT, architect, the second son of Will-
iam Adam of Maryburgh, in Fife, was born in 1728.
He studied at the University of Edinburgh, and prob-
ably received his first instruction in architecture from
his father, who, whether a professional architect or not,
gave proofs of his skill and taste in the designs of
Hopetoun House and the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
In 1754 young Adam visited the Continent, and spent
three years in Italy for the purpose of examining the
ruins of Roman architecture. The magnificence of the
i. baths erected at Rome in the time of Diocletian
aving impressed him with the idea that there had been
a marked revival of architectural art during that emper-
or’s reign, he resolved to visit the ruins of the private
palace Diocletian had erected at Spalatro in Dalmatia.
He continued actively engaged in his profession until his
death in 1792. James, his brother and associate in
labor, died in 1794.
ADAM, RIGHT HON. WILLIAM, nephew of the pre-
ceding, eldest son of John Adam, Esq., of Blair-Adam,
Kinross-shire, was born on the 2d August 1751, studied
at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and
passed at the Scotch bar in 1773. Soon after he re-
moved to England, where he entered Parliament in 1774,
and in 1782 was called to the Common-law bar. He
was successively Attorney and Solicitor General to the
Prince of Wales, one of the managers of the impeach-
ment of Warren Hastings, and one of the counsel who
defended the first Lord Melville when impeached (as
Mr. Dundas). During his party’s brief tenure of office
in 1806 he was Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall,
and was afterwards a privy councillor and lord-lieuten-
ant of Kinross-shire. In 1814 he became a baron of
Exchequer in Scotland. He died at Edinburgh on the
17th February, 1839.
ADAM'S APPLE, the popular name of the pro-
jection in the fore-part of the neck formed by the
anterior extremity of the thyroid cartilage of the larynx.
The name comes from the notion that the lump was
caused by a piece of the “forbidden fruit” sticking in
Adam’s throat.
ADAM'S BRIDGE, or Rama’s Bridge, a chain of
sand-banks, extending from the island of Manaar, near
the N.W. coast of Ceylon, to the island of Rameseram,
off the Indian coast, and lying between the Gulf of
Manaar on the S.W. and Palk Strait on the N. E.
ADAM’S PEAK, a lofty mountain in Ceylon, about
45 miles E. from Colombo, in N. lat. 6° 55'., E. long.
80° 30'. It rises steeply to a height of 7240 feet, and
commands a magnificent prospect.
ADAMANT, from the Greek Adamas, an adjective
meaning “invincible,” originally applied to substances
of extraordinary hardness, and used as a synonym for
diamond. *
ADAMAWA, a country of Central Africa, lies be-
tween 7° and 11° N. lat and I 1 - and 16° E. long.,
about midway on the map between the Bight of Biafra.
and Lake Chad. Its boundaries cannot be strictly
defined, but it stretches from S. W. to N.E. a distance
of 200 miles, with a width of from 70 to 80 miles. This
region is watered by the Bemuwe and the Faro. The
former, which ultimately unites with the Niger, flows
through Adamawa, first in a northerly, then in a west-
erly direction, and is joined by the Faro, which rises in
the south, 22 miles from Yolla, the capital of the coun-
try. The country, which is exceedingly rich and is cov-
ered with luxuriant herbage, has many villages and a
considerable population. The grain known as Holcus
sorghume or durra, ground-nuts, yams and cotton are
the principal products, and the palm and banana abound.
Elephants are very numerous, and ivory is largely
exported. In the eastern part of the country the rhino-
ceros is met with, and the rivers swarm with crocodiles.
and with a curious mammal called the ayu,
ADAMITES, or ADAMIANS, a sect of heretics that
flourished in North Africa in the 2d and 3d centuries.
Basing itself probably on a union of certain gnostic
and ascetic doctrines, this sect pretended that its mem-
bers were re-established in Adam's state of original
innocency. They accordingly rejected the form of mar-
riage, which, they said, would never have existed but for
sin, and lived in absolute lawlessness, holding that, what-
ever they did, their actions could be neither good nor
bad. In 1421 they were almost exterminated by Ziska,
the leader of the Hussites, who committed many of them
to the flames. -
ADAMNAN or ADOMNAN, SAINT, born in Ireland
about the year 624, was elected Abbot of Iona in 679,
on the death of Failbhe. He died in 704.
ADAMS, JOHN, a distinguished statesman and sec-
ond president of the United States. He was born on the
19th or (new style) 30th of October, 1735, in that part
of the township of Brain tree, in Massachusetts, which
on a subsequent division was called Quincy. After
graduating in 1755, he removed to the town of Worces-
ter, where according to the economical practice of that
day in New England, he became a tutor in a grammar
school, and at the same time was initiated into the prac-
tice of law in the office of Mr. Putnam, then an attorney
and a colonel of militia, and subsequently a general of
some celebrity in the revolutionary war.
He was admitted to practice in the year 1758, and
gradually rose to the degree of eminence which a local
court can confer; and obtained distinction by some essays
on the subject of the canon and feudal law, which were
directed to point to the rising difference which com-
menced between the mother country and the colonies,
soon after the peace of 1763 had delivered the latter from
all disquietude respecting the establishments of France in
the adjoining province of Canada. Two years after, he
was chosen one of the representatives of his native town
to the congress of the province. His first prominent
interference in political affairs was at a meeting at Brain-
tree in 1765, to oppose the Stamp Act. The resolu-
tions he proposed were not only carried unanimously,
44
A D A
but were afterwards adopted verbatim by more than forty
other towns. In 1768 he found it necessary to remove to
Boston, owing to the increase of his legal practice.
When it was determined, in 1774, to assemble a gen-
eral congress from the several colonies, Mr. Adams was
one of those solicited for the purpose by the people of
Massachusetts. Before departing for Philadelphia to
;" the congress, he parted with the friend of his youth,
is fellow-student and associate at the bar, Jonathan Sew-
all, who had attained the rank of attorney-general, and
was necessarily opposed to his political views. Sewall
made a powerful effort to change his determination, and
to deter him from going to the congress. To this
Adams replied: “I know that Great Britain has deter-
mined on her system, and that very fact determines me on
mine. You know I have been constant and uniform in
opposition to her measures; the die is now cast; I have
passed the Rubicon; to swim or sink, live or die, survive
or perish with my country, is my unalterable determina-
tion.” The conversation was then terminated by Adams
saying to his friend, “I see we must part; and with a
bleeding heart, I say, I fear for ever. But you may de-
pend upon it, this adieu is the sharpest thorn on which I
ever set my foot.”
When the continental congress was assembled Mr.
Adams became one of its most active and emergetic lead-
ers, and signed the Declaration of Independence.
In 1777 he, with three other members, was appointed
a commissioner to France.
In 1785. Mr. Adams was appointed ambassador to the
court of his former sovereign, where his conduct was
such as to Secure the approbation of his own country, and
the respect of that to which he was commissioned. Whilst
in London, he published his work entitled Defence of the
American Constitution, in which he combated ably the
opinions of Turgot, Mably, and Price, in favor of a
single legislative assembly; and thus perhaps contributed
to the division of power and the checks on its exercise,
which became established in the United States. At the
close of 1787 he returned, after ten years devoted to the
public service, to America. He received the thanks of
Congress, and was elected soon after, under the presi-
dency of Washington, to the office of Vice-President. In
I790 Mr. Adams gave to the public his Discourses on
Davila, in which he exposed the revolutionary doctrines
propagated by France and her emissaries in other coun-
tries. On the retirement of Washington, the choice of
President fell on Mr. Adams, who entered on that office
in May 1797.
. He was not especially successful in his administration,
lost the confidence of his party and failed to obtain a
renomination. On leaving office he retired to his
native place, where he died on July 4, 1826, the same
day as Jefferson died, and the fiftieth anniversary of
the # of the Declaration of Independence.
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY, eldest son of the preced-
ing, was born at Braintree on the 11th July 1767. The
greater part of his education was received in Europe,
which he visited in company with his father in 1778,
and again in 1780, when he attended for a time the uni-
versity of Leyden. When only fifteen years old he
went, as Secretary, with Francis Dana on his unsuccessful
mission to St. Petersburg. Returning home, he
graduated at Harvard in 1788, and was admitted to the
bar in 1791. He was ambassador to the Hague in
1794, and was sent to Berlin as ambassador by his
father. On Jefferson becoming president (1801), Adams
was recalled, and resumed the practice of law in Bos-
ton. In 1802 Suffolk county returned him a member
of the Massachusetts Senate, and in the following year
he was elected to Congress. Indebted for his position
to the Federal party, Adams supported their views for
four years, but separated from them by voting for Jef.
ferson’s proposed embargo. This course involved him in
much controversy, and cost him his seat in the Senate.
In 1809 Madison, having obtained after Some delay the
concurrence of the Senate, entrusted Adams with the
embassy to St. Petersburg. When war broke out
between England and the United States, Adams
induced the Czar to make an offer of intervention,
which, however, the English Government declined to
accept. After serving for two years (1815–17) as min-
ister in London, he again entered the arena of home
politics as secretary of state under Monroe. In this
office he distinguished himself specially by his arrange-
ment of the treaty with Spain, which defined the
boundaries of the ceded territories of Florida and
Louisiana. An elaborate report on weights and meas-
ures gained for him also a name for scientific acquire-
ments. In 1825 the election of a president fell, accord-
ing to the constitution of the States, to the House of
Representatives, since no one of the candidates had e
secured an absolute majority of the electors chosen by ſti
the States, and Adams, who had stood second to Jackºi
son in the electoral vote, was chosen in preference to ‘ſ.
Jackson, Clay, and Crawford. The administration of
Adams was marked by the imposition of a high tariff
on foreign goods, with the view of promoting internal
industry, and by the unsuccessful attempt to purchase
Cuba from Spain. He died of paralysis on 23d Feb-
ruary, 1848, having been seized two days previously
while attending the debates of Congress. Adams
wrote a number of works, which are now of little
importance.
ADAMS, RICHARD, M. A., divine. Two contempo-
raries of the same name are frequently confounded with
each other. The more eminent was son of the Rev.
Richard Adams, rector of Worrall, in Cheshire. The
family records seven clergymen of the Church of Eng-
land in succession. The present worthy was born at
Worrall, but the loss of the registers leaves the date
uncertain. He died in 1698.
ADAMS, SAMUEL, American statesman, born at
Boston, Sept. 27, 1722, was second cousin to John
Adams. He studied at Harvard, but, owing to his
father's misfortunes in business in connection with a
banking speculation,-the “manufactory scheme,”—
he had to leave beſore completing his course, and to
relinquish his intention of becoming, a Congregational
clergyman. In all the proceedings which issued at last
in the declaration of independence, Adams was a con-
spicuous actor. He took part in the numerous town
meetings, drafted the protest which was sent up by
Boston against the taxation scheme of Grenville (May
1764); and, being chosen next year a member of the
general court of Massachusetts, soon became one of the
leaders in debate. His uncompromising resistance to
the British Government continued; he was a prominent
member of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia,
and was one of those who signed the Declaration of In-
dependence in 1776. From 1789 to 1794 he was lieu-
tenant-governor of the State, and governor from 1794
to 1797, retiring in the latter year partly on account of
age, but partly also because the Federalists were then in
the ascendant, and he himself was inclined to the Jeffer-
son or Republican party. He died on the 3d Oct. 1803.
In an oration on American independence, delivered in
Philadelphia, 1st Aug. 1776, Adams characterises the
English as “a nation of shopkeepers.” The oration was
translated into French, and published at Paris; and it is
therefore not unlikely that Napoleon's use of this phrase
was not original.
ADAMS, THOMAS –“ the prose Shakspeare of Puri-
tan theologians,” as Southey named him—has left as
A D A — A D D
45
few personal memorials behind him as the poet himself.
His numerous works display great learning, classical and
patristic, and are unique in their abundance of stories,
anecdotes, aphorisms, and puns. He was a puritan in
the church, in distinction from the Nonconformist Puri-
tans, and is evangelically, not dry-doctrinally, Calvin-
istic in his theology.
ADAMSON, PATRICK, a Scottish prelate, Arch-
bishop of St. Andrews, was born in the year 1543, in
the town of Perth, where he received the rudiments of
his education. He afterwards studied philosophy, and
took his degree of master of arts at the University of
St. Andrews. In 1564 he set out for Paris as tutor to
the eldest son of Sir William Macgill. In the month
of June of the same year, Mary Queen of Scots being
delivered of a son, afterward James VI. of Scotland
and I. of England, Mr. Adamson wrote a Latin poem,
in which he gave the prince the title of king of France
and England. This proof of his loyalty involved him
difficulties. The French court was offended, and
...tered him to be arrested; and he was confined for six
Months. He was released only through the intercession
of Queen Mary and some of the principal nobility, who
interested themselves in his behalf. As soon as he
recovered his liberty, he retired with his pupil to
Bourges. . He was in this city during the massacre at
Paris; and the same persecuting spirit prevailing among
the Catholics at Bourges as at the metropolis, he lived
concealed for seven months in a public-house, the aged
master of which, in reward for his charity to heretics,
was thrown from the roof, and had his brains dashed
out. In 1588 accusations were brought against him.
The year following he published the Lamentations of
the prophet Jeremiah in Latin verse, which he dedi-
cated to the king, complaining of his hard usage. The
king was unmoved by his application, and granted the
revenue of his see to the Duke of Lennox, so that the
prelate and his family were literally reduced to the want
of bread. During the remaining part of his unfor-
tunate life he was supported by charitable contributions,
and died in 1592.
ADANA, a city of Asia Minor, the capital of the
province of the same name, on the right bank of the
Sihun, about 30 miles from the sea, in N. lat. 37° 1',
E. long. 35° 18'. It is built on the site of the ancient
Antiochia ad Sarum. The population of the town is
2O,OOO.
ADANSON, MICHEL, a celebrated French naturalist,
descended from a Scottish family which had at the Revo-
lution attached itself to the fortunes of the house of
Stuart, was born the 7th of April 1727, at Aix, in
Provence, where his father was in the service of M. de
Vintimille, archbishop of that province. On the trans-
lation of this prelate to the archbishopric of Paris, about
the year 1730, the elder Adanson repaired thither with
his five children, who were all provided for by their
father's patron. A small canonry fell to the lot of
Michel, the revenue of which defrayed the expenses of
his education at the college of Plessis. While there he
was distinguished for great quickness of apprehension,
strength of memory, and mental ardor; but his genius
took no particular bent, until he received a microscope
from the celebrated Tuberville Needham, who was struck
with admiration of the talents and acquirements he dis-
played at a public examination. From that time to the
last hour of his life he persevered with a zeal almost
unexampled in the observation and study of nature. He
had been elected a member of the Academy of Sciences
in 1759, and he latterly subsisted on a small pension it
had conferred on him. Of this he was deprived on the
dissolution of the Academy by the Constituent Assembly,
and was consequently reduced to such a depth of poverty
as to be unable to appear before the French Institute
when it invited him to take his place among its members.
Government afterward conferred upon him a pension
sufficient to relieve the simple wants of the great
naturalist. He died, after months of severe suffering,
on the 3d of August 1806, requesting, as the only deco-
ration of his grave, a garland of flowers gathered from
the 58 families he had differentiated – “a touching
though transitory image,” says Cuvier, “of the more
durable momument which he has erected to himself in his
works.” His zeal for science, his unwearied industry,
and his talents as a philosophical observer, are conspicu-
ous in all his writings. The serenity of his temper, and
the unaffected goodness of his heart, endeared him to the
few who knew him intimately. On his return from Africa
in 1754, he laid before the French Indian Company a
scheme for the settlement of a colony in Senegal, where
articles of African produce might be cultivated by free
negroes. . His propositions were unheeded by his country-
men, and, by a misdirected patriotism, he refused to
present them to the Abolitionists of England. A similar
feeling led him to refuse to settle in Austria, Russia, or
Spain, on the invitation of the sovereigns of those
countries. His most important works are his Matural
Aſistory of Senegal and his Families of Plants.
ADAPTATION, in Biology, is the process by which
an organism or species of organismy becomes modified
to suit the conditions of its life. Every change in a
living organism involves adaptation; for in all cases life
consists in a continuous adjustment of internal to external
relations. The term is usually restricted, however, to
imply such modifications as arise during the life of an
individual, when an external change directly generates
Some change of function and structure.
ADDA, the ancient Addua, a river of Northern
Italy, formed by the union of several small streams, near
the town of Bormio, in the Rhaetian Alps, flows west-
ward through the Valtellina into the Lake of Como,
near its northern extremity.
ADDER, the common viper (Vipera communis).
The death adder (Acanthopis tortor) of Australia, and
the puff adder (Clotho arietans) of South Africa, are
both highly poisonous. -
ADDINGTON, HENRY, Viscount SIDMOUTH,
prime minister of England, eldest son of Dr. Anthony
Addington, was born at Reading on the 30th May 1757.
He was educated at Winchester and at Brazenose Col-
lege, Oxford. In 1784 he was called to the bar at
Lincoln’s Inn, but being elected about the same time
member of Parliament for Devizes, he did not enter on
legal practice. He was already on terms of intimacy
with the younger Pitt, his father having been Lord
Chatham’s medical adviser (a circumstance that secured
for young Addington the nickname in Parliament of
“the Doctor”); and he attached himself, as was natural,
to the party of the great commoner. His fidelity to
Pitt received a speedy and ample acknowledgment when
he was elected, in May 1789, speaker of the House, in
succession to Grenville. For a period of twelve years
he discharged the duties of the chair to the general satis-
faction of all parties, if with no very marked ability.
In 1801, when Pitt resigned on the question of Catholic
emancipation, Addington succeeded him in the offices of
prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer. In
January 1805 he joined the cabinet as president of the
council, accepting at the same time the dignity of a
peerage, which he had previously declined. He resigned
office, however, in July of the same year, in consequence
of the share he took in the prosecution of Lord Melville
having estranged him from Pitt. After the death of
the latter in 1806, he became lord privy seal, and subse-
quently lord president in the cabinet of Fox and Gren-
46
A D D
ville, but resigned office in 1807. He became a third
time lord president under Mr. Perceval in 1812, and in
June of the same year received the seals of the Home
Office under the administration of Lord Liverpool.
He held this position for ten eventful years, during
which he received his full share of the hostile criticism
to which home secretaries are peculiarly exposed. The
policy of repression which he pursued in regard to the
reform meeting at Manchester in 1819, was not justifi-
able even according to the limited ideas of liberty prev-
alent at that time.
ADDISON, JOSEPH, was the eldest son’of Lancelot
Addison, Dean of Lichfield, and was born at his father’s
rectory of Milston in Wiltshire, on the 1st day of May
1672. He took his master’s degree in 1693, and held a
fellowship from 1699 till 1711.
The eleven years extending from 1693, or his twenty-
first year, to 1704, when he was in his thirty-second, may
be set down as the first stage of his life as a man of let-
ters. During this period, embracing no profession, and
not as yet entangled in official business, he was a student,
an observer, , and an author ; and though the literary
works which he then produced are not those on which his
permanent celebrity rests, they gained for him in his own
day a high reputation.
His first literary efforts were poetical. In 1693 a
short poem of his, addressed to Dryden, was inserted in
the third volume of that veteran writer’s Miscel/anies.
The next volume of this collection contained his trans-
lation, in tolerable heroic couplets, of “all Virgil's
Aſozart/, Georgic, except the story of Aristaeus.” Two
and a half books of Ovid were afterwards attempted ;
and to his years of early manhood belonged also his
prose AEssay on Virgil’s Georgics, a performance which
hardly deserved, either for its style or for its critical excel-
lence, the compliment paid it by Dryden, in prefixing it
to his own translation of the poem. The most ambi-
tious of those poetical essay-pieces is the Account of the
Greatest AEnglish Poets, dated April 1694, and addressed
affectionately to Sacheverell, the poet’s fellow-collegian,
who afterwards became so notorious in the party-quar-
rels of the time. In the summer of 1699 he crossed into
France, where, chiefly for the purpose of learning the
language, he remained till the end of 17oo ; and after
this he spent a year in Italy. In Switzerland, on his
way home, he was stopped by receiving notice that he
was to be appointed envoy to Prince Eugene, then
engaged in the war in Italy. Towards the end of 1703,
Addison returned to England.
Works which he composed during his residence on
the Continent were the earliest that showed him to have
attained maturity of skill and genius.
With the year 1704 begins a second era in Addison's
life, which extends to the summer of 1710, when his age
was thirty-eight. This was the first term of his official
career; and, though very barren of literary performance,
it not only raised him from indigence, but settled defin-
itively his position as a public man. His correspond-
ence shows that, while on the Continent, he had been
admitted to confidential intimacy by diplomatists and
nien of rank; immediately on his return he was enrolled
in the Kitcat Club, and brought thus and otherwise into
communication with the gentry of the Whig party.
Although all accounts agree in representing him as a shy
man, he was at least saved from all risk of making him-
self disagreeable in society, by his unassuming manners,
This extreme caution, and that sedulous desire to oblige,
which his satirist Pope exaggerated into a positive fault.
Not long, aſter, Marlborough's great victory at Blen-
heim, it is said that Godolphin, the lord treasurer,
expressed to Lord Halifax a desire to have the great
duke's fame extended by a poetical tribute. Halifax
seized the opportunity of recommending Addison as the
fittest man for the duty; stipulating, we are told, that
the service should not be unrewarded, and doubtless sat-
isfying the minister that his protegé possessed other
qualifications for office besides dexterity in framing
heroic verse. The Campaign, the poem thus written
to order, was received with extraordinary applause; and
it is probably as good as any that ever was prompted by
no more worthy inspiration.
The consideration covenanted for by the poet’s friends
was faithfully paid. A vacancy occurred by the death
of another celebrated man, John Locke; and in Novem-
ber 1704, Addison was appointed one of the five com-
missioners of appeal in Excise. In 1706 he became one
of the undersecretaries of state, serving first under
Hedges, who belonged to the Tory section of the Gov-
ernment, and afterwards under Lord Sunderland, Marl-
borough's son-in-law, and a zealous follower of Addi-
son's early patron, Somers. In 1708 he entered Par-
liament, sitting at first for Lostwithiel, but afterwards
for Malmesbury, which, being six times elected, he rep-
resented from 1710 till his death. Here unquestionably
he did fail. What part he may have taken in the
details of business we are not informed; but he was
always a silent member, unless it be true that he once
attempted to speak and sat down in confusion. During
the last few months of his tenure of office Addison con-
tributed largely to the Zatler. But his entrance on this
new field does nearly coincide with the beginning of
new section in his history. -
Even the coalition-ministry of Godolphin was too
Whiggish for the taste of Queen Anne; and the Tories,
the favorites of the court, gained, both in parliamentary
power and in popularity out of doors, by a combination
of lucky accidents, dexterous management, and divisions
and double-dealing among their adversaries. The real
failure of the prosecution of Addison's old friend, Sach-
everell, completed the ruin of the Whigs; and in August,
1710, an entire revolution in the ministry had been com-
pleted. The Tory administration which succeeded kept
its place till the queen's death in 1714, and Addison was
thus left to devote four of the best years of his life, from
his thirty-ninth year to his forty-third, to occupations
less lucrative than those in which his time had recently
been frittered away, but much more conducive to the
extension of his own fame, and to the benefit of English
literature.
Soon after the fall of the ministry, he contributed five
numbers to the Whig Examiner, a paper set up in
opposition to the Tory periodical of the same name, and
afterwards became the vehicle of Swift's most vehement
invectives against the party he had once belonged to.
These are certainly the most ill-natured of Addison's
writings, but they are neither lively nor vigorous. There
is more spirit in his allegorical pamphlet, the Trial and
Conviction of Count Zariff.
But from the autumn of 17 Io till the end of 1714 his
principal employment was the composition of his cele-
brated Periodical Essays. The honor of inventing the
plan of such compositions, as well as that of first carry-
ing the idea into execution, belongs to Richard Steele,
who had been a school-fellow of Addison at the Charter-
house, continued to be on intimate terms with him after-
wards, and attached himself with his characteristic ardor
to the same political party. When, in April 1709,
Steele published the first number of the Tatler, Addison
was in Dublin, and knew nothing of the design. He
began to furnish essays in a few weeks, assisted occa-
sionally while he held office, and afterwards wrote oftener
than Steele himself. He thus contributed in all, if his
literary executor selected his contributions correctly,
more than 60 of the 271 essays which the work contains.
A D E
47
The Tatler was dropped at the beginning of 1711, but
only to be followed by the Spectator, which was begun
on the 1st day of March, and appeared every week-day
till the 6th day of December 1712. It had then com-
pleted the 555 numbers usually collected in the first
Seven volumes.
On the cessation of the Spectator, Steele set on foot
the Guardian, which, started in March 1713, came to
an end in October, with its 175th number. To this
series Addison gave 53 papers, being a very frequent
writer during the latter half of its progress. None of
his essays here aim so high as the best of those in the
Spectator; but he often exhibits both his cheerful and
well-balanced humor, and his earnest desire to inculcate
sound principles of literary judgment.
In April 1713 Addison brought on the stage, very
reluctantly, as we are assured, and can easily believe, his
tragedy of Cato. Its success was dazzling; but this
issue was mainly owing to the concern which the poli-
ticians took in the exhibition. The Whigs hailed it as a
brilliant manifesto in favor of constitutional freedom.
The Tories echoed the applause, to show themselves
enemies of despotism, and professed to find in Julius
Caesar a parallel to the formidable Marlborough.
The literary career of Addison might almost be held
as closed soon after the death of Queen Anne, which
occurred in August 1714, when he had lately completed
his 42d year. His own life extended only five years
longer; and this closing portion of it offers little that is
pleasing or instructive. We see him attaining the summit
of his ambition, only to totter for a little and sink into
an early grave. We are reminded of his more vigorous
days by nothing but a few happy inventions interspersed
in political pamphlets, and the gay fancy of a trifling
poem on Kneller's portrait of George I.
In August 1716, when he had completed his 44th year,
Addison married the Countess-Dowager of Warwick.
The countess is said to have been proud as well as vio-
lent, and to have supposed that, in contracting the alli-
ance, she conferred j instead of receiving it. To
the uneasiness caused by domestic discomfort, the most
friendly critics of Addison’s character have attributed
those habits of intemperance which are said to have
grown on him in his later years to such an extent as to
have broken his health and accelerated his death.
A DEL or SOMAULI, an extensive tract of country,
stretching eastward from the neighborhood of Tajurrah
to Cape Guardafui, between 43° and 51° E. long., with
a breadth not accurately ascertained.
ADELAAR, CORT SIVARTSEN, surnamed the Eagle,
a famous naval commander, was born at Brevig in Nor-
way in 1622. At the age of fifteen he became a cadet
in the Dutch fleet under Van Tromp, and after a few
years entered the service of the Venetian Republic,
which was engaged at the time in a war with Turkey.
ADELAIDE, the capital of the British colony of
South Australia and of the county of the same name,
situated on the Torrens, seven miles from Port Adelaide,
with which it is connected by railway. The river,
which is spanned at this point by several bridges, divides
the city into two parts—North Adelaide, the smaller of
the two, but containing the chief private houses, occu-
pying a gentle slope on the right bank; and South
Adelaide, the commercial centre of the town, lying on a
very level plain on the left. The chief manufactures
are woollen, starch, soap, beer, flour, leather, earthen-
ware, and iron goods. There is a good retail trade in
European produce; and in the vicinity are iron and cop-
per mines. r
PORT ADELAIDE is situated in a low marshy position,
on a small inlet of the Gulf of St. Vincent. Its har-
bor is safe and commodious; but a bar at the mouth,
where the depth of water varies with the tide from 8 to
16 feet, prevents large vessels from entering. It is a
free port, and has good wharfs and warehouse accom-
modations.
ADELSBERG, a market town of Austria, in the
province of Carniola, 26 miles S.W. of Laibach, and
about the same distance E. of Trieste.
ADELUNG, FRIEDRICH voN, a distinguished philol-
ogist, nephew of John Christoph Adelung, was born at
Stettin on the 25th of February 1768. After studying
philosophy and jurisprudence at Leipsiche accompanied
a family to Italy, where he remained for several years.
At Rome he obtained access to the Vatican library, a
privilege which he utilized by collating and editing some
valuable old German MSS. that had been taken from
Heidelberg.
ADELUNG, JoHANN CHRISTOPH, a very eminent
German grammarian, philologist, and general scholar, was
born at §. in Pomerania, on the 8th August
1732, and educated at the public schools of Anclam and
Closterbergen, and the university of Halle. In the year
1759 he was appointed professor at the gymnasium of
Erfurt, but relinquished this situation two years after,
and went to reside in a private capacity at Leipsic, where
he continued to devote himself for a long period to the
cultivation of letters, and particularly to those extensive
and laborious philological researches which proved so
useful to the language and literature of his native
country. The writings of Adelung are very voluminous,
and there is not one of them, perhaps, which does not
exhibit some proofs of the genius, industry and erudition
of the author. But although his pen was usefully em-
ployed upon a variety of subjects in different departments
of literature and science, it is to his philological labors
that he is principally indebted for his great reputation;
and no man ever devoted himself with more zeal and
assiduity, or with greater success, to the improvement of
his native language. His German dictionary has been
generally regarded as superior to the English one of
Johnson, and certainly far surpasses it in etymology. In-
deed, the patient spirit of investigation which Adelung
possessed in so remarkable a degree, together with his
intimate knowledge of the ancient history and progress-
ive revolutions of the different dialects on which the
modern German is based, peculiarly qualified him for the
duties of a lexicographer. No man before Jacob Grimm
did so much for the language of Germany. Shortly be-
fore his death he issued the very learned work, at which
he had been laboring quietly for years, entitled Mithri-
dates; or, a General Aſistory of Lazz guages, zwith the
Zord’s Prayer, as a specimen, in nearly five hundred
/anguages and dialects.
ADEN, a town and seaport of Yemen, in Arabia,
belonging to Britain, situated on a peninsula of the
same name, IOO miles east of the strait of Bab-el-
Mandeb. The peninsula of Aden consists chiefly of a
mass of barren and desolate volcanic rocks, extending
five miles from east to west, and three from its northern
shore to Ras Sanailah or Cape Aden, its most south- .
erly point ; it is connected with the main land by a neck
of flat, sandy ground, only a few feet high ; and its
greatest elevation is Jebel Shamshan, 1776 feet above
the level of the sea. The town is built on the eastern
coast, in what is probably the crater of an extinct vol-
cano, and is surrounded by precipitous rocks, that form
an admirable natural defense. From its admirable com-
mercial and military position, Aden early became the
chief entrepôt of the trade between Europe and Asia.
ADERNO, a city in Sicily, in the province of Cata-
nia, near the foot of Mount Etna, 17 miles N.W. of
Catania. It is built on the site of the ancient Adra-
7tum, portions of the massive walls of which are still
48
A D E — A D M
visible, and numerous Roman sepulchres have been
found in the vicinity.
ADERSBACH ROCKS, a remarkable group of iso-
lated columnar rocks in a valley of the Riesengebige,
on the frontier of Bohemia and Prussian Silesia, 9 miles
W. N.W. of Braunau.
ADHESION, a term used to denote the physical
force in virtue of which one body or substance remains
attached to the surface of another with which it has
been brought in contact. It is to be distinguished from
cohesion, which is the mutual attraction that the parti-
cles of the same body exert on each other; and it differs
from chemical attraction or affinity, since the properties
of the substances it affects remain unchanged after it
takes place. It is a force that the molecules of the
adhering bodies exert on each other, and must not be
confounded with a contact which is due to mere mechan-
ical pressure, such as that which a piece of caoutchouc
tubing exerts by its elasticity on a body that distends it.
The phenomena of CAPILLARY ATTRACTION (7.2.)
depend on adhesion. Sometimes, when a solid and a
liquid are brought into contact, the adhesive force over-
comes the cohesion of the particles of the solid, so that
it loses its solid form, and is dissolved or held in solu-
tion. To a looser kind of adhesion, whereby one body
is prevented from moving smoothly on the surface of
another, we give the name of friction. The force of
this increases with pressure, which may be the effect of
gravitation or the result of mechanical appliances. The
principle of the process of plating, gilding, &c., is sim-
ilar to this. The adhesive force of cement, &c., is
sometimes very great. Again, air and other gases
adhere to solids. A dry needle, placed carefully on the
surface of still water, will float, resting on a cushion of
air; and when thermometers are filled with mercury,
the liquid has to be boiled in them to expel the air that
adheres to the glass.
ADIAPHORISTS, a name applied to Melancthon and
his supporters in a controversy which arose out of the
So-called Leipsic Interim (1548), and raged until 1555.
In 1547 Charles V. had drawn up the Augsburg Interim,
with a view to provide for the temporary government of
the Church until a general council could be called. This
gave great dissatisfaction both to the advanced and to the
more moderate reformers; and the object of Melancthon's
Leipsic Interim was to reconcile all parties, if possible,
by declaring that certain rites and observances of the
Roman Catholic Church and the jurisdiction of the
Roman Catholic bishops being adiaphora (things indif-
ferent), might be lawfully recognized.
ADIGE (German, Etsch), the ancient Athesis, a large
river of Italy, formed by several rivulets which rise in the
Rhaetian Alps, and unite near Glarus. It is navigable
from the heart of the Tyrol to the sea, and has in Lom-
bardy a breadth of 200 yards and a depth of from Io to
16 feet, but the strength of the current renders its navi-
gation very difficult, and lessens its value as a means of
transit between Germany and Northern Italy. The
Adige has a course of about 220 miles.
ADIPOCERE (from adeps, fat, and cera, wax), a
substance into which animal matter is sometimes con-
verted, deriving its name from the resemblance it bears to
both fat and wax. When the Cemetery of the Inno-
cents at Paris was removed in 1786–87, great masses of
this substance were found where the coffins containing
the dead bodies had been placed very closely together.
At the bottom of the coffin, in these cases, there appeared,
loosely enveloped in linen, a shapeless mass, of a dingy
white color, flattened as though it had undergone great
pressure. The whole body had been converted into this
fatty matter, except the bones, which remained, but were
extremely brittle. A similar substance, found in peat, is
known as bog-butter.
ADIPOSE (adeps, fat), a term in Anatomy, signify-
ing fatty; as adipose tissue, adipose cell, &c.
ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS, a group of mount-
ains in the N. of the State of New York, lying between
Lakes Champlain and Ontario. They rise from an
extensive plateau about 2000 feet above the level of the
Sea, and are chiefly of granite formation. Mount Marcy,
the highest summit, has an altitude of 5337 feet, and
others of the group are from 4000 to 5000 feet.
ADIT (from adire, to go to), a passage or door.
The doors of porticoes in ancient theatres were called
adits. In mines the name is given to a gallery or pas-
Sage, nearly horizontal, by which water is carried off.
Ores also are sometimes removed by the adit. Some
works of this kind are of great magnitude.
ADJUDICATION, in Scottish Law, the name of
that action by which a creditor attaches the heritable,
i.e., the real, estate of his debtor, or his debtor's heir,
in order to appropriate it to himself either in payment
or security of his debt. The term is also applied to a
proceeding of the same nature by which the holder of an
heritable right, laboring under any defect in point of
form, gets that defect supplied by decree of a court.
ADJUDICATION in Bankruptcy, in Anglish Lazv, is
equivalent to the Scotch award of sequestration.
ADJUSTMENT, in Commerce, the settlement of a
loss incurred at sea on insured goods. If the policy be
what is called an open one, and the loss of the goods be
total, the insurer must pay for them at the value of prime
cost, which includes not only the invoice price of the
goods, but all duties paid, the premium of insurance, .
and all expenses incurred on them when put on board.
ADJUTAGE, a short tube or nozzle, inserted in an
orifice, by means of which liquids flow from a vessel
more freely.
ADJUTANT, a military officer whose duty it is to
assist the commanding officer of a regiment or battalion.
Every battalion of infantry, regiment of cavalry, and
brigade of artillery, has an adjutant, who keeps the regi-
mental books, records, and correspondence; acts as the
commanding officer’s representative in matters of regi-
mental detail; superintends the drill of recruits; keeps
the roster (i.e., register of order of service) for all
duties; details the guards, piquets, detachments, &c.,
that are furnished by the regiment; and is responsible for
the receipt of the daily divisional or brigade order from
the superior staff-officer, and the preparation and issue
of regimental orders. The Adjutant-General is the
staff-officer specially charged with all matters relating to
the discipline and drill of the army.
ADJUTANT, the Ciconia Argala, or Zeptoptilos
Argala, a species of stork found in tropical India. It is
of great size, sometimes six or seven feet in height, the
body and legs bearing nearly the same proportions as in
the common stork.
ADJYGURH, a town and fort of India in the presi-
dency of Bengal, 130 miles S.W. of Allahabad. Popu-
lation, 5000.
ADMINISTRATOR, in English Zaw, he to whom
the ordinary or judge of the ecclesiastical court, now
the Court of Probate, commits the administration of
the goods of a person deceased, in default of an execu-
tor. The origin of administrators is derived from the
civil law.
ADMINISTRATOR, a person legally empowered to act
for another whom the law presumes incapable of acting
for himself, as a father for a pupil child.
ADMIRAL, a great officer or magistrate, who has
the government of a navy and the hearing of all mari-
time causes.
A D M — A D R
49
There can be little doubt of the Asiatic origin of the
name given to th’s officer, which does not appear to
have been known in the language of Europe be ore the
time of the Holy Wars. Amir, in Arabic, is a chief
or commander of forces; it is the same word as azneer
of the peninsula of India (as ameer a / omra/, the chief
of lords or princes) and the emir of the Turks or
Saracens, who had and still have their emir or ameer'ſ
duréea, commander of the sea.
ADMIRALTY CHARTS. These useful aids to
navigation are constructed in the hydrographic depart-
ment of the British Admiralty, by specially-appointed
surveyors and draughtsmen, and they are issued to the
public by order of the lords commissioners of the
admiralty. Accompanying the charts there are books
of Sailing directions, tables, and lists of lights. Similar
charts to those of the British Admiralty are issued by
the United States Coast and Geodatic Survey, as well
as by the Russian and French governments. The
superintendent of the Coast Survey issues an annual
report, showing the progress of the survey, and con-
taining much valuable information.
ADMIRALTY, HIGH Court of, the English
court of law having jurisdiction in nearly all matters
connected with the British marine. It had formerly a
criminal as well as civil jurisdiction in time of peace, but
this prerogative is now exercised only on special
OCC2S1 OI)S.
ADMIRALTY ISLAND, an island belonging to
the United States, about 90 miles long from N. to S.,
and 25 miles broad, lying between King George III.
Archipelago and the mainland, in 58° N. lat., 134° W.
long.
KoMIRALTY ISLANDS, a group of about forty
islands lying to the N.E. of New Guinea, between 2°
and 3° S. lat., and 146° 18' and 147° 46' E. long.
ADOLPHUS, JoHN, historian and barrister, was
born in London on the 7th August 1768. 7% e Aſistory
of Ængland from the Accession of George //Z. to 1783,
which he published in 1802, was favorably noticed in the
Adinburgh Rezniew for its impartiality and accuracy.
A new and enlarged edition of this work, in eight
volumes, was in preparation, but only seven volumes
were completed when the author died, 16th July 1845.
ADOLPHUS, John LEYCESTER, son of the above,
also a distinguished barrister (died 1862), was the first to
pierce the mask of the author of Wazierſey in letters
addressed to Richard Heber, which he published in 1821.
ADONIS, according to some authors, the son of
Theias, king of Assyria, and his daughter Smyrna
[Myrrha], was the favorite of Venus. He was ford of
hunting; and Venus often warned him not to attack the
larger wild beasts; but neglecting the advice, he was
killed by a wild boar he had rashly wounded. Venus
was inconsolable, and turned him into a flower of a
blood color, supposed by some to be an anemone.
Adonis had to spend half the year in the lower regions,
hut during the other half he was permitted to revisit the
upper world, and pass the time with Venus.
ADONIS, in Ancient Geograp/y, a small river rising
in Mount Lebanon, and falling into the sea at Byblus.
ADONIS, a genus of ramunculaceous plants, known
commonly by the names of Pheasant’s Eye and Ælos
Adozzis.
ADOPTIAN CONTROVERSY, a controversy rela-
ting to the Sonship of Christ, raised in Spain by Elipan-
dus, archbishop of Toledo, and Felix, bishop of Urgel,
towards the close of the 8th century. By a modification
of the doctrine of Nestorius they maintained that Christ
was really the Son of God in his divine nature alone,
and that in his human nature he was only the son of
God by adoption. A friendly letter from Alcuin, and a
controversial pamphlet, to which Felix replied, were
followed by the sending of several commissions of clergy
to Spain to endeavor to put down the heresy. Arch-
bishop Leidrad of Lyons being on one of these commis–
sions, persuaded Felix to appear before a synod at Aix-
la-Chapelle in 799. There, after six days' disputing
with Alcuin, he again recanted his heresy. The rest of
his life was spent under the supervision of the archbishop
at Lyons, where he died in 816.
ADOPTION, the act by which the relations of
paternity and filiation are recognized as legally existing
between persons not so related by nature. Cases of
adoption were very frequent among the Greeks and
Romans, and the custom was accordingly very strictly
regulated in their laws. In Athens the power of adop-
tion was allowed to all citizens who were of sound mind,
and who possessed no male offspring of their own, and
it could be exercised either during lifetime or by testa-
ment. The person adopted, who required to be himself
a citizen, was enrolled in the family and demus of the
adoptive father, whose name, however, he did not
necessarily assume. Among the Romans the existence
of the patria Žotestas gave a peculiar significance to the
custom of adoption. The motive to the act was not so
generally childlessness, or the gratification of affection,
as the desire to acquire those civil and agnate rights
which were found on the Zatria potestas. It was neces-
sary, however, that the adopter should have no children
of his own, and that he should be of such an age as to
preclude reasonable expectation of any being born to him.
Another limitation as to age was disposed by the maxim
adoptio imitatuz alataram, which required the adoptive
father to be at least eighteen years older than the
adopted children. Adoption is not recognized in the
laws of England and Scotland, though there are legal
means by which one may be enabled to assume the name
and arms and to inherit the property of a stranger. In
France and Germany, which may be said to have em-
bodied the Roman law in their iurisprudence, adoption.
is regulated according to the principles of Justinian,
though with several more or less important modifica-
tions, rendered necessary by the usage of these countries
respectively.
ADORATION (from os, oris, the mouth, or from oro,
to pray), an act of homage or worship which, among
the Romans, was performed by raising the hand to the
mouth, kissing it, and then waving it in the direction of
the adored object. Adoration is applied in the court of
Rome to the ceremony of kissing the Pope's foot, a.
custom which is said to have been introduced by the
popes after the example of the Emperor Diocletian. In
the Romish Church a distinction is made between Zatria,
a worship due to God alone, and Dzz/ia or Æ3/erdzºſia,
the adoration paid to the Virgin, Saints, martyrs, crucis,
fixes, the host, &c.
ADOUR, the ancient Azurus, a river of France which
rises near Barége, in the department of Upper Pyrenees,
and, flowing first northward, then, with a circuit to the
west, passes through the departments of Gers and Landes,
and falls into the Bay of Biscay, 3 miles below Bayonne.
ADOWA, the capital of Tigré, in Abyssinia, is situ-
ated in 14° 12' N. lat., 39°3' E. long., on the left bank
of the River Hasam, 145 miles N. E. of Gondar. Popu-
lation, about 6000.
ADRA, the ancient Abdera, a seaport of Spain, on
the Mediterranean, in the province of Almería, 60 miles
S.E. of Grenada. Population, 7400.
A DRASTUS, in Legendary History, was the son of
Talaus, king of Argos, and Lysianassa, daughter of Poly-
bus, king of Sicyon. Being driven from Argos by
Amphiaraus, Adrastus repaired to Sicyon, where he be-
came king on the death of Polybus. After a time he
4. A
5O
A D R
was reconciled to Amphiaraus, to whom he gave his
sister in marriage, returned to Argos, and occupied the
throne. He acquired great honor in the famous war
against Thebes, which he undertook for the restoration
of his son-in-law Polynices, who had been deprived of his
rights by his brother Eteocles, notwithstanding the agree-
ment between them. The death of his son affected
Adrastus so much that he died of grief at Megara, as he
was leading back his victorious army.
ADRIA, a city of Italy, in the province of Rovigo,
between the rivers Po and Adige. It is a place of great
antiquity, and was at an early period a seaport of such
importance and celebrity as to give name to the sea on
which it stood. The population of Adria is Io,000.
A DRIA, in St. Paul's time meant all that part of the
Mediterranean between Crete and Sicily. This fact is
of importance, as it relieves us from the necessity of find-
ing the island of Melita, on which Paul was shipwrecked,
in the present Adriatic Gulf.
ADRIAN, capital of Lenawee co., Michigan, sit-
uated on a branch of the Raisin river, and on the
Michigan Southern Railway, 73 miles W. S.W. of
Detroit. Adrian is the centre of trade for the surrounding
district, which is chiefly grain-producing. Pop. 9,239.
ADRIAN, PUBLIUS AELIUS, Roman emperor. See
HADRIAN and ROMAN HISTORY.
ADRIAN (Sometimes written HADRIAN) was the name
of six popes:—
* ADRIAN I., Son of Theodore, a Roman nobleman,
occupied the pontifical chair from 772 to 795. Soon
after his accession the territory that had been bestowed
on the popes by Pepin was invaded by Desiderius, king
of the Longobards, and Adrian found it necessary to in-
voke the aid of Charlemagne, who entered Italy with a
large army, and repelled the enemy. The pope acknowl-
edged the obligation by conferring upon the emperor the
title of Patrician of Rome, and Charlemagne made a
fresh grant of the territories originally bestowed by his
father, with the addition of Ancona and Benevento. The
friendly relations thus established between pope and
emperor continued unbroken, though a serious difference
arose between them on the question of the worship of
images, to which Charlemagne and the Gallican Church
were strongly opposed, while Adrian favored the views
of the Eastern Church, and approved the decree of the
Council of Nicaea (787), confirming the practice and ex-
communicating the iconoclasts. It was in connection
with this controversy that Charlemagne wrote the so-
called Zióri Carolini, to which Adrian replied by letter,
anathematising all who refused to worship the images of
Christ, or the Virgin, or saints. Notwithstanding this,
a synod, held at Frankfort in 794, anew condemned the
practice, and the dispute remained unsettled at Adrian's
death.
ADRIAN II., born at Rome, became pope in 867, at
the age of seventy-six. He faithfully adhered to the am-
bitious policy of his immediate predecessor, Nicholas I.,
and used every means to extend his authority. His per-
sistent endeavors to induce Charles the Bald to resign
the kingdom of Lorraine to the emperor were unsuccess-
ful. His arrogant measures were, however, the imme-
diate occasion of the Schism between the Greek and
Latin churches. Adrian had himself been married, but
put away his wife on ascending the papal throne, and a
council called by him at Worms in 868 decreed the
celibacy of the clergy. He died in 872.
ADRIAN III., born at Rome, succeeded Martin II. in
884, and died in 885 on a journey to Worms
ADRIAN IV., whose name was Nicholas Breakspeare,
was born before I IOO A.D. at Langley, near St. Albans,
in Hertfordshire, and is the only Englishman who has
occupied the papal chair. His merit became known to
Pope Eugenius III., who created him cardinal-bishop of
Alba in 1146, and sent him two years later as his legate
to Denmark and Norway. On this mission he con-
verted many of the inhabitants to Christianity, and
erected Upsal into an archiepiscopal see. Soon after his
return to Rome, Anastasius, successor of Eugenius, died,
and Nicholas was unanimously chosen pope, against his
own inclination, in Nov. 1154. On hearing of the elec-
tion, Henry II. of England sent the abbot of St. Albans
and three bishops to Rome with his congratulations,
which Adrian acknowledged by granting considerable
privileges to the monastery of St. Albans, including
exemption from all episcopal jurisdiction except that of
Rome. The bestowal by Adrian of the sovereignty of
Ireland upon the English monarch was a practical asser-
tion of the papal claim to dispose of kingdoms. The
act, besides facilitating and hastening the subjection of
Ireland to England, was also the means of inducing
Henry to yield the long-contested point of lay investi-
ture to ecclesiastical offices. The beginning of Adrian's
pontificate was signalized by the energetic attempts of
the Roman people to recover their ancient liberty under
the consuls, but the pope took strong measures to main-
tain his authority, compelling the magistrates to abdi-
cate, laying the city under an interdict, and procuring
the execution of Arnold of Brescia (1155). With Adrian
commenced the long and bitter conflict between the
papal power and the house of Hohenstaufen which ended
in the humiliation of the latter. A letter addressed by
the pope to Frederick and the German bishops in 1157
asserted that the emperor held his dominions as a beneft.
cium. The expression, being interpreted as denoting
feudal tenure, stirred up the fiercest indignation of
Frederick and the Germans, and though explanations
were afterwards given with the view of showing that the
word had not been used in an offensive sense, the breach
could not be healed. Adrian was about to pronounce
the sentence of excommunication upon Frederick when
he died at Anagni on the 1st Sept. I 159.
ADRIAN V., a Genoese, whose name was Ottobnio
Fiesci, occupied the papal throne for only five weeks in
1276. When congratulated on his accession he replied
in the well-known words, “I wish you had found me a
healthy cardinal rather than a dying pope.”
ADRIAN VI., born of humble parentage at Utrecht
in 1459, studied at the university of Louvain, of which
he became vice-chancellor. He was chosen by the
Emperor Maximilian to be tutor to his grandson, the
Archduke Charles, through whose interest as Charles V.
he was afterwards raised to the papal throne. In 1517
he received the cardinal's hat from Leo X., and in 1519
he was made bishop of Tortosa. After the death of
Ferdinand he was for a time regent of Spain. He was
chosen pope Jan. 9, 1522. He died on the 14th Sep-
tember 1523. So little did the people care to conceal
their joy at the event that they wrote on the door of
his physician’s house the words “the savior of his
country.”
ADRIAN, CARDINAL, was born at Corneto, in Tus-
cany, and studied at Rome. He was sent by Innocent
VIII. as nuncio to Britain, to endeavor to reconcile
James III. of Scotland and his subjects. On his return
to Rome he became secretary to Pope Alexander VI.,
who employed him in various missions, and subsequently
invested him with the purple. It was Adrian in particu-
lar that Alexander is said to have meant to poison in
order that he might seize on his great wealth, when, as
is generally reported, he fell a victim to his own wick-
edness. Not long after the elevation of Leo X, to the
papal chair he was implicated in the conspiracy of Cardi-
nal Petrucci against that pontiff. He confessed his
guilt; and pardon being offered only on condition of his
*
A D R — A D U
5 I
payment of a fine of 25,000 ducats, he resolved to fly
from Rome. It is supposed that he was murdered by a
domestic who coveted his wealth.
A DRIANI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA, born of a patri-
cian family of Florence about 151 I, was for thirty years
professor of rhetoric at the university. He wrote a
history of his own times, from 1536 to 1574, in Italian,
which is generally, but according to Brunet erroneously,
considered a continuation of Guicciardini. He died at
Florence in 1579. -
A DRIANOPLE (called by the Turks EDRENEH), a
city of European Turkey, in the province of Rumelia,
137 miles W. N.W. of Constantinople; 41° 41' N. lat.,
26°35' E. long. It is pleasantly situated partly on a
hill and partly on the banks of the Tundja, near its con-
fluence with the Maritza. Next to Constantinople,
Adrianople is the most important city of the empire. It
is the seat of a bishop of the Greek Church. Adrianople
was called Uskadama previous to the time of the Emperor
Hadrian, who improved and embellished the town, and
changed its name to Hadrianopolis. In 1360 it was taken
by the Turks, who, from 1366 till 1453, when they got
possession of Constantinople, made it the seat of their
government. In the campaign of 1829 Adrianople sur-
rendered to the Russians without making any resistance,
but was restored aſter the treaty of peace signed the
same year. Population, 140,000.
A D RIATIC SEA, the Adriałżczemz Mazze of the
ancients, is an arm of the Mediterranean which separates
Italy from Triest, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Albania. It
extends from 40° to 45° 50' N. lat. in a N. W. direction.
Its extreme north-west portion forms the Gulf of Venice,
and on the east side are the gulfs of Triest, Fiume, Cat-
taro, and Drino. Its greatest length is 450 miles, its
mean breadth 90 miles, and its depth varies from 12 to 22
fathoms. The western or Italian coasts are generally
low and marshy; but the eastern shores are steep and
rocky, and the abounding creeks and inlets, with the
mumerous islands, afford to the mariner many safe natu-
ral harbors.
A DULE or ADULIs, a town on the Red Sea. See
ZULLA.
ADULLAM, in Scripture Geography, a city in the
plain country of the tribe of Judah.
ADULTERATION, the act of debasing a pure or
genuine commodity for pecuniary profit, by adding
to it an inferior or spurious article, or by taking from it
one or more of its constituents. The statutes against
adulteration in the United States are of a purely local
character, and vary with locality. The following applies
to British legislation only: The objects of adultera-
tion are fourfold, namely, to increase the bulk or
weight of the article, to improve its appearance, to
give it a false strength, or to rob it of its most valuable
constituents. All these adulterations are manifestly of
a designedly fraudulent character, and are therefore
properly the subjects of judicial inquiry; but there
may be accidental corruptions and adulterations of a
commodity, arising from natural or unavoidable causes,
as when darnel or ergot become mixed with grain in
the fields of the slovenly farmer, or when an article
becomes changed and deteriorated from spontaneous
decay, or when mineral matters or other impurities
are accidentally derived from the machinery or vessels
in which the thing is prepared or kept. The recogni-
tion of such impurities, and the tracing of them to
their source, is of prime importance in pursuing a
charge of adulteration. Few articles of commerce,
however, are exempt from fraudulent adulteration, and
the practice of it has grown with the competition of
trade, and the removal of those wholesome restrictions
which in former times were so energetically opposed to
all kinds of dishonest dealings; all large cities had their
corporate regulations for supervising and governing
every description of trade and manufacture. The
excise, too, including the customs, had until recently
control over the quality of all excisable articles; and,
although the prime object of this was to protect the
revenue of the country, yet it also served to prevent
adulteration. As far back as the reign of John (I2O3)
there was a proclamation throughout England for
enforcing the legal obligations of assize as regards
bread ; and in the following reign the statute (51 Hen.
III. Stat. 6) entitled the Pillory and Tumbrel, was
framed for the express purpose of protecting the public
from the dishonest dealings of bakers, vintners, brewers,
butchers, and others. This statute is deserving of
notice as the first in which the adulteration of human
food is specially noticed and prohibited ; and it seems
to have been enforced with more or less rigor until the
time of Anne, when it was repealed. According to
Iliber A/hus, it was strictly observed in the days of
Edward I., for it states that, “if any deſault shall be
found in the bread of a baker in the city, the first time,
let him be drawn upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to
his own house through the great street where there be
most people assembled, and through the great streets
which are most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging from
his neck ; if a second time he shall be found commit-
ting the same offence, let him be drawn from the Guild-
hall through the great street of Cheepe, in the manner
aforesaid, to the pillory, and let him be put upon the
pillory, and remain there at least one hour in the day;
and the third time that such deſault shall be ſound, he
shall be drawn, and the oven shall be pulled down, and
the baker made to forswear the trade in the city for
ever.” Vintners, spicers, grocers, butchers, regrators,
and others, were subject to the like punishment for
dishonesty in their commercial dealings—it being
thought that the pillory, by appealing to the sense
of shame, was far more deterrent of such crimes
than fine or imprisonment. But all this has given way
to the force of free trade, and now the practice of
adulteration has become an art, in which the knowl-
edge of science and the ingenuity of trade are freely
exercised. In the year 1872, an Act was passed,
entitled An Act to amend the laws for the Prevention
of Adulteration of Food, Drink, and Drugs. The
main features of this Act are the following :- Local
authorities in England, Scotland, and Ireland are bound
to appoint analyists with competent medical, chemical,
and microscopical knowledge. They must also appoint
officers or inspectors to purchase articles of food, drink,
and drugs within their respective districts, and take
them to the analyst for examination. On receiving a
certificate from the analyst, stating that any article is
adulterated, the inspector must take the necessary legal
proceedings for the purpose of bringing the offender to
justice. The penalty on conviction of mixing anything
whatever with a drug, with the view of adulterating it,
or of mixing any injurious or poisonous ingredient with
any article of food or drink, is a sum not exceeding
fifty pounds, together with the costs; and for the sec-
ond offence he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and be
imprisoned for a period not exceeding six calendar
months with hard labor. The adulteration of intoxi-
cating liquors is provided for by the Licensing Act
1872, and in this Act there is a schedule of substances,
called “Deleterious Ingredients,” which are considered
to be adulterations. The penalties for adulteration are
very severe, leaving it to the magistrate either to inflict
a heavy fine or to send the offender to prison.
Adulteration in other countries is strictly prohibited
under penal obligations. The Prussian penal code pro-
52
A D U
vides that any person selling adulterated or spoiled
goods shall be liable to a penalty up to fifty dollars, or
imprisonment for six weeks, with confiscation of goods;
and it is not necessary to prove that the seller was aware
of the adulteration. In Holland, the Dutch law is very
similar to the code Napoleon, and inflicts a punishment
of imprisonment for from six days to two years, with a
fine of from 16 to 6oo francs. The adulteration of
bread with copperas or sulphate of zinc is dealt with by
imprisonment of from two to five years, and a fine of
from 200 to 500 florins. In Paris, malpractices connected
with the adulteration of food are investigated by the
Conseil de Salubrité and punished.
Adulterations of Miłę.—This is commonly effected
by the addition of water—technically termed Simpson;
and , it is known by the appearance of the milk, the
specific gravity of it, the quantity of cream which rises,
and the chemical composition of the milk. Good milk
has a rich appearance, and a full pleasant taste. Its
specific gravity ranges from IO29 (water being IOOO) to
IO32—the average being Iogo. If, therefore, the
density of milk is above Iogo, other conditions corre-
sponding, the inference is that the sample is unusually
good. . Between IO28 and 1030 it is most probably genu-
ine. . At from Io26 to Io28 it is of doubtful quality,
and below that, unless the amount of cream is enor-
mously large, the sample is not genuine. An instrument,
called a ga/actometer, has been constructed to show the
Specific gravity of milk at a glance; but it must always
be remembered that while the addition of water tends
to lower the gravity of milk, so also does the presence of
much cream, and therefore a sample of skimmel milk
may show a high gravity even when diluted with water.
The percentage quantity of cream is ascertained by
means of an instrument called a Jactometer.
Coffee has from very early times been the subject of
Sophistication. As far back as 1725, the Act 2 Geo. I.
c. 30, took cognizance of the practice, and rendered it
penal. In 1803 it was the object of very decisive meas-
ures, for by 43 Geo. III. c. 129, the officers of excise
were empowered to search for, and to seize any burnt,
scorched, or roasted peas, beans, or other grains or veg-
etable substance prepared in imitation of coffee; and any
person manufacturing or selling the same was liable to a
penalty of 4, IOO; gradually, however, it was found that
use of torrefied vegetables in lieu of coffee, was becom-
ing general in spite of these restrictions, and, therefore,
in 1822, the Legislature thought it expedient to allow
the manufacture and sale of scorched or roasted corn,
peas, beans, or turnips, by persons who were not dealers
or sellers of coffee or cocoa, provided the same was sold
under license in a whole or unground condition, and in
its proper name. At that time the use of chicory was
not generally known in England, although it had long
before been introduced into France as a substitute for
coffee. It was also used in Belgium and the Nether-
lands, so that travellers who visited Paris, Brussels, or
Amsterdam, became acquainted with the substitute, and
gradually acquired a taste for it. Even chicory itself is
now the subject of adulteration with roasted corn,
beans, lupin seeds, acorns, horse-chestnuts, peas, pulse,
mustard husks, coffee husks, and even spent coffee,
besides various roots, as carrots, parsnips, mangel-
wurzel, beet-root, dandelion, etc. It is even said that
spent tan and dried bullocks' livers have been employed
for the purpose. The tests for these adulterations are
the appearances presented by the tissues of the various
vegetables when examined under the microscope, and by
the fact that infusion of chicory does not become dis-
colored when it is treated with iodine, as it contains no
starchy matters.
7ea.—Formerly when the supply of tea to Great
Britain was entirely under the control of the East India
Company, the adulteration of it in China was rarely
practiced, as every shipment of it was carefully examined
by experienced officers at Canton, who rejected all teas
of spurious or doubtful character. At that time, there-
fore, the adulteration of tea was carried on after it was
imported into England and there were many legisla-
tive enactments prohibiting the practice. By the Act 2
Geo. I. c. 3, every tea dealer was subject to a penalty of
4, IOO, if he was convicted of counterfeiting, altering,
fabricating, or manufacturing tea, or mixing it with
other leaves. Later still, the statutes of 4 Geo. II. c.
14, and 17 Geo. III. c. 29, and 4 Geo. IV. c. 14, dealt
more precisely with the subject, and imposed other
penalties. At that time the adulterations of tea were
effected in a wholesale manner; for according to Mr.
Phillips, of the Inland Revenue Office, there were in
London alone, in 1843, as many as eight manufactories.
in which the exhausted leaves, obtained from hotels,
coffee-houses, and elsewhere, were redried, and faced
with rose-pink and blacklead, in imitation of genuine
tea. More recently, however, the adulteration of tea
has been practiced by the Chinese, who find no difficulty
in disposing of any kind of spurious tea to English
merchants at Canton and Shanghai, who ship it to other
countries and lodge it in the bonded warehouses with all
the formalities of an honorable transaction, knowing
that the difficulties of convicting them under the Adul-
teration of Food Acts and Nuisances Removal Acts are
almost insurmountable; for, in the first place, the local
sanitary authorities have no means of obtaining direct
information of the existence of unsound or spurious tea,
or other article of food or drink in bonded warehouses ;
and secondly, if such information reaches them indirectly,
they have no legal right of entry for the purpose of
examining the tea and taking samples. But besides
these, there are the difficulties of proving the ownership
of the article, and the guilty knowledge of the broker
who sells it. In illustration of this, we may refer to the
proceedings of the sanitary authorities of the city of
London in their endeavor to suppress the importation
and sale of spurious tea. In the month of March, 1870,
Dr. Letheby, the food analyst for the city, reported that a
large quantity of spurious tea had arrived in London
from China, and was lodged in the bonded warehouses of
the city. The adulterations practiced by the Chinese
are numerous; exhausted tea is redried and glazed in a
very deceptive manner. Millions of pounds of leaves of
different plants, other than tea, are gathered and mixed
with it. Mineral matters too, in the form of china clay,
fine sand, and iron filings, are ingeniously incorporated
with the leaf before curking, so that as much as from 20.
to 40 per cent. of impurity is thus mixed with it.
Cocoa in its natural state contains so much fatty
matter (amounting to rather more than half its weight),
that it has long been the practice to reduce it by means
of sugar or farinaceous substances. The first of these
preparations is called chocolate, and the latter is known
by such names as granulated, flake, rock, soluble cocoa,
&c. In some cases the mixture is adulterated with
mineral matters, as oxide of iron, to give color. These
adulterations are recognized by the appearance and taste
of the preparation, by its microscopic characters, by
the color and reaction of its solution, and by the pro-
portions of ſat and mineral matters in it. &
Bread.— Especial care has been taken at all times to
protect the public from the dishonest dealing of bakers.
The assize of bread, for example, is a very ancient
Institution; for it was the subject of a proclamation in
1202, and it was the chief matter referred to in the
notable statute of the Pillory and Tumbrel already
mentioned. At the present time, the chief adulterations
A D U
53
of bread are with alum or sulphate of copper for the pur-
pose of giving solidity to the gluten of damaged or inferior
flour, or with chalk or carbonate of soda to correct
the acidity of such flour, or with boiled rice or potatoes
to enable the bread to carry more water, and thus
to produce a large number of loaves per sack of flour.
In practice IOO lbs. of flour will make from 133 to
137 lbs. of bread, a good average being 136 lbs.; SO
that a sack of flour of 280 lbs. should yield 95 four-
pound loaves. But the art of the baker is exercised to
increase the number, and this is accomplished by harden-
ing the gluten in the way already mentioned, or by
means of a gummy mass of boiled rice, three or four
pounds of which, when boiled for two or three hours in
as many gallons of water, will make a sack of flour
yield at least 100 four-pound loaves. The ash of bread
will also furnish evidences of the presence of mineral
impurities.
A/our and other Farinaceous Matters. — The tests
for good flour are its sweetness and freedom from acidity
and musty flavor. A given weight of the flour, say
500 grains, made into a stiff dough with water, and then
carefully kneaded under a small stream of water, will
yield a tough, elastic gluten, which, when baked in an
oven, expands into a clean-looking ball of a rich brown
color, that weighs, when perfectly dry, not less than 50
grains. Bad flour makes a ropy-looking gluten, which
is very difficult of manipulation, and is of a dirty brown
color when baked.
Fatty Matters and Oils are the subjects of frequent
adulteration. Butter and lard, for example, are mixed
with inferior fats, and with water, Salt, and farina. Most
of these impurities are seen when the sample of butter or
lard is melted in a glass, and allowed to stand in a warm
place for a few hours, when the pure fat will float as a
transparent oil, while the water, salt, farina, &c., will
subside to the bottom of the glass. Fresh butter gen-
erally contains a notable quantity of water, as from 12
to 13 per cent., and sometimes a little Salt, and a trace of
curd ; but these should never exceed two per cent. in
the aggregate. Foreign fats are recognised by the gran-
ular look of the butter, by its gritty feel, by its taste,
and by its odor when warmed.
Oils are adulterated with inferior kinds, and the fraud
is detected by means of the specific gravity of the oil,
and its chemical reactions when tested upon a white
plate with a drop of concentrated sulphuric acid — the
color and its time of development being the indications
of the quality of the oil.
Ising/ass 1s often adulterated with gelatine, the fraud
being ingeniously contrived so as to retain to a large
extent the well-known characters of genuine isinglass ;
but it may be recognized in the following way: immersed
in cold water, the shreds of genuine isinglass become
white and opaque like cotton threads, and they swell
equally in all directions, whereas those of gelatine become
transparent and ribbon-like.
Sugar.— During the last ten or twelve years the man-
ufacture of sugar from starch has been an important
branch of industry. The product is sent into commerce
under the names of glucose, saccharum, and British
sugar; and although it is chiefly used for brewing purposes,
it is also employed for adulterating brown sugar, and for
making confectionery, jams, marmalades, and fruit jellies.
Mustard is generally so acrid and powerful in its
flavor that it is commonly diluted with flour, or other far-
inaceous matter, turmeric being added to improve its ap-
pearance.
Spices, as pepper, cinnamon, curry powder, ginger,
cayenne, &c., are more or less the subjects of fraudulent
adulteration. which can readily be detected by the micro-
scope, and by an examination of the mineral constituents.
Beer, Ale, and Porter.— The assize of ale is contem-
poraneous with that of bread, being described as the
“Assia Pazzi's et Cerzesia,” in old documents. In the
statute 51 Henry III. c. 16 (1266), they are spoken of as
ancient and well-known institutions, the object of them
being to regulate the quality and price of these articles.
The officers appointed to determine the goodness of ale
were called “ale conners,” or “ale tasters” (gustatores
cerzisiae), and were elected annually in the court-leet of
each manor, and in the city of London at the ward-mote,
according to the advice and assent of the alderman and
other reputable men of the ward. As far back as the
time of Anne there was a law prohibiting the use of
Cocculus indicus or any unwholesome ingredient in the
brewing of beer, under severe penalties. The tests for
the adulteration of beer, ale, and porter, are not easily
applied except by a skilled chemist; but it may be said
that the chief qualities of good beer are its density, sweet-
ness, Spirituosity, piquancy, flavor, and frothiness.
Malt.— The Excise do not permit malt to be adulter-
ated with ungerminated grain; but it is very difficult to
determine whether the presence of these grains is acci-
dental or otherwise, as in some wet seasons when barley
is badly stacked it will heat or become mouldy, and the
grains will lose their vitality.
Wines and Spirits.—The denunciation in the
Scripture against the use of mixed wine has reference, in
all probability, to wines which were ſortified or adulter-
ated with stimulating and intoxicating herbs. In Great
Britain measures were taken at a very early period to
prevent the sale of unsound and unwholesome wine. In
modern times the art of adulterating wine has been
brought to great perfection; for it consists not merely in
the blending of wines of different countries and vintages,
but in the use of materials which are entirely foreign to
the grape. Port wine, for example, is manufactured
from Beni Carlos, Figueras, and red Cape, with a touch
of Mountain to soften the mixture and give it richness —
the body and flavor being produced by gum-dragon, and
the color by “berry-dye,” which is a preparation of Ger-
man bilberries. To this is added the washings of brandy
casks (“brandy cowe ") and a little salt of tartar to form
a crust. Sherry of the brown kind and of low price is
mingled with Cape and cheap brandy, and is flavored
with “brandy-cowe,” sugar-candy, and bitter almonds.
If the color be too high it is lowered by means of
blood, and softness is imparted to it by gum-benzoin,
Large quantities of what are called clarets are manu-
factured in England from inferior French wine and
rough cider, the color being imparted to it by turnsol or
cochineal. Madeira is produced from Vidonia with
a little Mountain and Cape, to which are added
bitter almonds and sugar. Common Sicilian wine is
transformed into Tokay, Malaga, and Lachryma Christi.
Champagne is produced from rhubarb stalks, goose-
berries and sugar, the product being largely consumed at
balls, races, masquerades, and public dinners. Of late,
too, since the investigations of Petiot, Thenard, Gall,
Hussman, and others, the manufacture of wine from
sugar and the refuse husk or mash of the grape has been
largely practised, insomuch that a great part of the wine
of France and Germany has ceased to be the juice of the
grape at all. In point of fact, the processes of blending,
softening, fortifying, Sweetening, plastering, &c., &c.,
are carried on to such an extent that it is hardly possible
to obtain a sample of genuine wine, even at first hand;
and books are written on the subject, in which the
plainest directions are given for the fabrication of every
kind of wine, there being druggists called “brewers'
druggists,” who supply the agents of adulteration.
These are as follow : — Elderberry, logwood, brazil-
wood, red Sandal-wood, cudbear, red beet-root, &c.,
54
A D U
for color; litharge, lime or carbonate of lime, carbonate
of soda, and carbonate of potash, to correct acidity;
catechu, logwood, sloe-leaves, and oak-bark, for astrin-
gency; sulphate of lime, gypsum, or Spanish earth, and
alum for removing color; cane sugar for giving sweetness
and body; glucose or starch sugar for artificial wine;
alcohol for fortifying; and ether, especially acetic ether,
for giving bouquet and flavor.
Zoëacco and Snuff.- The adulteration of these arti-
cles is prohibited; manufacturers of tobacco and snuff
being prohibited from using on having in their possession
sugar, honey, molasses, treacle, leaves, herbs or plants,
powdered wood, moss, weeds, sea-weeds, or any ground
or unground roasted grain, chicory, lime, sand, umber,
ochre or other earths, nor anything capable of being
used to increase the weight of tobacco or snuff, under
a penalty of £2OO— water alone being allowed in the
manufacture of tobacco, and water, salt and alkaline
Salts, as well as lime, in the manufacture of snuffs, under
a penalty of £300. These adulterations are recognized
by drying the sample and noting the loss of weight, and
by the amount and nature of the ash left on incineration.
Foreign leaves, &c., are discovered by the aid of the
microscope.
Among the adulterations which are practised for the
purpose of improving the appearance of the article and
giving it a false strength are the following: The addi-
tion of alum or su/p/ate of copper to bread, the facing
of black tea with black lead, and of green with a mix-
ture of 27tdigo or Arussian b/ue with turmeric and chizza
clay; the treatment of pickles and preserved fruits with
a sa/4 of copper, which has the property of mordanting
and brightening the green coloring matter of vege-
tables. Ferrugi zuous earths are added to sauces,
anchovies, potted meats, and the preparation of cocoa.
Adulterations are also practised for the purpose of
debasing the article, as when the cream is taken from
milk by the process of skimming; or when the active
principles of spices, etc., have been removed by distilla-
tion.
Adulteration of Cattle Foods.- In a recent trial,
where the question of adulteration was raised, a linseed-
cake maker stated in evidence that the ordinary oil-cake
consisted of 50 parts ground sesamé cake, 20 parts of
bran and 30 of linseed and linseed siftings. To prevent
the detection of this fraud by an examination of the cake
with the naked eye, it is customary to powder the mate-
rials very fine by means of a machine called a “Buffein
machine,” after which they are thoroughly mixed together
and pressed into a cake.
The Adulteration of Seeds, in fraud of her Majesty's
subjects, and to the great detriment of agriculture, has
been provided for by the Act 32 and 33 Vict. c. 112,
wherein it is prohibited to kill, dye or to sulphur seeds, or
any way to give them a false appearance, under a penalty
of £5 for the first offence, and 4.5o for the second.
Adu/teration of Drugs.-This at all times has been
considered a serious offence. In the city of London, the
president and censors of the College of Physicians have
power to search for apothecaries' wares, drugs, and stuffs,
and on finding them defective, corrupted, and not meet
nor convenient to be ministered in any medicines for the
health of man’s body, they are to destroy them, and are
to correct and punish the offenders by committing them
to prison, and amercing them in a penalty not exceeding
420. More recently, in 1872, the Act 35 and 36 Vict.
c. 74, renders it penal for any one to adulterate a drug
for sale, or to sell such drug. In the first case the pen-
alty is a sum not exceeding £50, together with the costs
of the conviction; and for a second offence he shall be
guilty of a misdemeanor, and be imprisioned for a period
no" exceeding six calendar months, with hard labor. In
the second case, the seller of an adulterated drug is sub-
ject to a penalty not exceeding £20, together with costs;
and for a second offence he shall have his name, place of
abode, and offence published in any manner that the jus-
tice thinks fit. The chief adulterations and debasing of
drugs are the following:— In the case of vegetable sub-
stances, as jalap, opium, rhubarb, cinchona bark, &c.,
foreign substances are added to make up for the loss of
weight in drying and powdering, there being in many
cases a trade allowance of only four per cent. for such
loss, whereas in almost all cases it exceeds this. Roots,
seeds, and barks, for example, lose from 6 to 9 per cent.,
Scammony 7 per cent., aloes 9, Sarsaparilla Io, squills 12,
and opium from 15 to 25 per cent. At other times ſor-
eign substances are added to assist in grinding, or to
improve the ºupearance of the article. Occasionally the
active principles are removed, or the medicine has be-
come worthless from keeping or from ſaulty preparation.
In the case of the alkaloids, inert substances, as sugar,
starch, gum, &c., are mixed with them to increase their
weight and bulk. Lastly, the activity of a vegetable drug
may greatly depend on its mode and place of culture.
With respect to mineral preparations, there is even a still
larger field for adulteration, insomuch that the purity of
the article is entirely regulated by the wholesale price
of it.
The Adulteration of 7 extile Fabrics. – Woollen
goods have for years past been largely adulterated with
refuse fibres called “shoddy” or “mingo.” The practice
was denounced by Latimer in one of his sermons at
Paul's Cross, preached before King Edward in 1635,
wherein he spoke of it as the devil’s artifice, saying that
they were wont to make beds of flock, but now they had
turned it into dust, which he aptly called “Devil's dust,”
and that the cloth worker did so incorporate it in the
cloth that it was wonderful to see. The practice is still
in vogue, for there is hardly a piece of cheap cloth with-
out it. Shoddy, as originally used was merely the fluff
or waste from the looms, but now it consists of any kind
of woollen rubbish, as old blankets, stockings, &c.,
pulled to pieces in a machine called the “Devil.” Mingo
is even a shorter description of fibre, and is made in the
same way from old rags. No less than forty millions of
pounds of these are made annually in Yorkshire, at an
estimated value of eight millions sterling, and all of it is
used for adulterating woollen cloth. There is even
another kind of refuse called “extract,” which is employed
for the same purpose. It consists of the wool obtained
from the rags of mixed goods; that is, goods which have
a cotton or linen warp blended with wool. The cotton
is destroyed by chemical agency, chiefly by means of
dilute sulphuric acid, and the wool is left intact.
The cotton fabrics and gray goods of Lancashire and
Yorkshire are largely adulterated with size and china
clay, the object being to give them increased weight and
substance.
Aalsification of Coin and Precious Metals.- In
Anglo-Saxon times the debasing or counterfeiting of
coin was punished by the loss of the hand. In later
times it has been criminal in the highest degree. (See
MINT and Coin AGE.) In the second place, the coin is
tested, as to its weight and fineness, by persons skilled in
the goldsmith’s craft. (See Assay.) But, notwith-
standing this, the coins of the realm, as issued from the
mint, have oſten been debased to a considerable extent ;
for, according to Lord Liverpool, the total debasement
of the silver money of this country, from the time of the
Conquest to the reign of Elizabeth, was not less than
65 per cent. It is notorious that in Spain, Austria and
Turkey the degradation of the silver coin, even at the
present time, is carried to a serious extent.
The adulteration of precious metals was prohibited
A D U —
A D V 55
and provided for by the rules and regulations of the vari-
ous guilds and corporations which took cognizance of the
goldsmiths' craft. As early as the 26th of Henry II.
(1180) the Goldsmiths’ Company of London was founded,
and in 1327, when it was incorporated, it was vested with
the privilege and power of inspecting, trying and regulat-
ing all gold and silver wares throughout the kingdom, and
of punishing all offenders who were found guilty of work-
ing adulterated gold or silver. The chief offenders ap-
pear to have been the cutlers, who were charged with
covering base metal in such a manner that it could not
easily be detected. It was therefore provided that all
manner of vessels of gold and silver should be of “good
and true alloy;” and power was given to the company to
“go from shop to shop to assay if the gold was good,”
and finding that it was not of the right touch, it was to
be seized and forfeited for the king.
ADULTERY (from the Latin adulterium) is the sex-
ual intercourse of a married person with another than
the offender's husband or wife. Among the Greeks, and
in the earlier period of Roman law, it was not adultery
unless a married woman was the offender. The founda-
tion of the later Roman law with regard to adultery was
the /ex juſza de adulteriis coercendis passed by Au-
gustus about B.C. 17.
Adultery is a ground of divorce. See DIVORCE.
ADVENT, the period of the approach of the nativity,
lasting, in the Greek Church, from St. Martin’s Day
(Nov. II), and, in other churches, from the Sunday near-
est to St. Andrew's Day (Nov. 30) till Christmas. The
observance of it dates from the 4th century, and it has
been recognised since the 6th century as the commence-
ment of the ecclesiastical year. With the view of direct-
ing the thoughts of Christians to the coming of Christ as
Saviour, and to his second coming as Judge, special les-
sons are prescribed for the four Sundays in Advent. The
phrase second advent is commonly used to denote our
Lord’s “appearing the second time, without sin, unto
salvation,” which is so often spoken of in the New Tes-
tament. -
ADVERTISEMENT (from the French avertisse-
mezzº, a giving notice, or announcement) denotes in a
general sense any information publicly communicated
through the press or otherwise. It is the profit derived
from advertisements that supports the larger number of
newspapers. To advertise advantageously requires both
experience and judgment; without a knowledge of the
character and circulation of the public journals, much
expenditure may be wasted by advertising in papers that
have either a limited or inappropriate circulation. The
sale of some commodities (such as quack medicines)
depends almost wholly on advertising. Advertising
often falls disproportionately on books, as it is neces-
sary that new publications should be freely advertised.
From this, and their generally ephemeral character, it
may be said that ninety-nine out of a hundred pamphlets
are published at a loss.
ADVOCATE (from the Latin advocatus) a lawyer
authorised to plead the causes of litigants in courts of
law. The advocatus of the Romans meant, as the word
implies, a person whose assistance was called in or in-
voked. The word is not often used among the earlier
jurists, and appears not to have had a strict meaning.
By the /ex Cincia, passed about two centuries before
Christ, and subsequently renewed, the acceptance of
remuneration for professional assistance in lawsuits was
prohibited. This law, like all others of the kind, was
evaded. The skilful debater was propitiated with a
present; and though he could not sue for the value of
his services, it was ruled that any honorarium so given
could not be demanded back, even though he died before
the anticipated service was performed. The traces of
this evasion of a law may be found in the existing prac-
tice of rewarding counsel by fees in anticipation of
services. The term advocate is of frequent use in the
chronicles, capitularies, chartularies, and other records
of ecclesiastical matters, during the Middle Ages. The
term was applied in the primitive church to those who
defended the Christians against malignants or persecut-
ors. The advocate, defender, or patron, was of a
temporal rank, corresponding to the power of the ec-
clesiastical body who sought his advocacy. Princes
sought the distinction from Rome; and it was as a relic
of the practice of propitiating temporal sovereigns by
desiring their protection that Henry VIII. received his
title of “Defender of the Faith.” The office of advo-
cate to any of the great religious houses, possessed of
vast wealth, was one of dignity and emolument, gener-
ally held by some feudal lord of power and influence.
This kind of protection, however, was sometimes op-
pressive. In the authorities quoted by Du Cange we
find that so early as the 12th century, the advocates were
accused of rapine and extortion; and by a capitulary of
the popedom of Innocent III. they are prohibited from
taking and usurping rewards and privileges beyond use
and wont. The office at length assumed a fixed charac-
ter in its powers and emoluments; and it became the
practice for the founders of churches and other eccle-
siastical endowments to reserve the office of advocate to
themselves and their representatives. The term advo-
cate was subsequently superseded by the word patron;
but a relic of it still exists in the term adzowson, and the
word advowee, which is the form in which the Latin
advocatus found its way into the technicalities of En-
glish law. In France, corporations or faculties of
avocats were attached to the parliaments and other tri-
bunals. They formed, before the revolution, a part of
the extensive and powerful body commonly called the
nobility of the robe. It was not necessary that the
avocat should be born noble, and his professional rank
was little respected by the hereditary aristocracy; but as
a middle rank, possessed of great powers and privileges,
which it jealously guarded, the profession acquired great
influence. The Faculty of Advocates is the collective
term by which the members of the bar are known in
Scotland. They professionally attend the supreme
courts in Edinburgh; but they are privileged to plead in
any cause before the inferior courts, where counsel are
not excluded by statute. This body has existed by im-
memorial custom. Its privileges are constitutional, and
are founded on no statute or charter of incorporation.
The body formed itself gradually, from time to time, on
the model of the French corporations of avocats,
appointing like them a dean or doyen, who is their prin-
cipal officer. No curriculum of study, residence, or
professional training was, until 1856, required on enter-
ing this profession; but the faculty have always had the
power, believed to be liable to control by the Court of
Session, of rejecting any candidate for admission. The
candidate undergoes two private examinations—the one
in general scholarship, in lieu of which, however, he may
produce evidence of his having graduated as master of
arts in a Scottish university, or obtained an equivalent
degree in an English or foreign university; and the
other, at the interval of a year, in Roman, private,inter-
national, and Scots law. He must, before the latter
examination, produce evidence of attendance at classes of
Scots law and conveyancing in a Scottish university, and
at classes of civil law, public or international law, con-
stitutional law, and medical jurisprudence in a Scottish
or other approved university.
LORD ADVOCATE, or KING's ADvoCATE, is the
principal law-officer of the crown in Scotland. His
business is to act as a public prosecutor, and to plead in
56
A DV —AE L
all causes that concern the crown. He has the privilege
of pleading in court with his hat on.
ADVOCATION, in Scottish Zazy, was a mode of
appeal from certain inferior courts to the supreme
COurt.
ADVOWSON, or ADvowzEN (advocatio) in En-
glish Common Zazº, the right of presentation to a vacant
ecclesiastical benefice, is so called because the patron de-
fends or advocates the claims of the person whom he pre-
sents. Originally all appointments within a diocese lay
with the bishop; but when a landowner founded a church
on his estate and endowed it, his right to nominate the
incumbent was usually recognised. Where the right of
presentation remains attached to the manor, it is called
an advowson appendant, and passes with the estate by
inheritance or sale without any special conveyance. A
sale is absolutely prohibited during the mortal sickness
of the incumbent, or during the existence of a vacancy.
There are upwards of 13,000 benefices in the Church of
England, the advowsons being distributed as shown in
the following list, which may be taken as approximately
correct: — Under the patronage of the crown there are
I I44 livings; bishops, 2324; deans and chapters, 938;
The universities, 770; parochial clergy, 931; and private
persons, 7000.
ADYTUM, the most retired and sacred place of
ancient temples, into which none but the officiating
priests were allowed to enter. The Most Holy Place of
the temple of Solomon was of the nature of the pagan
adytum; none but the high priest being admitted into it,
and he but once a year.
AE, or AE, a diphthong, compounded of A and E, of
frequent occurrence in Latin and in Anglo-Saxon. In
the best editions of the classics the form now preferred
iS (Zé.
AEACUS, in Mythology, the son of Jupiter by Ægina.
When the isle of Ægina was depopulated by a plague,
his father, in compassion to his grief, changed all the
ants upon it into men and women, who were called
AMyrmidones.
AEDILE, in Roman Antiguity, a magistrate whose
chief business was to superintend buildings of all kinds,
but more especially public ones, as temples, aqueducts,
bridges, &c. To the aediles likewise belonged the care
of highways, public places, weights and measures, &c.
They also superintended the markets, fixed the prices of
provisions, took cognisance of breaches of decency and
public order, and took charge of police matters gen-
erally. The custody of the plebiscita, or decrees of the
people, and senatus consulta, or decrees of the Senate,
was likewise committed to them. They had the inspec-
tion of theatres and plays, and were obliged to exhibit
magnificent games to the people, usually at their own
expense, whereby many of them were ruined.
AEGADES, or AEGATES, a group of islands off the
western coast of Sicily, between Trapani and Marsala,
consisting of Maretimo, Levanzo, and Favignana.
AEGEAN SEA, a part of the Mediterranean, now more
usually called the Archipelago or Grecian Archipelago.
See ARCHIPELAGO.
AEGEUS, in Fabulous History, the son of Pandion,
was king of Athens, and the father of Theseus. He was
one of the Athenian heroes, but is notable chiefly for
the manner of his death. The Athenians having
killed Androgeus, the son of Minos, king of Crete, for
carrying away the prize for wrestling from them, Minos
made war upon them; and being victorious, imposed
this severe condition to AEgeus, that he should annually
send into Crete seven of the noblest of the Athenian
youths and as many maidens, chosen by lot, to be de-
voured by the Minotaur. On the fourth year of this
tribute the choice fell on Theseus, or, as others say, he
himself entreated to be sent. The king, at his son’s
departure, gave orders that, as the ship sailed with black
Sails, it should return with the same in case he perished;
but if he came back, victorious he should change them
for white. When Theseus returned from Crete after
killing the Minotaur, he forgot to change the sails in
token of his victory, according to the agreement ; and
his father, who sat on a rock watching the return of the
vessel, imagining from the black sail that his son was
dead, cast himself headlong into the sea, which was
supposed in consequence to have obtained the name of
the Agean Sea.
AEGINA, in Fabulous History, the daughter of
Asopus, king of Boeotia, was beloved by Jupiter, who
carried her from Epidaurus to a desert island called
CEzzopia, which was afterwards called by her name.
See AEACUS.
AEGINA, or EGINA, or ENGIA, an island in the Sa-
ronic gulf, 20 miles distant from the Piraeus, formerly
vying with Athens in naval power, and, at the sea-fight
of Salamis, disputing the palm of victory with the
Athenians. The victory of Salamis was in a great
measure owing to the thirty ships of AEgina, and the
voice of grateful Greece assigned to her warriors on
that eventful day the prize of valor. Yet, not long
after, the rivalry of Athens began to cloud the pros-
perity of the haughty islanders, whose fleet she had
before defeated, and AEgina at length sunk under the
enmity of a relentless commercial rival, that banished
her citizens and supplied their place with Attic colonists.
After the close of the Peloponnesian war, Lysander
restored the banished inhabitants, but AEgina never
recovered its ancient prosperity.
AEGINETA, PAULUS, a celebrated surgeon of the
island of AEgina, whence he derived his name. Accord-
ing to Le Clerc's calculation, he lived in the 4th century.
His knowledge in Surgery was very great, and his works
are deservedly famous. AEgineta is the first writer who
takes notice of the cathartic property of rhubarb, and,
according to Dr. Milward, is the first in all antiquity
who deserves the title of accoucheur.
AEGIS, in C/assical Mythology, a name given to
the shield or buckler of Jupiter. The goat Amalthaea,
which had suckled that god, being dead, he is said to
have covered his buckler with the skin, or used the
skin as a buckler. When so used it would usually be
fastened on the right shoulder, and would partially
envelope the chest as it passed obliquely round in front
and behind to be attached to the shield under the left
all II).
AEGISTHUS, in Ancient Aſistory, was the son of
Thyestes by his own daughter Pelopea, who, to conceal
her shame, exposed him in the woods. Some say he
was taken up by a shepherd and suckled by a goat; whence
he was called Ægist/ius. After he grew up he was rec-
ognized by his father, and on the death of the latter he
became king of Mycenae.
AEGOSPOTAMI, in Ancient Geography, a small
river in the Thracian CherSonesus, running South-east,
and falling into the Hellespont to the north of Sestos,
—with a town of the same name, and a station or road
for ships, at its mouth.
AELFRIC, “the Grammarian,” as he has been called,
is one of the most voluminous of our old English writers
before the Conquest. He flourished at the latter end of
the Ioth century and the beginning of the 11th. AEl-
fric afterward removed to Cerne Abbey, in Dorsetshire,
where he composed his Homilies, the work on which his
fame as an author chiefly depends. They are 80 in
number. In composing them, AElfric drew largely from
the fathers. Their style is very simple and pleasing,
and obscure words are carefully avoided in order to
AE L — A E R
57
adapt them to the capacity even of the most ignor-
ant.
AELIA CAPITOLINA, a name given to the city
built by the Emperor Hadrian, A.D. 134, near the spot
where the ancient Jerusalem stood, which he found in
ruins when he visited the eastern parts of the Roman
empire.
AELIANUS, CLAUDIUs, born at Praeneste, in Italy.
He taught rhetoric at Rome, under the Emperor Alex-
ander Severus, according to Perizonius, but more prob-
ably under Hadrian. He was surnamed “Honey-
tongued,” on account of the ease and accuracy with
which he spoke and wrote. His curious and entertain-
ing work entitled Varia Historia has been frequently
ºlished as well as his treatise De AWatura Anima-
2247/2.
AEMILIUS, PAULUS, the name of a celebrated family
of the AEmilia Gens. See PAULUs.
AEMILIUS, PAULUS, or PAOLO EMILIo, a celebrated
historian, born at Verona, who obtained such reputation
in Italy that he was invited into France by the cardinal
of Bourbon, in the reign of Charles VIII., in order to
write the history of the kings of France in Latin, and was
presented to a canonry in Notre Dame. He died at
Paris on the 5th of May 1529.
AENEAS, in Fabulous History, a Trojan prince, the
son of Venus and Anchises. He plays a conspicuous
part in the ZZiad, and is represented, along with Hector,
as the chief bulwark of the Trojans. Homer always
speaks of AEneas and his descendants as destined to reign
at Troy after the destruction of Priam and his house.
Virgil has chosen him as the hero of his great epic and
the story of the Aºzzeid.
AENEAS SYLVIUS, Pope. See PIUs II.
AEOLIAE INSULAE, the modern LIPARI ISLANDs, a
group of islands between Italy and Sicily. They are so
called from AEolus, the god of the winds, who was sup-
posed to rule over them.
AEOLIAN HARP, named from AEolus, god of the
wind, a musical instrument consisting of cat-gut strings
stretched over a wooden sound-box. When exposed to a
Current of air, the strings produce a variety of pleasing
harmonic Sounds in strange succession and combination.
AEOLIS, or AEOLIA, in Ancient Geography, a country
of Asia Minor, settled by colonies of Æolian Greeks.
The name in its limited sense was applied to the coast
extending from the river Hermus to the promontory of
Lectum.
AEOLUS, in Heathen Mythology, the god and father
of the winds, was variously represented as the son of
Hippotes, or of Neptune by a daughter of Hippotes, or
of Jupiter. In the Odyssey he is mentioned as the king
of the Æolian isle to whom Jupiter had given the super-
intendence and distribution of the winds.
AEON, a space of time, was often used in Greek to
denote indefinite or infinite duration; and hence, by me-
tonymy, for a being that exists for ever. See GNOS-
TICISM. -
AEPINUS, FRANz MARIA ULRICH THEODOR, a dis-
tinguished German natural philosopher, was born at
Rostock in Saxony in 1724, and died at Dorpat in August
1802. After studying medicine for a time, Francis AEpi-
nus devoted himself to the physical and mathematical
sciences, in which he soon gained such distinction that
he was admitted a member of the Berlin Academy of
Sciences. He enjoyed the special favor of the Empress
Catharine II., who appointed him tutor to her son Paul.
AEpinus is best known by his researches, theoretical and
experimental, in electricity and magnetism. . Adopting
Franklin's theory of positive and negative electricities,
or electric forces, he investigated the relations of these
fully, and especially the conditions of their equilibrium;
and many of the conclusions he arrived at do not depend
for their value and importance on the theory of Franklin.
It is to be added that Æpinus was the first to perceive
and define, with any measure of clearness, the affinity
between electricity and magnetism. His discussion of
the effects of parallax in the transit of a planet over the
sun’s disc excited great interest, having appeared (in 1764)
between the dates of the two transits of Venus that took
place during last century. -
AEQUI, an ancient and warlike people of Italy, inhab-
iting the upper valley of the Anio.
AERARIANS, a class in ancient Rome, composed of
citizens who had suffered the severest kind of degrada-
tion the censors could inflict. Though heavily taxed,
they could not vote in assemblies or serve in the army,
and were deprived of and excluded from all posts of
honor and profit. Romans of the higher classes, as well
as the plebeians, were liable to become AErarians.
AERARIUM, the public treasury at ancient Rome.
It contained the moneys and accounts of the state, and
also the standards of the legions, the public laws engraven
on brass, the decrees of the senate, and other papers
and registers of importance. In addition to the com-
mon treasury, supported by the general taxes and
charged with the ordinary expenditure, there was a re-
serve treasury, also in the temple of Saturn, maintained
chiefly by a tax of 5 per cent on the value"of all manu-
mitted slaves which was not to be had recourse to, or
even entered, except in the extreme necessity of the
state. Besides, Augustus also established a military
treasury, containing all money raised for and appro-
priated to the maintenance of the army.
AERATED WATERS. Waters impregnated with
an unusually large portion of carbonic acid, or other
gaseous substances, occur abundantly in springs through-
out the world; and, in addition to their gaseous constit-
uents, generally hold in solution a large percentage of
different salts. The manufacture of aerated waters arose
out of the attempt to imitate these by artificial means.
The earliest method of producing acidulated water was
that which still obtains in the preparation of effervescing
draughts, such as are made from “Seidlitz” powders.
These powders consist of separate portions of sodium
bicarbonate and tartaric acid, which, on being dissolved
together in water, form sodium tartrate and liberate
carbonic acid, which bubbles up through the water.
Real soda-water is best prepared by adding to the
water before aeration a proportion of sodium bicarbon-
ate equal to about 30 or 36 grains per pint of water.
Potash-water, Seltzer, lithia, Carrara, bromide of potas-
sium, and a host of other waters, are similarly prepared,
the various salts being used in different proportions, ac-
cording to the taste and experience of manufacturers.
Lemonade, and other aerated drinks flavored with fruit
syrups, have the proportion of syrup placed in the bottle
to which simple aerated water taken from a receiver,
indicating a pressure of 80 to 100 ft. per square inch, is
added. The “soda water” of the modern soda fountain
is made by saturating water with carbonic acid gas, gen-
erated in a receiver, at high pressure, by pouring dilute
sulphuric acid over marble dust, and introduced into a
strong copper tank, whence it is forced by pressure of the
gas. On account of the rapidity with which the gas es-
capes on the removal of pressure, special arrangements
are required for the bottling and corking processes, and
the frequent explosion of bottles necessitates guards to
protect the bottler. A dexterous bottler will fill and cork
5000 bottles in ten hours. The consumption of aerated
waters, especially in hot climates, is very great.
AEROE, or ARROE an island of Denmark, in the
Little Belt, lying 7% miles S. of Funen, between Alsen
and Langeland.
58
A E R
AEROLITE (ºjo, air, and Años, a stone), a stony
or metallic body, which, falling through the atmosphere,
reaches the earth's surface. These meteoric stones ge...-
erally contain a considerable proportion of iron; indeed,
the iron in some of these substances exceeds the siliceous
matter, and some have then given them the name of me-
teoric irons. See METEOR.
AERONAUTICS. The subject of aerostation is
scarcely ever alluded to by the classical writers, and the
fable of Daedalus and Icarus, and the do we of Archytas,
form almost all we have to record in relation to flying pre-
vious to the dark ages.
The ancients seem to have been convinced of the im-
possibility of men being able to fly, and they appear to
have made no attempt in this direction at all. The
power of flying was attributed only to the most powerful
of the divinities; and it was regarded as only secondary
to Jupiter’s prerogative of flashing the lightning and
hurling the thunderbolt.
The history of aerostatics in the Middle Ages, like
that of every other subject relating even remotely to
science or knowledge of any kind, is little better than
a record of the falsehoods or chimeras circulated by
impostors or enthusiasts.
During the darkness of the Middle Ages every one at
all distinguished for his knowledge in physics was gen-
erally reputed to have obtained the power of flying in
the air. Friar Bacon did not scruple to claim the
invention ; and the credulity and indulgent admiration
of Some authors have lent to these pretensions more
credit than they really deserved. Albertus Magnus,
who flourished in the first half of the 13th century, was
reputed to have discovered the art; and to give an idea
of the state of the physical sciences at that time, it is
worth while to quote the following recipes :-‘Take one
pound of sulphur, two pounds of willow-carbon, six
pounds of rock-salt ground very fine in a marble mor-
tar ; place, when you please, in a covering made of fly-
ing papyrus to produce thunder. The covering, in
order, to ascend and float away, should be long, grace-
ful, well filled with this fine powder; but to produce
thunder, the covering should be short, thick, and half
full.” Regiomontanus, the first real mathematician
after the partial revival of learning, is said, like Archy-
tas, to have formed an artificial dove, which flew before
the Emperor Charles V. at his public entry into Nurem-
berg; but the date of Regionontanus's death shows this
to have been impossible.
Attempts at flying have, as a rule, been made by a
somewhat low class of projectors, who have generally
united some little share of ingenuity to a smattering of
mechanics. At the beginning of the 16th century an
Italian alchemist visited Scotland, and was collated by
#. IV. to the abbacy of Tungland, in Galloway.
aving constructed a set of wings, composed of various
plumage, he undertook from the walls of Stirling Castle
to fly through the air to France. This feat he actually
attempted, but he soon came to the ground, and broke
his thigh-bone by the violence of the fall — an accident
he explained by asserting that the feathers of some
fowls were employed in his wings, and that these had an
affinity for the dunghill, whereas, if composed solely of
eagles' feathers, they would have been attracted to the
air. In 1617, Fleyder, rector of the grammar school
at Tübingen, delivered a lecture on flying, which he
published eleven years afterwards. A poor monk,
however, ambitious to reduce the theory to practice,
provided himself with wings; but his machinery'broke
down, and, falling to the ground, he broke his legs and
perished. Bishop Wilkins says it was related that “a
certain English monk called Elmerus, about the Confes-
sor’s time,” flew by means of wings from a tower a dis-
tance of more than a furlong; that another person flew
from St. Mark’s steeple at Venice; and another, at
Nuremberg. He also quotes Busbequius to the effect
that a Turk also attempted something of the kind at
Constantinople.
In Borelli's posthumous work, published at Rome in
1680–81, he calculated the enormous strength of the
pectoral muscles in birds; and his proposition is entitled
“Est impossibile, ut homines propriis viribus artificiosë
volare possint,” in which he clearly points out the im-
possibility of man being able by muscular strength to give
motion to wings of sufficient extent to keep him sus-
pended in the air.
A very slight consideration of the matter shows that,
although the muscles of man may not be of sufficient
strength to enable him to use wings, this objection does.
not apply against the possibility of making a flying
chariot in which the motive power should be produced
mechanically, as in a watch, or a boat to float in the
atmosphere.
Albert of Saxony, a monk of the order of St. Augus-
time, and a commentator on the physical works of
Aristotle, seems first to have comprehended (though in a
very vague and erroneous manner) the principles on which
a body might be made to float in the atmosphere.
Adopting, of course, Aristotelian views with regard to the
nature of the elements, he considered that, as fire is more
attenuated, and floats above our atmosphere, therefore
a small portion of this ethereal substance, enclosed in a
light, hollow globe, would raise it to a certain height and
keep it suspended in the air; and that, if more air were
introduced, the globe would sink like a ship when water
enters by a leak. Long afterwards Francis Mendoza, a
Portuguese Jesuit, who died in 1626, at the age of forty-
six, embraced this theory, and he held that the combusti-
ble nature of fire was no real obstacle, as its extreme
levity and the extension of the air would prevent it from
supporting inflammation. , Casper Scott, also a Jesuit,
adopted the same speculation, only that he replaced the
fire by the thin ethereal substance which he believed
floated above our atmosphere.
The discovery of the balloon was due to Stephen
and Joseph Montgolfier, sons of Peter Montgolfier, a
large and celebrated papermaker at Annonay, a town
about 40 miles from Lyons. The brothers had observed
the suspension of clouds in the atmosphere, and it
occurred to them that if they could enclose any vapor
of the nature of a cloud in a large and very light bag, it
might rise and carry the bag with it into the air. They
accordingly made experiments, inflating bags with smoke
from a fire placed underneath, and found either that the
smoke or some vapor emitted from the fire did ascend
and carry the bag with it. Being thus assured of the
correctness of their views, they determined to have a
public ascent of a balloon on a large scale. They
accordingly invited the States of Vivarais, then assem-
bled at Annonay, to witness their aerostatic experiment;
and on June 5, 1783, in the presence of a considerable
concourse of spectators, a linen globe of IOS feet in cir-
cumference was inflated over a fire fed with Small bun-
dles of chopped straw, and when released rapidly rose to
great height, and descended, at the expiration of ten
minutes, at the distance of about I WA mile. This was
the discovery of the balloon. In Montgolfier’s first bal-
loon, no source of heat was taken up with it, so that the
air inside rapidly cooled, and the balloon soon descended.
The news of the experiment at Annonay rapidly
spread over Europe, and at Paris attracted so much
attention that M. Faujas de Saint-Fond, a naturalist,
set on foot a subscription for paying the expense of
repeating the experiment. The balloon was constructed
by two brothers of the name of Robert, under the
A E R
59
superintendence of M. Charles, professor of natural
philosophy in Paris, and afterward a member of the
Academy of Sciences. It had at first been suggested to
copy the process of Montgolfier, but Charles proposed
the application of hydrogen gas, which was adopted.
The filling of the balloon, which was made of thin silk
varnished with a solution of elastic gum, and was about
I3 feet in diameter, was commenced on August 23, 1783,
in the Place des Victoires. The hydrogen gas was
obtained by the action of dilute sulphuric acid upon iron
filings, and was introduced through leaden pipes; but as
the gas was not passed through cold water, great difficulty
was experienced in filling the balloon completely; and
altogether about 500 ft). of sulphuric acid, and twice
that amount of iron filings were used. Bulletins were
issued daily of the progress of the inflation; and the
crowd was So great that on the 26th the balloon was
moved to the Champ de Mars, a distance of 2 miles.
This was done secretly, in the middle of the night, to
avoid the crowd; and the appearance of the balloon
being thus removed, preceded by lighted torches, and
escorted by a detachment of soldiers, is described as
having been very remarkable. On the next day, August
27, an immense concourse of people covered the Champ
de Mars, and every spot from which a view could be
obtained was crowded. About five o’clock a cannon was
discharged as the signal for the ascent, and the balloon,
when liberated, rose to the height of about 3000 feet
with great rapidity. A shower of rain which began to
fall directly after the balloon had left the earth in no
way checked its progress; and the excitement was so
great, that thousands of well-dressed spectators, many
of them ladies, stood exposed, watching it intently the
whole time it was in sight, and were drenched to the
skin. The balloon, after remaining in the air for about
three-quarters of an hour, fell in a field near Gonesse,
about 15 miles off, and terrified the peasantry so much
that it was torn into shreds by them. Hydrogen gas was
at this time known by the name of inflammable air; and
balloons inflated with gas have ever since been called by
the people air-balloons, the kind invented by the Mont-
golfiers being designated fire-balloons.
The first human being who ascended in a balloon
was M. François Pilâtre de Rozier, a young maturalist,
who, two years afterwards, was killed in an attempt
to cross the English Channel in a balloon. On Octo-
ber 15, 1783, and following days, he made several
ascents (generally alone, but once with a companion,
M. Girond de Villette), in a captive balloon (i.e., one
attached by ropes to the ground), and demonstrated
that there was no difficulty in taking up ſuel and feeding
the fire, which was kindled in a brazier suspended under
the balloon, when in the air. The way being thus pre-
pared for aerial navigation, on November 21, 1783, M.
Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes first trusted
themselves to a free fire-balloon. The experiment was
made from the Jardin du Chateau de la Muette, in the
Bois de Boulogne. The machine employed, which was
a large fire-balloon, was inflated at about two o'clock,
and leaving the earth at this time, it rose to a height of
about 500 feet, and passing over the Invalides and the
Ecole Militaire, descended beyond the Boulevards,
about 9000 yards from the place of ascent, having
been between twenty and twenty-five minutes in the
air. The result was completely successful; and it is
Scarcely necessary to add, the excitement in Paris was
very great.
Only, ten days later, viz., on December 1, 1783,
MM. Charles and Robert ascended from Paris in a bal-
loon inflated with hydrogen gas. The balloon, as in
the case of the small one of the same kind previously
launched from the Champ de Mars, was constructed by
the brothers Robert. It was 27 feet in diameter, and
the car was suspended from a hoop surrounding the
middle of the balloon, and fastened to a met which cov-
ered the upper hemisphere. The balloon ascended very
gently from the Tuileries at a quarter to two o'clock,
and after remaining for some time at an elevation of
about 2000 feet, it descended in about two hours at
Nesle, a small town about 27 miles from Paris, when
M. Robert left the car, and M. Charles made a second
ascent by himself. He had intended to have replaced
the weight of his companion by a nearly equivalent
quantity of ballast; but not having any suitable means
of obtaining such ready at the place of descent, and it
being just upon sunset, he gave the word to let go, and
the balloon being thus so greatly lightened, ascended
very rapidly to a height of about 2 miles. After stay-
ing in the air about half-an-hour, he descended 3 miles
from the place of ascent, although he believed the dis-
tance traversed, owing to different currents, to have
been about 9 miles. In this second journey M. Charles
experienced a violent pain in his right ear and jaw, no
doubt produced by the rapidity of the ascent. He also
witnessed the phenomenon of a double sunset on the
same day; for, when he ascended, the Sun had set in the
valleys, and as he mounted he saw it rise again, and set
a second time as he descended.
All the features of the modern balloon as now used
are more or less due to Charles, who invented the valve
at the top, suspended the car from a hoop, which was
itself attached to the balloon by netting, &c. The M.
Robert who accompanied him in the ascent was one of
the brothers who had constructed it.
On January 19, 1784, the largest balloon on record (if
the contemporary accounts are correct) ascended from
Lyons. It was more than IOO feet in diameter, about
30 feet in height, and when distended had a capacity,
it is said, of over half-a-million cubic feet. It was
called the Flesse//es, and after having been inflated
from a straw fire in seventeen minutes, it rose with
seven persons in the car, viz., Joseph Montgolfier,
Pilâtre de Rozier, Count de Laurencin, Count de
Dampierre, Prince Charles de Ligne, Count de Laport
d’Anglefort, and M. Fontaine, the last gentleman having
leaped into the car just as the machine had started.
The fire was fed with trusses of straw, and the balloon
rose majestically to the height of about 3OOO feet, but
descended again after the lapse of about a quarter of an
hour from the time of starting, in consequence of a rent
in the upper part.
It is proper here to state that researches on the use of
gas for inflating balloons seem to have been carried on at
Philadelphia nearly simultaneously with the experiments
of the Montgolfiers; and when the news of the latter
reached America, Messrs. Rittenhouse and Hopkins,
members of the Philosophical Academy of Philadelphia,
constructed a machine consisting of forty-seven small
hydrogen gas-balloons attached to a car or cage. After
several preliminary experiments, in which animals were
let up to a certain height by a rope, a carpenter, one
James Wilcox, was induced to enter the car for a small
sum of money; the ropes were cut, and he remained in
the air about ten minutes, and only then effected his
descent by making incisions in a number of the balloons.
through fear of ſalling into the river, which he was
approaching.
The improvements that have been made in the man-
agement and inflation of balloons in the last ninety
years have only had reference to details, so that as far as
essential principles are concerned the subject is now
in pretty much the same state as it was in 1783. We
have therefore arrived at a point in the history of the bal-
loon where it is well to consider how much the Montgol-
6o
A E R
fiers and Charles owed to their predecessors; and it is
proper here to state that, ºft we have assigned the
invention to the two brothers, Stephen and Joseph — as
no doubt they both conducted the early experiments to-
gether—still there is reason to believe that the share of
the latter was very small. Stephen, however, although
the originator of balloons, does not appear ever to have
ascended himself, and Joseph did not repeat the ascent
just mentioned in the Flesselles. The Montgolfiers had
studied Priestley's Experiments relating to different
Áinds of Air, whence they first conceived the possibility
of navigating the atmosphere; but their experiment was
so simple as to require scarcely any philosophical knowl-
edge. They had seen smoke ascend, and thought that if
they could imprison it in a bag, the bag might ascend too;
and the observation and reasoning were both such as
might occur to anybody. This does not detract from
their merit; it, on the contrary, adds to it.
We now return to the history of aerial navigation,
and commence with an account of the first ascents of
balloons in Great Britain. Although the news of the
Annonay and subsequent experiments, in France rapidly
spread all over, Europe, and formed a topic of general
discussion, still it was not till five months aſter the
Montgolfiers had first publicly sent a balloon into the
air that any aerostatic experiment was made in England.
In November 1783 Count Zambeccari, an Italian, who
happened to be in London, made a balloon of oil-silk,
Io feet in diameter, and weighing I I ſh. It was publicly
shown for several days, and on the 25th it was three-
quarters filled with hydrogen gas, and launched ſrom the
Artillery ground at one o’clock. It descended after two
hours and a half near Petworth, in Sussex, 48 miles
from London. This was the first balloon that ascended
from English ground. On February 22, 1784, a
hydrogen gas balloon, 5 feet in diameter, was let up
from Sandwich, in Kent, and descended at Warneton, in
French Flanders, 75 miles distance. This was the first
balloon that crossed the Channel. The difficulties and
dangers of aerial navigation having been surmounted by
the end of the year 1783, the ascents of balloons were
now multiplied in all quarters. It will therefore be
sufficient to notice very briefly only the more remarkable
of the succeeding ascents.
The Chevalier Paul Andreami, of Milan, constructed
a fire balloon 68 feet in diameter, and on February 25,
I784, ascended from Milan with two brothers of the
name of Gerli, and remained in the air for about twenty
minutes. This is usually regarded as the first ascent in
Italy (but see Monck, Mason's Aeronautica, p. 247).
Andreani ascended again on March 13, with two other
persons. -
On the 2d of March M. Jean Pierre Blanchard, who
had be ºn for some years before occupied with projects
for fl; made his first voyage from Paris in a balloon
27 feet in diameter, and descended at Billancourt, near
Sévres. Just as the balloon was about to ascend, a
young man jumped into the car, and, drawing his sword,
declared his determination to ascend with Blanchard.
He was ultimately removed by force.
On July 15, 1784, the Duc de Chartres and the two
brothers Robert ascended from St. Cloud; but the neck
of the balloon becoming choked up with an interior bal-
loon filled with common air, intended to regulate the
ascending and descending power, they were obliged to
make a hole in the balloon, in order to allow the escape
of the gas, but they descended in safety.
The first person who rose into the air from British
ground appears to have been Mr. J. Tytler, who as-
cended from the Comedy Gardens, Edinburgh, on
August 27, 1784, in a fire-balloon of his own construc-
tion. He descended on the road to Restalrig, about
half-a-mile from the place where he rose.
Although by a few days Tytler has the precedence,
still his attempts and partial success were all but totally
unknown; whereas Lunardi’s experiments excited an
enormous amount of enthusiasm in London, and it was
he that practically introduced aerostation into that coun-
try in the face of very great disadvantages. We have
already referred to the extraordinary apathy displayed
in England with regard to aerostatic experiments, one
cause of which was that their introduction was
due to a foreigner. , Vincent Lunardi was secretary to
Prince Caramanico, the Neapolitan ambassador, and his
published letters to his guardian, the Chevalier Com-
pagni, written while he was carrying out his project, and
detailing all the difficulties, &c., he met with as they
occurred, are very interesting, and give a vivid account
of the whole matter. His balloon was 33 feet in cir-
cumference, and was exposed to the public view at the
Lyceum, in the Strand, where it was visited by upwards
of 20,000 people. It was his original intention to have
ascended from Chelsea Hospital, but the conduct of a
crowd at a garden at Chelsea, which destroyed the fire-
balloon of a Frenchman named De Moret, who an-
nounced an ascent on August II, but was unable to keep
his word, led to the withdrawal of the leave that had been
granted. Ultimately, after some difficulties had been
arranged, he was permitted to ascend from the Artillery
ground, and, on September 15, 1784, the inflation with
hydrogen gas took place. Lunardi ascended alone, in
presence of the Prince of Wales and an enormous crowd
of spectators. He took up with him a pigeon, a dog,
and a cat, and the balloon was provided with oars, by
means of which he hoped to raise or lower it at pleasure.
Shortly after starting, the pigeon escaped, and one of
the oars became broken and fell to the ground. In
about an hour and a half he descended at South Mimms,
in Hertfordshire, and landed the cat, which had suffered
from the cold; he then ascended again, and then de-
scended, after the lapse of about three-quarters of an
hour, at Standon, near Ware, where he had great diffi-
culty in inducing the peasants to come to his assistance;
but at length a young woman, taking hold of one of the
cords, urged the men to follow her example, which they
then did. The excitement caused by this ascent was
immense, and Lunardi at once became the star of the
hour. He was presented to the king, and was courted
and flattered on all sides. . The king was in conference
with his ministers; but on hearing that the balloon was
passing, he broke up the discussion, remarking that they
might resume their deliberations, but that perhaps they
might not see Lunardi again; upon which, he, Mr. Pitt,
and the other ministers viewed the balloon through tele-
scopes. The balloon was afterwards exhibited in the
Pantheon. In the latter part of the following year
(1785) Lunardi made several very successful ascents from
Kelso, Edinburgh, and Glasgow (in one of which he tra-
versed a distance of I ſo miles): these he has described
in a second series of letters. He subsequently returned
to Italy, where we believe he still followed the practice
of aerostation, and made many ascents. He died on
July 31, 1806, at Lisbon, according to the Gentleman’s
Magazizze, but a contemporary, newspaper gives
Genoa as the place, and adds that he died in a state of
very great indigence.
Lunardi’s example was soon followed by others, and,
on October 16, 1784, Blanchard ascended from Little
Chelsea with Mr. Sheldon, and having deposited the lat-
terat Sunbury, rose again alone, and descended at Rom-
ney Marshes. On November 12, Mr. James Sadler,
sen., ascended from Oxford, and there is every reason to
believe that he made a previous ascent from the same
A. E. R.
6 I
place on October 12, four days previous to Blanchard's
(see Monck Mason, p. 274, where it is stated that he
attempted to ascend in a fire-balloon on September 12,
but that the balloon was burnt). On November 30,
1784, Blanchard again ascended, accompanied this time
by 1)r. J. Jeffries, an American physician. On January
4, 1785, Mr. Harper ascended from Birmingham ; and
on January 7, Blanchard and Dr. Jeffries achieved the
ſeat of crossing the Channel from Dover to Calais. At
Seven minutes past one the balloon leſt Dover Castle,
and in their passage they had a most magnificent view of
both shores. When about one-third across they found
themselves descending, and threw out every available thing
from the boat or car. When about three-quarters across
they were descending again, and had to throw out not
only the anchor and cords, but also to strip and throw
away part of their clothing, after which they found they
were rising, and their last resource, viz., to cut away the
car, was rendered unnecessary. As they approached the
shore the balloon rose, describing a magnificent arch high
over the land. They descended in the forest of Guinnes.
On March 23, 1785, Count Zambeccari, who had, as
we have seen, launched the first balloon from English
ground, ascended for the first time with Admiral Vernon
from London. Shortly afterwards he returned to his
own country, and there applied himself assiduously to
the practice of aerial navigation. He twice, in 1803 and
18O4, descended into the Adriatic, and both times only
escaped after undergoing much danger. Descending in
a fire-balloon on September 21, 1812, after a voyage
from Bologna, the shock of the grapnel catching in a
tree caused the balloon to catch fire; and to save them-
selves from being burnt, Zambeccari and his companion,
Signor Bonaga, leaped from the car. The former was
killed on the spot, but the latter, though fearfully injured,
escaped with his life.
On June 15, 1785, Pilâtre de Rozier made his last
fatal voyage from Boulogne. It was his intention to
have repeated the exploit of Blanchard and Jeffries in
the reverse direction, and have crossed from Boulogne
to England. For this purpose he had contrived a double
balloon, which he expected would combine the advan-
tages of both kinds—a fire-balloon, Io feet in diameter,
being placed underneath a gas-balloon of 37 feet in diam-
eter, so that by decreasing or diminishing the fire in the
former it might be possible to ascend or descend without
waste of gas. Rozier was accompanied by M. P. A.
Romain, and for rather less than half an hour after the
aerostat ascended all seemed to be going on well, when
suddenly the whole apparatus was seen in flames, and the
unfortunate adventurers came to the ground from the sup-
posed height of more than 3000 feet. Rozier was killed on
the spot, and Romain only survived about ten minutes.
A monument was erected on the place where they fell,
which was near the sea-shore, about four miles from the
starting-point. The Marquis de la Maisonfort had accom-
panied Rozier to Boulogne, intending to ascend with him,
but M. Romain there insisted on a prior promise. Either
the upper balloon must have been reached by the flames,
and the gas taken fire, or the gas must have poured down
into the lower balloon, and so have caused the explo-
Sion. -
We must not forget to mention that on June 4, 1784,
Madame Thible ascended from Lyons in a fire-balloon
with M. Fleurand, in the presence of King Gustavus of
Sweden, then travelling under the name of Count Haga.
Madame Thible is very likely the only woman who ever
ascended in a fire-balloon. The first Englishwoman who
ever ascended into the air was Mrs. Sage, who accom-
panied Mr. Biggin in his voyage from London on June
29, 1785.
Accounts are given of an ascent at Constantinople,
*
made in the presence of the Sultan, by a Persian phy.
sician, accompanied by two Bostangis, early in the year
1786, who, crossing the sea which divides Europe from
Asia, descended about 30 leagues from the coast.
The substitution of coal-gas for hydrogen is due to
Mr. Charles Green, the veteran aeronaut, who made
several hundred ascents, the first of which took place on
July 19, 1821, the coronation day of George IV. In
this ascent ordinary coal-gas was first used ; and every
balloon, with very few exceptions, that has ascended
since this date, has been so inflated. Pall Mall was first
lighted by gas in 1807, and at the end of 1814 the gen-
eral lighting of London by gas commenced ; so that coal-
gas could not have been available for filling balloons long
before it was actually used. *
Leaving out of consideration the ascents undertaken
for scientific objects (very many of which were remarka-
ble for the height attained or the distance traversed, and
which will be specially noticed further on), we proceed
to mention the most noteworthy ascents that have taken
place and that have not ended fatally (these latter will be
referred to separately). Mr. Crosbie, a gentleman who
was the first to ascend from Ireland (January 19, 1785),
on the 19th of July, 1785, attempted to cross St. George's
Channel to England, but fell into the sea; he was saved
by some vessels that came to his rescue. Lunardi also
fell into the sea, about a mile and a half from the shore,
after an ascent from Edinburgh in December 1785; he
was rescued by a fishing-boat. Richard Maguire was the
second person who ascended from Ireland. Mr. Crosbie
had inflated his balloon on May 12, 1785, but it was
unable to take him up, when Mr. Maguire, a student at
the university, who was present, offered to ascend. His
offer was accepted, and he made the ascent. For this
he was knighted by the Lord-Lieutenant (Monck Mason,
p. 266). On July 22, 1785, Major Money ascended
from Norwich. The balloon was blown out to sea, and
he was obliged to descend into the water. After remain-
ing there seven hours he was rescued by a revenue cutter
which had been despatched to his assistance. Mr. James
Sadler attempted to cross St. George's Channel on the
1st of October, 1812, and had nearly succeeded, when,
in consequence of a change in the wind, he was forced to
descend into the sea off Liverpool. After remaining in
the water some time, he was rescued by a fishing-boat.
But on July 22, 1817, Mr. Windham Sadler, his second
son, succeeded in crossing the Channel from Dublin to
Holyhead. On May 24, 1837, Mr. Sneath ascended
from near Mansfield in a fire-balloon, and descended
safely. At half-past one o’clock on November 7, 1836,
Mr. Robert Hollond, Mr. Monck Mason and Mr. Charles.
Green ascended from Vauxhall Gardens, and descended
at about two leagues from Weilburg, in the duchy of Nas-
sau, at half-past seven the next morning, having thus trav-
ersed a distance of about 500 miles in 18 hours; Liége
was passed in the course of the night, and Coblentz in
the early morning. A full account of this trip is given by
Mr. Monck Mason in his Aeronautica (1838). The bal-
loon in which the journey was performed (a very large one,
containing about 85,000 cubic feet of gas), was subse-
quently called the AVassau Bal/oon, and under that name
became famous, and ascended frequently.
We ought also, perhaps, to notice a curious ascent
made by Mr. Green on July 29, 1828, from the Eagle
Tavern, City Road, on the back of a favorite pony.
Underneath the balloon was a platform (in place of a
car) containing places for the pony’s feet, and some
straps went loosely under his body, to prevent his lying
down or moving about. Everything passed off satisſac-
torily, the balloon descending safely at Beckenham ; the
pony showed no alarm, but quietly ate some beans with
which its rider supplied it in the air. Equestrian ascentºr
62
A E R
have smce been repeated. In 1852, Madame Poitevin,
who had made several such journeys in Paris, ascended
from Cremorne Gardens, London, on horseback (as
“Europa on a bull”); but after the first journey its
repetition was stopped in England by application to the
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police courts, as the exhibition outraged public feeling.
Lieutenant Gale was killed at Bordeaux on Sept. 8,
1850, in descending after an equestrian ascent, through
mismanagement in landing of the horse. M. Poitevin,
descending in 1858, after an equestrian ascent from
Paris, was nearly drowned in the sea near Malaga.
Among remarkable balloon ascents must also be noticed
that of Mr. Wise, from St. Louis, on June 23, 1859, in
which a distance of I I2O miles was traversed.
In 1863, Nadar, a well-known photographer at Paris,
constructed an enormous balloon, which he called “Le
Géant.” It was the largest gas-balloon ever constructed,
containing over 200,000 cubic feet of gas. Underneath
it was placed a smaller balloon, called a compensator,
the object of which was to prevent loss of gas during the
voyage. The car had two stories, and was, in fact, a
model of a cottage in wicker-work, 8 feet in height by 13
feet in length, containing a small printing-office, a pho-
tographic department, a refreshment-room, a lavatory,
&c. The first ascent took place at five o’clock on Sun-
day, October 4, 1863, from the Champ de Mars. There
were thirteen persons in the car, including one lady, the
Princess de la Tour d'Auvergne, and the two aeronauts
Louis and Jules Godard. In spite of the elaborate
preparations that had been made and the stores of pro-
visions that were taken up, the balloon descended at
nine o’clock, at Meaux, the early descent being rendered
necessary, it was said, by an accident to the valve-line.
A Second ascent was made a fortnight later, viz., on
October 18; there were nine passengers, including
Madame Nadar. The balloon descended at the expira-
tion of seventeen hours, near Nienburg in Hanover, a
distance of about 400 miles. A strong wind was blow-
ing, and the balloon was dragged over the ground a dis-
tance of 7 or 8 miles. All the passengers were bruised,
and some more seriously hurt.
Directly after Nadar's two balloon ascents, M. Eugene
Godard constructed what was perhaps the largest aerial
machine that has ever been made. It was a Montgolfier
or fire-balloon, of nearly half-a-million cubic feet capa-
city (more than double the capacity of Nadar's). The
balloon Flesseſſes, 1783, is said to have slightly exceeded
this size. The air was heated by an 18-foot stove,
weighing, with the chimney, 9So Ib. This ſurnace was
fed by straw; and the “car” consisted of a gallery sur-
rounding it. Two ascents of this balloon were made
from Cremorne Gardens, on July 20 and July 28, 1864.
This was the first fire-balloon seen by the inhabitants of
London, and it was the second ascent of this kind that
had been made in this country, Mr. Sneath's ascent at
Mansfield having been the first, as Mr. Tytler's experi-
ment at Edinburgh in 1784 was a leap, not an ascent, as
no source of heat was taken up.
In the summer of 1873 the proprietors of the New
York /)aily Graphic, an illustrated paper, determined
to construct a very large balloon, and enable Mr. Wise,
the well-known American aeronaut, to realize his favor-
ite scheme of crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe.
It was believed by many that a current from west to east
existed constantly at heights above 10,000 feet, but this
seems very uncertain. Mr. Green having stated that he
had met with such a current, Mr. Glaisher made a point
of investigating the directions of the wind at different
heights in his ascents, but found that they were as
capricious as near the ground. The same result was
found by others, and a comparison of the courses of the
balloons sent up from Paris during the siege will show
that no constant current exists. The American project
came to nothing owing to the quality of the material of
which the balloon was made. The size was said to be
Such as to contain 400,000 cubic feet, so that it would
lift a weight of 14, OOO ſh. On September 12, 1873,
during its inflation, Mr. Wise declared the material of
which it was made was so bad that he could not ascend
in it, though the other two persons who were to accom-
pany him agreed to go. When, however, 325,000 feet
of gas had been put into the balloon, a rent was ob-
served, and the whole rapidly collapsed. Although this
accident was greatly regretted at the time, it seems
pretty certain, from what subsequently took place, that
the aeronauts would not have succeeded in their object,
and a serious mishap was probably avoided. On Octo-
ber 6, 1873, Mr. Donaldson and two others ascended
from New York in the balloon after it had been re-
paired, and effected a perilous descent in Connecticut.
In 1875 Mr. Donaldson was lost in Lake Michigan, on
the occasion of an ascent from Chicago, in company
with Mr. Grimwood, a reporter.
In the summer of 1887, under the patronage of Mr.
Joseph Pulitzer, an enormous balloon was started from
St. Louis, bearing messages from the Post-Dispatch to
the New York World, both of which journals were the
property of Mr. Pulitzer. Great hopes were indulged in
regard to the verification of the existence of a northeast-
erly current of air, but these hopes were not realized,
the balloon landing a few miles from its starting point.
Of professional aeronauts, perhaps the best known and
most successful have been Blanchard, Garnerin, the Sad-
lers, Mr. Charles Green, Mr. Wise, Mr. Coxwell, and
the brothers Godard. Blanchard made, it is said, thirty-
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A E R
63
six ascents, his first having taken lace on March 2, 1784.
His wife also made many ascents; she was killed on July
7, ISI9. Garnerin is said to have ascended more than
fifty times; he introduced night ascents with fireworks,
&c., the first of which took place on August 4, 1807.
We shall have occasion to refer to him again when we
treat of parachutes. Mr. James Sadler made about
sixty ascents, the first of which took place on October
I2, I784. His two sons, John and Windham, both fol-
lowed in their father's steps; the latter was killed in
1817. In the minds of most Englishmen the practice of
ballooning will, for a long time, be associated with the
name of Mr. Charles Green, the most celebrated of
English aeronauts, who, having made his first ascent on
July 19, 1821, only died in the year 1870, at a very
advanced age. He is credited with 526 ascents by Mr.
Turnor; and from advertisements, &c., we see that in
1838 he had made 249. Mr. Green may be said to have
reduced ballooning to routine, and he made more ascents
than any other person has ever accomplished. He
accompanied Mr. Welsh in his scientific ascents, and to
him is also due the invention of the guide rope, which he
used in many of his voyages with success. It merely
consisted of a rope not less than IOOO feet in length,
which was attached to the ring of the balloon (from
which the car is suspended), and hung down so that the
end of it was allowed to trail along the surface of the
ground, the object being to prevent the continual waste
of gas and ballast that takes place in an ordinary balloon
journey, as such an expenditure is otherwise always going
on, owing to the necessity of keeping the balloon from
getting either too high or too low. If a balloon pro-
vided with a guide rope sinks so low that a good deal of
the rope rests on the earth, it is relieved of so much
weight and rises again ; if, on the contrary, it rises so
high that but a little is supported by the earth, a greater
weight is borne by the balloon, and equilibrium is thus
produced. Mr. Green frequently used the guide rope,
and ſound that its action was satisfactory, and that it
did not, as might be supposed, become entangled in trees,
&c. It was used in the Nassau journey, but more recent
aeronauts have dispensed with it. Still, in crossing the
sea or making a very long journey, where the preserva-
tion of the gas was of great importance, it could not fail
to be valuable. Mr. Green had, in his time, more experi-
ence in the management than has fallen to the lot of any
one else, and he brought to bear on the subject a great
amount of skill and practical knowledge. There is also
a plain matter-of-fact style about his accounts of his
ascents that contrasts very ſavorably with the writings of
Some other aeronauts. Mr. Coxwell, who has made
several hundred ascents, first ascended in 1844, under the
name of Wells. He it was who, as aeronaut, accom-
panied Mr. Glaisher in most of his scientific ascents,
1862–65. The Godard family have made very many
ascents in France, and are well known in all countries in
connection with aeronautics. It was to two of the
Godards that the management of the military balloons in
the Italian campaign was entrusted; it was M. Jules
Godard who succeeded in opening the valve in the dam-
gerous descent of Nadar's balloon in Hanover in 1863,
and it was Eugene Godard who constructed perhaps the
largest Montgolfier ever made, an account of the ascen-
sions of which has been given above. . M. Dupuis Del-
court was also a well-known aeronaut ; he has written on
the subject of aerostation, and his balloons were employed
by MM. Bixio and Barral in their scientific ascents. In
America Mr. Wise was far exce//ence the aeronaut; he
made several hundred ascents, and many of them were
distinguished for much skill and daring. He also appears
to have pursued his profession with more energy and
capacity than has any other aeronaut in recent times, and
his History of Aerostaſion shows him to have possessed
much higher scientific attainments than balloonists
usually have. In fact, Mr. Wise stood alone in this
respect. He was drowned in Lake Michigan on an
ascension from St. Louis, in 1879.
The number of fatal accidents that have occurred in
the history of balloons is not very great, and nearly all
have resulted either from the use of the fire-balloon, or
from want of knowledge, or carelessness on the part of
the aeronauts themselves. We have already referred to
the accidents that closed the careers of Philátre de Rozier
and Zambeccari. On November 25, 1802, S1gnor
Olivari, at Orleans, and on July 17, 1812, Herr Bittorff,
at Mannheim, perished in consequence of the accidental
combustion of their AZontgo/ādres. On April 7, 1806,
M. Mosment ascended from Lille upon a platform, from
which he accidently fell and was killed. On July 7,
1819, Madame Blanchard ascended from Paris at night
with fireworks attached to the car, a spark from one of
which ignited the gas in the balloon, and she was pre-
cipitated to the ground and killed. Lieut. Harris
ascended from Londom on May 25, 1824, but, through
mismanagement of the valve-line, he allowed all the gas
to escape suddenly from the balloon, which descended
with terrible velocity. He was killed by the fall, but his
companion, Miss Stocks, escaped almost uninjured. In
an ascent from Blackburn on September 29, 1824, by
Mr. Windham Sadler, the balloon, in rising, struck
against a chimney, and the aeronaut fell over the side of
the car and was killed. On July 24, 1837, Mr. Cocking
descended from a balloon in a parachute, which struck
the ground with such violence that he was killed on the
spot. In descending with a horse on September 8, 1850,
Lieut. Gale was killed; and in 1863 Mr. Chambers was
killed at Nottingham, his death arising from Suffocation
by the gas that poured out at the neck of the balloon,
which was not separated from the car by a sufficient
interval.
The number of accidents that have occurred bears but
a very small proportion to the number of successful
ascents that have been made. Mr. Monck Mason, in
his Aeronautica, gives a list of names, with the dates
and places of their ascent, of all persons who, as far
as he could find, had ascended previously to 1838.
His list contains 471 names, which are distributed among
the inhabitants of the different countries as follows:–
England, 313; France, IO4; Italy, 18; Germany and the
German States, 17; Turkey, 5; Prussia, 3; Russia, 2;
Poland, 2; Hungary, 2; Denmark, I; Switzerland, I;
and the United States, 3. Among these are the names
of 49 women, of whom 28 are English, 17 French, 3
German and I Italian. Some of the persons had ascended
a great number of times; thus, Mr. Charles Green's
ascents alone amounted to more than 249; and those of
the members of the same family to 535. Mr. Mason
calculated that the whole number of ascents executed by
Englishmen was 752. Of the 471 adventurers only nine
were killed, and of these six owed their fate to the dam-
gers of the fire-balloon, and one to bravado.
We can call to mind but five ſatal casualties that
have taken place since Mr. Mason compiled his list, viz.,
Mr. Cocking’s parachute accident, Mr. Gale’s death in
1850, Mr. Chambers' death in 1863, Donaldson's in 1875,
and Wise's in 1879.
We come now to an account of the use to which the
balloon has been applied for the advancement of science.
The ascents that have been made are by Sacharof, Biot,
and Gay-Lussac in 1804, by Bixio and Barral in 1850,
by Mr. Welsh in 1852, by Mr. Glaisher in 1862–66, and
MM. Flammarion and De Fonvielle in 1867–68. We
shall give a brief account of these ascents, because, as
has been remarked, with a few exceptions, they form the
64
A. E. R.
only useful purpose to which the balloon has been
applied. The general description of the phenomena,
&c., met with in a high ascent, and the general results
found, are referred to in the account of Mr. Glaisher’s
experiments, as not only are his accounts more detailed,
but the number of ascents made by him is much in
excess of that of all the others put together.
The Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, enter-
taining the opinion that the experiments made on
mountain-sides by De Luc, De Saussure, Humboldt, and
others must give results different from those made in
free air at the same heights, resolved in 1803 that a bal-
loon ascent should be made for the purpose of making
Scientific researches. Accordingly, on January 30, 1804,
M. Sacharoſ, a member of the academy, ascended, with
M. Robertson as aeronaut, in a balloon belonging to
the latter, which was inflated with hydrogen gas. The
ascent was made at a quarter past seven, and the descent
effected at a quarter to eleven. No great height was
reached, as the barometer never sank below 23 in., cor-
responding to less than 1% mile. The experiments
were not very systematically made, and the chief results
were the filling and bringing down several flasks of air
collected at different elevations, and the supposed obser-
vation that the magnetic dip was altered. A telescope
was fixed in the bottom of the car pointing vertically
downwards, so that the travellers might be able to ascer-
tain exactly the spot over which they were floating at
any moment. M. Sacharof found that, on shouting
downwards through his speaking-trumpet, the echo
from the earth was quite distinct, and at his height was
audible after an interval of about ten seconds.
At the commencement of 1804 Laplace proposed to
the members of the French Academy of Sciences that
balloons should be employed for the purpose of solving
certain physical problems, adding that, as the govern-
ment had placed funds at their disposal for the prosecu-
tion of useful experiments, he thought they might be
well applied to this kind of research.
On August 24, 1804, M.M. Gay-Lussac and Biot
ascended from the Conservatoire des Arts at ten o’clock
in the morning. Their magnetic experiments were
incommoded by the rotation of the balloon, but they
found that, up to the height of 13,000 feet, the time of
vibration of a magnet was appreciably the same as on
the earth’s surface. They found also that the air became
drier as they ascended. The height reached was about
13,000 feet, and the temperature declined ſrom 639
Fahr. to 519.
In a second experiment, which was made on Sep-
tember 16, 1804, M. Guy-Lussac ascended alone. The
chief result obtained was that the magnetic force, like
gravitation, did not experience any sensible variation at
heights from the earth’s surface which we can attain to.
Gay-Lussac also brought down air collected at the
height of nearly 23,000 feet, and on analysis it appeared
that its constitution was the same as that of air collected
at the earth's surface.
At the meeting of the British Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science, held at Aberdeen in 1859, a
committee was appointed for the purpose of making
observations in the higher strata of the atmosphere by
means of the balloon. For the first two years nothing
was effected, owing to the want both of an observer and
of a suitable balloon. . It will be enough, after explain-
ing the objects of the experiments, &c., to describe
briefly one or two of the most remarkable ascents, and
then state the kind of conclusions that follow from them
as a whole.
The primary object was to determine the temperature
of the air, and its hydrometrical state at different eleva-
tions to as great a height as could be reached; and the
Secondary objects were — (1) to determine the tempera-
ture of the dew-point by Daniell’s and Regnault’s
hygrometers, as well as by the dry and wet bulb ther-
mometers, and to compare the results; (2) to compare
the readings of an aneroid barometer with those of a
mercurial barometer up to the height of 5 miles; (3) to
determine the electrical state of the air; (4) the oxygenic
condition of the atmosphere, and (5) the time of vibra-
tion of a magnet; (6) to collect air at different eleva-
tions; (7) to note the height and kind of clouds, their
density and thickness; (8) to determine the rate and direc-
tion of different currents in the atmosphere; and (9) to
make observations on Sound.
The instruments used were mercurial and aneroid
barometers, dry and wet bulb thermometers, Daniell’s
dew-point hygrometer, Regnault’s condensing hygrome-
ter, maximum and minimum thermometers, a magnet
for horizontal vibration, hermetically sealed glass tubes
exhausted of air, and an electrometer. In one or two of
the ascents a camera was taken up.
The first ascent was made, as has been stated, from
Wolverhampton on July 17, 1862, and the journey was
remarkable on account of a warm current that was met
with at a great elevation. The balloon left at 9:43 A. M.,
and a height of 3800 feet was reached before an obser-
vation could be taken. The temperature of the air at
starting was 59° Fahr., at 4000 feet it was 45°, and it
descended to 26° at Io,000 feet, from which height to
that of 13,000 feet there was no diminution. While
passing through this space Mr. Glaisher put on addi-
tional clothing, feeling certain that a temperature below
zero would be attained before the height of 5 miles was
reached; but at the elevation of 15,500 feet the temper-
ature was 31°, and at each successive reading, up to
19,500, it iſzcz-eased, and was there 42°. The tempera-
ture then decreased rapidly, and was 169 at 26,ooo feet.
On descending it increased regularly to 379.8 at Io,000
feet.
The weather on the day (Aug. 18, 1862) of the third
ascent was favorable, and there was but little wind. All
the instruments were fixed before leaving the earth. A
height of more than 4 miles was attained, and the bal-
loon remained in the air about two hours. When at its
highest point there were no clouds between the balloon
and the earth, and the streets of Birmingham were dis-
tinctly visible. The descent was effected at Solihull, 7
miles from Birmingham. On the earth the tempera-
ture of the air was 679-8, and that of the dew-point
54°-6 ; and they steadily decreased to 39°5 and 22°2
respectively at 11,500 feet. The balloon was then made
to descend to the height of about 3Ooo feet, when both
increased to 56°-O and 47°-5 respectively. On throwing
out ballast the balloon rose again, and the temperature
declined pretty steadily to 249'o, and that of the dew-
point to — IO**O, at the height of 23,OOO feet. During
this ascent Mr. Glaisher’s hands became quite blue, and
he experienced a qualmish sensation in the brain and
stomach, resembling the approach of sea-sickness; but
no further inconvenience, besides such as resulted from
the cold and the difficulty of breathing, was experienced.
This feeling of sickness never occurred again to Mr.
Glaisher in any subsequent ascent.
In the years 1867 and 1868 M. Flammarion made
eight or nine ascents from Paris for scientific purposes.
The heights reached were not great, but the general
result of the observations was to confirm those made by
Mr. Glaisher. See M. Flammarion in Voyages Aériens,
Paris, 1870, or 7%raze/s 772 the Air, London, 1871.
Observations were also made in some balloon ascents by
M. de Fonvielle, which are noticed in the works just
referred to.
The balloon had not been discovered very long before
A E R
65
it received a military status, and soon after the com-
mencement of the French revolutionary war an aero-
nautic school was founded at Meudon; Guyton de Mor-
veau, the chemist, and Colonel Coutelle being the
persons in charge. Four balloons were constructed for
the armies of the north, of the Sambre and Meuse, of
the Rhine and Moselle, and of Egypt. In June 1794
Coutelle ascended with the adjutant and general to
reconnoitre the hostile army just before the battle of
Fleurus, and two reconnaissances were made, each occu-
pying four hours. It is generally stated that it was to
the information so gained that the French victory was
due. The balloon corps was in constant requisition
during the campaign, but it does not appear that, with
the exception of the reconnaissances just mentioned, any
great advantages resulted, except in a moral point of
view. But even this was of importance, as the enemy
were much disconcerted at having their movements so
completely watched, while the French were correspond-
ingly elated at the superior information it was believed
they were gaining. An attempt was made to revive
the use of balloons in the African campaign of 1830,
but no opportunity occurred in which they could be
employed. It is said that in 1849 a reconnoitring bal-
loon was sent up from before Venice, and that the
Russians used one at Sebastopol. In the French cam-
paign against Italy in 1859 the French had recourse to
the use of balloons, but this time there was not any
aerostatic corps, and their management was entrusted to
the brothers Godard. Several reconnaissances were
made, and one of especial interest the day before the
battle of Solferino. No information of much impor-
tance seems, however, to have been, gained thereby.
The Fleurus reconnaissance was made in a balloon
inflated with hydrogen gas, while at Solferino a fire-
balloon was employed. Each system has its advantages
and disadvantages; the gas-balloon requires several
hours for inflation, but then it can remain in the air
any length of time; the fire-balloon can be inflated
rapidly, but it will not stay in the air more than five or
ten minutes unless a furnace is taken up, the use of
which is impracticable in even a moderate wind;
besides, the fire-balloon must be of very large dimen-
sions, and only one person could, as a rule, ascend at a
time, and he would have to be occupied with the fire:
the use of fire-balloons also is always attended with some
danger. M. Eugene Godard, who was engaged in the
management of the balloons in the Italian campaign,
wrote to the Times, in August 1864, expressing his
opinion of the superiority of fire-balloons for war pur-
poses, as they are so easily inflated and are not
destroyed or compelled to descend even if pierced by
several balls; and this was also, we believe, the
opinion of the Austrians who made experiments with war
balloons.
In the late American war balloons were a good deal
used by the Federals. There was a regular balloon staff
attached to M'Clellan’s army, with a captain, an assist-
ant-captain, and about 50 non-commissioned officers and
privates. The apparatus consisted of two generators,
drawn by four horses each; two balloons, drawn by four
horses each, and an acid-cart, drawn by two horses.
The two balloons used contained about 13,000 and
26,000 feet of gas, and the inflation usually occupied
about three hours.
When the Montgolfiers first discovered the balloon,
its great use in military operations was at once prophe-
sied; but these anticipations have not been realised. On
the other hand, however, there can be no doubt that the
balloon has never had a fair trial, being viewed coldly
by officers enamored of routine, and when used, being.
often left unsupplied with suitable appointments. It is
probable that a future still remains for the balloon in
this direction.
The pāramount value of the balloon during the recent
siege of Paris must be fresh in the minds of all. It was
by it alone that communication was kept up between the
besieged city and the external world, as the balloons car-
ried away from Paris the pigeons which afterwards
brought back to it the news of the provinces. The
total number of balloons that ascended from Paris
during the siege, conveying persons and dispatches, was
sixty-four—the first having started on September 23,
1870, and the last on January 28, 1871. Gambetta
effected his escape from Paris, on October 7, in the
balloon Armand-Barbé, an event which doubtless led
to the prolongation of the war. Of the sixty-four bal-
loons only two were ever heard of; they were blown out
to sea. One of the most remarkable voyages was that
of the Ville d’Orléans, which, leaving Paris at eleven
o'clock on November 21, descended fifteen hours after-
wards near Christiania, having crossed the North Sea.
Several of the balloons on their descent were taken by
the Prussians, and a good many were fired at while in
the air; but we do not hear of any being injured from
this cause. The average size of the balloons was from
2Ooo to 2050 metres, or from 70,000 to 72,000 cubic feet.
The above facts we have extracted from Zes Ba//ozes due
Siège de Paris, a sheet published by Bulla & Sons,
Paris; compiled by the brothers Tissandier, well known
French aeronauts, and giving the name, size, and times
of ascent and descent of every balloon that left Paris,
with the names of the aeronaut and generally also those
of the passengers, the weight of despatches, the number
of pigeons, &c. Only those balloons, however, are
noticed in which some person ascended.
The principle of the parachute is so simple that the
idea must have occurred to persons in all ages. Father
Loubere, in his History of Siam, published two centuries
ago, tells of a person who frequently diverted the court
by the prodigious leaps he used to take, having two para-
chutes or umbrellas fastened to his girdle. In 1783 a
certain M. le Normand practically demonstrated the
efficiency of a parachute by descending from a high house
at Lyons; but he merely regarded it as a useful means
whereby to escape from fire. To Blanchard is due the
idea of using it as an adjunct to the balloon. As early
as 1785 he had constructed a parachute, to which was
attached a basket. In this he placed a dog, which
descended safely to the ground when the parachute was
released from a balloon at a considerable elevation. It
is stated that he descended himself from a balloon in a
parachute in 1793; but, owing to some defect in its con-
struction, he fell too rapidly, and broke his leg.
André Jaques Garnerin was the first person who suc-
cessfully descended from a balloon in a parachute, and he
repeated this experiment so often that }. may be said to
have first demonstrated the practicability of using the
machine; and, in fact, that he invented it in practical
and suitable form. In 1793 Garnerin had been taken
prisoner at Marchiennes, and he was confined for between
two and three years in the fortress of Bude, in Hungary.
While in captivity he elaborated in his mind the means
of descending from a balloon by means of a parachute;
and on October 22, 1797, he made his first public experi-
ment. He ascended from the park of Monceau at Paris,
and when at the height of about 1% mile he released
the parachute, which was attached to the balloon in
place of a car; the balloon, relieved suddenly of so great
a weight, rose very rapidly till it burst, while the para-
chute descended very fast, making violent oscillations all
the way. Garnerin, however, reached the earth in safety
upon the plain of Monceau. In 1802 Garnerin came to
England and made a good many ascents in all parts of
5 A
66
A E R
the country, many of which excited much enthusiasm,
as can be seen from the contemporary accounts; and on
September 21, 1802, he repeated his parachute experiment
in England. -
The parachute was dome-shaped, and bore a resem-
blance to a large umbrella. The case or dome was
made of white canvas, and was 23 feet in diameter.
At the top was a truck or round piece of wood Io
inches in diameter, with a hole in its centre, fastened to
the canvas by 32 short pieces of tape. The parachute
was suspended from a hoop attached to the netting of
the balloon, and below the parachute was placed a
cylindrical basket, 4 feet high and 2% feet in diameter,
which contained the aeronaut. The ascent took place at
about six o'clock from North Audley Street, London;
and, at a height of about (it is believed) 8,OOO feet, Gar-
nerin separated the parachute from the balloon. For a
few seconds his fate seemed certain, as the parachute
retained the collapsed state in which it had originally
ascended, and fell very rapidly. It suddenly, however,
expanded, and the rapidity of its descent was at once
checked, but the oscillations were so violent that the car,
which was suspended 20 feet below, was sometimes on a
level with the rest of the apparatus. Some accounts
state that these oscillations increased, others that they
decreased as the parachute descended, and the latter
seems most probable. It came to the ground in a field
at the back of St. Pancras Church, the descent having
occupied rather more than ten minutes. Garnerin was
hurt a little by the violence with which the basket con-
taining him struck the earth; but a few cuts and a slight
nausea represented all the ill effects of his fall.
Jordaki Kuparento, a Polish aeronaut, is the only
person who ever made any real use of a parachute.
He ascended from Warsaw on July 24, 1808, in a fire-
balloon, which, at a considerable elevation, took fire;
but being provided with a parachute, he was enabled to
effect his descent in safety.
The next experiment made with a parachute was that
which resulted in the unfortunate death of Mr. Robert
Cocking. So early as 1814 this gentleman had lectured
on the subject before the City Philosophical Society, and
also before the Society of Arts. He always retained an
interest in ballooning, and made two ascents — one with
Mr. Sadler, and the other on September 27, 1836, with
Mr. Green. The success of the balloon trip of Messrs.
Hollond, Mason, and Green, seems to have incited Mr.
Cocking to demonstrate practically the truth of his views.
He accordingly constructed a suitable parachute on his
principles, and having succeeded in obtaining the consent
of Messrs. Hughes and Gye, the proprietors of Vauxhall
Gardens, to permit the ascent to be made there, he pre-
vailed on Mr. Green to ascend in his great Nassau
balloon, with the parachute attached. The great defect
of Garnerin's umbrella-shaped parachute was its violent
oscillation during descent, and Mr. Cocking considered
that, if the parachute were made of a conical form
(vertex downwards), the whole of this oscillation would
be avoided; and if it were made of sufficient size, there
would be resistance enough to check too rapid a descent.
He therefore constructed a parachute on this principle,
the radius of which at its widest part was about 17 feet.
It was stated in the public announcements previous to
the experiment that the whole weighed 223 ſh; but from
the evidence at the inquest it appeared that the weight
must have been over 4oo Tb, Mr. Cocking's weight was
177 ſh, which was so much additional. On July 24,
1837, the trial took place; and the Nassau balloon,
with Mr. Green and Mr. Spencer, a solicitor, in the car,
and having suspended below it the parachute, in the car
of which was Mr. Cocking, rose from the ground at
twenty-five minutes to eight in the evening. A good
deal of difficulty was experienced in rising to a suitable
height, partly in consequence of the resistance to the air
offered by the expanded parachute, and partly owing to
its weight. Mr. Cocking wished the height to be 8000
S feet ; but when the balloon
reached the height of 5000
feet, it being then nearly
over Greenwich, Mr.
Green called out to
Mr. Cocking that he
should be unable
to ascend to the
requisite hight
if the para-
chute was to
descend in
day light.
Mr. Cocking
<\{Y}
&#: accordingly
let slip the
#. catch which
# was to liber-
# ate him from
Cocking's Parachute. the balloon.
The parachute for a few seconds descended very rapidly,
but still evenly, until suddenly the upper rim seemed to
give way, and the whole apparatus collapsed (taking a
form resembling an umbrella turned inside out, and
nearly closed), and the machine descended with great
rapidity, oscillating very much. When about two or
three hundred feet from the ground, the basket became
disengaged from the remnant of the parachute, and Mr.
Cocking was ſound in a field at Lee, literally dashed to
leCeS.
p Mr. Green and Mr. Spencer, who were in the car of
the balloon, had also a narrow escape. At the moment
the parachute was disengaged they crouched down in the
car, and Mr. Green clung to the valve-line, to permit
the escape of the gas. The balloon shot upwards, plung-
ing and rolling, and the gas pouring from both the upper
and lower valves, but chiefly from the latter, as the
great resistance of the air checked its egress from the
former. Mr. Green and Mr. Spencer applied their
mouths to tubes communicating with an air-bag with
which they had had the foresight to provide themselves,
otherwise they would certainly have been suffocated by
the gas. Notwithstanding this precaution, however, the
gas almost totally deprived them of sight for four or five
minutes. When they came to themselves they found
they were at a height of about four miles, and descending
rapidly. They effected, however, a safe descent near
Maidstone.
In 1839 Mr. Hampton made three descents in a para-
chute, on Garnerin’s pattern, from his balloon, the
“Albion.” He followed Garnerin’s example in attaching
the parachute to the netting of the balloon, so that when
the connection between the two was severed the latter
was left to its own devices. Mr. Hampton took meas-
ures, however, that it should descend soon after the para-
chute, and it was generally found no great distance off,
and returned to him. All his parachute descents were
safely performed, although in one he was a good deal
shaken.
Numerous attempts have been made both to direct
balloons and contrive independent flying machines.
After the invention of the balloon by the brothers Mont-
golfier, it was at once thought that novery great difficulty
would be found in devising a suitable steering apparatus;
in fact, it was supposed that to rise into the air and
remain there was the chief difficulty, and that, this bein
accomplished, the power of directing the aerostat woul
be a secondary achievement that must follow before long.
y
}



























A. E. R.
67
Accordingly, in most of the early balloons the voyagers
took up oars, sails, or paddles, which they diligently
worked while in the air; sometimes they thought an
effect was
produced,
and some-
Eºsºsºs
currents in
the atmos-
phere, it is
no wonder
that some
should have
announced
with confi-
.dence that
their course Hampton’s Parachute.
was changed from that of the wind by means of
the sails or oars that they used; in fact, it is not
very often that the whole atmosphere up to a con-
siderable height is moving en masse in the same direction,
so that generally the course taken by the balloon, as
determined merely by joining the places of ascent and
descent, is not identical with the direction of the wind,
'even when it is the same at both places. Although there
is no reason why balloons should not be so guided by means
of mechanical appliances attached to them as to move in
a direction making a small angle with that of the wind,
still it must have been evident to any one who has
observed a balloon during inflation on a windy day, that
any motion in which it would be exposed to the action of
a strong current of air must result in its destruction. It
has therefore gradually become recognized that the bal-
loon is scarcely a step at all towards a system of aerial
navigation; and many have thought that the principles
involved in the construction of a flying machine must be
very different from the simple statical equilibrium that
:Subsists when a balloon is floating in the air. “To navi-
gate the air the machine must be heavier than the air,”
has frequently been regarded as an axiom ; and there can
be no doubt that an apparatus constructed of such light
material as is necessary for a balloon must either be
destroyed or become ungovernable in a high wind.
Recently, however, M. Dupuy de Lôme, an eminent
French engineer, has constructed and made experiments
with a balloon which he considers satisfies some of the
conditions. The balloon is spindle-shaped, the longer
axis being horizontal, and it contains about 120,000
cubic feet. The car is suspended below the middle of
the balloon, and there are provided a rudder and a screw.
The rudder consists of a triangular sail placed beneath
the balloon and near the rear, and is kept in position by
a horizontal yard, about 20 feet long, turning round a
pivot in its forward extremity; the height of the sail is
16 feet, and its surface 160 square feet. Two ropes for
working the rudder extend forward to the seat of the
steerer, who has before him a compass fixed to the car,
the central part of which will contain fourteen men.
The screw is carried by the car, and is driven by four or
eight men working at a capstan. A trial was made with
the machine on February 2, 1872, on a windy day, and M.
de Lôme considered that he had been enabled by his screw
and rudder to alter his course about 12°. (See Aleport
of the Aeronautical Society, 1872.)
Of flying machines, in which both buoyancy and motion
were proposed to be obtained by purely mechanical
means, the number has been very great. Most of the
projects have been chimerical, and were due to persons
times not. &= -º ºffl sº
If we con- **** * . ºš
sider the - WTT 2-3 --- º
number of Zº
differ ent :////
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WN
possessed of an insufficient knowledge of the principles of
natural philosophy, both theoretically and practically.
They serve, however, to show how great a number of
individuals must have paid attention to the matter, and
even at the present time several patents are taken out
annually on the subject. We do not propose here to
give an account of any of these projects, for but few
have ever passed beyond projects, but will merely refer
to Mr. IHenson’s aerial carriage, which in 1843 attracted
some attention. The apparatus was an elaborate one,
and its principal feature was the great expanse of the
sustaining planes. The machine was to advance with
its front edge a little raised, the effect of which would
be to present its under surface to the air over which it
was passing; the resistance of this air, acting on, it like
the strong wind on the sails of a windmill, would, it was
thought, prevent the descent of the machine. Mr. Hen-
son invented a steam-engine of great lightness, but he
proposed that the machine should be started down an
inclined plane, so that the steam-engine would only have
to make up for the velocity lost by the resistance of the
air. The scheme never came to anything.
In 1865 the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain was
founded, the officers being –— President, the Duke of
Argyle; Treasurer, Mr. J. Glaisher; and Secretary, Mr.
Brearey. It has published an annual report every year
since [1873], containing selections from the papers read
to the society, and abstracts of the discussions that took
place thereon at the meetings. The numerous papers
submitted to this society bear witness to the great num-
ber of minds that are engaged on the solution of the
problem of aerial navigation. Of course, not a few of
the methods proposed are the fanciful projects of ignorant
men, but some show the careful thought and elaborate
experiment of trained engineers and other qualified per-
sons. In 1868 the society held an exhibition of flying
machines, &c., at the Crystal Palace, which was visited
by many persons. A fire-balloon of a M. de la Marne,
which should have ascended during this exhibition, caught
fire and was burnt. In 1871 a series of experiments was
made at Penn’s factory (Greenwich) on the resistance
of different shaped planes placed at different angles, in a
current of air produced by a rotary fan. Investigations
of this kind not only form the first step toward obtain-
ing data for a true knowledge of the exact nature of flying,
but are also, independently, of high scientific interest.
The chief object of the society is to bring together those
persons who are interested in the subject of aeronautics
(except balloonists by trade, who are ineligible), and to
encourage those who, possessing suitable acquirement,
are devoting their time to the investigation of the question.
Aerostatic societies have also been founded in other
countries; but although they have been inaugurated with
considerable &clat, more than one have already termi-
nated a short-lived career. The Vienna society seems,
however, to have been unusually active during the recent
exhibition of 1873.
In actual aerostation, as at present practised, ordinary
coal gas is used, which is many times heavier than
hydrogen, being, in fact, usually not less than half the
specific gravity of air. Even when balloons are inflated
with hydrogen, generated by the action of sulphuric acid
on zinc filings, the gas is very far from pure, and its
density is often double that of pure hydrogen, and even
greater.
The hydrostatic laws relating to the equilibrium of
floating bodies were known long previous to the invention
of the balloon in 1783, but it was only in the latter half
of the 18th century that the nature of gases was suf-
ficiently understood to enable these principles to have
been acted on. As we have seen, both Black and Cavallo
did make use of them on a small scale, and if they had












68 A E R
— AE S
thought it possible to make a varnish impervious to the
passage of hydrogen gas they could have easily anticipated
the Montgolfiers. As it was, no sooner was the fire-
balloon invented, than Charles at once suggested and
practically carried out the idea of the hydrogen or inflam-
mable air balloon.
The mathematical theory of the rate of ascent of a
balloon possesses remarkable historic interest, from the
fact that it was the last problem that engaged the atten-
tion of the greatest mathematician of the last century,
Euler. The news of the experiment of the Montgolfiers
at Annonay on June 5, 1783, reached the aged mathe-
matician (he was in his 77th year) at St. Petersburg, and
with an energy that was characteristic of him he at once
proceeded to investigate the motion of a globe lighter
than the air it displaced. For many years he had been
all but totally blind, and was in the habit of performing
his calculations with chalk upon a black board. It was
after his death, on September 7, 1783, that this board
was found covered with the analytical investigation of the
motion of an aerostat. This investigation is printed
under the title, Ca/cu/s sur les Ba//ons Aérostatiques
fait's par ſett M. Zéozzard AEuler, tel's qu'on les a
trouze's sur son ardoise, après sa mort arrizeſe le 7
Septembre 1783, in the Memoirs of the French Academy
for 1781 (pp. 264–268). The explanation of the earlier
date is that the volume of memoirs for 1781 was not
published till 1784. The peculiarity of Euler's memoir
is that it deals with the motion of a closed globe filled
with a gas lighter than air, whereas the experiments of
the Montgolfiers were made with balloons inflated with
heated air. The explanation of this must be that either
an imperfect account reached Euler, and that he supplied
the details himself as seemed to him most probable, or
that he, like the Montgolfiers themselves, attributed the
rising of the balloon to the generation of a special gas
given off by the chopped straw with which the fire was
fed. The treatment of the question by Euler presents
no particular point of importance—indeed, it could not;
but the fact of its having given rise to the closing work
of So long and distinguished a life, and having occupied
the last thoughts of so great a mind, conſers on the
problem of the balloon’s motion a peculiar interest.
The chief danger attending ballooning lies in the
descent; for if a strong wind be blowing, the grapnel
will sometimes trail for miles over the ground at the rate
of ten or twenty miles an hour, catching now and then
in hedges, ditches, roots of trees, &c.; and, after giving
the balloon a terrible jerk, breaking loose again, till at
length some obstruction, such as the wooded bank of a
stream, affords a firm hold. If the balloon has lost all
its buoyant power by the escape of the gas, the car also
drags over the ground. But even a very rough descent
is usually not productive of any very serious consequences;
as, although the occupants of the car generally receive
many bruises, and are perhaps cut by the ropes, it rarely
happens that anything worse occurs. On a day when
the wind is light (supposing that there is no want of bal-
last) mothing can be easier than the descent, and the
aeronaut can decide several miles off on the field in which
he will alight. It is very important to have a good sup-
ply of ballast, so as to be able to check the rapidity of
the descent, as in passing downward through a wet cloud
the weight of the balloon is enormously increased by the
water deposited on it; and, if there is no ballast to throw
out to compensate this accession of mass, the velocity is
sometimes very great. It is also convenient, if the dis-
trict upon which the balloon is descending appear unsuit-
able for landing, to be able to rise again. The ballast
consists of fine baked Sand, which becomes so scattered
as to be inappreciable before it has ſallen far below the
balloon. It is taken up in bags containing about 3% cwt.
each. The balloon at starting is liberated by a spring
catch which the aeronaut releases, and the ballast should
be so adjusted that there is nearly equilibrium before
leaving, else the rapidity of ascent is too great, and has
to be checked by parting with gas. It is almost impos-
sible to liberate the balloon in such a way as to avoid
giving it a rotary motion about a vertical axis, which
continues during the whole time it is in the air. This
rotation makes it difficult for those in the car to discover
in what direction they are moving; and it is only by
looking down along the rope to which the grapnel is sus-
pended that the motion of the balloon over the country
below can be traced. We may mention that the upward
and downward motion at any instant is at once known
by merely dropping over the side of the car a small piece
of paper : if the paper ascends or remains on the same
level or stationary, the balloon is descending; while, if it
descends, the balloon is ascending. This test is so deli-
cate that it sometimes showed the motion at a particular
instant with more precision than did Mr. Glaisher's very
delicate instruments.
Contrivances are often proposed by which the valve
might be opened in less crude ways than by merely pull-
ing a string attached to it; by which the jerks produced
by the catching of the grapnel might be diminished, &c.
These improvements are not adopted, becausesimplicity is.
requisite before everything. Any mechanical contrivance
might be broken and rendered useless by the first blow of
the car on the earth; whereas the primitive arrangements.
in use are such that Scarcely any rough treatment can
impair their efficiency.
The most important works that have appeared on the
the subject of aerostation are —
Padalus, or Mechanical Motions, by Bishop Wilkins,
London, 1648; A Treatise on the Nature and Proper-
ties of Air and other Permanently Alastic Fluids, by
Tiberius Cavallo, London, 1781; Account of the First
Aerial Voyage in Angland, in a Series of Zetters to
/his Guardian, by Vincent Lunardi, London, 1784;
History and Practice of Aerostation, by Tiberius.
Cavallo, London, 1785; Annals of some Remarkable
Aerial and Alpine Voyages, including those of the
author, by T. Forster, London, 1832; Aeronautica, by
Monck Mason, London, 1838; A System of Aeronautics,
comprehending its Earliest Investigations, by John
Wise, Philadelphia, 1850; Astra Castra, AExperiments.
and Adventures in the Atmosphere, by Hatton Turnor,
London, 1865; Voyages Aériezes, par J. Glaisher, C.
Flammarion, W. de Fonvielle, et G. Tissandier, Paris,
1870; the same translated into English and published,
edited by James Glaisher, under the title, 77-azels in
t/te Air, London, 1871.
AERTSZEN, PIETER, called “Long Peter” on account
of his height, an historical painter of great merit as re-
gards both drawing and coloring, was born at Amster-
dam in 1520, and died in 1573. Several of his best
works — altar-pieces in various churches — were de-
stroyed in the religious wars of the Netherlands. An
excellent specimen of his style on a small scale, a
picture of the crucifixion, may be seen in the Antwerp.
Museum.
AES is commonly translated brass, but the aes of the
Romans, was used to signify not only pure copper, but
also a bronze, or alloy of copper and tin. The cutting
instruments of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyp-
tians were originally of bronze. The Romans borrowed
their arms, as well as their money, from the Etruscans.
Analysis of the bronzes of these nations shows that they
contained about 12 per cent. of tin, which gave them
hardness and capability of receiving a good edge. As
the most ancient coined money of the Romans was of
copper or bronze, ſes came to be used for money in gen-
AE S
69
eral, even after the introduction of silver and gold
coinage. -
AESCHINES, an Athenian philosopher, said to be
the son of a sausage-maker. He was continually with
Socrates; which occasioned that philosopher to say that
the Sãusage-maker’s son was the only person who knew
how to pay a due regard to him.
AESCHINES, a celebrated Grecian orator, was born
in Attica 389 years before the Christian era. His serv-
ices as a soldier, and his talents, which were consider-
able, procured him great applause; and, as a public
speaker, he became a formidable rival to Demosthenes
himself. Three only of his orations are extant. His
<loquence is of a very high order, and as an orator he is
second only to Demosthenes.
AESCHYLUS, the father of the Greek tragic drama,
was born in the year 525 B.C., in the Attic demos of
Eleusis. The period of his youth and manhood coin-
cides, therefore, with that great uprising of the national
spirit of the Greeks, caused by the successive attempts of
Darius, king of Persia, and his son Xerxes, to enslave
their European neighbors on the north and west shores
of the AEgean. The father of Attic tragedy helped, in
the year 490, to drive the captains of Darius into the
marshes of Marathon, and, ten years later, encompassed
with ruin the multitudinous armament of Xerxes within
the narrow strait of Salamis. He composed seventy
plays, and gained the prize for dramatic excellence thir-
teen times. The Athenians esteemed his works so highly
as to allow some of them to be represented after his
death, a privilege, in their dramatic practice, alto-
gether anomalous. He died at Gela, in Sicily, in the sixty-
ninth year of his age. Of the seventy plays which an old
biographer reports him to have composed, only seven
remain, with a few fragments of little significance save
to the keen eye of the professed philologist. These frag-
ments, however, are sufficient to justify the high esteem
in which he was held by the Athenian public, and by
that greatest of all the great wits of a witty age and a
witty people, Aristophanes. In the grand trilogy which
exhibits, in three consecutive tragedies, the story of the
murder of Agamemnon, and its moral sequences, we have
a perfect specimen of what the Greek tragedy was to the
Greeks, as at once a complex artistic machinery for the
exhibition of national legend, and a grave pulpit for the
preaching of important moral truths; nor could a more
worthy founder than AEschylus of such a “sacred opera”
be imagined. -
AESCULAPIUS, in the Aeathem Mythology, the god
of medicine, was the son of Apollo and the nymph Co-
ronis. He was educated by the centaur Chiron, who
taught him the art of healing; and his skill enabled him
to cure the most desperate diseases. But Jupiter, en-
raged at his restoring to life Hippolytus, who had been
torn in pieces by his own horses, killed him with a thun-
derbolt. At Epidaurus, AEsculapius's statue was of
gold and ivory, with a long beard, the head surrounded
with rays, a knotty stick in one hand, and the other en-
twined with a serpent: the figure was seated on a throne
of the same materials as the statue, and had a dog lying
at its feet. The Romans crowned him with laurel, to
represent his descent from Apollo; and the Phliasians
represented him as beardless. The cock, raven, and the
goat were sacred to this deity. In many places votive
tablets were hung up, showing the names of those cured
and the diseases of which they were healed by his assist-
:alil Ce. -
AESIR, the gods of the Northmen of Scandinavia and
Iceland. There were twelve chief gods or AEsir besides
Odin, Thor, Baldur, Niórd, Frey, Ty or Tyr, Bragi,
Heimdal, Höd, Vidar, Ull, Forsetti, Loki or Lopt. The
chief goddesses were — Frigg, Freyia, Nanna, Sif, Saga,
Hel, Gefion, Eir, Hlin, Loffi, Vör, Snotra. The names
of the AEsir, considered in the primary old northern sig-
nificance of the words, convey in most instances an allu-
sion to their characteristics; but it is impossible to decide
whether they merely personify certain physical powers in,
nature, and abstract ideas of definite mental conditions,
or whether they were originally borne by individuals con-
nected with the pre-historic ages of the people. Our
knowledge of northern mythology has been derived prin-
cipally from the fragmentary remains of ancient Scandi-
navian songs, first collected in Iceland in the IIth century,
and embodied in the 13th century with numerous other
prose and poetic myths in a compilation now known to
us as the Zaldas.
In Thor, who seems to have been a god of that earlier
Phoenician form of nature-worship which was superseded
in Scandinavia and Northern Germany by the faith of
Odin, we have the impersonation of the disturbing and
destructive agencies in the universe. He is the son of
heaven and earth — of Odin, the All-father, and of Frigg
or Fiórgvin, the vivifying—and is the strongest of the
AEsir. From his hammer flashed the lightning, and his
chariot wheels sent thunder rolling through the clouds as
he went on his way, cleaving mountains, loosening the
pent-up streams and fires, and slaying all giants and mis-
shapen monsters. With his mallet he consecrated the
newly-wedded, and hence the sign of the mallet or ham-
mer was made by the Northmen when they took an oath
and bound themselves by vows, whether of marriage or
any other obligation. The early Christian missionaries
of Norway, finding the faith in Thor too strong to be
suddenly uprooted, tried to transfer many of his character-
istics to their zealous royal convert, St. Olaf, who was
said to have resembled the old northern god in his come-
liness of person, his bright red beard, hot, angry temper,
and personal strength; while some of the monks of a
later period endeavored to persuade the Northmen that
in Thor their forefathers had worshipped the Christ, the
strong and mighty Saviour of the oppressed, and that his
mallet was the rude image of the cross.
In Baldur the Northmen honored all that was beau-
tiful, eloquent, wise, and good, and he was the spirit of
activity, joy, and light; but his name signifies the strong
in mind.
From this brief outline it may be seen that in their
AEsir the Northmen recognised the creators, sustainers,
and regulators of the world as it now is, from whom
emanated the thought and life that pervade and animate
all nature, and the efforts to subject it to the spiritual
will. With Odin and the AEsir the intellectual life of
the northern people began; and although they ascribe
to them human forms and acts, these were seldom with-
out something higher and nobler than what pertains to
mortals; and while they recognised the existence of a
state of chaos and darkness before this world began with
the creation of the AEsir, they anticipated the advent of
another state, in which gods, like men, would receive
their award at the hands of a supreme All-father.
AESOP, the fabulist, is supposed to have been born
about the year 620 B.C., but the place of his birth is
uncertain, that honor being claimed alike by Samos,
Sardis, Mesembria in Thrace, and Cotiaeum in Phry-
gia. He was brought, while young, to Athens as a
slave, and having served several masters, was eventually
enfranchised by Iadmon the Samian. He thereupon
visited Croesus, king of Lydia, at whose court he is rep-
resented by Plutarch as reproving Solon for his discour-
teous manner towards the king. During the usurpation
of Pisistratus he is said to have visited Athens, and
composed the fable of Jupiter and the Frogs for the
instruction of the citizens (Phaedrus, i. 2). As the
ambassador of Croesus at Delphi, he was charged with
70
AE S
the payment of the large sum of four minae to each of
the citizens; but in consequence of some dispute, he
declined to distribute the money. The Delphians,
incensed at his conduct, accused him of Sacrilege, and
threw him headlong from a precipice, about 564 B.C.
• None of AEsop's works are extant. The popular
stories regarding him are derived from a life prefixed to
a book of fables purporting to be his, collected by Max-
imus Planudes, a monk of the 14th century. Whether
AEsop leſt any written fables has been justly disputed,
and Bentley inclines to the negative. Thus Aris-
tophanes represents Philocleon as learning his fables in
conversation, and not from a book; and Socrates essayed
to versify such as he remembered. Others again, are of
opinion that a collection had been made of them before
Socrates. It is, however, certain that fables bearing
AEsop's name were popular at Athens during the most
brilliant period of its literary history. A complete col-
lection of the AEsopean fables, 231 in number, was
published at Breslau, by J. G. Schneider, in 1810.
AESOP, a Greek historian, whose life of Alexander
the Great is preserved in a Latin translation by Julius
Valerius.
AESOP, CLODIUS, a celebrated actor, who flourished
about the 670th year of Rome. He and Roscius were
contemporaries, and the best performers who ever ap-
peared upon the Roman stage; the former excelling in
tragedy, the latter in comedy. Cicero was on intimate
terms with both actors, and put himself under their
direction to perfect his action. AEsop made his last ap-
É. on the stage in B.C. 55, at the dedication of
ompey’s theatre, on which occasion his voice failed
him. The son of AEsop took a pearl from the eardrop
of Caecilia Metella, and dissolved it in vinegar, that he
might have the satisfaction of swallowing eight thousand
pounds’ worth at a draught.
AESTHETICS is the term now employed to designate
the theory of the Fine Arts—the science of the Beau-
tiful, with its allied conceptions and emotions. The
province of the science is not, however, very definitely
fixed, and there is still some ambiguity about the mean-
ing of the term, arising from its etymology and various
use. The word aesthetic, in its original Greek form,
means anything that has to do with perception by the
senses. The limitation of the term to the compara-
tively narrow class of sensations and perceptions occu-
pied with the Beautiful and its allied properties is due to
the Germans, and primarily to Baumgarten, who started
from the Supposition that, just as truth is the end and
erfection of pure knowledge or the understanding, and
good that of the will, so beauty must be the supreme
aim of all sensuous knowledge.
A very brief survey of what has been written under
the name aesthetics is sufficient to show that it includes,
as its first and foremost problem, the determination of
the nature and laws of Beauty, including along with the
Beautiful, in its narrower signification, its kindred sub-
jects, the Sublime and the Ludicrous. To discover what
it is in things which makes them beautiful or ugly, sub-
lime or ludicrous, is one constant factor in the aesthetic
problem.
Metaphysical speculation in aesthetics centres about
the objective nature of beauty, and arises somewhat in
the following manner : — The appreciation of the Beau-
tiful is a mode of perception. In estimating a beautiful
landscape or a beautiful statue, the mind perceives the
beauty as a property of the object.
In the scientific discussion of aesthetic subjects, the
antithesis of subject and object in human cognition is
accepted as a phenomenal distinction, without any inquiry
into its ontological meaning. Inquirers no longer dis-
cuss the essence of beauty, looked on as a transcendental
conception above all experience, but seek to determine ina
what the Beautiful, as a series of phenomena, clearly and
visibly consists.
Greek Speculations.—Ancient Greece supplies us with
the first speculations on the Beautiful and the aims of the
fine arts. Nor is it surprising that among a people so
productive of noble artistic creations, and at the same:
time so speculative, numerous attempts to theorize on
these subjects should have been made. We have in
classic writings many allusions to works of an aesthetic
character now lost, such as a series on poetry, harmony,
and even painting, by Democritus. It is to be gathered,
too, from Plato's Dialogues that the Sophists made the
principles of beauty a special department in their teach-
ing. The first Greek thinker, however, whose views on
these subjects are at all known, is Socrates. Accepting
Xenophon's account of his views in the Memorabilia
and the Symposion, we find that he regarded the Beauti-
ful as coincident with the Good, and both of them as:
resolvable into the Useful. Every beautiful object is so
called because it serves some rational end, whether the
security or gratification of man.
Of the precise views of Plato on this subject, even if
they were really formed, it is very difficult to gain a just
conception from the Dialogues. At the same time wer
may conclude that Plato's mind leaned decidedly to a
theory of an absolute beauty.
In the Symposion he describes how love (Eros) pro-
duces aspiration towards the pure idea of beauty. It is.
only this absolute beauty, he tells us, which deserves the
name of beauty; and this is beautiful in every manner,
and the ground of beauty in all things. *
Omitting to notice the few valuable remarks oneaes-
thetic subjects of the later Greeks and their Roman
contemporaries, one may briefly refer to the views of the
Alexandrian mystic and Neo-Platonist, Plotinus. His
theory is found in an essay on the Beautiful in the series
of discourses called Æn meades. As to the characteristic
form of beauty, he supposed, in opposition to Aristotle,
that a single thing not divisible into parts might be
beautiful through its unity and simplicity. He attached
special worth to the beauty of colors in which material
darkness is overpowered by light and warmth. tº
After Plotinus there is little speculation on aesthetic
subjects till we come to modern writers. St. Augustine
wrote a treatise on the Beautiful, now lost, in which he
appears to have reproduced Platonic ideas under a Chris:
tian guise. He taught that unity is the form of all
beauty. Infinite goodness, truth, and beauty are the
attributes of the Deity, and communicated by him to
things. Of the modern theories, the German systems
are the most metaphysical, and have most affinity with
ancient speculation. In German literature the two
divisions of metaphysical deduction and critical con-
struction of aesthetic principles are very sharply con-
trasted, and nearly every writer on the subject is .
referred to one or other of the classes. On the one hand,
we have the laborious systematic philosophers, as Kant
and Hegel; and on the other, men who entered upon.
aesthetic speculation either as connoisseurs of some special
department, as Winckelmann and Lessing, or even as
productive artists—for example, Schiller and Goethe.
German Writers. — The first of the Germans who
attempted to fit a theory of the Beautiful and of Art
into a complete system of philosophy was Baumgarten.
The next original philosophical scheme of aesthetics is
that of Kant. His system of knowledge falls into three
branches— the critique of pure reason, which has to
determine what are the a priori elements in the
knowledge of objects; the critique of practical reason,
which inquires into the a priori determinations of the
will; and the critique of judgment, which he regards as:
AE S
7 I
a connecting link between the other two, and which has
to do with any a priori principles of emotion (pleasure
and pain), as the middle term between cognition and
volition. -
After Kant, the next philosopher to discuss the meta-
physics of the Beautiful and Art is Schelling. He
sought to engraft art upon his curious system of trans-
cendental idealism.
Passing over Solger, whose aesthetic doctrine is little
more than a revival of Platonism, we come to Hegel.
His system of philosophy falls into three parts, all based
on the self-movement of the idea or absolute: (1.) The
logic discussing the pure universal notions which are the
logical evolution of the absolute, as pure thought ; (2.)
Philosophy of nature — the disruption of thought, the
idea, into the particular and external ; (3.) Philosophy
of the spirit – the return of thought or the absolute
from this self-alienation to itself in self-cognizant thought.
Lessing is the first modern who has sought to deduce
the special function of an art from a consideration of the
means at its disposal. In his Zaokooza he defines the
boundaries of poetry and painting in a manner which has
scarcely been improved on since. In slight divergence
from Winckelmann, who had said that the representation
of crying was excluded from sculpture by the ancients as
unworthy of a great soul, Lessing sought to prove that it
was prohibited by reason of its incompatibility with the
conditions of plastic beauty. He reasoned from the
example of the celebrated group, the Laokoon. Visible
beauty, was, he said, the first law of ancient sculpture
and painting.
Goethe wrote several tracts on aesthetic topics, as well
as many aphorisms. He attempts to mediate between
the claims of ideal beauty, as taught by Winckelmann,
and the aims of individualisation. Schiller discusses, in
a number of disconnected essays and letters, some of the
principal questions in the philosophy of art. He looks
at art as a side of culture and the forces of human
nature, and finds in an aesthetically cultivated soul the
reconciliation of the sensual and rational. Other writers
of this class, as Wilhelm von Humboldt, the two
Schlegels, Gervinus, though they have helped to form
juster views of the several kinds of poetry, &c., have
contributed little to the general theory of art.
Aºrench writers on Asthetics.- In passing from Ger-
man to French writers on aesthetical topics we find, as
might be expected, much less of metaphysical assumption
and a clearer perception of the scientific character of
the problem. At the same time, the authors are but
few, and their works mostly of a fragmentary character.
Passing by the Jesuit André, who sought to rehabilitate
Augustin's theory of the Beautiful, we first light on the
name of Batteux. He seeks to determine the aims of
art by elucidating the meaning and value of the imita-
tion of nature. He classifies the arts according to the
forms of space and time, those of either division being
capable of combining among themselves, but not with
those of the other. Thus architecture, sculpture, and
painting may co-operate in one visible effect ; also music,
poetry, and the dance. Diderot, in the Encyclopédia,
sought to define beauty by making it to consist in the
perception of relations, naturalness, or fidelity to nature.
Père Buffier said it is the type of a species which gives
the measure of beauty. A beautiful face, though rare,
is nevertheless the model after which the largest number
is formed.
The lectures of Cousin, entitled Du Vrai, du Beau,
et du Bien, the Cours d’Asthétique of Jouffroy, and
the systematic treatise of Lévêque, La Science du Beau,
are the principal works of this school. The last, as the
most elaborate, will afford the student the best insight
into this mode of speculation.
. cal processes in the perception of the Beautiful.
Ataliazz and Dutch Writers. — There are few writers
on aesthetic subjects to be found in Italian and Dutch
literature, but they have little of original speculation.
The Italian, as Pagano and Muratori, follow French
and English writers. One Dutch writer, Franz Hem-
sterhuis (18th century), is worth naming. His philo-
sophic views are an attempt at reconciliation between
the sensational and the intuitive system of knowledge.
The only faculty of true knowledge is an internal sense,
nevertheless all true knowledge comes through the
senses. . The soul, desiring immediate and complete
knowledge, and being limited by its union with the
senses, which are incapable of perfectly simultaneous
action, strives to gain the greatest number of the ele-
ments of cognition or ideas in the shortest possible
time. In proportion as this effort is successful, the
knowledge is attended with enjoyment. The highest
measure of this delight is given by beauty, wherefore
it may be defined as that which affords the largest
number of ideas in the shortest time.
Zng/is/. Writers.- In the aesthetic speculations of
English writers, we find still less of metaphysical con-
struction and systematisation than in those of French
thinkers. Indeed, it may be said that there is nothing
answering to the German conception of aesthetic in our
literature. The inquiries of English and Scotch think-
ers have been directed for the most part to very definite
and strictly scientific problems, such as the psychologi-
The
more moderate metaphysical impulses of our country-
men have never reached beyond the bare assertion of
an objective and independent beauty. Hence we find
that the German historians regard these special and
limited discussions as so many empirical reflections,
wholly devoid of the rational element in true philoso-
phy. English writers are easily divisible into two
groups — (1.) Those who lean to the conception of a
primitive object beauty, not resolvable into any simpler
ingredients of sensation or simple emotion, which is
perceived intuitively either by reason or by some special
faculty, an internal sense; (2.) Those who, tracing the
genesis of beauty to the union of simple impressions,
have been chiefly concerned with a psychological dis-
cussion of the origin and growth of our aesthetic per-
ceptions and emotions.
Lord Shaftesbury is the first of intuitive writers on
beauty. His views are highly metaphysical and Pla-
tonic in character. The Beautiful and the Good are
combined in one ideal conception, much as with Plato.
Matter in itself is ugly. The order of the world,
wherein all beauty really resides, is a spiritual principle,
all motion and life being the product of spirit. The
principle of beauty is perceived not with the outer
senses, but with an eternal — that is, the moral— sense.
This perception affords the only true delight, namely,
spiritual enjoyment. Shaftesbury distinguishes three
grades of the Beautiful, namely, (1.) Inanimate objects,
including works of art; (2.) Living forms, which
reveal the spiritual formative force; and (3.) The source
from which these forms spring, God.
Hutcheson follows many of Shaftesbury's ideas. Yet
he distinctly disclaims any independent self-existing
beauty in objects apart from percipient minds. “All
beauty,” he says, “is relative to the sense of some mind
perceiving it.”
The next writer of consequence on the intuitive is
Reid. He held, on the ground of common sense, that
beauty must exist in objects independently of our minds.
As to the nature of the Beautiful, he taught that all
beauty resides primarily in the faculties of the mind,
intellectual and moral. The beauty which is spread over
the face of visible nature, is an emanation from this
72 G
AE S
spiritual beauty, and is beautiful because it symbolizes
and expresses it. Thus the beauty of a plant resides in
its perfection for its end.
He recognises three forms of Sublimity: those of
Extension or space, of Protension or time, and of In-
tension or power. Finally, he thinks that the Pictur-
esque differs from the Beautiful in appealing simply to
the imagination. A picturesque object is one whose
parts are so palpably unconnected that the understand-
ing is not stimulated to the perception of unity.
A very like interpretation of beauty, as spiritual and
typical of divine attributes, has been given by Mr. Rus-
kin in the second volume of his Moderzi Painters.
This part of his work, bearing the title “Of Ideas of
Beauty,” has a very systematic appearance, but is in
fact a singularly desultory series of aesthetic ideas put
into a very charming language, and colored by strong
emotion. The forms of typical beauty are —(i.) Infin-
ity, the type of the divine incomprehensibility; (2.)
Unity, the type of the divine comprehensiveness; (3.)
Repose, the type of the divine permanence; (4.) Sym.
metry, the type of the divine justice; (5.) Purity, the
type of the divine energy; and (6.) Moderation the type,
of government by law.
Of the more analytic writers on the effects of the
Beautiful, Addison deserves a passing mention. His
Essays on the Imagination, contributed to the Spectator,
are admirable specimens of popular aesthetic reflection.
Addison means by the pleasures of imagination those
which arise originally from sight, and he divides them
into two classes—(1.) Primary pleasure, which entirely
proceeds from objects before our eyes; and (2.) Second-
ary pleasures, flowing from ideas of visible objects. The
original sources of pleasure in visible objects are great-
ness, novelty, and beauty. The secondary pleasures, he
rightly remarks, are rendered far more extended than
the original by the addition of the proper enjoyment of
resemblance, which is at the basis of all mimicry and
Wit.
In the Elements of Criticism of Lord Kaimes, another
attempt is made to affiliate aesthetic phenomena to simpler
pleasures of experience. Beauty and ugliness are simply
the pleasant and the unpleasant in the higher senses of
sight and hearing. . He illustrates the English tendency
to , connect mental processes with physiological con-
ditions, by referring the main elements of the feeling of
sublimity to the effect of height in objects in compelling
the spectator to stand on tiptoe, by which the chest is
expanded and muscular movements produced which give
rise to the peculiar emotion.
Passing by the name of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose
theory of beauty closely resembles that of Père Buffier,
we come to the speculations of another artist and painter,
Hogarth. He discusses in his Analysis of Beauty all
the elements of visible beauty, both form and color,
often manifesting great speculative skill, and always
showing a wide and accurate knowledge of art. He
finds, altogether, six elements in beauty, namely — (1.)
Fitness of the parts to some design, as of the limbs for
support and movement; (2.) Variety in as many ways
as possible, thus in form, length, and direction of line,
shape, and magnitude of figure, &c.; (3.) Uniformity,
regularity, or symmetry, which is only beautiful when it
Thelps to preserve the character of fitness; (4.) Simplicity
or distinctness, which gives pleasure not in itself, but
through its enabling the eye to enjoy variety with ease;
(5.) Intricacy, which provides employment for our active
energies, ever eager for pursuit, and leads the eye “a
wanton kind of chase"; (6.) Quantity or magnitude,
which draws our attention, and produces admiration and
awe. . The beauty of proportion he very acutely resolves
into the needs of fitness. Hogarth applies these principles
to the determination of degrees of beauty in lines, and
figules, and compositions of forms. Among lines he
singles out for special honor the serpentine (formed by
drawing a line once round from the base to the apex of
a long, slender cone) as the line of grace or beauty par
excellence. Its superiority he places in its many varieties
of direction or curvature, though he adds that more
suddenly curving lines displease by their grossness, while
straighter lines appear lean and poor. In this last remark
Hogarth tacitly allows another principle in graceful line,
namely, gentleness, as opposed to suddenness, of change
in direction.
Burke's speculations on the Beautiful, in his Philo-
sophical Z727tary into the Origzze of our Zaleas of the
Sublime and Beautiful, are curious as introducing
physiological considerations into the explanation of the
feelings of beauty they illustrate, moreover, the tendency
of English writers to treat the problem as a physiologi-
cal one. He finds the elements of beauty to be — (1.)
Smallness of size; (2.) Smoothness of surface; (3.)
Gradual variation of direction of outline, by which he
means gentle curves; (4.) Delicacy, or the appearance of
fragility; (5.) Brightness, purity, and softness of color.
Alison, in his well-known Zssays on the Nature and
Arizzciples of Zasłe, proceeds on an exactly opposite
method to that of Hoganth and Burke. He considers
and seeks to analyse the mental process which goes on
when we experience the emotion of beauty or sublimity.
He finds that this consists in a peculiar operation of the
imagination, namely, the flow of a train of ideas through
the mind, which ideas are not arbitrarily determined, but
always correspond to some simple affection or emotion
(as cheerfulness, sadness, awe), awakened by the object.
Jeffrey’s Essays on Beauty is little more than a mod-
ification of Alison’s views.
D. Stewart’s chief merit in the aesthetic discussions,
contained in his A2/kilosophical Assays, consists in point-
ing out this unwarranted assumption of some single
quality (other than that of producing a certain refined
pleasure) lunning through all beautiful objects, and con-
stituting the essence of beauty.
Of the association psychologists James Mill did little
more towards the analysis of the sentiments of beauty
than re-state Alison’s doctrine. On the other hand,
Professor Bain, in his treatise The AEmotions and the
Will, carries this examination considerably further.
He asserts with Stewart that no one generalisation will
comprehend all varieties of beautiful objects. He
thinks, however, that the aesthetic emotions, those in-
volved in the fine arts, may be roughly circumscribed and
marked off from other modes of enjoyment by means of
three characteristics—(1.) Their not serving to keep up
existence, but being gratifications sought for them-
selves only; (2.) Their purity from all repul-
sive ingredients; (3.) Their eminently sympathetic or
sharable nature in contrast to the exclusive pleasures of
the individual in eating, &c.
An interesting turn has been given to the psychology
of aesthetics by Mr. Herbert Spencer. In some of his
essays, as the one entitled “The Origin and Function of
Music,” and more fully in the concluding chapter of his
Psychology (second edition), on the AEsthetic Sentiments,
he offers a new theory of the genesis of the pleasures of
beauty and art, based on his doctrine of evolution. He
takes up Schiller's idea of the connection between aes-
thetic activity and play, only he deals with this latter
not as an ideal tendency, but as a phenomenal reality,
seeking to make it the actual starting-point in the order
of evolution of aesthetic action. Play or sport is defined
as the superfluous and useless exercise of ſaculties that
have been quiescent for a time, and have in this way be-
come so ready to discharge as to relieve themselves by
A E T — A F F
73
simulated actions. AEsthetic activities yield to the
higher powers of perception and emotion the substituted
exercise which play yields to the lower impulses, agree-
ing with play in not directly subserving any process con-
ducive to life, but being gratifications sought for them-
selves only. This point of affinity between the two
classes of pleasure is a valuable addition to aesthetic
theory, and helps one to understand how the artistic
impulse first arose. Oscar Wilde, who a few years ago
created a furore in the United States by his lectures on
+sthetics, is the most noted exponent of the subject at
the present day.
AETION, whose picture of the marriage of Roxana
and Alexander was exhibited at the Olympic games,
flourished in the times of Hadrian and the Antonines.
AETIUS, a Roman general of the closing period of
the western empire, born at Dorostolus in Moesia, late
in the 4th century. While detained for some time as a
hostage in the camp of Rhuas, king of the Huns, he
acquired an influence with the barbarians that was after-
wards of much advantage to himself. He led into Italy
an army of 60,000 Huns. In Gaul he won his military
reputation, upholding for nearly twenty years, by com-
bined policy and daring, the falling fortunes of the
western empire. His greatest victory was that of Chalons-
sur-Marne (20th Sept. 451), in which he utterly routed
Attila and the Huns—the number slain on both sides
being, according to one computation, 300,000, though
this is obviously an exaggeration. This was the last tri-
umph of the empire. Three years later (454) Aëtius
presented himself at court to claim the emperor's daughter
in marriage for his son Gaudentius; but Valentinian, sus.
pecting him of designs upon the crown, slew him with his
own hand.
AETIUS, surnamed “the Atheist,” founder of an ex-
treme Sect of the Arians, was a native of Coele-Syria.
In 356 he went to Alexandria with Eunomius in order to
advocate Arianism, but he was banished by Constantius.
Julian the apostate recalled him from exile, bestowed
upon him an estate in Lesbos, and retained him for a time
at his court in Constantinople. Being consecrated a
bishop, he used his office in the interests of Arianism by
creating other bishops of that party. At the accession
of Valens (364) he retired to his estate at Lesbos, but
soon returned to Constantinople. He died in 367. *
AETIUS, a Greek physician, born at Amida in Meso-
potamia, who lived at the end of the 5th or the beginning
of the 6th century. He studied at Alexandria, and was
physician to the court at Constantinople.
AETNA. See ETNA.
AETOLIA, a country of ancient Greece. The country
is in general mountainous and woody, but along the
coast from the Achelous to the Evenus, and northward
to Mount Aracynthus, is a plain of great fertility. The
AEtolians were a restless and turbulent people, strangers
to friendship or principles of honor, and they were con-
sequently regarded by the other states of Greece as out-
laws and public robbers. On the other hand, they were
bold and enterprising in war, undaunted in the greatest
dangers, and jealous defenders of their liberties. They
distinguished themselves above all the other nations of
Greece in opposing the ambitious designs of the Mace-
donian princes, who, after having reduced most of the
other states, were forced to grant them a peace upon
very honorable terms. Social war was kindled by the
AEtolians with the express purpose of humbling the
Achaeans. In the latter they held out for the space of
three years against united forces, but were obliged at
last to purchase a peace by yielding up to Philip all
Acarnania. In order to regain this province they
entered into an alliance with Rome against Philip, and
proved of great service to the Romans in their war with
him; but, being dissatisfied with the terms of peace
granted by Flaminius, they made war upon the Romans
themselves. They were speedily overcome, and only
obtained peace on very humiliating terms. After the
conquest of Macedon by AEmilius Paullus the AEtolians
were reduced to a much worse condition ; for not only
those among them who had openly declared for Perseus,
but those who were only suspected to have secretly
favored him, were sent to Rome to clear themselves be-
fore the senate. There they were detained, and never
afterwards permitted to return to their native country.
Five hundred and fifty of the chief men were barbar-
ously assassinated by the partisans of Rome solely on the
suspicion of favoring the designs of Perseus. The AEto-
liams appeared before AEmilius Paullus in mourning
habits, and made loud complaints of such inhuman
treatment, but could obtain no redress; on the contrary,
ten commissioners, who had been sent by the Senate to
settle the affairs of Greece, enacted a decree, declaring
that those who were killed had suffered justly, since it
appeared to them that they had favored the Macedonian
party. From this time those only were raised to the
chief honors and employments in the AEtolian republic
who were known to prefer the interest of Rome to that
of their country. It is now included in the kingdom of
Greece.
A FANASIEF, ALEKSANDR NIKOLAEVICH, a Rus-
sian scholar, distinguished for his researches in Slavonic
literature and archaeology, was born in 1825 and died
in 1871.
źr, DOMITIUs, orator, born at Nismes, flourished
under Tiberius and the three succeeding emperors. He
disgraced his talents by acting as public accuser in behalf
of the emperors against some of the most distinguished
personages in Rome. Afer died in the reign of Nero,
A. D. 60.
AFFIDAVIT means a solemn assurance of a matter
of fact known to the person who states it, and attested
as his statement by some person in authority. Evidence
is chiefly taken by means of affidavits in the Courts of
Chancery in this and other countries. The term is gen-
erally applied to a statement certified by a justice of peace
or other magistrate. Affidavits are sometimes necessary
as certificates that certain formalities have been duly and
legally performed. They are extensively used in the
practice of bankruptcy, and in the administration of the
revenue. If any persons called as witnesses, or required
or desiring to make an affidavit or deposition, and shall
refuse or be unwilling from alleged conscientious motives
to be sworn, the court or justice may, on being satisfied
of the sincerity of such objections, allow such person to
make a solemn affirmation or declaration. Justices are
permitted to take affidavits in any matter by declaration,
and a person making a false affidavit in this way is liable
to punishment. Affidavits may be made abroad before
any ambassador, envoy, minister, chargé d'affairs, secre- -
tary of embassy or legation, consul, or consular agent.
AFFINITY, in Law, as distinguished from consan-
guinity, is applied to the relation which each party to a
marriage, the husband and the wife, bears to the kindred
of the other. A man cannot contract a marriage with
his wife's sister so as to be valid in one State of the
Union, by celebrating his marriage with her in another
State where such marriages are lawful.
AFFINITY, CHEMICAL, the property or relation
in virtue of which dissimilar substances are capable of
entering into chemical combination with each other.
Substances that are so related combine always in fixed
and definite proportions; the resulting compound differs
from its components in its physical properties, with the
exception that its weight is exactly the sum of their
weights; and the combination is always accompanied
74
A F F – A F G
with the evolution of heat. In these respects it differs
from a mere mechanical mixture; in the latter there is
contact without combination, and its properties are a
mean or average of those of the substances that compose
it. That effect may be given to chemical affinity, the
substances must be placed in contact ; but mere contact
is often insufficient, and combination only takes place on
the application of heat, light, electric agency, &c., or
through the interposition of some foreign substance.
Generally speaking, the affinity is less between sub-
stances that closely resemble each other than between
those whose properties are altogether dissimilar.
AFFIRMATION. See AFFIDAVIT.
AFFRE, DENIS AUGUSTE, Archbishop of Paris,
was born at St. Rome, in the department of Tarn, on
the 27th Sept. 1793. When fourteen years of age, he
became a student at the seminary of St. Sulpice. He
was ordained a priest in 1818. After filling a number of
ecclesiastical offices, he was elevated to the Archbishopric
of Paris in 1840. During the insurrection of 1848 the
archbishop was led to believe that by his personal inter-
ference peace might be restored between the soldiery
and the insurgents. He accordingly applied to General
Cavaignac, who warned him of the risk he incurred.
Soon afterwards, the firing having ceased at his request,
he appeared on the barricade at the entrance to the
Faubourg St. Antoine, bearing a green branch as a
sign of peace. His reception was not very favorable,
and he had spoken only a few words, when the insur-
gents, fancying they were betrayed, opened fire upon
the national guard, and the archbishop fell. He was
removed to his palace, where he died on the 27th June
1848. The archbishop wrote several treatises of con-
siderable value, including one on Egyptian hieroglyphics.
AFGHANISTAN.—This is the name applied, orig-
inally in Persian, to that mountainous region between
N.W. India and Eastern Persia, of which the Afghāns
are the most numerous and the predominant inhabitants.
Afghans, under that and other names, have played no
Small part in Asiatic history. But the present extensive
. of the name Afghdīmāstāzz is scarcely older
than the shortlived empire founded by Ahmed Khan in
the middle of last century. The Afghans themselves are
not in the habit of using the term.
In treating of this country, we include a part of the
Hazāra mountain region, but not that part of the Oxus
basin which is now under Afghan rule, for which see
AFGHAN TURKESTAN.
Afghanistan, generally may be regarded as a great
quadrilateral plateau — using that term in the technical
sense of a region whose lowest tracts even are consider-
ably elevated above the sea-level—extending from about
62° to 70° E. long., and from 30° to 35° N. lat. This
territory corresponds fairly to the aggregate of the
ancient provinces of Aria (Herät), Drangiana (Seis-
tän), the region of the Paropamisadaº (Kâbul), and
Azachosia (Kandahār), with Gandaritis (Peshāwar and
Yüzufzai). , Though the last territory belongs ethnically
to Afghanistan, an important part of it now forms the
British district of Peshāwar, whilst the remainder ac-
knowledges no master.
The boundaries of Afghanistan can be stated here
only roughly ; and, from the area thus broadly defined,
many portions will have to be deducted as occupied by
independent or semi-independent tribes. But, so under-
stood, they may be thus stated:—
On the north : beginning from east, the great range
of Hindu Kush, a western offshoot of the Himalaya,
parting the Oxus basin from the Afghan basins of the
Kabul river and Helmand. From long. 689 this bound-
ary continues westward in the prolongation of Hindu
Kush, called Koh-i-Bābā. This breaks into several
almost parallel branches, enclosing the valleys of the
river of Herat and the Murghāb or river of Merv.
The half-independent Hazara tribes stretch across these
branches and down into the Oxus basin, so that it is dif-
ficult here to assign a boundary. We assume it to con-
tinue along the range called Safed Koh or “White
Mountain,” which parts the Herat river valley from the
Murghab. 1
On the east : the eastern base of the spurs of the Suli-
mâni and other mountains which limit the plains on the
west bank of Indus, and the lower valleys opening into
these, which plains (the “Derajāt") and lower valleys ,
belong to British India. North of Peshāvar district the
boundary will be, for a space, the Indus, and then the
limit, lying in an unknown country, between the Afghan
and Dard tribes.
On the South : the eastern part of the boundary, occu-
pied by practically independent tribes, Afghan and
Bilâch, is hard to define, having no marked natural indi-
cation. But from the Shál territory (long. 67°) belong-
ing to the Bilâch state of KELAT, westward, the south-
ern limits of the valleys of the Lora river, and then of
the Helmand, as far as the Lake of Seistan in lat. 30°,
will complete the southern boundary. Thus the whole
breadth of Bilūchistān, the ancient Gedrosia, a dry
region occupying 5° of latitude, intervenes between
Afghanistan and the sea.
The western boundary runs from the intersection of the
Lake of Seistan with lat. 30°, bending eastward, so as
to exclude a part of the plain of Seistan on the eastern
bank of the lake, and then crosses the lake to near the
meridian of 61°. Thence it runs nearly due north, near
this meridian, to a point on the Hari-Rūd, or river of
Herat, about 70 miles below that city, where it encoun-
ters the spurs of the Safed Koh, which has been given as
the northern boundary.
But if we take the limits of the entire Afghan domin-
ions, as they at present exist, the western boundary will
continue north along the Hari-Răd to lat. 36°, and the
northern boundary will run from this point along the
borders of the Turkman desert, so as to include Andkhoi,
to Khoja Sāleh ferry on the Oxus. The Oxus, to its
source in Great Pamir, forms the rest of the northern
boundary. These enlarged limits would embrace the
remainder of the Hazara mountain tracts and the whole
of what is now called AFGHAN TURKESTAN, as well as
BADAKHSHAN with its dependencies, now tributary to the
Afghan Amir.
The extreme dimensions of Afghanistan, as at first
defined, will be about 600 miles from east to west, and
450 miles from north to south; and, if we take the whole
Afghan dominion, the extent from north to south will be
increased to 600 miles. Within both the areas so defined,
however, we have included some territory over which
the Afghan government has no control whatever, and
much over which its authority is respected only when
backed by a special exertion of force. Under the former
head come the valleys of the Yusufzai clan north of
Peshāwar, the Momands Afridis, Vaziris, &c., adjoining
that district on the west and south-west, the high-lying
valleys of Chiträl or Kāshkār, and of the independent
Pagans or Käfirs, among the loftier spurs of Hindu
Kush. Under the latter head come the eastern district
and (partially) of Kurram, the Kākar country in the
extreme south-east, much of the country of the tribes
called Eimák and Hazara in the north-west, and proba-
bly Badakhshān with its dependencies.
If we suppose the sea to rise 4000 feet above its exist-
ing level, no part of the quadrilateral plateau that we
I Not to be confounded with the more easterly Safed Kok of
the Kabul basin.
A F G
75
have defined would be covered, except portſbns of the
lower valley of the Kabul River, small tracts toward the
Indus, and a triangle, of which the apex should be at the
Lake of Seistan in the extreme south-west, and the base
should just include Herat and Kandahar, passing beyond
those cities to intersect the western and southern bound-
aries, respectively. Isolated points and ridges within
this triangle would emerge.
NATURAL DIVISIONS.—Of these, this Kabul basin
(I.) forms the first. As others we may discriminate —
(2.) The lofty central part of the table-land on which
stand Ghazni and Kala’t-i-Ghilzai, embracing the upper
valleys of ancient Arachosia; (3.) The upper Helmand
basin; (4.) The lower, Helmand basin, embracing
Girishk, Kandahar, and the Afghan portion of Seistan;
(5.) The basin of the Herat river; and (6.) The eastern
part of the table-land, draining by streams, chiefly occa-
sional torrents, towards the Indus.
A affael A'arine. —Its northern limit is the range of
Hindu Kush, a name which properly applies to the lofty,
snow-clad crest due north of Kabul, and perhaps espe-
cially to one pass and peak.
The Kabul river (the ancient Kophes) is the most
important river of Afghanistan. . It may be considered
as fully formed about 30 miles east of Kabul, by the
junction thereabouts (the confluence does not seem to
have been fixed by any traveller) of the following streams:
—(a.). The Kabul stream, rising in the Unai pass
towards the Helmand, which, after passing through the
city, has been joined by the Logar river flowing north
from the skirts of the Ghilzai plateau; (b.) A river
bringing down from the valleys Ghorband, Parwān, and
Panjshir, a large part of the drainage of Hindu Kush,
and watering the fruitful plain of Dâman-i Koh (the
“Hill-skirt”), intersected by innumerable brooks, and
studded with vineyards, gardens, and fortalices. This
river was formerly called Bārān, a name apparently
obsolete, but desirable to maintain; (c.) The river 7 agao,
coming down from the spurs of Hindu Kush on the
Kafir borders.
Some 30 miles further east, the Alishang enters on the
left bank from Laghmān, above which this river and its
confluents drain western KAFIRISTAN. Twenty miles
further, and not far beyond Jalālābād, the Kabul river
receives from the same side a confluent entitled, as re-
gards length, to countas the main stream. In some older
maps this bears the name of Kāma, from a place near
the confluence, and in more recent ones Kitzzer, from a
district on its lower course. Higher it is called the river
of Kas/Aar, and the Beilam. It seems to be the
Choaspes, and perhaps the Malamantus of the ancients.
It rises in a small lake near the borders of Pamir, and
flows in a south-west direction through the length of
Kashkar or Chitral, an independent valley-state, whose
soil lies at a height of 6000 to 1 1,000 feet. The whole
length of the river to its confluence with the Kabul river
cannot be less than 250 miles, i.e., about 80 miles longer
than that regarded as the main stream, measured to its
moSt remote SOurce.
The basin of the Kabul river is enclosed at the head
by the Paghman range, an offshoot of Hindu Kush,
which divides the Kabul valleys from the Helmand.
Generally the characteristics of this country are ele-
vated plateaux of sandy or gravelly surface, broken by
ranges of rocky hills, and often expanding in wide spaces
of arid waste, which terminate to the south-west in a
regular desert of shifting sand. Even in cultivated
parts there is a singular absence of trees, and when the
crops are not visible this imparts an aspect of great des-
olation and emptiness to the landscape. Natural wood,
however, is found in some parts of West Afghanistan,
as in the almost tropical delta of the Helmand, in the
Ghūr territory, and on the Herat river below Herat.
Generally, indeed, in such cases the trees appear to be
mimosas, tamarisks, and the like, with little body of
foliage.
Next to the Kabul river in importance, and probably
much exceeding it in volume as it certainly does in
length, is the Aſe/mand (AEtymander), the only consid-
erable river in its latitude from the Tigris to the Indus.
As we know nothing of the lake in which the Lora.
is said to end, and the greater part of the lake of
SEISTAN (see that article) is excluded from Afghanistan,
there remains only the A6-i- Istada, on the Ghilzai
plateau. This is about 65 miles S. S.W. of Ghazni,
and stands at a height of about 7000 feet, in a site of
most barren and dreary aspect, with no tree or blade of
grass, and hardly a habitation in sight. It is about 44.
miles in circuit, and very shallow; not more than 12
feet deep in the middle. The chief feeder is the
Ghazni river. The Afghans speak of a stream drain-
ing the lake, but this seems to be unfounded, and the
Saltness and bitterness of the lake is against it. Fish
entering the salt water from the Ghazni river sicken and
die.
The chief political divisions of Afghanistan in recent
times are stated to be Kabul, Jalalabad, Ghazni, Kan-
dahar, Herat, and AFGHAN TURKESTAN (q.v.), to
which are sometimes added the command of the Ghilzais.
and of the Hazaras. This list seems to omit the un-
ruly districts of the eastern table-land, such as Kurrum,
Khost, &c.
In addition to KABUL, GHAZNI, KANDAHAR, HERAT,
described under those articles, there are not many places
in Afghanistan to be called towns. We notice the fol-
lowing: —
Jalālābād lies, at a height of 1946 feet, in a plain on
the south of the Kabul river. It is by road roo miles
from Kabul, and 91 from Peshawar. Between it and
Peshawar intervene the Khybar and other adjoining
passes; between it and Kabul the passes of Jagdalak,
Khurd-Kabul, &c. Akbar built Jalalabad. Hindus
form a considerable part of the town population, and
have a large temple.
Asté/if is a town in the Koh Daman, 20 miles N.N.W.
of Kabul, which was stormed and destroyed, 29th Sep-
tember, 1842, by a force under General M’Caskill, to
punish the towns-people for the massacre of the garrison.
at Charikar, and for harboring the murderers of
Burnes. The place is singularly picturesque and beauti-
ful. The town is estimated, with seven villages depend-
ing on it, to contain about 18,000 souls.
Chârikâr (population 5000) lies about 20 miles north
of Istalif, at the north end of Koh Daman, and watered
by a canal from the Ghorband branch of the Baran
river.
A ala’t-i-Ghilzai has no town, but is a fortress of
some importance on the right bank of the Tarnak, on
the road between Ghazni and Kandahar, 89 miles from
the latter, and at a height of 5773 feet.
Girish/ is also a fort rather than a town, the latter
being insignificant. It is important for its position on
the high road between Kandahar and Herat, command-
ing the ordinary passage and Summer ford of the Hel-
mand.
A'arrah belongs to the Seistan basin, and stands on
the river that bears its name, and on one of the main
routes from Heras to Kandahar, 164 miles from the
former, 236 miles from the latter. The population
came back to the southern site after the destruction of
the mediaeval city by Shah Abbas, and the city pros-
pered again till its bloody siege by Nadir Shah. Since
then, under constant attacks, it has declined, and in
1837 the remaining population, amounting to 6000, was
----------
76
A F G
carried off to Kandahar. Such are the vicissitudes of a
<ity on this unhappy frontier.
Sabzwär, the name of which is a corruption of old
Persian, Zsphizar, “horse-pastures,” is another important
strategic point, 93 miles from Herat and 71 miles north
of Farrah, in similar decay to the latter.
Zarzzz is a town in the famous but little known country
of Ghur, to the east of Herat, the cradle of a monarchy
(the Ghurid dynasty) which supplanted the Ghaznevides,
and ruled over an extensive dominion, including all
Afghanistan, for several generations.
The variety of climateis immense, as might be expected.
At Kabul, and over all the northern palt of the country
to the descent at Gandamak, winter is rigorous, but
especially so on the high Arachosian plateau. In Kabul
the snow lies for two or three months; the people seldom
leave their houses, and sleep close to stoves. At Ghazni
the snow has been known to lie long beyond the vernal
equinox; the thermometer sinks to . Io9 and 15° below
zero (Fahr.); and tradition relates the entire destruction
of the population of Ghazni by Snow-storms more than
“On Ce,
Afghanistan is believed to be rich in minerals, but few
are wrought. Some small quantity of gold is taken from
the streams in Laghman and the adjoining districts.
Famous silver mines were formerly wrought near the
Jhead of the Panjshir valley, in Hindu Kush. Iron of
excellent quality is produced in the (independent) terri-
tory of Bajaur, north-west of Peshawar, from magnetic
iron sand, and is exported. Iron ore is most abundant
near the passes leading to Bamian, and in other parts of
Hindu Kush. Copper ore from various parts of Af-
ghanistan has been seem, but is nowhere worked.
Lead is found, e.g., in Upper Bangash (Kurran dis-
trict), and in the Shinwari country (also among the
branches of Safed Koh), and in the Kakar country.
There are reported to be rich lead mines near Herat
scarcely worked. Lead, with antimony, is found near
the Arghand-ab, 32 miles north-west of Kala’t-i-Ghilzai;
in the Wardak hills, 24 miles north of Ghazni; in the
Ghorband valley, north of Kabul; and in the Afridi
dountry, near our frontier. Most of the lead used, how-
ever, comes from the Hazara country, where the ore is
described as being gathered on the surface. An ancient
mine of great extent and elaborate character exists at
Feringal, in the Ghorband valley. Antimony is obtained
in considerable quantities at Shah-Maksud, about 30
miles north of Kandahar.
Silicate of zinc in modular fragments comes from the
2hob district of the Kakar country.
Sulphur is said to be found at Herat, dug from the
soil in small fragments, but the chief supply comes from
the Hazara country, and from Pirkisri, on the confines
of Seistan, where there would seem to be a crater, or
fumarole. Sal-ammoniac is brought from the same
place. Gypsum is found in large quantities in the plain
of Kandahar, being dug out in fragile coralline masses
from near the surface.
Coal (perhaps lignite) is said to be found in Zurmat
(between the Upper Kurram and the Gomal) and near
Ghazni.
Nitre abounds in the soil over all the south-west of
Afghanistan, and often affects the water of the Äärez, or
subterranean canals.
In most parts of the country there are two harvests,
as generally in India. One of these, called by the
Afghans bahárak, or the spring crop, is sown in the end
of autumn, and reaped in Summer. It consists of wheat,
barley, and a variety of lentils. The other, called pāizah
or tármái, the autumnal, is sown in the end of spring,
and reaped in autumn. It consists of rice, varieties of
millet and sorghum, of maize, Phaseolus Mungo, tobacco,
beet, turnips, &c. The loftier regions have but one har-
VeSt.
Wheat is the staple food over the greater part of the
country. Rice is largely distributed, but is most abun-
dant in Swat (independent), and best in Peshawar (Brit-
ish). It is also the chief crop in Kurram. In much of
the eastern mountainous country bd/ra (Holcus spicatus)
is the chief grain. Most English and Indian garden-
stuffs are cultivated; turnips in some places very largely,
as cattle food.
The growth of melons, water-melons, and other cucur-
bitaceous plants is reckoned very important, especially
near towns; and this crop counts for a distinct harvest.
Sugar-cane is grown only in the rich plains; and
though cotton is grown in the warmer tracts, most of the
cotton cloth is imported.
Madder is an important item of the spring crop in
Ghazni and Kandahar districts, and generally over the
west, and supplies the Indian demand. It is said to be
very profitable, though it takes three years to mature.
Saffron is grown and exported. The castor-oil plant is
everywhere common, and furnishes most of the oil of
the country. Tobacco is grown very generally; that of
Kandahar has much repute, and is exported to India
and Bokhara. Two crops of leaves are taken.
Lucerne and a trefoil called shaftal form important
fodder crops in the western parts of the country, and,
when irrigated, are said to afford ten or eleven cuttings
in the season. The Áoma! (Prangos pačzularia) is
abundant in the hill country of Ghazni, and is said to
extend through the Hazara country to Herat. It is
stored for winter use, and forms an excellent fodder.
Others are derived from the Aſolcus sorghum, and two
kinds of panick. It is common to cut down the green
wheat and barley before the ear forms, for fodder, and
the repetition of this, with barley at least, is said not to
injure the grain crop.
Of great moment are the fruit crops. All European
fruits are produced profusely, in many varieties, and of
excellent quality. Fresh or preserved, they form a prin-
cipal food of a large class of people, and the dry fruit is
largely exported. In the valleys of Kabul, mulberries
are dried, and packed in skins for winter use. This mul-
berry cake is often reduced to flour, and used as such,
forming in some valleys the main food of the people.
Grapes are grown very extensively, and the varieties
are very numerous. The vines are sometimes trained on
trellises, but most frequently over ridges of earth 8 or Io
feet high. The principal part of the garden lands in
villages round Kandahar is vineyard, and the produce
must be enormous.
Open canals are usual in the Kabul valley, and in
eastern Afghanistan generally; but over all the western
parts of the country much use is made of the Karez,
which is a subterranean aqueduct uniting the waters of
several springs, and conducting their combined volume
to the surface at a lower level. Elphinstone had heard
of such conduits 36 miles in length.
As regards vertebrate zoölogy, Afghanistan lies on the
frontier of three regions, viz., the AEurasian, the Ætheo-
piazz (to which region Biluchestan seems to belong), and
the Zndo-AMalayam. Hence it naturally partakes some-
what of the forms of each, but it is in the main Eura-
Jºž0.72.
The camel is of a more robust and compact breed
than the tall beast used in India, and is more carefully
tended. The two-humped Bactrian camel is sometimes
seen, but is not a native.
Horses form a staple export to India. The best of
these, however, are brought from Maimana and other
places on the Chorasan and Turkoman frontier. . The
indigenous horse is the yābū, a stout, heavy-shouldered
A F G
77
animal, of about 14 hands high, used chiefly for burden,
but also for riding. It gets over incredible distances at
an ambling shuffle; but is unfit for fast work, and can-
not stand excessive heat.
The cows of Kandahar and Seistan give very large
quantities of milk. They seem to be of the humped
variety, but with the hump evanescent. Dairy produce
is important in Afghan diet, especially the pressed and
dried curd called Armit (an article and name perhaps intro-
duced by the Mongols).
There are two varieties of sheep, both having the fat
tail. One bears a white fleece, the other a russet or
black one. Much of the white wool is exported to
Persia, and now largely to Europe by Bombay. Flocks
of sheep are the main wealth of the nomad population,
and mutton is the chief animal food of the nation. In
autumn large numbers are slaughtered, their carcases
cut up, rubbed with salt, and dried in the sun. The
same is done with beef and camel's flesh.
The goats, generally black or parti-colored, seem to
be a degenerate variety of the shawl-goat.
Silk is produced in Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar,
and Herat, and chiefly consumed in domestic manufac-
tures, though the best qualities are carried to Panjab
and Bombay.
Excellent carpets — soft, brilliant, and durable in
color—are made at Herat. They are usually sold in
India as Persian. Excellent felts and a variety of woven
goods are made from the wool of the sheep, goat, and
Bactrian camel.
Rosaries are extensively made at Kandahar from a
soft crystallized silicate of magnesia (chrysolite). The
best are of Semi-transparent straw color, like amber.
They are largely exported, especially to Mecca.
Practically, there are no mavigable rivers in Afghan-
istan, nor does there exist any wheeled carriage. Hence
goods are carried on beasts of burden, chiefly camels,
along roads which often lie through close and craggy
defiles, and narrow, stony valleys among bare mountains,
or over waste plains. Though from time immemorial
the larger part of the products of India destined for
western Asia and Europe has been exported by sea, yet
at one time valuable caravans of these products, with
the same destination, used to traverse these rugged
Afghan roads.
The chief imports by Peshawar from India into
Afghanistan are cotton, woollen, and silk goods ; from
England, coarse country cloths, sugar and indigo,
Benares brocades, gold thread and lace, Scarves, leather,
groceries, and drugs. The exports are raw silk and
silk fabrics of Bokhara, gold and silver wire (Russian),
horses, almonds and raisins, and fruits generally, furs
(including dressed fox skins and sheep skins), and bullion.
A’aces may first be divided into Afghan and non-Af-
ghan, of whom the Afghan people are predominant in
numbers, power and character.
The Afghans themselves do not recognise as entitled
to that name all to whom we give it. According to
Bellew they exclude certain large tribes, who seem,
neverthcless, to be essentially of the same stock, speak-
ing the same language, observing the same customs, and
possessing the same moral and physical characteristics.
These are recognised as Patháns, but not as A/g/hans,
and are all located in the vicinity of the Sulimani mount-
ains and their offshoots towards the east.
Of the Afghans proper there are about a dozen great
clans, with numerous subdivisions. Of the great clans
the following are the most important: —
The Durrënis, originally called Abdalis, received the
former name from a famous clansman, Ahmed Shah.
The Ghilzais are the strongest of the Afghan clans,
and perhaps the bravest.
The Yusufzais occupy an extensive tract of hills and
valleys north of Peshawar, including part of the Pesha-
war plain.
The Kakars, still retaining in great measure their in-
dependence, occupy a wide extent of elevated country
in the south-east of Afghanistan, among the Spurs of the
Toba and Sulimani mountains, bordering on the Biluch.
tlibes.
Of the non-Afghan population associated with the Af-
ghans, the 737. As come first in importance and numbers.
The Kızılödishes may be regarded as modeln Persians,
but more strictly they are Persianised Tulks, like the
present royal race and predominant class in Persia.
The Hazáras have their stronghold and proper home
in the wild, mountainous country on the not th-west of
Afghanistan proper, including those western extensions.
of Hindu Kush.
The Hazaras generally have features of Mongol type,
often to a degree that we might 'call exaggerated, and
there can be no doubt that they are mainly descended
from fragments of Mongol tribes who came from the
east with the armies of Chinghiz Khan and his family,
though other races may be represented among the tribes
called Hazaras.
Almdé is a term for a sept or section of a tribe. It
has come to be applied, much as hazara, to certain
nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes west of the Hazaras, of
whom we have been speaking, and immediately north
of Herat.
Aſ mudkis.- This is the name given to people of Hindu
descent scattered over Afghanistan. They are a fine,
athletic, dark, handsome race, considerable in numbers,
but poor, and usually gaining a livelihood as farm-Ser-
vants, barbers, sweepers, musicians, &c.
Bilitchis.- Many of these squat among the abandoned
tracts on the lower Helmand ; a fierce and Savage peo-
ple, professing Islam, but not observing its precepts,
and holding the grossest superstitions; vendetta their
most stringent law; insensible to privation, and singu-
larly tolerant of heat; camel-like in capacity to do
without drink; superior to the Afghans in daring and
address, which are displayed in robber raids carried into
the very heart of Persia.
There remain a variety of tribes in the hill country
north of the Kabul river, speaking various languages,
seemingly of Prakritic character, and known as Kohis-
tanis, Laghmanis, Pashais, &c.; apparently converted
remnants of the aboriginal tribes of the Kabul basin, and
more or less kindred to the still unconverted tribes of
Kafiristan, to the Chitral people, and perhaps to the
Dald tribes who lie to the north of the Afghan country
on the Indus.
An able officer of the staff in India (Col. Macgregor)
has lately made a diligent attempt to estimate the popu-
lation of Afghanistan, which he brings to 4,901,OOO
Souls. g
The Afghans, in government and general manners,
have a likeness to other Mahommedan nations; but they
have also many peculiarities.
Besides their division into clans and tribes, the whole
Afghan people may be divided into dwellers in tents and
dwellers in houses; and this division is apparently not
coincident with tribal divisions, for of several of the
great clans, at least a part is nomad and a part settled,
Such, e.g., is the case with the Durrani and with the
Ghilzai.
They are under some indefinite control by their chiefs,
to whom serious disputes are referred. Petty matters
are settled by the “greybeards" of the community,
guided by the Afghan traditional code. Many of the
nomad tribes are professed and incorrigible thieves.
Among certain tribes the ceremony of naming a male
78
A F G
child is accompanied by the symbolical act of passing
him through º made in the wall of a house, whilst
a volley of musketry is fired overhead.
The settled Afghans form the village communities,
and in part the population of the few towns. Their
chief occupation is with the soil. They form the core
of the nation and the main part of the army. Nearly
all own the land on which they live, and which they cul-
tivate with their own hands or by hired labor.
As a race, the Afghans are very handsome and ath-
letic, often with fair complexion and flowing beard,
generally black or brown, sometimes, though rarely, red;
the features highly aquiline. The hair isshaved off from
the forehead to the top of the head, the remainder at
the sides being allowed to fall in large curls over the
shoulders. Their step is full of resolution; their bear-
ing proud and apt to be rough.
The women have handsome features of Jewish cast
(the last trait often true also of the men); fair complex-
ions, sometimes rosy, though usually a pale Sallow; hair
braided and plaited behind in two long tresses terminat-
ing in silken tassels. They are rigidly secluded, but
intrigue is frequent. In some parts of the country the
engaged lover is admitted to visits of courtship, analo-
gous to old Welsh customs.
The Afghans, inured to bloodshed from childhood, are
familiar with death, and are audacious in attack, but
easily discouraged by failure; excessively turbulent and
unsubmissive to law or discipline; apparently frank and
affable in manner, especially when they hope to gain
some object, but capable of the grossest brutality when
that hope ceases. They are unscrupulous in perjury,
treacherous, vain, and insatiable, passionate in vindict-
iveness, which they will satisfy at the cost of their own
lives and in the most cruel manner. Nowhere is crime
committed on such trifling grounds, or with such general
impunity, though when it is punished the punishment is
atrocious. . Among themselves the Afghans are quarrel-
some, intriguing, and distrustful; estrangements and af-
frays are of constant occurrence; the traveller conceals
and misrepresents the time and direction of his journey.
The Afghan is by breed and nature a bird of prey. If
from habit and tradition he respects a stranger within
his threshold, he yet considers it legitimate to warn a
Ineighbor of the prey that is afoot, or even to overtake
and plunder his guest after he has quitted his roof. The
repression of crime and the demand of taxation he regards
alike as tyranny. The Afghans are eternally boasting of
their lineage, their independence, and their prowess.
They look on the Afghans as the first of nations, and
each man looks on himself as the equal of any Afghan,
if not as the superior of all others.
The political institutions of the Afghans present the
rude and disjointed materials of a free constitution. The
Ination is theoretically divided into four great stocks, sup-
posed to spring from four brothers. But these four
divisions are practically obsolete, and only come up in
genealogies. Each tribe has split into several branches,
and in the more numerous and scattered tribes these
tranches have separated, and each has its own chief. They
retain, however, the common name, and an idea of com-
munity of blood and interests.
The type of the Afghan institutions is perhaps best
seen in some of the independent tribes near the British
frontier. These cling most closely to the democratic
traditions. Their rude state of society is held together
by a code as rude, which is acknowledged, however, and
understood by every one, and enforced by the commu-
nity, every member of which considers its infringement
as an act committed against his own privileges. The
Maliks or chiefs are the representatives of the tribe,
division or family to which they each belong, but they
possess no independent power of action, and before they
can speak in council, they must have collected the wishes
of the bodies which they represent.
Justice is administered in the towns, more or less
defectively, according to Mohammedan law, by a kāzi
and muftis.
A prominent law in this code is that called Mazza-
watai, or “entering in.” By this law the Pathan is
bound to grant any boon claimed by the person who
crosses his threshold and invokes its sanctions, even at
the sacrifice of his own life and property.
The Afghans are Mohammedans of the Sunni or
orthodox body, with the exception of a few tribes, per-
haps not truly Pathan, who are Shiahs. They are very
Superstitious in regard to charms, omens, astrology, and
so forth, and greatly addicted to the worship of local
Saints, whose shrines (ziyārat) are found on every hill-
top. The shrine, a domed tomb, or mayhap a heap of
stones within a wall, sometimes marks the saint’s grave,
but it is often a cenotaph. The saint may have been
unknown in life for his virtues, but becomes after death
an object of veneration, for reasons often hard to dis-
cern. In the immediate environs of Ghazni there are no
less than 197 of these shrines.
A very marked feature in Afghan character is the
passionate love for field sports, especially hawking.
Deer-stalking in the open plains, the driving of game to
well-known points by a host of beaters, and wild-fowl
shooting with decoys, are others of their sports. They
are capital horsemen, and unerring marksmen with the
native rifle (jezail).
Among themselves the people are convivial and
humorous. Festive gatherings are frequent, where they
come together, not to buy or sell, or even to quarrel,
but to make a noise and be happy. Tilting, shooting,
racing, and wild music vary the amusements.
They have a wild dance called the 4tan, in which the
men work themselves into great excitement. Among
some Kakar tribes it is said the atan is sometimes
danced by both sexes together.
Afghanistan is now, and has been before, under one
prince, but it is hardly a monarchy as we are used to
understand the term. It is rather the government of a
dictator for life over a military aristocracy, and within
this a congeries of small democracies.
The revenues of Dost Mahommed Khan were esti-
mated in 1857 at 4,000,000 rupees, or about £400,000.
This included Aſghan Turkestan, but not Herat, which
he did not hold. The Herat revenue was estimated
some years before (probably too low) at £80,000. In
the later years of Dost Mahommed the net revenue is
stated to have amounted to 4,710,000, of which the
army cost 4430,000.
Customs dues at Kabul and Kandahar are only 2%
per cent. nominally, but this is increased a good deal by
exactions. There is a considerable tax on horses ex-
ported for sale, and a toll on beasts of burden exporting
merchandise, from 6 rupees on a loaded camel to I rupee
on a donkey.
According to the old system the Afghan forces were
entirely composed of the ulus, or tribesmen of the
chiefs, who were supposed to hold their lands on a con-
dition of service, but who, as frequently as not, went
over to the enemy in the day of need. As a counter-
poise, the late Amir Dost Mahommed began to form a
regular army. In 1858 this contained 16 infantry regi-
ments of (nominally) 800 men, 3 of cavalry of 300 men,
and about 8o field-pieces, besides a few heavy guns.
The pay was bad, and extremely irregular, and punish-
ments were severe. The men were fine, but recruited
in the worst manner, viz., the arbitrary and forcible
seizure of able-bodied men.
A F G
79
Persian is the vernacular of a large part of the non-
Afghan population, and is familiar to all educated
Afghans. But the proper language of the Afghans is
Aus/illſ, or Pukhtit (these are dialectic variations).
There is a respectable amount of Afghan literature.
The oldest work in Pushtu as yet mentioned is a
history of the conquest of Swat by Shaikh Māli, a
chief of the Yusufzais, and leader in the conquest
(A.D. 1413–24).
The literature is richest in poetry.
(17th century) is the best known poet.
Iluliſler OllS.
The Afghan chroniclers call their people Bani-Israil
(Arab. for Children of Israel), and claim descent from
King Saul (whom they call by the Mahommedan corrup-
tion 7%i/itt), through a son whom they ascribe to him,
called Jeremiah, who again had a son called Afghāna.
And one of the Afghan histories, quoted by Mr.
Bellew, relates “a current tradition ” that previous to
the time of Kais, Bilo, the father of the Biluchis, Uzbaá
(evidently the father of the Uzbegs), and Afghana, were
considered as brethren. As Mahommed Uzbeg Khan,
the eponymus of the medley of Tartar tribes called
Uzbegs, reigned in the 14th century, A D., this gives
some possible light on the value of these so-called
traditions.
The most notable facts in later history must be briefly
stated. In 1848, when the Sikh revolt broke out, Dost
Mahommed, stimulated by popular outcry and by the
Sikh offer to restore Peshawar, crossed the frontier and
took Attok. A cavalry force of Afghans was sent to
join Sher Singh against the British, and was present at
the battle of Gujerat (21st Feb. 1849). The pursuit of
the Afghans by Sir Walter Raleigh Gilbert, right up to
the passes, was so hot that the Dost owed his escape to
a fleet horse.
In 1850 the Afghans re-conquered Balkh.
In January 1855, friendly intercourse, which had been
renewed between the Dost and the British government,
led to the conclusion of a treaty at Peshawar.
In November 1855, after the death of his half-brother,
I'ohandil Khan of Kandahar, the Dost made himself
master of that province. In 1856 came the new Per-
sian advance to Herat, ending in its capture, and the
English expedition to the Persian Gulf. In January
1857 the Dost had an interview at Peshawal with Sir J.
Lawrence, at which the former was promised arms and
a subsidy for protection against Persia. In consequence
of this treaty a British mission under Major Lumsden
proceeded to Kandahar. The Indian mutiny followed,
and the Afghan excitement strongly tried the Dost’s
fidelity, but he maintained it. Lumsden’s party held
their ground, and returned in May 1858.
In 1863, Dost Mahommed, after a ten months' siege,
captured Herat; but he died there thirteen days later
(9th June), and was succeeded by his son Sher Ali Khan.
Since then the latter has passed through many vicissi-
tudes in rivalry with his brothers and nephews, and at one
time (1867) his fortunes were so low that he held only
Balkh and Herat. By the autuillil of 1868, however,
he was again established on the throne of Kabul, and
his competitors were beaten and dispersed. In April
1869 Sher Ali Khan was honorably and splendidly
received at Amballa by the Earl of Mayo, who had
shortly before replaced Sir J. Lawrence. Friendly
relations were confirmed, though the Amir's expectations
were not fulfilled. He received the balance of a dona-
tion of 4, 120,000 which had been promised and partly
paid by Sir John Lawrence. A considerable present of
artillery and arms was made to him; since then some
small additional aid in money and arms has been sent,
but no periodical subsidy.
Abdarrahmān
Ballads are
In 1870 the Ameer's eldest son, Yakub Khan, who
had shown great ability as the governor of Herat, and
had, on many occasions, given his father valuable
assistance, broke into open rebellion against him. In
1873 Abdulla Jan was proclaimed heir-apparent, and in
1874 Yakub was imprisoned by his father at Kabul.
For some time previous to 1878 there had been an
estrangement between Shere Ali and the British govern-
ment; he had then made overtures to Russia; and had
welcomed at his capital a Russian mission. In conse-
quence of these new relations with Russia, Shere Ali
was invited to receive a British mission; his refusal led,
after some fruitless negotiations, to war, and hostilities
began by forcing the entrance to the Khyber Pass,
toward the end of November. Severe fighting fol-
lowed, but the English were everywhere successful.
Before the end of December, Jelalabad was occupied
without resistance, and Kandahar a little later. Shere
Ali fled from Kabul to Turkestan, and died at Mazar-i-
Sharif toward the end of February, 1879. Yakub
Khan was proclaimed Ameer in the following month,
and, on May 26th, signed a treaty of peace with the British
at Gandamak. It was provided that the British repre-
sentative should reside at Kabul, and that the British
government should defend Afghanistan from foreign
aggression, the Ameer receiving a subsidy; while the
Kuram, Pishin and Sibi valleys, the Khyber and Michni
passes, were to remain under the control of the British
government as part of a line of scientific defensible
frontier for India. This settled matters for a time, but
in September of the same year, the revolted troops of
the Ameer surrounded and attacked the British resi-
dency. The resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari, and his
staff, with almost the whole of their Indian guard, were
cut to pieces after a desperate and gallant resistance.
Measures were immediately adopted for punishing this
outrage. Sir F. Roberts, with a force of over 6,000
men, after defeating the Afghans at Charasia, twelve
miles from Kabul, on October 6th, took possession of
that city on the 12th, when Yakub Khan abdicated, and
put himself under British protection. All went well for
two months, but early in December there were gather-
ings of the tribes in the neighborhood of Kabul.
Attempts to disperse them were defeated, and the Brit-
ish were beleaguered for ten days in their cantonments
at Sherpur. The arrival of reinforcements, under
General Gough, enabled them once more to take the
field, and the war was continued in a desultory way.
In June, 1880, Ayub Khan, a younger brother of
Yakub Khan, the ex-Ameer, proclaimed a ghaza, or
holy war, and announced his intention of marching on
Kandahar, then in the possession of the British. A
brigade under Brigadier-General Burrows was sent
against him. On the 27th of July Burrows marched to
attack Ayub at Maiwand, and was completely defeated,
with a loss of over 1,000 killed and wounded. A
second reverse followed in August, when Brigadier-
General Brooke's column was attacked, and had to
retire with heavy loss, that officer being killed. Abdul
Rahman Khan, who had been a pensioner of the Rus-
sian government, in Samarkand, from 1870 to 1880, in
the meanwhile had come to terms with the British
government, and had, in July, been recognized as
Ameer. The withdrawal of the army of occupation
had been decided on, when news of the Maiwand dis-
aster was brought. To avenge this, General Roberts
marched with a force from Kabul on August 9th, and
reached Kandahar on the 31st. On the following day
he totally defeated Ayub Khan, the Afghan camp,
artillery and baggage falling into his hands, while Ayub
himself escaped with a handful of horse. Before with-
drawing, the British troops reduced to submission some
8O
A F R
A F G —
refractory tribes, and completed the evacuation of
Afghanistan by the end of April, 1881. Abdul Rah-
man Khan, with the assistance of the British govern-
ment, shortly after made himself master of the whole
country.
Russia's proposal, in 1882, to delimit the frontier of
Afghanistan, was received coldly in England. In July,
I884, however, a commission was appointed to demar-
cate the boundary between Aſghanistan and the ter-
ritory of the Turkomans. Gen. Sir Peter Lumsden
was nominated by the British government, and General
Zelenoi by the Russian. The line on which the com-
missioners were to be engaged was from Kwaja Sala on
the Oxus, to Sarakhs. But after the annexation of
Merv and the preliminary surveys of M. Lessar, in the
valleys of the Khushk and Murghab, the Russian
authorities took a different view. They contended that
the Paropamisus was the true boundary of Herat, and
that the district of Badghis, inhabited by Saryk Tur-
komans, who had proffered their allegiance to the
Czar, lay outside Afghan territory. Questions of such
grave moment, it was further stated, required to be
Settled by the two European governments before the
commissioners could enter on their duties, and General
Zelenoi was, without further explanation, sent to Tiflis.
General Lumsden waited for him for four months on
the Murghab, with an escort of 500 men, besides fol-
lowers. In the meanwhile, the Russian outposts were
advanced so as to include part of the debatable land.
By their occupation of Zulfikar, fifty miles south of
Pul-i-Khatun, the outposts of the two nations were
brought into immediate contact, and it was only
through the urgent remonstrances of General Lumsden
that a collision was avoided. Matters were further
complicated by the attack on Panjdeh, near the fork of
the Khushk and Murghab rivers, by a force under the
command of General Komaroff, on March 30, 1885,
and by his seizure of this important strategical position.
During 1886 the demarcation of the frontier was pro-
ceeded with, and in April, 1887, the British and Rus-
sian commissioners met at St. Petersburg. After some-
what protracted negotiations, an agreement was effected,
resulting in a compromise of the points at issue, con-
cessions having been made on jº sides. Russia ob-
tained the valleys south of Panjdeh for nine or ten
miles in the direction of Herat; on the other hand, the
Ameer of Bokhara waived his claims to the pasture-
lands on the left bank of the Amu Daria, south of
Khoja Saleh. Russia now touches the northwestern
frontier of Afghanistan, and has developed her railway
communication in this direction with extraordinary
rapidity, Meanwhile Great Britain has fortified and
garrisoned Quetta in Beluchistan, on the southern
frontier of Afghanistan, and connected it with India by
a railway extended (1887) as far as Pishin. In 1887
troubles arose between the Ameer and rebellious Ghil-
. and other subjects, and some severe struggles took
21CC.
AFGHAN TURKESTAN is a convenient name
applied of late years to those provinces in the basin of
the Oxus which are subject to the Amir of Kabul.
Badakhshan and its dependencies, now tributary to the
Amir, are sometimes included under the name.
We do not know the precise divisions maintained
under the Afghans, but they coincide generally with the
old principalities or khanates, the hereditary rulers of
which, in several cases, continue in authority under the
Afghan governor of Turkestan. Bamian, Saighan, and
the higher valleys, belong, it is understood, to a special
command over the Hazara tribes.
AFIUM-KARA-HISSAR, a city of Asiatic Turkey,
in pashalic of Anatolia, nearly 200 miles E. of Smyrna,
and 50 miles S.S.E. of Kutaiah. The population is
estimated at about 60,000.
AFRAGOLA, a town of Italy, in the province of
Napoli, 6 miles N.N.E. of Naples. Pop. 25,000.
AFRANIUS, LUCIUS, a Latin poet who lived about
a century before Christ. IIe wrote comedies in imita-
tion of Menander; and was commended by Cicero and
Quintilian for his acute genius and fluent style.
AFRANIUS, LUCIUS, was a devoted friend and ad-
herent of Pompey. In the year 60 B.C., and chiefly by
Pompey’s support, he was raised to the consulship. On
the rupture between Caesar and Pompey, he was com-
ºl. to surrender to Caesar at Herda, 49 B.C., and was
ismissed on promising not to serve again in the war.
Afranius, regardless of his promise, joined Pompey at
Dyrrhachium, and at the battle of Pharsalia, 48 B.C., he
had charge of Pompey's camp. On the complete defeat
of Pompey, Afranius repaired to Africa, and was plesent
at the battle of Thapsus, 46 B.C., which ruined the
hopes of the Pompeians in that part of the world. Escap-
ing from the field, he was afterwards taken prisoner, and
handed over to Caesar, whose veterans, disappointed at
his not being led to immediate execution, lose in tumult
and put him to death.
AFRICA, this vast continent, though associated from
the dawn of civilization with traditions and mysteries of
the most stimulating kind, has remained until recently one
of the least known, and, both commercially and politi-
cally, one of the least important of the great divisions of
the globe. The knowledge of Africa possessed by the
ancients was very limited, owing principally to its phys-
ical construction. The great desert, which in, a broad
belt stretches quite across the continent, forbade every
attempt to pass it until the introduction of the camel by
the Arabs. The want of any known great liver, except
the Nile, that might conduct into the interior, con-
tributed to confine the Greek and Roman colonists to .
the habitable belt along the northeln coast. The
Phoenicians are known to have formed establishments
on the northern coast of Aſlica at a very eally period of
history, probably not less than 3,000 years ago; and the
conquest of Egypt by Cambyses dates as far back as the
year B. c. 525. We may consider, therefore, the coasts
of Egypt, of the Red Sea, and of the Mediterranean,
to have been settled and well known to the ancient
Asiatics, who were constantly passing the narrow
isthmus which divided their country from Africa and
led them immediately from parched deserts into a fertile
valley, watered by a magnificent river. But whether
they were much or little acquainted with the western
coast, which bounds the Atlantic, and the eastern coast,
washed by the Indian Ocean, is a question that has
exercised the research and ingenuity of the ablest
Scholars and geographers, and has not yet been Satisfac-
torily answered. ©
The extent to which ancient discovery proceeded
along the eastern coast of Africa, has divided the
opinion of the learned nearly as much as its progress on
the western coast. Delisle, Huet, and Bochart, made
the discovery of the coast to extend as far south as
Mozambique and Madagascar. D'Anville could trace
such discovery no further than to Cape Delgado; and
M. Gosselin contends that the ancients never proceeded
down beyond Brava.
Egypt, under the Ptolemies, the great patrons of
science and promoters of discovery, possessing the
advantage of the only great liver which falls from the
African continent into the Mediterranean, made no.
progress beyond its ancient boundaries; and though
the Romans, who subsequently possessed Egypt, pene-
trated beyond the fimits of their own dependencies,
they extended their discoveries no further than Fezzan
90°-Longitude west zoºroºn Greenwich. 10°
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long. W.25°of Greenwich.
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AFRICA.
SCALE of MILEs.
10--- 100 - - - - - -
Copyright, 1890, by Rand, McNally & Co.
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Scale of Miles,
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A F R.
8 I
in one direction, and, at a later period, beyond Nubia
as far as Abyssinia, and the regions of the Upper Nile.
We know nothing of the progress made by the Cartha-
ginians in the discovery of Interior Africa; but although
it has been asserted that their merchants had reached the
banks of the interior river, which we call the Kawara or
Niger, they have left nothing on record that will warrant
such a supposition. The people from whom we derive
the first information concerning the interior of Northern
Africa are the Arabs, who, by means of the camel, were
able to penetrate across the great desert to the very
centre of the continent, and along the two coasts as
far as the Senegal and the Gambia on the west, and to
Sofala on the east. On this latter coast they not only
explored to an extent far beyond any supposed limits
of ancient discovery, but planted colonies at Sofala,
Mombas, Melinda, and at various other places.
The 15th century produced a new era in maritime
discovery. The voyages of the Portuguese were the first
to give anything like an accurate outline of the coasts,
and to complete the circumnavigation of Africa. The
discovery of America and the West India islands gave
rise to that horrid traffic in African negroes, which has
since been suppressed ; but this traffic has been the
means of acquiring a more extended and accurate knowl-
edge of that part of the coast which lies between the
rivers Senegal and the Cameroons, as well as of the
manners and character of the people who inhabit this
extended line of coast.
During the last sixty years more has been done to
make us acquainted with the geography of Africa than
during the whole of the 17OO previous years since Ptol-
emy taken together. With Mungo Park, strictly
speaking, commences the era of unceasing endeavors to
explore the interior.
Mungo Park proceeded in 1795 from the river Gambia
on the west coast, to the Joliba (commonly called Niger),
traced this river as far as the town of Silla, explored the
intervening countries, determined the southern confines
of the Sahara, and returned in 1797. In 1805 this ad-
venturous traveller embarked on a second journey in the
same regions, for the purpose of descending the
river Joliba to its mouth. This journey added little to
the discoveries already made, and cost the traveller his
life. He is ascertained to have passed Timbuktu, and
to have reached Boussa, where he was killed by the na-
tives. In 1798 Dr. Lacerda, a scientific Portuguese trav-
eller, who had already acquired fame through his journeys
in Brazil, made the first great journey in South-Eastern
Africa, inland from Mozambique, and reached the capi-
tal of the African king, known as the Cazembe, in whose
country he died.
Hornemann, in 1796–98, penetrated from Cairo to
Murzuk, and transmitted from that place valuable in-
formation respecting the countries to the south, espe-
cially Bornu. He then proceeded in that direction, but it
is supposed that he soon afterward perished, as no ac-
counts of his further progress have ever reached Europe,
The first actual crossing of the continent that has been
recorded was accomplished between the years 1802 and
1806, by two Pombeiros or mercantile traders in the
employment of the Portuguese, who passed from Angola
eastward through the territories of the Muata Hianvo
and the Cazembe, to the possessions on the Zambeze.
In 1816 an expedition was sent out by the English Gov-
ernment under the command of Captain Tuckey, to the
river Congo, which was at that time believed to be the
lower course of the Joliba. This was a disastrous un-
dertaking, and the geographical additions were but slight,
the river having been ascended a distance of 280 miles.
The explorations of the latter half of the nineteenth
century, actuated as they were by diverse motives, are
full of interest and have resulted in giving the world a
great if not entirely complete knowledge of this vast
continent.
In 1849 the English Government appointed James
Richardson, an experienced African traveler, to the
command of an expedition which was to start from
Tripoli, and thence endeavor to penetrate to the central
part of the continent. Two German naturalists, Doc-
tor Barth and Mr. Overweg, accompanied the expedi-
tion. They penetrated to Mourzouk ; then passed
over the Sahara, visited the hilly oasis of Azben and
its principal town, Agades. In 1851 they reached the
Soudan midway between the Niger and Lake Tchad.
Richardson and Overweg both died on the journey, but
Barth pressed forward and gave to the world its first
and most accurate knowledge of the western Soudan.
In 1854 he explored the Niger and visited Timbuctu.
The next year he was joined by Doctor Vogel, who had
been sent out to replace Mr. Overweg. For another
year they carried on their labors together, and fixed
the altitude of Lake Tchad and the latitude of Kouka.
Their operations covered an immense field, embracing
more than twenty-five degrees of latitude and as much
of longitude. Doctor Barth's work is an inexhaustible
mine of information concerning all this region.
From 1862 onward, many French travelers and
soldiers have done much to solve the geographical prob-
lems of northwestern Africa, and in 18So two French-
men, M.M. Moustier and Ziveifel, discovered the source
of the Niger.
Many were the attempts to penetrate the basin of the
Nile, but travelers ascending that stream were baffled
for centuries. Finally, two German missionaries opened
the way from the east coast. Between 1847 and 1852
Doctors Krapf and Rebman traveled Ioo leagues
Inland ſrom the eastern coast, and discovered a high
chain of mountains covered with snow. Rebman dis-
covered Kilima-Njaro, and Krapf, Mount Kenia. Here
they heard of great lakes lying beyond, and their reports,
published in 1856, decided the London Geographical
Society to send an expedition in that direction. It was
placed under the command of Captains Burton and
Speke, and in 1857 they left Zanzibar and traveled
westward. The result of their expedition was the dis-
covery of Lake Tanganyka and the Victoria Nyanza.
In 1860 Speke and Grant made another journey to the
great lakes, following substantially the same route as
before. They reached the Victoria Nyanza, and, in
1863, entered upon the river issuing therefrom, and
arrived at Gondokoro, where they met Col. Samuel
Baker on his way up the Nile. Speke and Grant
returned to England, but Baker pressed onward up the
Nile by a different route, and, in 1864, discovered another
lake which he named Albert Nyanza.
The news of these discoveries awakened great inter-
est throughout Europe, and African travel was thence-
forth undertaken with ardor. In every direction trav-
elers pierced the continent. Doctor Schweinfurth,
from 1869 to 1874, journeyed through the valley of the
Nile, and penetrated beyond Khartoum, into the
country of the Monbuttus, or dwarfs, and the Nyam-
Nyam. Schweinfurth’s discoveries were of the highest
value. Between 1869 and 1873 Sir Samuel Baker,
under the auspices of the Khedive, made a second ex-
pedition tºp the Nile for the purpose of suppressing the
slave traffic. On this expedition he completed the
survey of Albert Nyanza.
David Livingstone's explorations began substantially
in 1840, when he first went out to South Africa as a
missionary, but it was not until 1849 that he crossed
the great southern plateau, and discovered Lake
Ngami. Between 1851 and 1854 he ascended the
82
A F R.
Zambesi river for several hundred miles, and crossing
the interior westward, reached Loanda on the Atlantic
coast. He then retraced his steps to where he had left
the Zambesi, and followed that stream to the east
coast. On this journey he discovered Victoria falls.
From 1858 until 1861 he was engaged in further explor-
ations, traced with Mr. Kirk the source of the river Shire,
and examined the country about Lake Nyassa. Return-
ing to the Cape he made preparations for his last journey.
He reached the Chambezi river, south of Tanganyka, in
1868. This river, under this name, falls into Lake
Bemba or Bangweola. Thence it issues as the Luapula
until it falls into Lake Moero, whence it issues as the
Lualaba. Livingstone traced it through three lakes,
and it was his belief that it was the true source of the
Nile. We know it now to be the head waters of the
Congo. He was employed in these explorations and
in traveling around Lake Tanganyka for several years,
though nothing was heard from him in Europe, save
disquieting rumors of his death.
In 1871, Henry M. Stanley, then a reporter on the
New York Herald, was sent by his employer, James
Gordon Bennett, to find Livingstone. He reached Zan-
zibar in January, 1871, organized a caravan, and
started for Lake Tanganyka. It was not until the fol-
lowing November that he reached his destimation and
delivered supplies to Livingstone, then sorely in need of
them. Stanley remained with Livingstone four months,
making explorations around the lake, discovering the
River Rusizi flowing into the north end of the lake.
Stanley returned home, and Livingstone continued his
explorations until May, 1873, when he died.
The travels of Livingstone, embracing a period of
thirty years, added immensely to the domain of geo-
graphical knowledge, but all was not yet known. In-
terest was still aroused as to the relation of the great
lakes to the Nile, and all the region about them was
still a blank on the map of Africa.
In 1873 the Geographical Society of London resolved
to continue Livingstone’s explorations, and with that
view sent out Lieutenant Cameron. His orders were
to find Livingstone, if living, and place himself under
his command. At Zanzibar he organized an expedi-
tion, three beside himself being Europeans. Marching
westward through a difficult and often hostile country,
he finally reached Tabora, or Kazeh, where he heard of
Livingstone’s death. He found Livingstone’s last jour-
mals and papers, and sent them home. He then
established himself at Ujiji, determined the altitude of
Lake Tanganyka, made a survey of the south half of the
lake, and proved that the Lake Liemba of Livingstone
was identical with Tanganyka. He discovered an
intermittent outflow from the lake, which he supposed
flowed into the Lualaba. In his further explorations he
came to the conclusion, which subsequently was proved
to be correct, that Tanganyka and the Lualaba did not
belong to the Nile system, as Livingstone supposed, but
to the Congo. His observations showed that the
Lualaba was at least one hundred feet below the level
of the Nile at Gondokoro, while the discharge of water
through it was five times as great. From the lack of
boats Cameron could not actually verify his supposition,
as Stanley afterward did. , Cameron's researches proved
of great value, for his observations were scientifically
made and his maps showed latitude, longitude, and
altitude with accuracy.
Cameron was followed by an explorer whose discover-
ies have had a still greater celebrity. In 1874 Henry
M. Stanley was sent, at the expense of the New York
Aerald and the London 7 elegraph, to continue Living-
stone's explorations. No expense was spared to give
exceptional advantages to the expedition. Organizing
at Zanzibar, Stanley visited the mountains that separate
the basin of the Indian Ocean from Tanganyka and the
Nile. He discovered the most southern source of the Nile,
and explored the rivers Livumba and Shimiyu. In the
spring of 1875 he completely circumnavigated Victoria
Nyanza, and surveyed its shores. Going south he dis-
covered another-large lake, the Muta Nzige, now known
as Albert Edward Nyanza, and arrived at Ujiji on Lake
Tanganyka. There he followed Cameron’s route to
Nyangwe on the Lualaba, upon which he launched his
boat, Z'he Zady Alice, in which he had sailed over the
great lakes. The river swept to the north, but follow-
ing the stream, though encountering many hostile
Savages, he descended to the Atlantic, thus proving the
Lualaba and the Congo to be identical. His travels
had lasted three years. g
In 1879 Stanley was again sent out to Africa under
the auspices of the International Association, at the
head of which was the king of Belgium, for the purpose
of founding the Congo Free State. Stations were
established along the Congo river. Roads were built;
and many of the affluents of the river were explored.
The whole country is now being rapidly opened to
trade.
Other explorers have also done much to add to our
knowledge of Africa. ... Between 1859 and 1865 Du
Chaillu made two expeditions from the Gaboon region
into the interior, discovering the gorilla, and the Fan
tribe of cannibals. De Brazza, a French naval officer,
made several expeditions in the equatorial region and
on the Congo between 1878 and 1880. A Portuguese
explorer, Maj. Serpa Pinto, crossed the continent
from Benguela to the Zambesi in 1877 and 1878.
Doctor Holub, a Hungarian naturalist, made some
valuable and interesting explorations in southern Africa
in 1886–87. From the east coast the enterprise of
travelers and explorers have been quite as great. In
1880 Joseph Thompson explored the region between
Nyassa and Tanganyka, and, in 1884, made a journey from
Mombasa, by Kilima-Njaro and Mount Kenia, across
Masai land to Victoria Nyanza. In 1884 Mr. H. H.
Johnston ascended Kilima-Njaro to the height of
16,200 feet. In 1885–86 Dr. G. A. Fischer, in his
attempt to relieve Emin Pasha, reached north to Lake
Baringo. In 1881–82 De Pogge and Lieutenant
Wissmann crossed the continent from west to east,
leaving Loanda and traveling to Nyangwe, which they
reached in April, 1882. From here Wissmann contin-
ued his journey to Zanzibar, where he arrived in No-
vember, 1882, having crossed the whole of Africa in
twenty-three months. The region passed through is
one of great fertility, though the natives are savage and
in some places practice cannibalism. Here is the great
empire of the Muata Yamvo, which is drained by the
Kasai and other tributaries of the Congo. It is the
“sphere" now claimed by Portugal.
In 1885 Lieutenant Wissmann organized another expe-
dition and returned to the Kasai river, exploring it into
the Congo. Other travelers in the various quarters of
the Congo region were Doctor Junker, Mr. Grenfell,
Capello and Ivens, and Dr. Oscar Wolf.
The reports of the wonderful fertility and resources of
the great lake region of the Upper Nile stimulated the
khedive of Egypt to add all those provinces to his own.
The Soudan and Equatoria were conquered and annexed
to Egypt, and in 1874 General Gordon was appointed to
rule over them. The seat of government was at Khar-
toum. One of Gordon's lieutenants was Edward
Schnitzler, a Prussian Jew, a physician by profession,
who had traveled and seen service in Turkey, Armenia,
Syria, and Arabia, and in 1876 had been employed by the
khedive. He took the name of Emin Effendi, and, in
A F R.
83
1878, Gordon appointed him governor of the Equatorial
province, his capital being at Lado. There he remained
through all the subsequent disasters that befell the
Egyptian arms, including the fall of Khartoum and the
death of Gordon, in December, 1884. After the death
of Gordon the Mahdists began to threaten Emin Bey,
or Emin Pasha, as he was then known, and he fell
back from Lado south to Wadelai on the branch of
the Nile which issues from Albert Nyanza. Here
be became isolated from the world. For months and
months he heard nothing from Egypt, though he knew
the Soudan was in rebellion, and that his own safety
was threatened. In December, 1886, a relief expedi-
tion was organized to carry supplies to him, and to
escort him to the coast, if he desired to leave his post.
The command of the expedition was given to Henry M.
Stanley. After a discussion of the various routes by
which the Albert Nyanza might be reached, that by
way of the west coast and the Congo river was deemed
the most advisable. Recruiting a force at Zanzibar,
Stanley carried it by steamer around the Cape to the
Congo, and thence up that river to its junction with
the Aruwimi, and then up the Aruwimi to Yambuya,
1,300 miles from the sea. This point was reached June
15, 1887, and was to be the base of the expedition.
Dividing his command, he left what was called the rear
guard, under the command of Maj. Edmund Barttelot,
and on June 28th, with the advance column, comprising
389 men, plunged into the great African forest, hitherto
unknown and unexplored. The rear guard, composed
df 129 men, was to await further reënforcements
and supplies, and was then to follow the advance.
The objective point was Kavalli, a village at the
southern extremity of Albert Nyanza, distant 330
geographical miles from Yambuya, estimated , at
55o English miles. For 160 days Stanley marched for-
ward with his men through jungle and bush and forest.
He followed the course of the Aruwimi, which runs
through the forest almost due east and west, and, after-
ward, of its confluents, the Ituri and the Ihuri. The
column met with unparalleled hardships, and almost
suffered complete starvation, so difficult was it to obtain
sufficient supplies of food. From two to ten miles a
day was the rate of travel, so difficult was it to make a
road through the jungle. They passed through many
villages of hostile tribes and had many skirmishes with
them. In this great forest dwell the Pigmies, or Wam-
butti dwarfs. After incredible suffering and the loss
of many men, the column emerged from the forest on
December 5th and came out upon a beautiful grassy
plain over which roamed buffaloes, antelopes, and other
varieties of wild animals. Two miles to the east of
where they emerged, a tall peak arose 4,600 feet above
the sea, named by Stanley Mount Pisgah. A range of
mountains lay further eastward, at the foot of which
rolled the Albert Nyanza, the objective point of the
-expedition.
The natives of the grass-land were quite as hostile as
the forest tribes, and several battles took place ere
‘Stanley reached the lake. On December 14th he
reached Kavalli, but he could learn no word of Emin.
He had left his steel whale boat in the forest with a de-
tachment of his men, unable to travel, and as Wadelai,
where Emin was supposed to be, was a march twenty-
five days distant through a rocky and sterile country,
Stanley deemed it most advisable to return for the boat,
hoping also to hear some word of the rear guard left at
Yambuya.
Back into the forest they went, and at West Ibiri
built Fort Bodo, as a place of rest and safety, while a
detachment was sent further back to Ungarowina for
the boat. The return to the lake was accomplished by
April 18, 1888, when Stanley received a letter from .
Emin. On April 29th they met. After delivering a
portion of supplies to Emin, Stanley turned back into
the forest in quest of his rear guard, of which nothing
had been heard. Through the width of the forest he
again journeyed all the way to Banalya, but a short
distance from Yambuya, the original starting point.
There he found the remains of the rear guard in a
terrible plight. Major Bartlelot had been murdered,
and all the European officers, except Mr. Bonny, were
gone. More than half of the force had deserted or was
dead. Reorganizing the command, Stanley led it
through the forest and brought it, not without disaster
and suffering, once more to Albert Nyanza. This great
African forest stretches in unbroken density north and
south 621 miles, with an average breadth of 517 miles.
The sun can scarcely penetrate it. The trees, compris-
ing almost every variety of wood, grow to an enormous
height, some reaching 180 feet, while underneath there
is a thick growth of bushes and vines. Innumerable
insects swarm everywhere. Birds of many varieties
inhabit the trees, while wild animals, all manner of
reptiles, lemurs, chimpanzees, and baboons make their
homes in its dark recesses. Added to these are the
various tribes of the forest, among them the dwarfs, the
most vicious and degraded of beings. They slay their
enemies as well as their game with poisoned arrows,
Many of Stanley's men fell victims to their poisoned
arrows, or to poisoned skewers, deftly concealed in the
pathway, upon which they would tread. The whole
region reeks with disaster and death.
This forest Stanley crossed three times in this, the
most memorable of all his expeditions. It was not
until January, 1889, that he succeeded in bringing his
forces, or what remained of them, to Kavalli. His
various journeys through the forest occupied him nearly
eighteen months. Three months more were occupied
in making preparations to escort Emin Pasha and his
people to the sea coast at Zanzibar. April Ioth the
caravan started from the southern extremity of Albert
Nyanza and, December 4th following, safely reached
Bagamonya. Stanley's quest, relief, and rescue of
Emin were ended. Besides the nature and character of
the great forest the discoveries made on this expedition
were great and important. Chief among them was the
discovery of the Ruwenzori range of mountains—the
Mountains of the Moon—south of Lake Muta-Nzige,
re-named Lake Albert-Edward by Stanley. This snow
covered range, towering 16,000 feet above the sea, had
never been noticed by any modern explorers of the
lake region. It seems to have been known to the
ancients, however, as the Mountains of the Moon. Its
waters are drained into Lake Albert-Edward, and are
thence discharged through the Semlika river into the
Albert Nyanza. From this latter lake the White Nile
1SSüleS.
This expedition of Stanley's leaves little to be dis-
covered in Africa that is now absolutely unknown.
All that remains to be done is detail, in the way of
accurate measurements and observations.
The origin and meaning of the name of this great
continent has been a fertile subject for conjecture among
philologists and antiquaries. By the Greeks it was
called Libya, and by the Romans, Africa.
With respect to the word Africa, Suidas tells us that
it was the proper name of that great city which the
Romans called Carthago, and the Greeks, A archedon.
It is certain, at least, that it was applied originally to
the country in the immediate neighborhood of Carthage.
that part of the continent first known to the Romans,
and that it was subsequently extended with their increas-
ing knowledge, till it came at last to include the whole
84
A F R
continent. Of the meaning of the name, the language
of Carthage itself supplies a simple and natural explan-
ation; the word Afrygah, signifying a separate estab-
lishment, or in other words a colony, as Carthage was
of Tyre. So that the Phoenicians of old, at home, may
have spoken of their Afrygah, just as we speak of our
colonies. Be that as it may, the Arabs of the present
day still give the name of Afrygah or Afrikiyah to the
territory of Tunis. . It may also be remarked that the
name seems not to have been used by the Romans till
after the time of the first Punic war, when they became
first acquainted with what they afterwards called Africa
Aropria.
Africa lies between the latitudes of 38° N. and 35° S.,
and is of all the continents the most truly tropical. It
is, strictly speaking, an enormous peninsula attached to
Asia by the isthmus of Suez. The most northern point
is the Cape, situated a little to the west of Cabo Blanco,
and opposite Sicily, which lies in lat. 37° 20' 40" N.,
long. 9° 41' E. Its southernmost point is Cabo d'Agul-
has, in 34° 49' 15" S.; the distance between these two
points being 433O geographical, or about 5000 English
miles. The westernmost point is Cabo Verde, in long.
17° 33' W., its easternmost Cape Jerdaffun, in long.
51° 21' E., lat. IO* 25' N., the distance between the
two points being about the same as its length. The
western coasts are washed by the Atlantic, the northern
by the Mediterranean, and the eastern by the Indian
Ocean.
The form has been likened to a triangle, or to an oval,
but such a comparison is scarcely warranted, it being of
an irregular shape, the northern half rounding off, the
southern one contracting and terminating in a point.
The superficial extent of Africa has never been accu-
rately determined, but may be taken at 9,858,000 geo-
#. Square miles, exclusive of the islands. It is
arger than either Europe or Australia, but smaller than
Asia and the New World.
The coast line of Africa is very regular and unbroken,
presenting few bays and peninsulas. The chief indenta-
tion is formed by the Gulf of Guinea, with its two sec-
ondary divisions, the Bight of Benim and the Bight of
Biafra. On the northern coast, the Gulf of Sidra and
the Gulf of Kabes must be mentioned, and on the eastern
coast the Gulf of Arabia. -
The physical configuration may be considered under
two heads, the great lower-lands and plains of Northern
Africa, and the great table-lands, with their mountain
ranges and groups, of Central and Southern Africa.
The great northern lower-land comprises the Sahara,
the Lake Chad region, and the valley of the Lower
Nile. The Sahara is by no means a plain throughout,
but for the greater part it rises into table-lands, inter-
spersed with mountain groups of 6000 feet elevation, and
probably more, and the term lower-lands can only be
applied to it in a general way, to distinguish it from the
more elevated region to the south.
The great mass of the African plateau land is to
southward of the Ioth parallel of N. latitude, but it is
prolonged on the eastern side almost to the north coast
of the continent by the wedge-shaped table-land of
Abyssinia, the highest surface in Africa, and by the
mountains which extend from it between the lower
course of the Nile and the Red Sea. The terminal
point of the highland in this direction may be said to be
Jebel Attaka, which rises immediately west of Suez to a
height of 2640 feet. From this point to the southern
extremity of the continent the eastern and generally
higher edge of the great plateau runs in an almost un-
broken line. Passing Southwards along its margin, the
most prominent heights before the table-land of Abys-
sinia is reached are Mounts Elba, 6900, and Soturba,
6ooo feet in elevation, near the middle of the Africal
coast of the Red Sea. There may, however, be greater
heights in the little known region of Nubia, which lies.
between these mountains and the Nile.
The eastern slope of the Abyssinian plateau begins.
immediately south of the port of Massowah, and is a
uniform line of steep descent, unbroken by any river,
ſalling abruptly from an average height of 7000 feet to
the depressed plain which here skirts the coast of the
Red Sea. This edge, which extends southward for at
least 800 miles, forms the water-parting of the rivers:
which have ſurrowed deeply into the opposite slopes of
the plateau, and appears to be higher than the general
surface of the country; yet several lofty groups of mount-
ains rising from the level of the high land attain a much
greater elevation, and Mount Abba Jared, the highest
known point, is estimated at 15,000 feet above the sea. .
Between the most southern part of Abyssinia which is.
known, and the equator, where the edge of the plateau
has again been partly explored, a long space of unknown
country intervenes; but there is every reason to believe
that the slope is continuous. Mount Keni, 18,000 feet.
and Kilima-njaro, 18,715 feet, the highest points in all
Aſrica, mark the eastern edge under the equator; further
south on the inland route ſrom Zanzibar to the Tanganyika
the edge is known as the Rubeho Mountains, with a
height of 5700 feet at the pass by which they are crossed
on the caravan route. Still further, the edge is again
known where it forms a rampart, called the Njesa,
walling in the Nyassa Lake. From this point Mount.
Zomba, 7000 feet high, near Lake Shirwa, Mount Milanje,
8ooo feet, and Mount Clarendon, 6OOO feet, carry it
south to where the Zambeze river" makes the first break.
in its uniform line. The narrows and rapids of Lupata,
below the town of Tete, mark the point at which the
river breaks through the plateau land to the coast slope
beneath it. Passing the river, the eastern edge is again
followed in the Mashona and Matoppo Mountains (72OO
feet) of Mosilikatse's kingdom, from which heights the
chief tributaries of the Limpopo river flow. At the
head-waters of that river the plateau edge forms the
Hooge Veldt of the Transvaal Republic, which joins.
with the Kathlamba or Drakenberg. The portion of
the edge which bears this name is specially prominent ;
it runs southward in a huge wall of rocky crags which
support the table-land behind for 500 miles, almost
parallel with the coast, and at a distance of 150 miles.
from it, having Zulu Land, Natal, and Caffraria on the
slopes of the spurs which it throws down to the coast.
In the Transvaal Republic, where the Drakenberg joins.
the Hooge Veldt, the edge attains a height of 8725 feet
in the summit named after the explorer Mauch, but it is.
highest where it forms the interior limit of Natal, and
where Cathkin Peak rises to 10,357 feet above the Sea.
The western edge of the great African plateau is gen.
erally lower than the eastern, since the whole slope of
the continent is more or less from the great heights on
its eastern side, towards the west, but it is also clearly
traceable, and of great height throughout.
The northern edge of the great African plateau is.
almost unknown; but there are evidences that it runs
eastward between the 4th and 8th parallels of N. latitude,
to a point at which it is well known, and where the Nile.
falls over its slope, forming the succession of rapids.
above Gondokoro. &
The general elevation of the surface of the great Afri-
can plateau, the limits of which have now been traced,
may be taken at from 3000 to 4000 feet above the sea;
but its surface presents very great undulations, from the
depressions which are occupied by some of the great
lakes, to the high mountains which rise above its average
level.
A F R
85
The African continent, as far as it has yet been ex-
plored, seems to be the portion of the globe least
disturbed by volcanic action. The known active vol-
canoes in the continent are those of the Cameroon
Mountains, on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea in
the west, and the Artali volcano in the depressed region
of the salt desert which lies between the Abyssinian
plateau and the Red Sea.
Among the minerals of Africa, salt is widely distrib-
ºuted, though in some districts wholly wanting. Thus,
in the Abyssinian highland the salt, which is brought up
in small blocks from the depressed salt plain on the Red
Sea coast beneath, is so valued as to be used as a money
currency; and in the native kingdoms of South Central
Aſrica, the salt districts are royal possessions strictly
guarded. Metals seem nowhere very abundant. Gold
is perhaps the most generally distributed. The gold-fields
of the Transvaal Republic and of the country which ex-
tends thence to the Zambeze, are numerous; but no yield
has as yet been discovered of sufficient quantity to over-
-come the difficulties of working, and of transport to the
distant sea-ports, to which no navigable rivers lead from
this region. Copper is known to existin large quantities
in the mountains of native kingdoms of the centre of
South Africa; and one of the objects of Dr. Livingstone's
journey was to visit the famed copper country of
Katanga south-west of the Tanganyika Lake. The
diamond-fields in the districts of the Vaal and Orange
rivers north of Cape Colony are now steadily worked,
and give good returns.
Africa is the only one of the continents of the globe
which lies equally to north and south of the equator,
and the portions of it which extend beyond the tropics
do not advance far into the temperate zones. From this
it results that Africa, besides being the warmest of all
the continents, has also the most equal distribution of
the sun's heat during the seasons over the parts which
lie north and south of the central line. Winds and rain,
depending on the distribution of heat, are also corre-
spondingly developed in these two great divisions of the
continent, and the broad landscape zones, passing from
humid forest to arid sandy desert, also agree exactly with
one another north and south of Equatorial Africa.
Between 109 N. and Io9 S. of the equator, but espe-
-cially in that portion of it the outskirts of which have
only as yet been reached by travellers, Africa appears to
be a land of dense tropical forest. Wherever it has
been penetrated, travellers speak of an excessively rank
vegetation; passage has been forced through thick under-
wood and creeping plants, between giant trees, whose
foliage shuts out the Sun's rays; and the land teems with
animal and insect life of every form and color.
The extremities of the continent, to which moisture is
carried from the neighboring oceans, again pass into a
second belt of pastoral or agricultural land, in the north-
ward slopes of the plateaus of Barbary, Marocco, Alge-
tria, and Tunis, corresponding with the seaward terraces
of cultivated land in the Cape Colony in the south.
Taking a broad view of the hydrography of Africa,
ºthere are two great arcas of continental drainage, one in
the north, and the other in the south, from which no
water escapes directly to the ocean. These correspond
almost exactly with the two desert belts of the Sahara
and the Kalahari above described. The whole of the
remaining portions of the continent, its forests and pas-
toral districts, in which the greater rainfall gives greater
power to the rivers, are drained by streams which find
their way to the ocean on one side or other, generally
forcing a passage through some natural or waterworn
gorge in the higher circle of mountains which run round
:the otter edges of the great plateau.
It must be noticed that the capabilities of the African
rivers, as highways of approach to the interior of the
continent, are exceedingly small in comparison with
those of the other great continents of the globe, most of
them being either barred at their mouths, or by rapids
at no great distance from the coast. It is owing to this
physical cause mainly that the African continent has re-
mained for so many centuries a sealed book to the civil-
ised world. On the other hand, it must be observed,
that when these outer barriers have been passed, the
great interior of the land, in its most productive regions,
possesses a network of vast rivers and lakes, unsurpassed
in extent by those of any country of the world, by
means of which the resources of Central Africa may in
future be thoroughly developed.
The Nile is the oldest of historical rivers, and afforded
the only means of subsistence to the earliest civilised
people on earth, and yet the origin of this river remained
an enigma almost to the present day. Though it drains
a larger area than any other river of Africa, upwards of
1,000,000 square miles, and in this respect is one of the
largest rivers of the globe, the Nile, passing for a great
portion of its lower course through the desert belt of
North Africa, and receiving no tributaries there, loses
much of its volume by evaporation, and is far surpassed in
the quantity of water conveyed to the ocean by the
Congo, in the most equatorial zone. The great labors
of Dr. Livingstone, in the lake region of Central Africa,
have so narrowed the space within which the sources of
the Nile can exist, that, though no traveller has yet
reached the ultimate ſeeders of the great river, their posi-
tion can now be predicated almost with certainty. The
delta of the Nile, in which the river divides into two
main branches, from which a multitude of canals are
drawn off, is a wide, low plain, occupying an area of about
9000 square miles. The most remarkable circumstance
connected with the delta is the annual rise and overflow
of the river, which takes place with the greatest regular-
ity in time and equality in amount, beginning at the end
of June, and subsiding completely before the end of
November, leaving over the whole delta a layer of rich
fertilising slime.
The Sheliff in Algeria, and the Muluya in Eastern
Marocco, are the chief streams flowing to the Mediter-
ranean from the high land of Barbary. *.
Passing round to the Atlantic system, the Sebu, the
Ummer Rebia, and the Tensift, from the Atlas range,
are permanent rivers flowing across the fertile plain of
Western Marocco, which they serve to irrigate. Next
is the Wady Draa, a water-course which has its rise on
the inner slope of the high land in Marocco, and which
bends round through the Maroccan Sahara to the
Atlantic, near the 28th parallel. Its channel, of not
less than 500 miles in length, forms a long oasis in the
partly desert country through which it flows, and water
remains in its bed nearly throughout the year.
A stretch of 1 Ioo miles of waterless coast, where the
desert belt touches on the Atlantic, intervenes between
the Draa and the Senegal river, at the beginning of the
pastoral belt in lat. 15° N.
The Senegal rises in the northern portion of the belt
of mountains which skirt the Guinea coast, and has a
northwesterly course to the sea. During the rainy
season it is navigable for 500 miles, from its mouth to
the cataract of Feloo, for vessels drawing 12 feet of
water, but at other times it is not passable for more
than a third part of this distance. The Gambia has its
sources near those of the Senegal, and flows westward in
a tortuous bed over the plain country, giving a navigable
channel of 400 miles, up to the Falls of Barra Kunda.
The Rio Grande, from the same heights, is also a con-
siderable river. . .
The Niger is the third African river in point of area
86
A F R
of drainage and volume; it is formed by the union of
two great tributaries, the Quorra of Benue, the former
from the west, the latter from the country in the east of
the river basin. The Quorra, called the Joliba in its
upper course, has its splings in the inner slope of the
mountains which give rise to the Senegal and Gambia,
not far from the Atlantic coast. At first its course is
north-eastward to as far as the city of Timbuctu, on the
border of the desert zone; then it turns due east, and
afterwards southeast to its confluence with the Benue,
at a point 200 miles north from the coast of the Gulf
of Guinea. The chief tributary of the Quorra is the
Sokoto river, coming from the elevated countly which
forms the water-parting between the Niger basin and
that of Lake Chad on the east, and its confluence is
near the middle of the portion of the channel of the
Quorra which bends to the south-east.
At a distance of about IOO miles from its sources,
the traveller Park, the first European who reached the
Joliba, found it flowing in a wide fertile valley, and
navigated by canoes which kept up a constant traffic.
Above Timbuctu the commerce of the river is busily
carried on in barges of 60 to 80 tons burden ; further on,
where the river touches upon the desert belt in the most
northelly portion of its course, its fertile banks form the
most marked contrast to the arid desert lands beyond.
The delta is much more extensive than that of the Nile,
and measures about 14,000 square miles of low alluvial
lain, covered with forest and jungle, and completely
intersected by branches from the main river, the outmost
of which reach the sea not less than 200 miles apart.
Unlike the Nile, the Niger possesses one main channel
through the centre of the delta, called at its mouth the
Nun river.
Old Calabar river, the Camaroon river, and the
Gaboon, are the best known of a number of wide inlets
or estuaries of the sea, which occur on the west coast
immediately north of the equator; but these are merely
the receptacles of a number of minor streams, not the
mouths of great rivers, as at one time supposed.
The Ogowai (pron. Ogowee) river, the delta of which
forms Cape Lopez, immediately S. of the equator, is a
great stream which is believed to drain a large area of
the forest zone between the Niger and the Congo; as yet,
its lower coast is only known to a distance of 200 miles
from the Sea. Above the delta the main stream of the
river, named the Okanda, breaks through the edge of the
plateau, and is joined by the Onango, a tributary from
the coast range of the Sierra Complida. Below this
confluence the river is a mile and a half in average width,
its depth varying from 15 to 50 feet. The delta is formed
by the two main branches into which the Ogowai divides
at about 30 miles from the coast, and is a swampy flat,
covered with mangroves.
The Congo or Zaire must be considered the second
river of Africa in point of area of drainage, and it is the
first in respect of the volume of water which it discharges
to the ocean. There remains but little doubt that the
head streams of this vast river are those which supply the
great lacustrine system discovered by Dr. Livingstone in
his recent journeys south and west of Lake Tanganyika.
The Coanza, the most important river of Angola, in
respect of its affording a navigable channel for 140
miles from its mouth, rises in a broad valley formed by
the Mossamba Mountains in the interior of Benguela,
and curves north-westward to the ocean.
The Orange river also belongs for the greater part of
its lower course to the water-courses of the arid belt,
but it receives such a constant supply from its head
streams, which descend from the high lands near the east
coast of the continent, as to be able to maintain a
perennial flow in its channel, which, however, is so
shallow as to be of no value for navigation. Its main
head streams are the Vaal and Nu Gariep or Orange,
which rise on the opposite slopes of one of the summits.
of the Crakenberg range, called the Mount aux Sources.
After encircling the Orange River Free State, these
livers unite near the centre of this part of the continent
to form the Orange, which continues westward to the
Atlantic, but without receiving any permanent tributary.
The first large river of the Indian Ocean system is
the Limpopo or Crocodile river, so named from the
great number of these animals found in its bed. Its.
basin lies centrally in the southern tropic, also in the
desert belt, and on this account it barely maintains a
shallow flow of water throughout the year.
The Zambeze is the great river of the pastoral belt of
South Africa, and the fourth in point of size in the con-
timent, draining nearly 600,000 Square miles.
The Rovuma, which has its chief tributaries from the
plateau edge on the eastern side of Lake Nyassa, is the
next great river of the drainage to the Indian Ocean.
Still further north the mouths of a great river named
the Rufiji are known, on the coast opposite the island of
Monfia, south of Zanzibar.
The Kingami and the Wami are two streams from the
plateau edge, in the country of Usagara, and reach the
sea in the channel formed by Zanzibar island. The
Pangani river, further north, rises in the snowy mount-
aim Kiliman-jaro. The Sabaki and Dana, which em–
bouch on the opposite side of Formosa Bay, in 3° S.,
flow over the same coast plains, having their head springs.
in the spurs of Mount Kenia. The latter liver might
be navigated during the rainy season IOO miles from the
COaSt.
The Juba river is the most considerable on the eastern
side north of the equator. No permanent rivers reach
the Red Sea from the Abyssinian highlands or from the
heights of Nubia which continue these northward ; the
largest water-course is that of the Barca, which is
periodically filled by its tributaries in the northern part
of the Abyssinian plateau.
Turning now to the great areas of continental drain-
age, it is observed that in North Africa there is a vast
space of upwards of four millions of square miles, extend-
ing from the Nile Valley westward to the Atlantic coast,
and from the plateau of Barbary in the north to the
extremities of the basin of Lake Chad in the south,
from which no single river finds its way to the sea.
The whole of this space, however, appears to be ſur-
rowed by water channels in the most varied directions,
Lake Chad, on the margin of the pastoral belt, is Sup-
plied by a large river named the Shari, coming from the
moist forest country which lies nearer the equator; and
the lake, which till recently was believed to have no out-
let, overflows to north-eastward, fertilizing a great wady,
in which the waters become lost by evaporation as they
are led towards the more arid country of the Sahara.
The southern area of continental drainage is of much
smaller extent, and occupies the space of the desert zone
which lies between the middle of the Zambeze basin and
Damara Land.
Smaller spaces of continental drainage exist at various
points near the eastern side of the continent. One of
these occupies the depressed area between the base of the
Abyssinian highland and the Red Sea, and is properly a
continuation of the Sahara desert belt beyond the inter-
vening plateau. In this space the Hawash river,
descending from the plateau, terminates before reaching
the sea. Another interior basin lies in the plateau
between the edge on which mountains Kenia and Kilima-
njaro rise and the country east of the Victoria Lake, and
includes several salt lakes.
The great lakes, which form such a prominent feature
A F R
87
in African hydrography, are found chiefly in the southern
and eastern regions of the continent, but they are dis-
tributed over all the systems of drainage. The Victoria
and Albert Lakes of the Nile basin are great seas of fresh
water; and if their extent should ultimately prove to be
nearly that which is at present believed, they rival the
great American lakes for the place of the greatest expanse
of fresh water on the globe. The former, the Victoria
Lake, is at an elevation of about 3300 feet above the
Sea ; and its outline, as at present sketched on our maps,
occupies an area of not less than 30,000, square miles.
The Albert Lake, 2500 feet above the sea, is believed to
have an extent not far short of this. Lake Baringo,
north-east of the Victoria, is reported to be a great fresh
lake, discharging towards the Nile by a river which is
possibly the Sobat tributary. Lake Tzana or Dembea,
6O miles in length, at a level of 6000 feet above the sea,
on the Abyssinian plateau, is the only remaining great
lake of the Nile basin.
The great expansions of the Chambeze-Lualaba river,
- presumably belonging to the river Congo, are the only
other considerable lakes of the Atlantic drainage. The
highest of them, Lake Bangweolo or Bemba, is described
as being 150 miles in length from east to west, and at an
elevation of 4000 feet; Lake Moero, the next, extends
through 60 miles; Lakes Kamalondo or Ulenge, and the
yet unvisited lakes of the same drainage, are described
as of vast extent, and lie at an elevation of about 2000
feet above the sea.
Belonging to the drainage system of the Indian Ocean
are, Lake Nyassa, 1500 feet above the sea, and stretch-
ing meridionally over an area of nearly 9000 square miles
in the basin of the Zambeze; and Lake Samburu, a re-
ported lake of great extent, lying in the plateau edge
north of Mount Kenia, and probably belonging to the
basin of the Juba river. The great Lake Tanganyika,
upwards of Io, OOO Square miles in area, and united by a
broad channel with Lake Liemba in the south, occupies
a deep longitudinal basin, girt with mountains; it is
28OO feet above the sea level.
Lake Chad, the greatest lake of the continental system
of North Africa, is a shallow lagoon of very variable
extent, with numerous islands: it lies at about I IOO feet
above the sea; its waters are fresh and clear, and its
overflow is carried off to north-eastward by the wady
named Bahr-el-Ghazal.
Lake Ngami, the corresponding lake in the southern
continental system, at an elevation of about 2900 feet,
is also a shallow, reedy lagoon, varying in extent accord-
ing to the season. The Zuga river carries off its surplus
water to eastward. Salt lakes are of frequent occur-
rence in the areas of continental drainage; perhaps the
most remarkable of these is the Assal lake, which lies in
a depression east of Abyssinia comparable with that of
the Dead Sea, 600 feet beneath the level of the Red Sea;
the Sebka-el-Faroon or Schott Kebir, South of Tunis, is
a great salt lagoon, IOO miles in lefgth, dried up in
summer, when its bed is found to be thickly encrusted
with salt, and in winter covered with water to a depth
of two or three feet.
Africa lies almost entirely in the torrid zone, and is
the hottest continent of all. The greatest heat, however,
is not found under the equator, since the whole of the
central belt of the continent is protected by a dense cov-
ering of forest vegetation, supported by the heavy rain-
fall, and has in consequence a more equable climate, but
in the dry, bare, exposed desert belts, which lie on the
margins of the tropics, the Sahara in the north and the
Kalahari in the south, where the climate is extreme.
The highest temperature is ſound throughout the Sahara,
particularly in its eastern portions toward the Red Sea.
In Upper Egypt and Nubia eggs may be baked in the
W. - s
hot sands; and the saying of the Arabs is, “in Nubia the
soil is like fire and the wind like a flame.” The regions
along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts are rendered
more temperate by the influence of the Sea. To the
south of the Great Desert the temperature decreases,
chiefly on account of the increasing moisture and pro-
tection of the land surface from extreme heating by its
tree growth, but also because of the greater elevation of
the land as the great southern plateau is approached.
Africa is not much under the influence of the regular
winds, except the monsoons of the Indian Ocean, the
great movement of the atmosphere depending chiefly on
the oscillation of the continent beneath the sun during
the seasons, as will be afterward explained. The wind
currents over the whole continent have a prevailing
direction from the east. There are the trade winds,
modified by interruptions of changing heat and elevation
of the land surface. In the northern part of the Indian
Ocean the year is divided between the south-west mon-
soon, blowing from March till September, away from
Africa, towards the then heated continent of Asia ; and
the north-east monsoon, or rather the normal trade
wind, blowing towards the African coasts, from October
till February. -
In Africa the dependence of the winds and rains upon
the movement of the land beneath the sun is more
clearly marked than in any other intertropical region of
the globe. The high temperature caused by the verti-
cal heat of the sun over a particular area induces an
indraught of air to that place, an ascending current is
produced which carries up with it the warm and moist
air; condensed in the higher regions of the atmosphere,
the moisture falls as rain, and the condensation makes.
way for a further indraught.
On the eastern coast-land the rains are more depend-
ent on the direction of the monsoon winds; about the
mouths of the Zambeze and on the Mozambique coast
the rains begin in November, after the north-east mon-
soon wind has set in over the northern part of the Indian
Ocean, bringing with it the vapors drawn from the sea
to condense on the coast slopes. The rains continue
here till March, when the south-west monsoon begins to
blow away from the land towards the then heated Sur-
face of Asia.
The Sahara, and also the Kalahari of Southern
Africa, are almost rainless regions, but wherever a suf-
ficient elevation occurs to intercept a cooler stratum of
the atmosphere, rain is not wanting, even in the midst
of the Great Desert. -
The causes of want of rainfall in the vast region of
the Sahara appear to be mainly these — that the winds
advancing towards it come from a cooler and moister to
a warmer and drier region, indeed to the hottest and
driest of all, and so are constantly losing in moisture
and gaining in temperature as they approach ; the high
plateau of Abyssinia forms an effective screen from the
winds of the Indian Ocean, wringing out their moisture
before the Sahara is reached, and on the Atlantic side
the north-east trade wind constantly blows away from
the land; a barrier of mountains also deprives the
Sahara of rain from the south-west. Another cause of
dryness is the low level of great areas of the Sahara.
Although Africa belongs'almost entirely to the torrid
and warm zones, its vegetable productions are essentially
different in different parts. Thus, in the extreme north,
groves of oranges and olives, plains covered with wheat
and barley, thick woods of evergreen oaks, cork-trees,
and sea-pines, intermixed with cypresses, myrtles, ar-
butus, and fragrant tea-heaths, form the principal fea-
tures of the landscape. On this northern coast the
date-palm is first found; but its fruit does not arrive at
perfection, and it is chiefly valued as an ornamental
N *
*
88
A F R
object in gardens. Various kinds of grain are cultivated.
Beyond this region of the coast and the Atlas chain,
with the borders of the Sahara, commences a new scene.
It is in this region, extending to the borders of Soudan,
that the date-tree forms the characteristic feature.
Being peculiarly adapted to excessive dryness and high
temperature, it flourishes where few other plants can
maintain an existence. Were it not for the fruit of the
invaluable date-tree, the inhabitants of the desert would
almost entirely depend on the products of other regions
for their subsistence. With the southern boundary of
the Sahara, the date-tree disappears, the baobab or
monkey bread-tree takes its place, and, under the in-
fluence of tropical rains, a new, rich, and highly-
developed flora presents itself. These trees, together
with huge cotton-trees, oil-palms, sago-palms, and
others of the same majestic tribe, determine the aspect
of the landscape. Instead of waving fields of corn, the
Cassava, yam, pigeon-pea, and the ground-nut, form the
farinaceous plants. The papaw, the tamarind, the Sen-
egal custard apple, and others, replace the vine and the
fig. In Southern Africa, again, the tropical forms dis-
appear, and in the inland desert-like plains, the fleshy,
leafless, contorted, singular tribes of kapsias, of mesem-
bryanthemums, euphorbias, crassulas, aloes, and other
succulent i. make their appearance. Endless
species of heaths are there found in great beauty, and
the hills and rocks are scattered over with a remarkable
tribe of plants called Cycadaceae. Plants of the protea
tribe also add to the extraordinary variety in the vege-
table physiognomy of that region.
The most important members of the quadrumana
family are the anthropoid monkeys, the chimpanzee and
gorilla, in Tropical and Western Africa. Baboons and
mandrils, with few exceptions, are peculiar to Africa.
Only a few species of the genus Macacus, which is East
Indian, are found in Africa. The only short-tailed
species (Macacus Inn uzes) is North African, and is also
found wild on the opposite coast at the Rock of Gibraltar.
In Madagascar the place of the true monkeys is supplied
by the peculiar tribe of the true Lemurs or makis.
Many species have close affinities with those of Asia;
thus the orang-outang of Borneo is represented in
Africa by the chimpanzee. The gibbons are entirely
wanting.
Of the large Carnivora the bear is almost entirely
wanting, and occurs only sparely in the Atlas Mount-
ains in Barbary. The true martens are unknown, but
otters occur. Of the Cazu is family the jackal is charac-
teristic, and roams over the whole of Africa. It differs
from the Asiatic species in its paler skin, which approaches
the color of the prevailing deserts. The wolf and fox
do not extend beyond the northern margin of Africa.
Hyaenas are true African tenants; the striped hyaena
extending from Asia over North Africa, the spotted
hyaena over the remainder of the continent; in the
southmost part of the continent the brown hyaena is
also found, and with it the aardwolf, or earth wolf of the
Cape colonists, allied to this genus. Africa is the chief
home of the lion, which there remains undisturbed as
king over the lower animal creation, though it has been
driven inwards from the more settled portions of the
coast land, while in the extreme south-western parts of
Asia, to which it is now confined, its power is divided
with that of the tiger. The leopard, serval, caracal,
chaus and civet cat (the locality of the true civet being
North Africa), are the other principal representatives of
the cat tribe. The herpestes or ichneumons have the
same distribution as the civets; the species which destroys
the eggs of the crocodile is found in Egypt and the
North of Africa.
Of wild horses the asinine group is characteristic of
Asia, and the hippotigrine of Africa. The quagga, ex-
clusively African, inhabits the most southern parts of the
continent, and is scarcely found north of the Orange
river, but occurs in great herds associated with the white-
tailed gnu; the zebra (AEquus Burchellii), or zebra of the
plains, is widely distributed over Aſrica, from the limit
of the quagga to Abyssinia and the west coast ; the zebra
of the mountains (AEquus zebra), more completely striped
than the rest, is only known in South Africa. The true
onager or aboriginal wild ass is indigenous to North-
East Africa and the island of Socotra. A species in-
habiting the highland of Abyssinia is distinct from these.
The horse, domesticated in other parts of Africa, except-
ing the region of forests, is not found in the eastern
intertropical region; and, for some cause not yet clearly
ascertained, it appears to be impossible to acclimatise it
there. The single humped camel or dromedary is used
over the whole of North Africa, as far south and west
as the river Niger and Lake Chad. The Indian buffalo
has spread by introduction to North Africa; the Cape
buffalo, a species peculiar to Africa, reaches as far north
as a line from Guinea to Abyssinia; the Bos Brachycerus
is a species peculiar to West Africa, from Senegal to the
Gaboon. Of sheep, the Ozris Tragelaphus is peculiar
to North Africa; the Ibex goat extends into Abyssinia.
The family of the antelopes is essentially African, five-
sixths of the species composing it being natives of that
country, and chiefly of i. portion lying south of the
Sahara, occurring in dense herds. Lastly the giraffe,
one of the most celebrated and characteristic of African
quadrupeds, ranges from the limits of the Cape Colony
as far as the Sahara and Nubia.
The ornithology of Africa presents a close analogy in
many of its species to those of Europe and South Asia.
Thus, on its northern coast, there is scarcely a single
species to be found which does not also occur in the
other countries bordering on the Mediterranean. The
ornithology of the region of the Nile and the northern
coasts is identified with that of Arabia, Persia and
Spain. The deserts are inhabited by species adapted to
its solitudes; while Southern Africa presents different
species.
The ostrich, the hugest of birds, which has been
described as the feathered camel, or the giraffe among
birds, is found in almost every part of Africa. But its
chief home is the desert and the open plains; mount-
ainous districts it avoids, unless pressed by hunger.
The large messenger or secretary-bird, which preys
upon serpents and other reptiles, is one of the most
remarkable African birds. It is common near the Cape,
and is not seldom domesticated.
Among the smaller birds of Africa are many species
remarkable for the gaudiness and brilliancy of their
plumage, or the singularity of their manners and econ-
omy. Of the former kind may be mentioned the sun-
birds, the lamprotornis, the bee-eaters, the rollers, the
plantain-eaters, the parrots, the halcyons, and numerous
smaller birds that swarm in the forests.
Though Africa is not exempt from the scourge of
venomous or dangerous reptiles, still it has compara-
tively fewer than other tropical countries, owing to the
dryness of the climate. The reptiles harbored by the
desert regions consist chiefly of harmless lizards and ser-
pents of a small size, though often venomous. The frog
and tortoise tribes are represented in but few species and
numbers.
The most important among the reptiles is the crocodile,
which inhabits nearly all the large rivers and lakes within
the tropics, and is still abundant in the Nile below the
first cataract.
The chameleon is common in Africa. Among the
venomous species of snakes are the purple naja, the
A F R
89
Cerastes or horned viper, the ringed naja, and the dart-
1ng viper.
Edible fish are found almost everywhere in great
variety, and quantity. . The flesh waters of Egypt pro-
duce the gigantic bishir, the coffres, and numerous.
species of the pimelodes. Many varieties of fish exist
in the great interior lakes ; five large species found in
the Tanganyika are described by Burton. The greater
number of the fish of the Red Sea resemble the saxatiles
of the warm seas of Asia. On the west coast are
found the fish belonging to equatorial latitudes, while
the shores of the Mediterranean produce those of
France and Spain. The seas of the southern extremity
possess the species common to the latitudes of the
antarctic, south of the three great capes. The fish of
the east coast are the same as those of the Indian Sea.
Of the insect tribes Africa also contains many
thousand different kinds. The locust has been, from
time immemorial, the proverbial scourge of the whole
continent; scorpions, scarcely less to be dreaded than
noxious serpents, are everywhere abundant; and the
zebub, or fly, one of the instruments employed by the
Almighty to punish the Egyptians of old, is still the
plague of the low and cultivated districts. In the
interior of Africa a venomous fly occurs in certain
regions of the south and east, which is fatal to nearly
all domestic animals. It is called tsetse (Glossina
2ntorsitans), and its size is almost that of the common
blue fly which settles on meat; but the wings are larger.
From the shores of the Mediterranean to about the
latitude of 20° N., the population of Africa consists
largely of tribes not originally native to the soil, but of
Arabs and Turks, planted by conquest, with a consider-
able number of Jews, the children of dispersion, and
the more recently introduced French. The Berbers of
the Atlas region, the Tuaricks and Tibbus of the Sahara,
and the Copts of Egypt, may be viewed as the descend-
ants of the primitive stock, while those to whom the
general name of Moors is applied, are perhaps of mixed
descent, native and foreign. From the latitude stated
to the Cape Colony, tribes commonly classed together
under the title of the Ethiopic or Negro family are found,
though many depart very widely from the peculiar phys-
iognomy of the Negro, which is most apparent in the
natives of the Guinea coast. In the Cape Colony, and
on its borders, the Hottentots form a distinct variety in
the population of Africa, most closely resembling the
Mongolian races of Asia.
The Copts, or as they are correctly pronounced,
either Ckoobt or Ckibt, are considered to be the
descendants of the ancient Egyptians. They do not
now compose more than one-sixteenth part of the popu-
lation of Egypt, their number not exceeding 145,000,
about Io,000 of whom reside at Cairo.
The countries above Egypt are inhabited by two
tribes of people resembling each other in physical
characters, but of distinct language and origin. One is,
perhaps, the aboriginal or native, the other a foreign
tribe.
The country of the Nubians is limited on the west by
that of the Tibbus, who are spread over the eastern por-
tions of the Sahara, as far as Fezzan and Lake Chad.
“All that is not Arabic in the kingdom of Marocco,
all that is not Arabic in the French provinces of Algeria,
and all that is not Arabic in Tunis, Tripoli, and Fezzan,
is Berber. The language, also, of the ancient Cyrenaica,
indeed the whole country bordering the Mediterra-
nean, between Tripoli and Egypt, is Berber. The
extinct language of the Canary Isles was Berber; and,
finally, the language of the Sahara is Berber. The
Berber languages, in their present geographical localities,
are essentially inland languages. As a general rule, the
Arabic is the language for the whole of the sea-coast
from the Delta of the Nile to the Straits of Gibraltar,
and from the Straits of Gibraltar to the mouth of the
Senegal.” The Berber nation is one of great antiquity,
and from the times of the earliest history has been
spread over the same extent of country as at present; the
ancient Numidian and Mauritanian names of Sallust,
and other writers, have a meaning in the modern Berber.
The Shuluh, who are the mountaineers of the North-
ern Atlas, live in villages of houses made of stone and
mud, with slate roofs, occasionally in tents, and even in
caves. They are chiefly huntsmen, but cultivate the
ground and rear bees. They are described as lively,
intelligent, well-formed, athletic men, not tall, without
marked features, and with light complexions. The
Kabyles, or Kabaily, of the Algerian and Tunisian ter-
ritories, are the most industrious inhabitants of the Bar-
bary States, and, besides tillage, work the mines con-
tained in their mountains, and obtain lead, iron, and
copper.
The Tuarick are a people spread in various tribes
through the greater portion of the Sahara.
The Moors who inhabit large portions of the empire
of Marocco, and are spread all along the Mediterranean
coast, are a mixed race, grafted upon the ancient Mauri-
tanian stock; whence their name.
At two different periods, separated from each other by
perhaps a thousand years, Africa was invaded by Arabic
tribes, which took a lasting possession of the districts
they conquered, and whose descendants form no incon-
siderable portion of the population of North and Central
Africa, j. their language has superseded all others as
that of civilisation and religion. Of the first invasion
more has been said under the head “Abyssinians.” The
second was that effected by the first successors of
Mahomet, who conquered Egypt, and subsequently the
whole north of Africa as far as the shores of the Atlantic,
in the course of the first century of the Hegira, or the
seventh of the Christian era. As regards language,
Egypt is now an entirely Arabic country, although in
many other respects the Fellahs are totally different from
the peasants in Arabia. But there are also several tribes
of true Arabic descent scattered about from the high
lands of Abyssinia down over Nubia and Egypt, and
westward over the central provinces of Kordofan, Dar-
fur, Waday, and Bornu. Others wander in the Libyan
deserts and the Great Sahara, as well as in the states of
Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, leading a similar life with
the Kabyles, but constituting a totally distinct race.
Others, again, dwell in the empire of Marocco, among
whom those along the shores of the Atlantic are motori-
ous for their predatory habits and ferocious character.
The early settlements of the Jews in Egypt are facts
universally known. Under the Ptolemies, large numbers
of them settled at Alexandria and in Cyrenaica, and
aſter the destruction of Jerusalem they rapidly spread
over the whole of the Roman possessions in Aſrica;
many also took refuge in Abyssinia. King Philip II.
having driven them out of Spain, many thousands of
families took refuge on the opposite coast of Africa.
They are now numerous in all the larger towns in the
north, where they carry on the occupation of merchants,
brokers, &c., the trade with Europe being mostly in
their hands. They live in a state of great degradation,
except in Algiers, where the French restored them to
freedom and independence. They have acquired much
wealth, and although compelled to hide their riches from
the cupidity of their rulers, they lose no opportunity of
showing them whenever they can do so without risk of
being plundered, fear and vanity being characteristic
features of their character. The Jewesses in Marocco
and Algiers are of remarkable beauty.
90
A FR
Ever since the conquest of Egypt by Sultan Selim,
and the establishment of Turkish pashalics in Tripoli,
Tunis, and Algiers, Turks have settled in the north of
‘Africa; and as they were the rulers of the country,
whose numbers were always on the increase on account
of the incessant arrivals of Turkish soldiers and officials,
the Turkish became, and still is, the language of the
different governments. *
Not all the inhabitants of the country called Abys-
sinia are Abyssinians; nor are the real Abyssinians all
of the same origin, being a mixed race, to the formation
of which several distinct nations have contributed.
The primitive stock is of Ethiopian origin, but, as their
language clearly shows, was at an early period mixed
with a tribe of the Himyarites from the opposite coast
of Arabia, who, in their turn, were ethnologically much
more closely connected with the Hebrews than with the
Joctanides, or the Arabs properly speaking. In the age
of the Egyptian Ptolemies, and after the destruction of
Jerusalem, Jews settled in Abyssinia in such numbers,
that not only their religion spread among the inhabitants,
but the Hebrew language became mixed with the Abys-
sinian as it then was. Hence the surprising analogy
between the principal Abyssinian languages, viz., the
Gheez in Tigré, and the Amharic in Amhara, with the
Hebrew.
This extensive race comprehends by far the greater
number of African nations, extending over the whole
of Middle and South Africa except its southern-
most projection towards the Cape of Good Hope. A
line drawn from the mouth of the Senegal in the west to
Cape Jerdaffum in the east, forms its northern limits
almost with geometrical accuracy, few Ethiopic tribes
being found to the north of it. All the members of this
race, however, are not Negroes. The latter are only
one of its numerous offshoots; but between the receding
forehead, the projecting cheek-bones, the thick lips of
the Negro of Guinea, and the more straight configura-
tion of the head of a Galla in Abyssinia, there are still
many striking analogies; and modern philology having
traced still greater analogies, denoting a common origin,
among the only apparently disconnected languages of so
many thousands of tribes, whose color presents all the
hues between the deepest black and the yellow brown,
it is no longer doubtful that the Negro, the Galla, the
Somali, and the Kaffre, all belong to the same ethnologi-
cal stock.
The Kaffres, who, together with the tribes most akin
to them, occupy the greater portion of South Africa,
2specially the eastern portions, have some analogy with
Europeans in their features; but they are woolly haired,
and while some are almost black, others are comparatively
fair, although some of their tribes might have been mixed
with the Eastern Negroes. They have been very wrongly
classed with the Negroes.
We conclude this sketch with the Hottentot race,
which is entirely different from all the other races of
Africa. Where they originally came from, and how
they happened to be hemmed in and confined entirely to
this remote corner of the earth, is a problem not likely
to be ever satisfactorily solved. The only people to
whom the Hottentot has been thought to bear a resem-
blance are the Chinese or Malays, or their original stock,
the Mongols. . . Like these people, they have the broad
forehead, the high cheek-bones, the oblique eye, the thin
beard, and the dull yellow tint of complexion, resem-
bling the color of a dried tobacco leaf; but there is a
difference with regard to the hair, which grows in small
tufts, harsh, and rather wiry, covering the scalp some-
what like the hard pellets of a shoe-brush.
In the central forest regions of Africa, wherever com-
munications with the coast-land have been opened up,
hunting the elephant for its tusks to barter with the
traders appears to be the characteristic occupation, if
any beyond that of mere attention to the daily wants of
life is engaged in ; and here the population may be
considered as a settled one, living in villages in the more
open spaces of the woods. A rudely agricultural state
seems to mark the outer belt of negro land on each side
of the equatorial zone, where the population is also more
or less stationary. The arid regions of the Sahara and
the Kalahari beyond have, on the other hand, a thinly-
scattered nomadic population, though here also the ſer–
tile wadys form lines of more permanent habitation, and
contain permanent towns and villages.
Agriculture is conducted with little art. The natural
fertility of the soil in the well-watered districts super-
sedes the need of skill, while the production of the sim-
plest manufactures is alone requisite, where the range of
personal wants embraces few objects, and those of the
humblest class.
Wars, cruel and incessant, waged not for the sake of
territory, but for the capture of slaves, form one of the
most marked and deplorable features in the social condi-
tion of the African races.
In Religion, Christianity is professed in Abyssinia, and
in Egypt by the Copts, but its doctrines and precepts are
little understood and obeyed. Mohammedanism pre-
vails in all Northern Africa, excepting Abyssinia, as far
as a line passing through the Soudan, from the Gambia.
on the west to the confluence of the Quorra and Benue,
and thence eastward, generally following the Ioth paral-
lel of N. lat. to the Nile below the junction of the Gha-
zal ; thence southeast, leaving the coast-land in the
Mohammedan region, to 'Cape Delgado. In Marocco,
Algeria, and Egypt, there is an admixture of Jews.
Heathen Negroes and Caffre tribes extend southward
over the continent from the line described above to the
colonies in the southern extremity of the continent ; and
over this vast area the native mind is surrendered to
superstitions of infinite number and character. In the
Cape Colony Protestantism again prevails, but with a
strong intermixture of heathenism. The labors of
Christian missionaries have, however, done much, espe-
cially in South Africa, toward turning the benighted
Africans from idols to the living God.
In describing the political divisions of Africa, we shall
proceed from north to south.
The country included under the general name of Bar-
bary extends from the borders of Egypt on the east to
the Atlantic on the west, and is bounded by the Medi-
terranean on the north, and by the Sahara on the South.
It comprises the states of Marocco, Algeria, Tunis, and
Tripoli.
#. population consists chieflyof Mohammedan Moors
and Arabs; the number of Jews is estimated at 45,000,
and of Roman Catholics 25,000. The former have at-
tained a higher degree of industry and civilisation than
their brethren elsewhere; those of the latter who inhabit
the central mountainous regions are nearly independ-
ent.
The government is vested in a hereditary bey, and has
been conducted in peace and security for a number of
years. From the year 1575 onwards, Tunis has been
under the rule of Turkey; but by a firman of October
1871 the Sultan renounced the ancient tribute. The
bey, who is styled “Possessor of the kingdom of Tunis,”
is confirmed in his position at Constantinople, and may
neither enter into a war, nor conclude a treaty of peace,
nor cede any part of his territory, without the Sanction.
of the Sultan. The Tunisian coinage bears the name of
the Sultan, and the troops (3900 infantry and artillery,
and 100 cavalry, form the regular army) are at the dis
posal of the Sublime Porte in time of war. In the in-
A F R.
9I
terior of the country the bey has absolute power. The
slave trade was abolished in 1842.
The commerce of Tunis is considerable, but agricul-
ture is in a backward state. The exports consist chiefly
of wool, olive-oil, wax, honey, hides, dates, grain,
coral, &c.
The principal town is Tunis, situated on a shallow
lake on the north coast. It is the most important com-
mercial place on the southern shores of the Mediter-
ranean after Alexandria, and has a population of about
125,000. The site of the ancient Carthage is 13 miles
from Tunis in the direction of Cape Bon.
Tripoli, a regency of the Turkish empire, extends
from Tunis along the shores of the Mediterranean to the
table-land of Barca, which forms a separate province.
Tripoli is the capital of the regency, and the largest
town ; it lies on the Mediterranean, surrounded by a
fertile plain ; the number of inhabitants is about 30,000.
Murzuk, the capital of Fezzan, has a mixed population of
about I I,000 Souls. The town of Ghadamis has about
7OOO inhabitants.
Egypt occupies the north-eastern corner of Africa,
and is remarkable for its ancient and Sacred associations,
and its wonderful monuments of human art.
Egypt is a vast desert, the fertile portions susceptible
of cultivation being confined to the Delta of the Nile
and its narrow valley, a region celebrated in the most
ancient historic documents, for its singular fertility, and
still pouring an annual surplus of grain into the markets
of Europe. By the annual inundation of the Nile this
region is laid under water, and upon its retirement the
grain crops are sown in the layer of mud left behind it.
Barren ranges of hills and elevated tracts occupy the land
on both sides of the Nile, which is the only river of the
country.
The climate is very hot and dry. Rain falls but seldom
along the coasts, but the dews are very copious. The
hot and oppressive winds, called khamsin and simooms,
are a frequent scourge to the country; but the climate is,
upon the whole, more salubrious than that of many
other tropical countries.
The natural products are not of great variety. The
wild plants are but few and scanty, while those cultivated
include all the more important kinds adapted to tropical
countries; rice, wheat, sugar, cotton, indigo, are culti-
wated for export; dates, figs, pomegranates, lemons, and
olives, are likewise grown. The doum-palm, which ap-
pears in Upper Egypt, is characteristic, as also the papy-
rus. The fauna is characterised by an immense num-
ber of waterfowl, flamingoes, pelicans, &c. The hippo-
potamus and crocodile, the two primeval inhabitants of
the Nile, seem to be banished from the Delta, the latter
being still seen in Upper Egypt. The cattle are of ex-
cellent breed. Large beasts of prey are wanting; but
the ichneumon of the ancients still exists. Bees, silk-
worms, and corals are noticeable. Minerals are scarce,
natron, salt, and Sulphur being the principal.
The native Egyptians of Arab descent compose the
great bulk of the people, the peasant and laboring class,
and are termed Fellahs. Next in number, though com-
paratively few (145,000), are the Copts, descended from
the old inhabitants of the country, the ancient Egyptians,
but far from being an unmixed race. The Arabic Bed-
ouin tribes, Negroes, European Christians (Greeks, Ital-
ians, French, Austrian, English), the Jews, and the domi-
nant Turks, compose the remainder of the population.
Egypt at present is practically a British protectorate,
though nominally governed by an hereditary prince called
the Khedive. The Khedive, before British interfer-
ence, was an absolute, unquestioned despot.
The agriculture of Egypt has always been considerable,
there being three harvests in the year. The industry is
limited: one peculiar branch is the artificial hatching of
eggs in ovens heated to the requisite temperature, a pro-
cess which has been handed down from antiquity, and is
now chiefly carried on by the Copts. Floating bee-hives
are also peculiar to the Nile. The commerce is extensive
and important: the exports to Europe consist chiefly of
cotton, flax, indigo, gum-arabic, ostrich feathers, ivory,
Senna, and gold. The country forms part of the great
highway of traffic between Europe and Southern Asia.
Railways, from the ports of Alexandria and Damietta in
the Mediterrnean, and from Suez on the Red Sea, unite
at Cairo; and a railway now extends thence up the
bank of the Nile to near the first cataract of the river at
AsSouan, in lat. 24° N.
The Suez canal, uniting the Red Sea and the Medi-
terranean, was begun in April 1859, and was opened for
traffic ten years later, in November 1869. The cutting
runs from the artificial harbor of Port Said on the
Mediterranean, through the shallow lagoon of Menzaleh,
and through two smaller lakes with low sandhills be-
tween ; nearer Suez a depressed area, in which several
salt lakes formerly existed, has been filled up by water
let in by the canal, and now forms a wide expanse of
water. In length the canal is nearly 100 miles, and has
a depth throughout of 26 feet, with a general width of
200 to 300 feet at the top of the banks and 72 feet at the
bottom. Vessels are able to steam or be towed through
the canal in sixteen hours from Sea to sea.
Egypt proper is divided into three sub-pashalics —
Bahari or Lower Egypt, Vostani or Middle Egypt, and
Said or Upper Egypt. Cairo, on the east bank of the
Nile, is the capital of Egypt, and is the largest town
of Africa, containing 354,000 inhabitants: it has 400
mosques, and upward of 130 minarets, some of them of
rich and graceful architecture, presenting at a distance
an appearance singularly imposing. Alexandria on the
coast, is the emporium of the commerce with Europe,
and has 220,000 inhabitants, among whom are 54,000
Europeans. Damietta has a population of 37, IOO :
Rosetta of 18,300. Suez, on the northern extremity of
the Red Sea, is a small, ill-built town, but has assumed
importance as a good port since the establishment of the
overland route to India and the completion of the mari-
time canal. It has now nearly 14,000 inhabitants, of
whom about 25oo are Europeans. Port Said has 8800
inhabitants, of whom one-half are foreigners.
Nubia extends along the Red. Sea, from Egypt to
Abyssinia, comprising the middle course of the Nile.
The natural features of the country are varied ; the
northern portion consisting of a burning, sterile wilder-
ness, while the southern, lying within the range of the
tropical rains, and watered by the Abyssinian affluents
of the Nile, exhibits vegetation in its tropical glory,
forests of arborescent grasses, timber-trees, and ſº
sitical plants largely clothing the country. . This latter
territory, which may be called Upper Nubia, includes
the region of ancient Meroe, situated in the peninsula
formed by the Nile proper, the Blue River, and the
Atbara, and comprises, further south, the recently
extinguished modern kingdom of Sennaar.
The climate of Nubia is tropical throughout, and the
heat in the deserts of its centrar portions is not exceeded
by that of any other part of the globe. g
In the inhabitants two principal varieties are recog-
nized, the pure original population, and their descend-
ants, mixed with other nations. The Berberines inhabit
the northern part, and the Bisharis the desert regions;
the latter are the genuine Nubians, finely moulded and
dark complexioned, supposed by some to agree more
closely with the ancient Egyptians than the Copts,
usually deemed their representatives. In the south-
eastern part the true Negro element appears.
92
A F R
The country is favorable for agriculture, which, how-
ever, is only carried on to a limited extent, by the
women. Cattle are abundant, and the camels of the
Bisharin and Ababde are famous for their enduring
owers. Salt is largely exported from the shores of the
i. Sea to India, and ivory, with other products of
tropical Africa, forms a principal article of trade.
Khartum, the capital of Nubia, the chief seat of com-
merce, contains a population variously estimated at from
20,000 to 50,000. It is a modern town, having been
founded in 1821, and lies in a dry, flat and unhealthy
country, near the confluence of the two main branches
of the Nile.
Kordofan, on the western side of Nubia, lies between
the parallels of 12° and 16°, and between the meridians
29° and 32°, containing about 30,000 square miles. It
is a flat country, interspersed with a few hills, present-
ing in the dry season a desert with little appearance of
vegetation, and in the rainy season a prairie, covered
with luxuriant grass and other plants.
The population consists of Negroes. This country
was, simultaneously with Nubia, made tributary to
Egypt. The commerce consists of gum-arabic, ivory,
and gold, and is not inconsiderable. El Obeid, the
chief town, is composed of several villages of mud-built
houses, thatched with straw, containing about 12,000
inhabitants.
The Saharan countries extend from the Atlantic in
the west, to the Nilotic countries in the east, from the
Barbary States in the north, to the basins of the Rivers
Senegal and Kawara, and Lake Chad in the south.
The area of this large space amounts to at least 2,000,000
square miles, or upwards of one-half of that of the whole
of Europe. It is very scantily populated, but from our
present defective knowledge of that region, the number
of its inhabitants can be but roughly estimated.
The habitable portions of the Sahara are possessed
by three different nations. In the extreme western
portion, are Moors and Arabs. They live in tents,
which they remove from one place to another; and their
residences consist of similar encampments, formed of from
twenty to a hundred of such tents, where they are gov-
erned by a sheik of their own body; each encampment
constituting, as it were, a particular tribe. They are a
daring set of people, and not restrained by any scruple
in plundering, ill-treating, and even killing persons who
are not of their own faith; but to such as are, they are
hospitable and benevolent. The boldest of these chil-
dren of the desert are the Tuaricks, who occupy the
middle of the wilderness, where it is widest.
The commerce of the Sahara consists chiefly of gold,
ostrich feathers, slaves, ivory, iron, and salt, exchanged
for manufactured goods, and transported across the
desert by great caravans, which follow lines uniting the
greater cities and oases of the southern and northern
borders.
Western Africa comprehends the west coast of Africa,
from the borders of the Sahara, in about lat. 17° N. to
Nourse River, in about the same latitude south, with a
considerable space of inland territory, varying in its
.extent from the shores, and, in fact, completely unde-
fined in its interior limits.
Senegambia, the country of the Senegal and Gambia,
extends from the Sahara in the north to lat. Io9 in the
south, and may be considered as extending inland to the
sources of the waters which flow through it to the At-
lantic.
The western portion is very flat, and its contiguity to
the great desert is frequently evidenced by dry hot
winds, an atmosphere loaded with fine sand, and clouds
of locusts. The eastern portion is occupied with hills
and elevated land.
The vegetation is most luxuriant and vigorous. The
baobab (monkey bread-tree), the most enormous tree on
the face of the globe, is eminently characteristic of
Senegambia.
The inhabitants consist of various Negro nations, the
chief of which are the Wolof.
The gum trade is the most important traffic on the
Senegal; bees-wax, ivory, bark and hides forming the
chief exports from the Gambia. -
Of European settlements are: The French possessions
on the Senegal ; the capital of which is St. Louis, built
about the year 1626, on an island at the mouth of the
river. The total population of the settlement announts
to about 2 ſo,COO.
The British settlement on the Gambia has about
7000 inhabitants. Bathurst is the chief town.
The Portuguese settlement consists of small factories
south of the Gambia, at the Bissagos Islands, Bissao,
Cacheo, and some other points.
The west coast of Africa, from Senegambia to the
Nourse River, is commonly comprised by the general
denomination Guinea Coast, a term of Portuguese
origin.
The climate, notoriously fatal to European life, is
rendered pestilential by the muddy creeks and inlets,
the putrid swamps, and the mangrove jungles that
cover the banks of the rivers. There are two seasons
in the year, the rainy and the dry season. The former
commences in the southern portion in March, but at
Sierra Leone and other northern parts, a month later.
Vegetation is exceedingly luxuriant and varied. One
of the most important trees is the AE/ais guineeresis, a
species of palm, from the covering of whose seed or
nut is extracted the palm-oil, so well known to English
commerce and manufacture. The palm-oil tree is in-
digenous and abundant from the river Gambia to the
Congo; but the oil is manufactured in large quantities
chiefly in the country of the Gold and Slave Coasts.
The former comprises nearly all the more remarkable of
African animals: particularly abundant are elephants,
hippopotami, monkeys, lions, leopards, crocodiles,
serpents, parrots. The domestic animals are mostly of
an inferior quality. The principal minerals are gold
and iron. The population consists, besides a few
European colonists, of a vast variety of Negro nations,
similar in their physicial qualities and prevailing customs,
but differing considerably in their dispositions and
morals.
The chief articles of commerce are palm-oil, ivory,
gold, wax, various kinds of timber, spices, gums, and
IICe.
The divisions of Northern or Upper Guinea are mostly
founded on the productions characteristic of the different
parts, and are still popularly retained.
The British colony of Sierra Leone extends from
Rokelle river in the north, to Kater river in the south,
and about twenty miles inland.
The Malaghetta or Grain Coast extends from Sierra
Leone to Cape Palmas. Malaghetta is a species of pep-
per yielded by a parasitical plant of this region. It is
sometimes styled the Windy or Windward Coast, from
the frequency of short but furious tornadoes throughout
the year.
The Ivory Coast extends from Cape Palmas 3° W.
long, and obtained its name from the quantity of the
article supplied by its numerous elephants.
The Gold Coast stretches from west of Cape Three
Points to the river Volta, and has long been frequented .
for gold dust and other products. By a treaty of Feb-
ruary 1871, the whole of the Dutch possessions on the
Gold Coast were made over to Britain, and the Danish
settlements of Christiansburg and Friedensburg were
A F R.
93.
ceded to the English in 1849; so that the British coast
now extends from the mouth of the Tenda river, in long.
2° 40' W., to that of the Ewe, in long. 19 Io' E. of
Greenwich.
The Slave Coast extends from the river Volta to the
Calabar river, and is, as its name implies, the chief scene
of the most disgraceful traffic that blots the history of
mankind.
The kingdoms of Ashantee, Dahomey, Yoruba, and
others, occupy the interior country of the Guinea coast,
On the Gaboon river, close to the equator, are a
French settlement (in 1871 the French retained only a
coaling station) and American missionary stations. At
the equator Southern or Lower Guinea begins, where
the only European settlements are those of the Portu-
guese.
Loango is reckoned from the equator to the Zaire or
Congo river. Its chief town is Boally, called Loango by
the Europeans.
Congo extends south of the Zaire, comprising a very
fertile region, with veins of copper and iron. Banza
Congo or St. Salvador is the capital.
Angola comprises the districts of Angola proper, Ben-
guela, and Mossamedes. In these regions the Portu-
guese settlements extend farther inland than the two pre-
ceding districts, namely, about 200 miles. The capital,
St. Paulo de Loando, contains 12,300 inhabitants, and
has a fine harbor. St. Felipe de Benguela is situated in
a picturesque but very marshy and most unhealthy spot.
The coast from Benguela to the Cape Colony may, in
a general arrangement like this, be included either within
West Africa or South Africa.
Under South Africa the Cape Colony only is generally
comprised. It takes its name from the Cape of Good
Hope, and extends from thence to the Orange river in
the north, and to the Kai river in the east.
Apart from the shores, the country consists of high
lands, forming parallel mountainous ridges, with elevated
plains or terraces of varying extent between.
The high plains or terraces are remarkable for their
extraordinary change of aspect in the succession of the
Seasons. During the summer heats they are perfect
deserts, answering to the term applied to them, karroos,
signifying, in the Hottentot language, “dry” or “arid.”
But the sandy soil being pervaded with the roots and
fibres of various plants, is spontaneously clothed with
the richest verdure after the rains, and becomes trans-
formed for a time into a vast garden of gorgeous flowers,
yielding the most fragrant odors. A great deposit of
rich copper ore occurs near the mouth of the Orange;
i. salt is obtained for consumption and sale from salt
a ReS.
The climate is exceedingly fine and salubrious. There
are two seasons, characterised by the prevalence of cer-
tain winds. During the summer, which lasts from Sep-
tember to April, the winds blow from south-east, cold
and dry; during the winter, namely from May to Septem-
ber, north-west winds prevail. In the most elevated
regions the winters are occasionally severe, and snow and
ice occur.
The chief native tribes within the British territory are
the Hottentots, Bechuanas, and Kaffres. No manufac-
ture is conducted at the Cape except the making of wine,
of which from Io,000 to 40,000 gallons are annually ex-
ported to England. Various articles of provision are
supplied to ships sailing between Europe and the East
Indies.
Cape Town is the capital of the colony, and contains
28,460 inhabitants, of whom 15, 120 are Europeans. Its
commerce is considerable, and the port is frequented by
5OO to 600 vessels every year.
The Orange river sovereignty, added to the British
territories in 1848, but subsequently given up and cons
stituted a free republic, extends north of the Orange river
as far as the Ky Gariep or Vaal river. In consequence
of the discovery of rich diamond fields on the lower Vaal
river and in the neighboring territory of the Griqua chief
Waterboer, who also petitioned to have his lands subjected
to British rule, a wide country surrounding the diamond-
fields was incorporated with the Cape Colony in October
1871, under the name of Griqua Land West, divided into
the districts of Pneil, Griqua Town, and Klipdrift. The
population of this new territory was estimated at 50,000
in 1872, concentrated in camps round the chief diamond-
fields.
Natal or Victoria, a district on the east coast, and
separated from the Cape Colony by Kaffraria, is a
recently formed British settlement, which was created
into a colony in 1856.
The Transvaal Republic is an inland state, between
the Vaal on the south and the Limpopo river on the
north, having the Drakenberg edge on the east, and the
Bechuana tribes, which occupy the region bordering on
the Kalahira desert, on the west, founded by the Dutch
boers emigrating from the Cape Colony.
East Africa extends from Natal northward to the Red
Sea, comprising Sofala, Mozambique, Zanzibar, and the
Somali country. -
Mozambique extends from the Zambeze to Cape Del-
gado, and is similar in its natural features, to the Sofala
Coast. The greatest river is the Zambeze.
The Zanzibar or Sawahili Coast extends from Cape
Delgado to the river Jub, near the equator. The coast
is generally low, and has but few bays or harbors: its
northern portion is rendered dangerous by a line of coral
reefs extending along it. The vegetation is luxuriant,
and cocoa-nut, palms, maize, rice, and olives are the
chief articles of cultivation. The fauna comprises all
the more characteristic African species.
The chief inhabitants are the Sawahili, of mixed Arab
and Negro descent, but the coasts are under the Arab
dominion of the Imaum of Muscat, by whose efforts
commerce with the nations of the interior has greatly
increased.
The Somali country comprises the eastern horn of
Africa, from the equator northward to the Bay of Tad-
jurra, near the entrance into the Red Sea.
The Somali country is famous for its aromatic pro-
ductions and gums of various kinds; and it is supposed
that the spices and incense consumed in such large quan-
tities by i. ancient peoples of Egypt, Greece, Syria, and
Rome, were derived from this part of Africa, and not
from Arabia.
Zeila and Berbera, on the northern coast, are the chief
trading ports: the permanent population of the former
is about 3000, while the latter may be said to exist only
during the winter, when no less than 20,000 strangers,
at an average, arrive to pitch their tents, and thus create
a great market-place.
Central Africa comprises the regions which extend from
the southern borders of the Sahara in the north to Cape
Colony in the south, and from Senegambia in the west
to the territory of the Egyptian pashalic on the east. It
comprehends, the central basins of the great lakes
from Lake Chad to the Nyassa, and the greater part of
the basins of the Niger, Congo, Nile, and Zambeze,
Even the Sahara may well be included in this general
denomination.
Timbuktu, or Jennie, comprises the basin of the
Joliba below Bambarra, and lies partly within the Great
Sahara. Timbuktu, a few miles from the banks of the
Joliba, and situated amid sands and deserts, is a cele-
brated centre of the North African caravan trade. It
contains from 12,000 to 15,000 inhabitants.
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A F R —
Houssa is an extensive coul...ry extending to the
Sahara in the north, to the Joliba or Kawara on the
west, to Bornu on the east, and to about Io9 N. lat. on
the south.
The capital, Sakatu, is one of the largest cities in
Negroland; it is situated in a fertile but marshy plain.
Kano, another large town, containing 30,000 to 40,000
inhabitants, is the great emporium of trade in Houssa;
there the English merchandise coming from the north
through the Sahara, meets with American goods coming
from the Bight of Benin.
Bornu is one of the most powerful states of Negro-
land, extending on the west to the Ioth degree of long.,
on the east to Lake Chad and the kingdom of Bag-
hermi, and on the South as far as Mandara and Adamaua,
in about I 19 N. lat.
The general character of Bornu is that of a plain,
subject to inundations, particularly near Lake Chad. It
is very fertile, and cotton and indigo attain a high de-
£ree of excellence. The original Bornuese are an agri-
.cultural people.
Kuka, the capital and residence of the Sheik of Bornu,
had in 1866 about 60,000 inhabitants.
Baghermi, another powerful kingdom, is situated east
of Bornu. The boundaries, according to Dr. Barth,
who first visited this country and penetrated as far as
Masefia, the capital, are on the west the river Loggeme,
a tributary of the Shary or Asu, by which it is divided
from Bornu and Adamaua; on the north its limits are
in about 12% N. lat., and on the east 19%9 E. long.,
both lines dividing it from Waday; the southern
boundary is in about 8%9 N. lat. Baghermi is an
extensive plain or valley formed by the river Shary
or Asu and its tributaries.
Waday, or Dar Saley, lies east of Baghermi, and
reaches as far as Darfur. It comprises an extensive
region, stretching as far as the basin of the Nile.
Darfur, east of Waday, extends as far as Kordofan.
The country rises towards the west into a range of hills
called Jebel Marrah. It is drained into the Nile. A
great portion of the country is Saharan in its character,
while other parts are fertile and diversified. Browne,
in 1703, estimated the whole population at 200,000. It
has an extensive trade with Egypt.
Cobbeih, the capital, is a merchant town, and contains
about 6000 inhabitants.
Fumbina or Adamaua is an extensive country south of
Houssa and Bornu, under Foulah dominion. It consists
of a large, fertile, and highly-cultivated valley, formed by
the river Benue. Near Yola, the capital, the Benue
receives the Faro, a large tributary coming from the
south-west. This country was first visited by Dr. Barth
in 1851.
Yola, the capital, lies in 8° 50' N. lat., and 13° 30' E.
1ongitude.
To Africa belong a considerable number of islands.
The Madeiras, belonging to Portugal, lie off the North-
west coast of Africa, at a distance of about 360 miles.
Madeira, the chief island, is about 100 miles in circuit,
and has long been famed for its picturesque beauty, rich
fruits, and fine climate, which renders it a favorite resort
of invalids. Wine is the staple produce. Funchal, the
chief town, with 18,000 inhabitants, is a regular station
for the West India mail steam-packets from Southamp-
ton, and the Brazilian sailing-packets from Falmouth.
The Canaries, belonging to Spain, the supposed For-
tunate Islands of the ancients, are situated about 300
miles south of Madeira. They are 13 in number, all of
volcanic origin, Teneriffe being the largest.
The Cape Verde Islands, subject to Portugal, are a
numerous group about 80 miles from Cape Verde.
Fernando Po, a very mountainous forest-covered
island, is in the Bight of Biafra. The British settlement
of Clarence Town was established in 1827, but afterwards
abandoned. The island now belongs to Spain.
St. Thomas, immediately under the equator, is a Por-
pºes settlement; as is also Prince's Island, in 29 N.
at.
Annobon in 29 S. lat., belongs to the Spaniards.
Ascension, a small, arid, volcanic islet, was made a
British port on the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte at St.
Helena, and since retained as a station at which ships
may touch for stores.
St. Helena is a huge dark mass of rock, rising abrupt-
ly from the ocean to the height of 2692 feet. James'
Town is the only town and port.
Madagascar, the largest island of Africa, and one of
the largest in the world, is separated from the Mozam-
bique coast by a channel of that name, about 250 miles
wide. The area exceeds that of France.
AFRICANUS, JULIUs, called also SExTUs, a Chris-
tian historian of the 3d century, born, according to
some, in Africa, and, according to others, in Palestine,
of African parents. Little is known of his personal
history, except that he lived at Emmaus, and that he
went on an embassy to the emperor Heliogabalus to ask
the restoration of that town, which had fallen into ruins.
His mission succeeded, and Emmaus was henceforward
known as Nicopolis. He wrote a history of the world
from the creation to the year 221 A.D., a period, accord-
ing to his computation, of 5723 years. He calculated
the period between the creation and the birth of Christ
as 5499 years, and antedated the latter event by three
years. This method of reckoning became known as the
Alexandrian era, and was adopted by almost all the
eastern churches.
AFZELIUS, ADAM, an eminent Swedish naturalist,
born at Larf, West Gothland, in 1750. For two years
(1792–94) he resided on the west coast of Africa as bot-
anist to the Sierra Leone Company. He edited the
autobiography of Linnaeus (Upsala, 1823). He died at
Upsala in 1836, having bequeathed his botanical collec-
tion to the university.
AFZELIUS, AR wild AUGUST, the Swedish historian,
poet, and comparative mythologist, was born at Fjell ker
in 1785. His poetical career began in 1811 and closed
in 1848, when he wrote his Farewell to the Swedish
Aarp. One great work of his life was to collect and
publish, in conjunction with the eminent Geijer, three
volumes of Swedish Folk-songs; but he will be best
remembered by his History of the Swedish People,
which has won him a European reputation. He did not
live to bring this history lower down than 1709.
AGA, or AGHA, a word, said to be of Tartar origin,
signifying a dignitary or lord. . Among the Turks it is
applied to the chief of the janissaries, to the command-
ers of the artillery, cavalry, and infantry, and to the
eunuchs in charge of the seraglio. It is also employed
generally as a term of respect in addressing wealthy men
of leisure, land-owners, &c. The word is found with a
somewhat similar usage in Tartary, Persia, and Algiers.
AGADES, the capital of the kingdom of Air, or
Asben, in Central Africa. The town is built on the
edge of a plateau, 2500 feet above the level of the sea,
and is supposed to have been founded by the Berbers to
serve as a secure magazine for their extensive trade with
the Songhay empire. The chief trade is in grain.
Agades derives its main importance from its situation on
the direct route from the countries to the north-east to
Sokoto and other important towns in the Hansa states.
The great salt caravans pass through it, as well as pil-
grims on their way to Mecca. From its healthy climate
and advantageous position, the place might prove to be
a good station for a European agent.
A G. A
95
AGAMEMNON. Agamemnon was a son of Atreus,
his mother being Aérope; succeeded to the sovereignty of
Atreus over Argolis, Corinth, Achaia, and many islands,
his seat being at Mycenae. The succession had been
usurped by Thyestes and AEgisthus. During the usurpa-
tion Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus visited Tyn-
dareus, the king of Sparta, and obtained in marriage his
two daughters—the former Clytaemnestra, the latter
Helena; with his help Agamemnon was reinstated in his
rights. Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus. The children
born by Clytaemnestra were Chrysothemis, Iphigenia,
Electra, and one Son, Orestes. Agamemnon was then
the most powerful prince in Greece; and to him of right,
as well as naturally, his brother Menelaus turned for aid
to compel the Trojans to give up his wife Helena, whom
Paris had carried off. The various princes of Greece
having been brought to unite in an expedition for this
purpose, Agamemnon was chosen leader, he himselſ
furnishing IOO ships and lending also 60 more to the
Arcadians. He was defeated at the siege of Troy. In
his absence Clytaemnestra had yielded to the temptations
of AEgisthus, and, to cover her shame, planned with him
the death of her husband. The approach of Agamem-
non being announced by a spy, a feast and an affected
welcome were prepared for him and his ſollowers. At
the feast they were fallen upon by hired murderers,
assisted by AEgisthus and Clytaemnestra. According to
AEschylus, Agamemnon was slain in his bath, his wife
first throwing a piece of cloth over him to prevent
resistance. For his death vengeance was taken by his
son Orestes. In Sparta he was worshipped under the
title of Zeus Agamemnon.
AGAPE, plur. AGAPAE, the love-feast, or feast of
charity, which among the primitive. Christians usually
accompanied the Eucharist. The feelings of love and
brotherhood fostered by the new faith, strengthened as
these must have been by the complete isolation of the
little Christian community, are quite sufficient to ac-
count for the existence of the Agapae, without referring
them to other more or less similar institutions. The
Agape was a common feast, symbolising the community
of goods when it no longer really existed, to which the
rich brought provisions, and the poor, who brought
nothing, were invited. At first it was observed probably
every evening in immediate connection with the celebra-
tion of the Lord's Supper. It closed with the holy
Riss.
AGA PETUS, deacon of the St. Sophia Church at
Constantinople, presented to the Emperor Justinian a
work entitled Chatra Regia, composed in 527, which
contained advice on the duties of a Christian prince.
AGARDE, ARTHUR, a learned English antiquary,
born at Foston, in Derbyshire, about 1540. He was
trained a lawyer; but entering the exchequer as a clerk,
he became deputy-chamberlain in 1570. This office
he held for forty-five years. Agarde died in 1615, and
was buried in the cloister of Westminster Abbey.
AGASIAS, Son of Dositheus, a famous sculptor of
Ephesus, who is supposed to have lived about the 4th
century. His celebrated work, known erroneously as
the Borghese Gladiator, was discovered at the com-
mencement of the 13th century in the ruins of an
imperial palace at Antium, where the Apollo Belvidere
was also found.
AGASSIZ, LOUIS John RUDOLPH, was the son of a
Swiss Protestant clergyman. Agassiz was born at
Motiers on May 28, 1807. Educated first at home,
then spending four years at the gymnasium of Bienne,
he completed his elementary studies at the academy of
Lausanne. He studied medicine successively at the
universities of Zurich, Heidelberg, and Munich; at the
same time availing himself of the advantages afforded
by these universities for extending his knowledge of
natural history, especially of botany. Having com-
pleted his academical course, he took his degree of
doctor of medicine at Munich.
Agassiz always declared that he was led into ichthyo-
logical pursuits through the following circumstances:–In
1819–2O, Spix and Martius were engaged in their cele-
brated Brazilian tour, and on their return to Europe,
amongst other collections of natural objects, they brought
home an important one of the freshwater fishes of Bra-
zil, and especially of the Amazon river. Unfortunately
Spix did not live long enough to work out the history
of these fishes; hence it became necessary that some
other naturalist should undertake the task of describing
them. . It is no insignificant proof of the reputation
which Agassiz had already won, that, though little more
than a youth just liberated from his academic studies, he
was selected for this purpose. His attention being thus
directed to the special subject of ichthyology, he at once
threw himself into the work with that earnestness of
spirit which characterised him to the end of his busy life.
Thus, in 1828, we find him, after describing a new spe-
cies of Cynocephalus, publishing a description of a new
cyprinoid fish. This was followed by a yet more elab-
orate research into the history of the cyprinoid and other
fishes found in the lake of Neuchatel. Rapidly enlarg-
ing his plans, the publication of the last-named work was
succeeded by the issue, in 1830, of a prospectus of a A'is-
tory of the Freshwater Fishes of Central Europe.
The task was completed and the work published in 1829.
Agassiz Soon found that his palaeontological labors
rendered a new basis of ichthyological classification ab-
solutely necessary. . The fossils rarely exhibited any
traces of the soft tissues of fishes. They chiefly con-
sisted of the teeth, Scales, and fins, even the bones being
perfectly preserved in but comparatively few instances.
Hence the classifications of Cuvier and other naturalists
were of little use to him in determining the mutual rela-
tions of the fossil forms. He therefore adopted his well-
known classification, which divided fishes into four groups
—viz., Ganoids, Placoids, Cycloids, and Ctenoids.
Under twenty-five years of age, and, as already ob-
served, with limited financial resources, he nevertheless
seems to have known no fear. He soon announced to
geologists several important generalisations, the correct-
ness of which has been confirmed by all subsequent
research. In particular, he pointed out that no exam-
ples of Cycloids and Ctenoids, comprehending the bulk
of the fishes now seen in our markets, were to be ſound
in rocks of older date than the cretaceous age.
As the work proceeded it became obvious that it
would over-tax the resources of the intrepid young zoöl-
ogist, unless some additional assistance could be afforded
to him. The British Association for the Advancement
of Science wisely came to his aid, and the late Earl of
Ellesmere—better known in his youth as Lord Francis
Egerton — gave him yet more efficient help.
It was whilst he was thus engaged that Agassiz paid
his first visit to England, for the purpose of studying the
rich stores of fossil fishes with which this country abounds.
Subsequently to his first visit to England the labors of
Hugh Miller, Dr. Malcolmson, and other geologists
brought to light the marvellous ichthyal fauna of the
Devonian beds of the north-east of Scotland.
The year 1840 witnessed the inauguration of a new
movement, which has proved to be of the utmost impor-
tance to geological science. Previously to this date De
Saussure, Venetz, Charpentier, and others had made the
glaciers of the Alps the subjects of special study, and
Charpentier had even arrived at the important conclusion
that the well-known erratic blocks of alpine rocks scat-
tered so abundantly over the slopes and summits of the
96
A G D
A G A —
|. mountains, had been conveyed thither by glaciers.
he question having attracted the attention of Agassiz,
he at once grappled with it in his wontedly enthusiastic
manner. He not only made successive journeys to the
alpine glaciers, but he had a rude hut constructed upon
one of the Aar glaciers, which for a time he made his
comfortless home, in order that he might the more thor-
oughly investigate the structure and movements of the
ice. These labors resulted in the publication of his
magnificent illustrated folio entitled Etudes sur les
Glaciers. In this important work the movements of the
glaciers, their moraines, their influence in grooving and
rounding off the rocks over which they travelled, were
treated with a comprehensiveness which threw into the
shade all the writings of previous laborers in this field.
He not only accepted Charpentier’s idea that some of the
alpine glaciers had extended across the wide plains and
valleys drained by the Aar and the Rhone, and thus
landed parts of their remains upon the uplands of the
Jura, but he went still further in the same direction. He
concluded that, at a period geologically recent, Switzer-
land had been another Greenland; that instead of a few
glaciers stretching their restricted lines across the areas
referred to, one vast sheet of ice, originating in the
higher Alps, had extended over the entire valley of north-
western Switzerland until it reached the southern slopes
of the Jura, which, though they checked and deflected
its further extension, did not prevent the ice from reach-
ing in many places the summit of the range.
Thus familiarized with the phenomena attendant on
the movements of recent glaciers, Agassiz was prepared
for a new and most unexpected discovery which he made
in 1846, in conjunction with the late Professor Buck-
land. These two savants visited the mountains of Scot-
land together, and found in six different localities clear
evidence of some ancient glacial action. The discovery
was announced to the Geological Society of London in
a joint communication from the two distinguished observ-
ers. In the autumn of 1846 he crossed the Atlantic, with
the two-fold design of investigating the natural history
and geology of the United States, and delivering a course
of lectures on zoölogy at the Lowell Institute ; and the
tempting advantages, pecuniary and scientific, presented
to him in the New World, induced him to settle in the
United States, where he remained to the end of his life.
He was appointed professor of zoölogy and geology in
the university of Cambridge, in 1847.
This transfer to a new field, and the association with
fresh objects of high interest to him, gave his energies a
new stimulus. Volume after volume now proceeded
from his pen : Some of his writings were popular, and
addressed to the multitude, but most of them dealt with
the higher departments of scientific research. But at
length the great strain on his physical powers began to
tell. He then sought to restore his waning health by a
southern voyage. His early labors among the fishes of
Brazil had often caused him to cast a longing glance
towards that country; and he now resolved to combine
the pursuit of health with the gratification of his long-
cherished desires. In April 1865 he started for Brazil,
along with his admirable wife and an excellent class of
assistants. An interesting account of this journey, to
the success of which the emperor of Brazil contributed
in every possible way, was published by Mrs. Agassiz
when they returned home, laden with the natural treas-
ures of the Brazilian rivers.
In 1871 he made a second excursion, visiting the
southern shores of the North American continent, both
on its Atlantic and its Pacific seaboards. He had ſor
many years yearned after the establishment of some per-
manent School where zoölogical science could be studied,
not in class-rooms or museums of dead specimens, but
amidst the living haunts of the subjects of study. Like
all truly great teachers, he had little faith in any school
but that of nature. The last, and possibly the most
permanently influential, of the labors of his long and suc-
cessful life, was the establishment of such an institution,
which he was enabled to effect through the liberality of
Mr. John Anderson, a citizen of New York. That
gentleman not only handed over to Agassiz the island of
Penikese, on the east coast, but also presented him with
$50,000 wherewith permanently to endow it as a practi-
cal school of natural science, especially devoted to the
study of marine zoölogy. Another American friend
gave him a fine yacht, of 80 tons burden, to be employed
in marine dredging in the surrounding seas. Had
Agassiz lived long enough to bring all this machinery
into working order, it is difficult to exaggerate the prac-
tical advantages which American science would have
reaped from it when guided by such experienced hands.
But it was otherwise ordained. The disease with
which he had struggled for some years proved fatal on
Dec. I4, 1873. -
AGATE, a name applied by mineralogists to a stone
of the quartz family, generally occurring in rounded
modules or in veins in trap rocks. The number of agate
balls in the rock often give it the character of amygda-
loid; and when such a rock is decomposed by the ele-
ments, the agates drop out, and are found in the beds of
streams that descend from it; or they may be obtained
in quarrying. The principal varieties are—
1. Calcedony. In this the colors are in parallel
bands.
2. Carnelian, or red calcedony, when found, is almost
always brownish or muddy. &
Mocha stones, originally brought from the East,
are clear grayish calcedonies, with clouds and dashes of
rich brown of various shades.
4. Moss agates are such as contain arborisations or
dendrites of oxide of iron, some of which seem to be
petrifactions of real vegetable forms.
Bloodstone is a dark-green agate containing bright
red spots like blood-drops.
6. Plasma, a grass-green stone, found engraved in
ruins at Rome, on the Schwartzwald, and on Mount
Olympus, appears to be calcedony colored by chlorite.
7. Chrysoprase, found in Silesia, is an agate colored
apple-green by oxide of nickel.
The agate can be cut or sawed easily, and is used
for making cups, rings, seals, handles for knives and
forks, sword-hilts, rosary beads, and a great variety of
trinkets.
AGATHARCHIDES, a celebrated Greek gramma-
rian and geographer who flourished about 140 years B.C.,
was born at Cnidos.
AGATHARCHUS, a Greek painter.
about 480 years B.C.
AGATHIAS, a Greek historian and poet, born at
Myrina in Asia Minor, about 536 A.D.
AGATHO, an Athenian tragic poet, the disciple of
Prodicus and Socrates, celebrated by Plato in his
Arotagoras for his virtue and his beauty.
AGATHOCLES, a famous tyrant of Sicily, was the
son of a potter at Rhegium. By his singular vigor and
abilities he raised himself through various gradations of
rank till he finally made himself tyrant of Syracuse, and
then of nearly all Sicily. He died in the seventy-second
year of his age, B.C. 290, after a reign of twenty-eight
C2 IS.
y AGDE, a town of France, in the department of
Hérault, on the left bank of the river of that name,
30 miles S.W. of Montpellier. It is a place of great
antiquity, and is said to have been founded, under the
name of Agathe, by the Greeks. The place commands
He flourished
A G E
97
an extensive coasting trade, more than 400 vessels annu-
ally entering the port. Soap and verdigris are manu-
factured, and the staple productions of southern France
are largely exported. Population, 97.47.
AGE, a term denoting generally any fixed period of
time, is used more definitely in a variety of senses.
Hesiod, for example, in his poem Works and ZXays,
describes minutely five successive ages, during each of
which the earth was peopled by an entirely distinct race.
The first or golden race lived in perfect happiness on the
fruits of the untilled earth, suffered from no bodily
infirmity, passed away in a gentle sleep, and became
after death guardian deemons of this world. The second
or siſzer race was degenerate, and, refusing to worship
the immortal gods, was buried by Jove in the earth.
The third or òrazeze race, still more degraded, was war-
like and cruel, and perished at last by internal violence.
The fourth or Aeroic race, was a marked advance upon
the preceding, its members being the heroes or demi-
gods who fought at Troy and Thebes, and who were
rewarded after death by being permitted to reap thrice a
year the free product of the earth. The fifth or iron
race, to which the poet supposes himself to belong, is
the most degenerate of all, sunk so low in every vice
that any new change must be for the better.
A definite period in history distinguished by some
special characteristic, such as great literary activity, is
generally styled, with Some appropriate epithet, an age.
According to Fichte's scheme there are five ages, dis-
tinguished by the relative predominance which instinct,
external authority, and reason have in them respectively,
instinct being supreme in the first, and reason in the last.
Comte's scheme distinguishes three ages according to the
state of knowledge in each, and he supposes that we are
now entering upon the third of these.
In relation to individual as well as to social life, age
is used with a considerable variety of application. It
frequently denotes the total duration of life in man,
animals, or plants, and in this sense belongs to the subject
of LONGEVITY (7.2.) It also denotes in man the various
periods into which his life may be divided, either from a
physiological or from a legal point of view. In the
former aspect perhaps the most common division is into
the four ages of infancy, youth, manhood, and old age.
These again have been increased to six or seven by some
physiologists—infancy, childhood, boyhood, or girlhood,
adolescence, manhood or womanhood, age, and old age
or second childhood. While bothschemes have a sufficient
basis of Scientific accuracy, they have also each attracted
the fancy of the poet. The division of human life into
periods for legal purposes is naturally sharp and definite.
It would be unscientific in the physiologist to name any
precise year for the transition from one of his stages to
another, inasmuch as that differs very considerably among
different nations, and even to some extent among different
individuals of the same nation. But the law must
necessarily be fixed and uniform, and even where it
professes to proceed according to nature, must be more
precise than nature. In France the year of majority is
twenty-one, and the nubile age, according to the Code
AVapo/eozz, eighteen for males and fifteen for females,
with a restriction as to the consent of guardians. In
Germany majority is usually reached at twenty-four,
though in some states (Bavaria, Saxony, Würtemburg,
and Baden) the age is twenty-one. In the United States
the age qualification for a president is thirty-five, for a
senator thirty, and for a representative twenty-five.
AGELADAS, an eminent statuary of Argos, and the
instructor of the three great sculptors, Phidias, Myron,
and Polycletus.
AGELNOTH, AETHELNOTH, or ETHELNoth,
known also as Ac/ie/notats, son of Egelmaer the Earl,
Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Canute, was
trained-in the monastery at Glastonbury, for which he
afterward obtained new privileges from the king. Ac-
cording to William of Malmesbury, he exercised a great
and salutary influence over Canute in the way both of
encouragement and restraint. He was appointed dean
of Canterbury and chaplain to the king, and was raised
to the archbishopric on the death of Living in IO2O.
When Canute died, he made the archbishop promise to
be faithful to his sons by Emma, and the promise was so
truly kept that Harold, the usurper, remained unconse-
crated until after the death of Agelnoth (Io98).
AGEN, the chief town of the department of Lot-et-
Garonne in France, is situated on the right bank of the
Garonne, 73 miles S. E. of Bordeaux. -
AGENT, in Diplomacy, Commerce and jurisprut-
dence, is a name applied generally to any person who
acts for another. It has probably been adopted from
France, as its function in modern civil law was other-
wise expressed in Roman julisprudence.
In Diplomacy, a class of semi-ambassadors termed
agents have been employed generally between states of
unequal power. The small community might send an
agent to propitiate some powerful government, and
secure its protection. A great power would, on the
other hand, distribute its agents among the petty states
which it kept in clientage, to see that no counteracting
influence was at work among them. See AMBASSADOR ;
DIPLOMACY.
The law of PRINCIPAL AND AGENT has its origin in
the law of mandate among the Romans, and fortunately
even in England the spirit of that system of jurispru-
dence pervades this branch of the law.
In a general view of the law of agency it is necessary
to have regard to the rights and duties of the principal,
the agent, and the public. The agent should not do
what he has no authority for ; yet if he be seen to have
authority, those with whom he deals should not be
injured by secret and unusual conditions. The employer
is bound by what his agent does in his name, but the
public are not entitled to take advantage of obligations
which are known to be unauthorized and unusual.
Agents are of different kinds, according to their stipu-
lated or consuetudinary powers. The main restraint in
the possible powers of an agent is in the old maxim,
delegatus more potest delegare, designed to check the
complexity that might be created by inquiries into re-
peatedly-deputed responsibility. The agent cannot
delegate his commission to put another in his place ; but
in practice this principle is sometimes modified, for it so
may arise from the nature of his office that he is to employ
other persons for the accomplishment of certain objects. .
In the general case, agency is constituted by the
acceptance of the mandate or autiñority to act for the
principal, and the evidence of this may be either verbal or
in writing. The English statute of frauds requires an
agent to have authority in writing for the purposes of its
1st, 2d, and 3d clauses relating to leases. “And it is
a general rule that an agent who has to execute a deed,
or to take or give livery or seisin, must be appointed by
deed for that purpose.” Agency may also be either
created or enlarged by implication. What the agent has
done with his principal’s consent the public are justified
in believing him authorized to continue doing. The law
is ever jealous in admitting as accessories of a general
appointment to any particular agency the power to
borrow money in the principal's name, to give his name
to bill transactions and to pledge him to gúaranties; but
all these acts may be authorised by implication; or by
being the continuation of a series of transactions of the
same kind and in the same line of business, to which the
principal has given his sanction.
7 A &
98
A G E — A G I
The obligations of the principal are — to pay the
agent's remuneration, or, as it is often called, cómmis-
sion, the amount of which is fixed by contract or the
usage of trade; to pay all advances made by the agent in
the regular course of his employment; and to honor the
obligations lawfully undertaken for him. The agent is
responsible for the possession of the proper skill and
means for carrying out the functions which he under-
takes. He must devote to the interests of his employer
such care and attention as a man of ordinary prudence
bestows on his own — a duty capable of no more certain
definition, the application of it as a fixed rule being the
function of a jury. He is bound to observe the strictest
good faith; and in some instances the law interposes to
remove him from temptation to sacrifice his employer’s
interest to his own; thus, when he is employed
to buy, he must not be the seller; and when
employed to sell, he must not be the purchaser. He
ought only to deal with persons in good credit, but he
is not responsible for their absolute solvency unless he
guarantee them. See ATTORNEY.
In France the Agents de Change were formerly the
class generally licensed for conducting all negotiations,
as they were termed, whether in commerce or the money
market. Of late the term has been practically limited
to those who conduct, like our stockbrokers, transac-
tions in public stock; and it is understood that it is rather
as speculators than as agents that the majority of them
adopt the profession. The laws and regulations as to
courtiers, or those whose functions were most distinctly
confined to transactions in merchandise, have been mixed
up with those applicable to agents de change. Among
the other revolutionary measures of the year 1791, the
professions of agent and courtier were again opened to
the public. They are now regarded as public officers,
appointed, with certain privileges and duties, by the gov-
ernment, to act as intermediaries in negotiating transfers
of public funds and commercial stocks, and for dealing
in metallic currency.
AGESILAUS, king of the Lacedaemonians, the
second of the name, son of Archidamus II., was, through
the influence of Lysander, raised to the throne in 398
B. C., in opposition to the superior claim of his nephew
Leotychides. Immediately on his accession he advised
the Lacedaemonians to anticipate the king of Persia,
who was making great preparations for war, and attack
him in his own dominions. He was himself chosen for
this expedition, and gained so many advantages over the
enemy that, if the league which the Athenians and the
Thebans formed against the Lacedaemonians had not
obliged him to return home, it seems probable that he
would have carried his victorious arms into the very
heart of the Persian empire. But he readily gave up
all these triumphs to come to the succor of his country,
which he happily relieved by his victory over the allies
at Chaeronea, in Boeotia, 394 B.C. He obtained another
near Corinth; but, to his great mortification, the The-
bans afterwards gained several victories over the Lace-
daemonians. He died in the third year of the Iogd
Olympiad, being the 84th year of his age and 38th of
his reign, and was succeeded by his son Archidamus.
AGGREGATION, STATES OF, the three states —
solid, liquid and gaseous — in which matter occurs,
depending on the degree of cohesion that subsists between
the molecules or atoms of material bodies. In the solid
state, the molecules cohere so firmly that their relative
positions cannot be changed without the application of
force, and the body retains a definite form; in the liquid
state, they move freely and readily on each other, the
cohesion that exists being so slight that the body has
itself no form; in the gaseous state, they are affected by
an elastic force that amounts to repulsion, and so diffuse
them through an increased space. The metals, glass,
wood, &c., are solids; water and atmospheric air are
the most familiar types of liquid and gaseous bodies.
AGH RIM, or AUGHRIM, a small village in Galway,
4 miles W. of Ballinasloe, is rendered memorable by the
decisive victory gained there on the 12th July, 1691, by
the forces of William III., under General Ginkell, over
those of James II., under the French general St. Ruth.
AGINCOURT, or Aziscourt, a French village, in
the department of Pas de Calais, situated in 50° 35' N.
lat., 2° 10' E. long., famous on account of the victory
obtained there by Henry V. of England over the
French. Following the example of several of his pre-
decessors, the young king crossed over to France in the
third year of his reign on a military expedition. On
the morning of Friday, the 25th of October, 1415, A. D.,
St. Crispin's day, the English and French armies were
ranged in order of battle, each in three lines, with
bodies of cavalry on both wings. The Constable
d’Albert, who commanded the French army, fell into
the snare that was laid for him, by drawing up his army
in a narrow plain between two woods. The first line
was commanded by the Constable d’Albert, the dukes
of Orleans and Bourbon, and many other nobles; the
dukes of Alençon, Brabant, and Barre conducted the
second line; and the earls of Marle, Damartine, Fau-
conberg, &c., were at the head of the third line. The
king of England placed 200 of his best archers in
ambush in a low meadow on the flank of the first line
of the French. His own first line consisted wholly of
archers. The main body of the English army, consist-
ing of men-at-arms, was commanded by Henry in per-
son ; the vanguard, committed to Edward Duke of York
at his particular request, was posted as a wing to the
right; and the rearguard, commanded by Lord Camois,
as a wing on the left. The archers were placed between
the wings, in the form of a wedge. The two armies,
drawn up in this manner, stood a considerable time gaz-
ing at one another in silence. But the English king,
dreading that the French would discover the danger of
their situation and decline a battle, commanded the
charge to be sounded, about 10 o’clock in the forenoon.
At that instant the first line of the English kneeled
down and kissed the ground ; and then starting up, dis-
charged a flight of arrows, which did great execution
among the crowded ranks of the French. Immediately
after, upon a signal being given, the archers in ambush
arose, and, discharging their arrows on the flank of the
French line, threw it into some disorder. The battle
now became general, and raged with great fury. The
English archers threw away their bows, and rushing for-
ward, made dreadful havoc with their swords and battle-
axes. The first line of the enemy was by these means
defeated, its leaders being either killed or taken pris-
oners. The second line, commanded by the Duke
d’Alençon, now advanced, and was met by the second
line of the English, led by the king. The duke forced
his way to the king, and assaulted him with great fury;
but Henry brought him to the ground, where he was
instantly dispatched by the surrounding soldiers, receiv-
ing innumerable wounds. Discouraged by this disaster,
the second line made no more resistance, and the third
fled without striking a blow ; yielding a complete and
glorious victory to the English, after a violent struggle
of three hours’ duration. The loss to the conquerors is
generally reckoned at 1600 men, and the French are said
to have left Io, Ooo slain on the field, including the con-
stable, three dukes, five counts, and ninety barons.
AGIO (Ital. aggio, exchange, discount), a term used
in commerce to denote the difference between the real
and the nominal value of money. In some states the
coinage is so debased, owing to the wear of circulation,
A G I — A G O
99
that the real is greatly reduced below the nominal value.
In countries where silver coinage is the legal tender, agio
is sometimes allowed for payment in the more conven-
ient form of gold.
AGIS. Four kings of this name reigned at different
periods in Sparta.
AGIS II. Succeeded his father Archidamus, and reigned
from 427 to 399 B.C.
AGIS III. Succeeded his father Archidamus III.338 B.C.
AGIS IV., Son of Eudamidas II., and lineally descended
from Agesilaus II., succeeded his father 244 B.C., and
reigned four years. He was more distinguished for the
‘social reforms he attempted to introduce at Sparta than
for his success as a general. The degenerate state of
the Spartan commonwealth led him to attempt a
reformation by restoring the institutions of Lycurgus,
and, in the spirit of a true reformer, he set the example
in his own person and household. His excellent inten-
tions were seconded by all the younger and poorer por-
tion of the community; but the rich and luxurious were
vehemently opposed to measures which threatened to in-
terfere so seriously with their influence and pleasures.
His colleague, Leonidas, headed the opposition, and
pusily propagated the suspicion that Agis aspired to tyr-
anny, by obliterating the distinctions of society and
increasing the power of the multitude. At this time the
Achaeans sent to Sparta for assistance in the war with
the AEtolians, which was granted. Agis received the
command of the troops, and though he gained no advan-
tage over the cautious Aratus, the Achaean general, he
conducted the campaign with considerable credit from
the good discipline he maintained in his army. On his
return he found that the misconduct of Argesilaus had
resulted in a revolution and the recall of Leonidas.
Leonidas contented himself with banishing his son-in-law,
but resolved on the ruin of Agis. The unfortunate king
was accordingly seized and cast into prison, where, after
a mock trial, he was sentenced to be strangled.
AGISTMENT, the profit arising from taking in cattle
to lie and pasture in one’s lands, applied more particu-
larly, in the first instance, to the proceeds of pasturage
in the king’s forests.
AGNANO, LAGO D’, a small circular lake near
Naples, about two miles in circumference, and evidently
situated in the crater of an extinct volcano.
AGNATES (Agnati), in Roman Zaw, are persons
related through males only, as opposed to cognates.
AGNESI, MARIA GAETANA, an Italian lady pre-
eminently distinguished for her scientific attainments,
was born at Milan on the 16th of May 1718, her father
Being professor of mathematics in the university of
Bologna. When only nine years old, she had such
command of Latin as to be able to publish an elaborate
address in that language, maintaining that the pursuit
of liberal studies was not improper for her sex. By
her thirteenth year she had acquired Greek, Hebrew,
French, Spanish, German, and other languages. She
was in consequence generally known as “the Walking
Polyglot.” Two years later her father began to assemble
in his house at stated intervals a circle of the most
learned men in Bologna, before whom she read and
maintained a series of theses on the most abstruse philo-
'sophical questions. In 1750, on the illness of her father,
she was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV. to occupy
the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy at
Bologna. After the death of her father, in 1752, she
carried out a long-cherished purpose by giving herself to
the study of theology, and especially of the fathers.
After holding for some years the office of directress of
the Hospice Trivulzio for Blue Nuns at Milan, she her-
self joined the sisterhood, and in this austere order
•ended her days (1799).
AGNESI, MARIA TERESA, sister of the above (died
I780), was well known as a musician, having composed
a number of cantatas, besides three operas — Sophonis-
Öe, Ciro in Armizzia, and AVitocri.
AGNOETAE, in Church History, a sect of ancient
heretics who maintained that Christ’s human nature did
not become omniscient by its union with His divinity.
AGNOLO, BAccio D’, wood-carver, sculptor, and
architect, was born at Florence in 1460. The first was
his original calling, and he attained considerable dis-
tinction in it before he turned his attention to archi-
tecture, which he went to Rome to study in 1530. He
was engaged to complete the drum of the cupola in the
metropolitan church ZX Santa María del Fiore; but
Michael Angelo found fault with his plans, and the work
remains unexecuted to this day. He died in 1543.
AGNONE, a town of South Italy, at the foot of
Monte Capraro, 20 miles N.W. of Campobasso.
AGNOSTIC, a word introduced recently into re-
ligious terminology to describe a person whose faith is
not of a nature to enable him to feel with certainty
the truth of any spiritual or supernatural proposi-
tion —in other words, he does not Ænow — hence does
not believe or disbelieve. He is not an aggressive
infidel, but a passive indifferentist, who neither denies
nor affirms.
AGNUS DEI, the figure of a lamb bearing a cross,
symbolical of the Saviour as the “Ilamb of God.” The
device occurs in mediaeval sculptures, but the name is
especially given in the Church of Rome to a small cake
made of the wax of the Easter candles, and impressed
with this figure.
AGNUS DEI is also the popular name for the anthem
beginning with these words, which is said to have been
introduced into the missal by Pope Sergius I. (687–
7OI).
AGOBARD, a Frank, born in 779, became coad-
jutor to Leidrad, archbishop of Lyons, in 813, and on
the death of the latter succeeded him in the see (816).
He was one of the chief supporters of Lothaire and
Pepin in their conspiracy against their father, Louis le
Debonnaire, and was in consequence deposed by the
council of Thionville (835). He died at Saintonge in
84O.
"Agonalia, in Roman Antiguity, festivals cele-
brated on the 9th January, 21st May, and IIth Decem-
ber in each year, in honor of Janus, whom the Romans
invoked before undertaking any affair of importance.
AGONIC LINES, the imaginary lines on the earth's
surface where the magnetic needle indicates no declina-
tion or deviation from the terrestrial meridian — that is,
points to the true north and south.
AGONOTHETA, or AGONOTHETEs, in Grecian
Antiquity, was the president or superintendent of the
Sacred games.
AGORA (to congregate), the place used among the
ancient Greeks as a public market, and corresponding in
general with the Roman forum. From its convenience
as a meeting-place, it became in most of the cities of
Greece a general resort for social and political purposes,
AGORANOMOI, magistrates in the republic of
Greece, whose position and duties were similar to those
of the aediles of Rome.
AGORDO, a town in North Italy, 12 miles N.W. of
Belluno.
AGOSTA, or AUGUSTA, a city of Sicily, 14 miles N.
of Syracuse, and in the province of that name. It is
built on a peninsula, and is united to the mainland by a
narrow causeway. By some writers it is supposed to
occupy the site of ancient Megara Hyblaea. The mod-
ern city, which was founded by the emperor Frederick II.
in 1229–33, suffered severely during the wars of succeed-
i
©
i
IOO
A G O – A G R
;
:
i
º
ing centuries, and was several times sacked. Population
(1865) 9735.
AGOSTINI, LEONARDO, an eminent antiquary of
the 17th century, born at Siena.
AGOSTINO and AGNOLO (or ANGELO) DA
SIENA, two brothers, architects and sculptors, who
flourished in the first half of the 14th century.
A GOSTINO, PAOLA, an eminent Italian musician,
born at Valerano, in 1593. His musical compositions
are numerous and of great merit, an Agnus Dei for
eight voices being specially admired. He died in 1629.
AGOUTI, a genus of mammals (the Dasyprocea)
found in South America and in some of the West Indian
islands, belonging to the same family as the guinea-pig,
viz., that of Cazida in the order Aºodezz/ia. When the
Antilles and Bahamas were discovered they are said to
have been overrun with these animals, which were the
largest quadrupeds then found in the islands.
AGRA, a division, district, and city of British India,
under the jurisdiction of the lieutenant-governor of the
North-Western Provinces.
AGRA DISTRICT lies between 26° 43' 45" and 27°
24' 15" N. lat., and between 77° 28′ and 78° 53' E.
long. It is bounded on the N. by the district of
Mathurá; on the E. by the Mainpurí and Etáwah dis-
tricts; on the S. by the Gwalior territory and the Dhol-
pur state; and on the W. by the Bhartpur territory.
Its area in 1872 was returned at 1873 square miles, and
its population at 1,094, 184 souls. The general appear-
ance of the district is that common to the Doab, a level
plain intersected by watercourses (nálás) and ravines.
The only hills are the sandstone elevations in the west
and south-west of the district. The principal rivers are
the Jamná, Chambal, Uttangan, and Khari. The Jamná
intersects the district, cutting off the subdivisions of
Itmadpur and Firozábād; and a branch of the Aligarh
division of the Ganges Canal passes through its northern
parts. Only five towns are returned by the census as
containing upwards of 5000 inhabitants.
AGRA. CITY, situated on the banks of the Jamná
river in 27° 10' N. lat., and 78° 5' E. long., is the head-
quarters of the division and capital of the district.
Formerly it was the provincial capital also, but since the
mutiny the seat of government has been removed from
Agra to Allahābād. The city, which is about 4 miles in
length by 3 in breadth, sweeps along the banks of the
river in a semicircle. The principal thoroughfares are a
fine broad street intersecting the town from north to
south, and the Strand, which runs along the banks of the
river for a distance of 2 miles. During the mutiny of
1857, it formed a place of refuge for the European and
Christian community of Agra, and was threatened by
the insurgent sepoys. The buildings of most note
within the walls of the fort are the palace and hall of
audience of Sháh Jahān, and the Morti Masjid, or
“Pearl Mosque.”
AG RAM, or ZAGRAB, the capital of the Austrian
i. of Croatia, is finely situated on a hill near the
anks of the Save, 160 miles south of Vienna. Popu-
lation in 1869, 19,857.
AGRARIAN LAWS (Zeges Agraria), when used in
the most extended signification of the term, are laws
for the distribution and regulation of property in land.
The history of these enactments is not only important
as explanatory of the constitution of the ancient repub-
lics, but is rendered highly interesting by the conflicting
opinions which have been entertained respecting their
object and operation. It seems to have been a motion
generally entertained in the ancient world that every
citizen of a country should be a landholder; and that
the territory of a state, so far as it was left uninclosed,
or not reserved for public purposes, should be divided
:
;
in equal portions among the citizens. Such a distribu-
tion of public land seems to have been acted upon as a
recognised principle from the earliest period to which
existing j'. extend.
It was long a prevalent and undisputed opinion that
the territories of the Hebrews, and of the republics of
ancient Greece, were divided into equal portions, and
that the object of such a distribution was to main-
tain a state of equality among all the members of the
community. Theignorant Hindu might remain satisfied
with the caste which nature had transmitted to him
through successive generations, because his progenitors
had been prevented from emerging from their obscurity;
but the citizens of Greece and Italy, being themselves
constituent members of the body politic, and not ignor-
ant of the power thereby conferred on them, could not
have been kept in check by the same principle of fear.
Such an attempt, moreover, to prevent the acquisition of
property would have obstructed the advancement of the
arts of civilised life, would have extinguished those feel-
ings of patriotism which led the Greeks so often to
hazard their lives in defence of their country, and, by
engendering discontent and exciting internal commo-
tions, would have made them an easy prey to their ene-
In 16S.
The expression Agrarian Laws, however, is more com-
monly applied to the enactments among the Romans
for the management of the public domains (ager pub-
Zicus); and to an account of these the remainder of our
space must be devoted. It is a singular fact that, while
almost every other subject connected with the Roman
constitution had been successfully investigated and ex-
plained, the object and intention of the agrarian laws
were entirely misunderstood by scholars for many cen-
turies aſter the revival of letters.
Romulus is represented as dividing his small territory
among the members of his infant community at the rate
of two jugera (each extending to two-thirds of an English
acre) a-piece, as inheritable property. The whole dis-
trict, however, was not thus assigned ; one portion was
set apart for the service of the gods and for royal do-
mains; and another was reserved as common land for
pasture. The stock kept on the common land served to
eke out a maintenance which two fugera could not
otherwise have furnished to a family, and an agistment
was paid to the commonwealth for the pasturage. It is
probable that the same principle prevailed under the regal
government, and that successive adjustments of the ter-
ritory were made. Such a law existed among those of
Servius Tullius. The equality of property thus estab-
lished seems to have been considered as a fundamental
principle of the Roman constitution; and the agrarian
laws are regarded as the necessary means of wresting
from the large proprietors the possessions which they had
illegally acquired.
The correct interpretation of the agrarian laws must
thus be considered as of modern date. Amidst the vio-
lence of the French Revolution a scheme for the equal
division of the national property was advocated, with
great popular favor, by some of the frantic leaders, who
sought a sanction for their extravagances in precedents.
drawn from the ancient republics, and particularly from
the agrarian laws of the Romans.
In almost all countries the legal property of the land
has been originally vested in the sovereign, whether we
are to understand under that name a single chief, a par-
ticular portion of the nation, or the people at large. In
the same manner, the property of all the land in a con-
quered country was held to be transferred to the Sovereign
power in the conquering state, and was assumed with
more or less rigor as circumstances seemed to require.
From the earliest times a portion of the Roman territory
A G R
I O I
was thus regarded as the property of the state, and the
profits arising from it were applied to the public service.
The public domain (ager publicats) was at first small,
but was gradually extended by right of conquest till it
embraced a large portion of the whole peninsula.
The lands thus acquired were disposed of in various
ways. A portion of them was frequently sold by auction
to meet the immediate necessities of the state, and was
thus conveyed in perpetuity to the purchasers. The dis-
posal of the remainder depended on the nature and con-
dition of the land, and its position in reference to the bulk
of the community. If in good condition and at no great
distance from the city, it was frequently assigned, in
small allotments of seven jugera (between 4 and 5 acres),
to those of the poorer citizens, whose services in war gave
them a claim upon the state; while in hostile districts
and on exposed frontiers military colonies were planted,
each colonist receiving a fixed quantity of land. In both
these cases the land so assigned ceased fo form part of
the public domain, and became the property of the recipi-
ents. In some cases the land, after having been assumed
as public property, was allowed to remain in the hand of
the former owners, who became the tenants of the state
for a fixed period, and paid a certain rent to the Roman
exchequer,
The state always reserved to itself the power of resum-
ing possession when it thought fit; and though such
resumption might in many cases be attended by individual
hardship, it was nevertheless justified by the original
•COntract.
Much of the obscurity connected with Roman agrarian
laws has arisen from a misapprehension of the meaning
of the words Żossidere, possessor, and possessio. These
terms, when used in a strictly legal sense, denote merely
occupancy by a tenant, and never imply an absolute
right of property.
AGREDA, a town of Spain, in the province of Old
Castile, 23 miles N.E. of Soria. Population, 312o.
AGRICOLA, CNAEUs JULIUS, was born at Forum
Julii, now Fréjus in Provence, 37 A.D., and was in
Vespasian's time made lieutenant to Vettius Bolanus in
Britain. Upon his return he was ranked by the emperor
among the patricians, and made governor of Aquitania.
This post he held for three years; he then was recalled
to Rome, and chosen consul, Britain being assigned to
him as his province (78 A.D.) Here he reformed many
abuses created by his predecessors, put a stop to extortion,
and caused justice to be impartially administered. Agric-
ola was in Britain fully seven years, from 78 to 85 A.D.;
and he died on the 23d August 93 A.D., when he had
attained the age of 55. Agricola was a man of great
integrity; he possessed high military talents, together
with administrative abilities of the first rank. The life
of Agricola, written by his son-in-law, the historian
Tacitus, is a model of simple and dignified biography.
AGRICOLA, CHRISTOPH LUDwig, landscape-
painter, was born at Regensburg on the 5th Nov.
1667, and died at the same place in 1719. His pictures
are to be found in Dresden, Brunswick, Vienna,
Florence, Naples, and many other towns of both Ger-
many and Italy.
AGRICOLA (originally LANDMANN), GEORG, a
famous mineralogist, born at Glauchau in Saxony, on
the 24th March 1494. After studying at Leipsic and
in Italy, he practised for some time as a physician at
Joachimsthal in Bohemia. Agricola was the first to
raise mineralogy to the dignity of a science, and he
developed it to such an extent that no substantial
advance was made upon his results until the middle of
the 18th century. He died at Chemnitz on the 21st
November 1555.
AGRICOLA, JOHANN FRIEDRICH, musician, was
the skill of the farmers of ancient Egypt.
born at Dobitschen in Saxe-Altenburg, on the 4th Jan.
1720, and died in 1774. He composed several operas
of great merit, as well as instrumental pieces and church
music. . His reputation chiefly rests, however, on his
theoretical and critical writings on musical subjects.
AGRICOLA (originally SchNITTER or SchNEIDER),
JOHANNES, one of the ſoremost of the German reform-
ers, was born on the 20th April 1492, at Elsleben,
whence he is sometimes called Magister /s/ebius. He
studied at Wittenberg, where he soon gained the friend-
ship of Luther. In 1519 he accompanied Luther to the
great assembly of German divines at Leipsic, and acted
as recording Secretary. After teaching for some time in
Wittenberg, he went to Frankfort in 1525 to establish
the worship according to thereformed religion. In 1540
Agricola left Wittenberg secretly for Berlin, where he
published a letter addressed to the elector of Saxony,
which was generally interpreted as a recantation of his
obnoxious views. Luther, however, seems not to have
so accepted it, and Agricola remained at Berlin. The
elector Joachim II. of Brandenburg having taken him
into his favor, appointed him court preacher and general
superintendent. He held both offices until his death in
1566, and his career in Brandenburg was one of great
activity and influence.
AGRICOLA, RODOLPHUS (originally ROELOF HUYS-
MANN), a distinguished scholar, born at Bafflo, near
Gröningen, in 1443. He was educated at Louvain,
where he graduated as master of arts. After residing
for some time in Paris, he went in 1476 to Ferrara in
Italy, and attended the lectures of the celebrated Theo-
dore Gaza on the Greek language. He died at Heidel-
berg in 1485. His principal work is the De Zizzentione
Dialectica, in which he attempts to change the Scho-
lastic philosophy of the day.
AGRICULTURE. It would be interesting to know
how the nations of antiquity tilled, and sowed, and '
reaped; what crops they cultivated, and by what methods
they converted them into food and raiment. But it is
to be regretted that the records which have come down
to us are all but silent upon these homely topics
In Mr. Hoskyn's admirable treatise we have an excel-
lent specimen of what may yet be done to recover and
construct an authentic history of the Agriculture of the
ancients, from the casual allusions and accidental notices
of rural affairs which lie thinly scattered through the
body of general literature; and, more especially, from
those mysterious records of the past, which are now
being rescued from their long burial under the ruins of
Some of the most famous cities of antiquity. Although
comparatively little has been found in such records
bearing directly upon the subject, we must not despair
of the learned industry and masterly skill of an advan-
cing and searching criticism, gathering together these
gleams of light, and making them happily converge upon
the darkness which has hitherto interposed between us
and a circumstantial knowledge of the methods and
details of ancient husbandry.
Every reader of the Bible is familiar with its frequen,
references to Egypt as a land so rich in corn that it not
only produced abundance for its own dense population,
but yielded supplies for exportation to neighboring
countries. Profane history corroborates these state-
ments. Diodorus Siculus bears explicit testimony to
He informs us
that they were acquainted with the benefits of a rotation
of crops, and were skilful in adapting these to the soil
and to the seasons. The ordinary annual supply of corn
furnished to Rome has been estimated at 20,000,000
bushels. From the same author we also learn that they
fed their cattle with hay during the annual inunda-
tion, and at other times tethered them in the meadows
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on green clover. Their flocks were shorn twice
annually (a practice common in several Asiatic coun-
tries), and their ewes yeaned twice a year. For
religious as well as for economical reasons, they were
reat rearers of poultry, and practised artificial hatch-
ing, as at the present day. The abundance or scarcity
of the harvests in Egypt depended chiefly upon the height
of the annual inundation. If too low, much of the land
could not be sown, and scarcity or famine ensued. On
the other hand, great calamities befell the country when
the Nile rose much above the average level. Cattle were
"drowned, villages destroyed, and the crops necessarily
much diminished, as in such cases many of the fields
were still under water at the proper seed time. In
1818 a calamity of this kind took place, when the
river rapidly attained a height of 3% feet above the
proper level.
It is from the paintings and inscriptions with which the
ancient Egyptians decorated their tombs that we get the
fullest insight into the state of agriculture amongst this
remarkable people. Many of these paintings, after the
lapse of two or three thousand years, retain the distinct-
ness of outline and brilliancy of color of recent produc-
tions. The acquaintance which these give us with their
occupations, attainments, and habits is truly marvellous,
and fills the reader of such works as Wilkinson's Egypt
with perfect amazement. Every fresh detail seems to
give confirmation to that ancient saying, “There is noth-
ing new under the sun.” The pictures referring to rural
affairs disclose a state of advancement at that early date
which may well lead us to speak modestly of our own
attainments. An Egyptian villa comprised all the con-
veniences of a European one of the present day. Besides
a mansion with numerous apartments, there were gardens,
orchards, fish-ponds, and preserves for game. Attached
to it was a farm-yard, with sheds for cattle and stables
for carriage horses. A steward directed the tillage
operations, superintended the laborers, and kept account
of the produce and expenditure. The grain was stored
in vaulted chambers furnished with an opening at the
top, reached by steps, into which it was emptied from
sacks, and with an aperture below for removing it when
required. Hand-querns, similar to our own, were used
for grinding corn; but they had also a larger kind
worked by oxen. In one painting, in which the sowing
of the grain is represented, a plough drawn by a pair of
oxen goes first; next comes the Sower scattering the seed
from a basket ; he is followed by another plough; whilst
a roller, drawn by two horses yoked abreast, completes
the operation. The steward stands by Superintending
the whole. Nothing, however, conveys to us so full an
impression of the advanced state of civilization amongst
the ancient Egyptians as the value which they attached
to land, and the formalities which they observed in the
transfer of it. In the time of the Ptolemies, their
written deeds of conveyance began with the mention of
the reign in which they were executed, the name of the
president of the court, and of the clerk who drew them.
The name of the seller, with a description of his per-
sonal appearance, his parentage, profession, and resi-
dence, was engrossed. The nature of ‘the land, its ex-
tent, situation, and boundaries; the name and appear-
ance of the purchaser were also included. A clause of
warrandice and an explicit acceptance by the purchaser
followed, and finally the deed was attested by numerous
witnesses (so many as sixteen occur to a trifling bargain),
and by the president of the court.
The nomades of the patriarchal ages, like the Tartar,
and perhaps some of the Moorish tribes of our own,
whilst mainly dependent upon their flocks and herds,
practised also agriculture proper. The vast tracts over
which they roamed were in ordinary circumstances com-
mon to all shepherds alike. During the summer they
frequented the mountainous districts and retired to the
valleys to winter. Vast flocks of sheep and of goats.
constituted the chief wealth of the nomades, although
they also possessed animals of the ox kind. When
these last were possessed in abundance, it seems to be an
indication that tillage was practiced. We learn that
Job, besides immense possessions in flocks and herds,
had 500 yoke of oxen, which he employed in ploughing,
and a “very great husbandry.” Isaac, too, conjoined.
tillage with pastoral husbandry, and that with success,
for we read that he sowed in the land of Gerar, and
reaped an hundred-fold—a return which it would appear,
in some favored regions, occasionally rewarded the
labors of the husbandman. Such increase, although
far above the average rate, was sometimes even greatly
exceeded, if we take the authority of Herodotus,
Strabo, and Pliny.
Along with the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Romans.
the Israelites are classed as one of the great agricultural
nations of antiquity. The Sojourn of the Israelites in
Egypt trained them for the more purely agricultural life
that awaited them on their return to take possession of
Canaan. Nearly the whole population were virtually
husbandmen, and personally engaged in its pursuits.
Upon their entrance into Canaan, they found the coun:
try occupied by a dense population possessed of walled
cities and innumerable villages, masters of great accu-
mulated wealth, and subsisting on the produce of their
highly cultivated soil, which abounded with vineyards.
and, oliveyards. It was so rich in grain, that the invad-
ing army, numbering 601,730 able-bodied men, with
their wives and children, and a mixed multitude of camp-
followers, found “old corn” in the land sufficient to
maintain them from the day they passed the Jordan.
The Mosaic Institute contained an agrarian law, based
upon an equal division of the soil amongst the adult
males, a census of whom was taken just before their
entrance into Canaan. Provision was thus made for
600,000 yeomen, assigning (according to different calcu-
lations) from sixteen to twenty-five acres of land to each.
This land, held in direct tenure from Jehovah, their
sovereign, was strictly inalienable.
The unrivalled literature of Greece affords us little
information regarding the practical details of her hus-
bandry. The people who by what remains to us of their
poetry, philosophy, history, and fine arts, still exert such.
an influence in guiding our intellectual efforts, in regu-
lating taste, and in moulding our institutions, were
originally the invaders and conquerors of the territory
which they have rendered so famous. Having reduced
the aboriginal tribes to bondage, they imposed upon
them the labor of cultivating the soil, and hence both
the occupation, and those engaged in it, were regarded
contemptuously by the dominant race, who addicted
themselves to what they regarded as nobler pursuits.
With the exception of certain districts, such as Boeotia,
the country was naturally unfavorable to agriculture.
When we find, however, that valleys were freed from
lakes and morasses by drainage, that rocky surfaces were
sometimes covered with transported soil, and that they
possessed excellent breeds of the domesticated animals,
which were reared in vast numbers, we infer that agri-
culture was better understood, and more carefully prac.
tised, than the allusions to it in their literature would
Seem to Warrant.
Amongst the ancient Romans agriculture was highly
esteemed, and pursued with earnest love and devoted
attention. “In all their foreign enterprises, even in
earliest times,” as Schlegel remarks, “they were exceed-
ingly covetous of gain, or rather of land; for it was in
land, and in the produce of the soil, that their principat
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IO3
and almost only wealth consisted. They were a thor-
oughly agricultural people, and it was only at a later
period that commerce, trades and arts, were introduced
among them, and even then they occupied but a subor-
dinate place.” Their passion for agriculture survived
very long; and when at length their boundless conquests
introduced an unheard-of luxury and corruption of mor-
als, the noblest minds among them were strongly at-
tracted towards the ancient virtue of the purer and
simpler agricultural times. Several facts in Roman his-
tory afford convincing proof, if it were required, of the
devotion of this ancient people to agriculture, in their
best and happiest times. Whilst their arts and sciences,
and general literature, were borrowed from the Greeks,
they created an original literature of their own, of which
rural affairs formed the substance and inspiration.
Schlegel and Mr. Hoskyn notice also the striking fact,
that whilst among the Greeks the names of their illus-
trious families are borrowed from the heroes and gods of
their mythology, the most famous houses amongst the
ancient Romans, such as the Pisones, Fabii, Lentuli,
&c., have taken their names from their favorite crops
and vegetables. Perhaps it is not too much to assert,
that many of those qualities which fitted them for con-
quering the world, and perfecting their so celebrated ju-
risprudence, were acquired, or at all events nourished and
matured, by the skill, foresight, and persevering indus-
try, so needful for the intelligent and successful cultiva-
tion of the soil. The words which Cicero puts into the
mouth of Cato give a fine picture of the ancient Roman
enthusiasm in agriculture. “I come now to the pleas-
ures of husbandry, in which I vastly delight. They are
not interrupted by old age, and they seem to me to be
pursuits in which a wise man’s life should be spent.
The earth does not rebel against authority; it never
gives back but with usury what it receives. The gains
of husbandry are not what exclusively commend it.”
In ancient Rome each citizen received, at first, an
allotment of about two English acres. After the expul-
sion of the kings this allotment was increased to about six
acres. These Smak inheritances must, of course, have
been cultivāted by hard labor. On the increase of the
Roman territory the allotment was increased to fifty, and
afterwards even to five hundred acres. Many glimpses
into their methods of cultivation are found in those works
of Roman authors which have survived the ravages of
time. Cato speaks of irrigation, frequent tillage, and
manuring, as means of fertilising the soil. Mr. Hoskyn,
from whose valuable contribution to the History of
Agriculture we have drawn freely in this historic sum-
mary, quotes the following interesting passage from
Pliny, commenting on Virgil:—“Our poet is of opin-
ion that alternate fallows should be made, and that the
land should rest entirely every second year. And this
is, indeed, both true and profitable, provided a man
have land enough to give the soil this repose. But how,
if his extent be not sufficient? Let him, in that case,
help himself thus. Let him sow next year’s wheat-crop
on the field where he has just gathered his beans,
vetches, or lupines, or such other crop as enriches the
ground. For, indeed, it is worth notice that some
crops are sown for no other purpose but as food for
others, a poor practice in my estimation.” In another
place he tells us, “Wheat, the later it is reaped, the
better it casts; but the sooner.it is reaped the fairer the
sample. The best rule is to cit it down before the grain
is got hard, when the ear begins to have a reddish-
brown appearance. ‘Better two days too soon than as
many too late,’ is a good old maxim, and might pass
for an oracle.” The following quotation from the same
author is excellent : —“Cato would have this point
especially to be considered, that the soil of a farm begood
and fertile; also, that near it there be plenty of laborers,
and that it be not far from a large town: moreover,
that it have sufficient means for transporting its prod-
uce, either by water or land. Also, that the house be
we// built, and the land about it as well managed. But
I observe a great error and self-deception which many
men commit, who hold opinion that the negligence and
ill-husbandry of the former owner is good for his succes-
sor or after-purchaser. Now, I say, theie is nothing
more dangerous and disadvantageous to the buyer than
land so left waste and out of heart; and therefore Cato
counsels well to purchase land of one who has managed
it well, and not rashly and hand-over-head to despise
and make light of the skill and knowledge of another.
He says, too, that as well land as men, which are of
great charge and expense, how gainful soever they may
seem to be, yield little profit in the end, when all
reckonings are made. The same Cato being asked,
what was the most assured profit rising out of land?
made this answer, — ‘To feed stock well.” Being asked
again, ‘What was the next?” he answered, “To ſeed
with moderation.” By which answer he would seem to
conclude that the most certain and sure revenue was
a low cost of production. To the same point is to be
referred another speech of his, “That a good husband-
man ought to be a seller rather than a buyer;' also,
‘that a man should stock his ground early and well, but
take long time and leisure before he be a builder;” for it
is the best thing in the world, according to the proverb,
“to make use, and derive profit, from other men's
follies.’ Still, when there is a good and convenient
house on a farm, the master will be the closer occupier,
and take the more pleasure in it; and truly it is a good
saying, that “the master’s eye is better than his heel.’”
Under the Goths, Vandals, and other barbarian Con-
querors, agriculture in Europe, during the middle ages,
seems to have sunk into the lowest condition of neglect
and contempt. We owe its revival, like that of other
arts and sciences, to the Saracens of Spain, who
devoted themselves to the cultivation of that conquered
territory, with hereditary love for the occupation, and
with the skilful application of the experience which they
had gathered in other lands in which they had established
their power. By them, and their successors, the Moors,
agriculture was carried in Spain to a height which per-
haps has not yet been surpassed in Europe. It is said,
that so early as the tenth century the revenue of Sara-
cenic Spain alone amounted to £6,000,000 sterling —
probably as much as that of all the rest of Europe at
that time. The ruins of their noble works for the irri-
gation of the soil still attest their skill and industry,
and put to shame the ignorance and indolence of their
successors. The same remark applies to the Spanish
dominions in South America. In the ancient empire of
Peru agriculture seems to have reached a high degree of
perfection. The ruins of basins and canals, frequently
carried through tunnels, prove their industry and skill in
irrigation.
The influence of the crusades upon the agriculture of
ëCi.
1- ~ * ~ * ~~ y-
be overlool The dreadful op-
this period is not to
pression of the feudal system received at that time a
shock most favorable to the liberties of man, and, with
increasing liberty, more enlightened ideas began to be
entertained, and greater attention to be paid to the cul-
tivation of the soil.
But, during this long interval, the population of
Europe was divided into two great classes, of which by
far the larger one was composed of bondmen, without
property, or the power of acquiring it, and small ten-
ants, very little superior to bondmen ; and the other
class consisting chiefly of the great barons and their
retainers, was more frequently employed in laying waste
W-i 1 \, cºl
IO4.
A G R
the fields of their rivals than in improving their own.
The superstition of the times, which destined a large
portion of the land to the support of the church, and
which, in some measure, secured it from predatory incur-
sions, was the principal source of what little skill and
industry were then displayed in the cultivation of the
soil. “If we consider the ancient state of Europe,”
says Mr. Hume, “we shall find that the far greater
part of society were everywhere bereaved of their per-
sonal liberty, and lived entirely at the will of their mas-
ters. Every one that was not noble was a slave; the
peasants were not in a better condition ; even the gen-
try themselves were subjected to a long train of sub-
ordination under the greater barons, or chief vassals of
the crown, who, though seemingly placed in a high state
of Splendor, yet, having but a slender protection from
law, were exposed to every tempest of the state, and by
the precarious condition on which they lived paid dearly
for the power of oppressing and tyrannising over their
inferiors.” The villains were entirely occupied in the
cultivation of their master’s land, and paid their rents
either in corn or cattle, and other produce of the farm,
or in servile offices, which they performed about the
baron's family, and upon farms which he retained in his
own possession. In proportion as agriculture improved
and money increased, it was found that these services,
though extremely burdensome to the villain, were of
little advantage to the master; and that the produce of a
large estate could be much more conveniently disposed
of by the peasants themselves who raised it, than by the
landlord or his bailiff, who were formerly accustomed to
receive it. The stock which these tenants employed in
cultivation commonly belonged to the proprietor, who
received a proportion of the produce as rent,- a sys-
tem which still exists in France and in other parts of the
Continent, where such tenants are called metayers, and
Some vestiges of which may yet be traced in the steel-
bow of the law of Scotland. Leases of the 13th cen-
tury still remain, and both the laws and chartularies
clearly prove the existence in Scotland of a class of cul-
tivators distinct from the serfs or bondmen. Yet the
condition of these tenants seems to have been very
different from that of the tenants of the present day;
and the lease approached nearer in its form to a feu-
charter than to the mutual agreement now in use. It
was of the nature of a beneficiary grant by the proprie-
tor, under certain conditions, and for a limited period;
the consent of the tenant seems never to have been
doubted. In the common expression “granting a lease,”
we have retained an idea of the original character of
the deed, even to the present time.
The corn crops cultivated during this period seem to
have been of the same species, though all of them prob-
ably much inferior in quality to what they are in the
F. day. Wheat, the most valuable grain, must
ave borne a small proportion, at least in Britain, to that
of other crops; the remarkable fluctuation in price, its
extreme scarcity, indicated by the extravagant rate at
which it was sometimes sold, as well as the preparatory
cultivation required, may convince us that its consump-
tion was confined to the higher orders, and that its
growth was by no means extensive. Rye and oats fur-
nished the bread and drink of the great body of the
people of Europe. Cultivated herbage and roots were
then unknown in the agriculture of Britain. It was not
till the end of the reign of Henry VIII. that any salads,
carrots, or other edible roots were produced in England.
The little of these vegetables that was used was formerly
imported from Holland and Flanders. Queen Catherine,
when she wanted a salad, was obliged to despatch a
messenger thither on purpose.
The ignorance and insecurity of those ages, which
necessarily confined the cultivation of corn to a com-
paratively small portion of country, left all the rest of
it in a state of nature, to be depastured by the inferior
animals, them only occasionally subjected to the care and
control of man. Cultivators were crowded together in
miserable hamlets; the ground contiguous was kept con-
tinually under tillage ; and beyond this, wastes and
woodlands of a much greater extent were appropriated
to the maintenance of their flocks and herds, which pas-
tured indiscriminately, with little attention from their
OWITerS.
The low price of butcher-meat, though it was then the
food of the common people, when compared with the
price of corn, has been justly noticed by several writers
as a decisive proof of the small progress of civilisation
and industry.
From the beginning of the reign of Henry VII. to
the end of Elizabeth's, a number of statutes were made
for the encouragement of tillage, though probably to
little purpose. The great grievance of those days was
the practice of laying arable land to pasture, and suffer-
ing the farm-houses to fall to ruin. “Where in some
towns,” says the statute 4th Henry VII. (1488), “two
hundred persons were occupied and lived of their lawful
labors, now there are occupied two or three herdsmen,
and the residue fallinto idleness;” thereforeit is ordained,
that houses which within three years have been let for
farms, with twenty acres of land lying in tillage or hus-
bandry, shall be upheld, under the penalty of halſ the
profits, to be forfeited to the king or lord of the fee.
Almost half a century afterwards, the practice had be-
come still more alarming; and in 1534 a new Act was
tried, apparently with as little success. “Some have
24,OOO sheep, some 20,000 sheep, some IO,OOO, some
6COO, some 4ooo, and some more and some less;” and
yet it is alleged the price of wool had nearly doubled,
“sheep being come to a few persons' hands.” A penalty
was therefore imposed on all who kept above 2000 sheep;
and no person was to take in farm more than two tene-
ments of husbandry. By the 39th Elizabeth (1597),
arable land made pasture since the 1st Elizabeth shall be
again converted into tillage, and what is arable shall not
be converted into pasture.
The laws regarding the exportation and importation
of corn during this period could have had little effect in
encouraging agriculture, though towards the latter part
of it they gradually approached that system which was
finally established at and soon after the Revolution.
From the time of the above-mentioned statute against
forestallers, which effectually prevented exportation, as
well as the freedom of the home trade, when corn was
above the price therein specified, down to 1688, there
are at least twelve statutes on this subject ; and some
of them are so nearly the same, that it is probable they
were not very carefully observed.
The first statute for levying tolls at turnpikes, to make
or repair roads in England, passed in 1662.
- Of the state of agriculture in Scotland in the 16th and
the greater part of the 17th century very little is known ;
no professed treatise on the subject appeared till after
the Revolution. The south-eastern counties were the
earliest improved, and yet in 1660 their condition seems
to have been very wretched. Ray, who made a tour
along the eastern coast in that year, says: “We observed
little or no fallow ground in Scotland; some ley ground
we saw, which they manured with sea wrack.”
From the Revolution to the accession of George III.
the progress of agriculture was by no means so consider-
able as we should be led to imagine from the great exporta-
tion of corn. It is the opinion of well-informed writers,
that very little improvement had taken place, either in the
cultivation of the soil or the management of live stock,
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from the Restoration down to the middle of last century.
Even clover and turnips, the great support of the pres-
ent improved system of agriculture, were confined to a
few districts, and at the latter period were scarcely culti-
vated at all by common farmers in the northern part of
the island.
The first considerable improvement in the practice of
that period was introduced by Jethro Tull, a gentleman
of Berkshire, who began to drill wheat and other crops
about the year 1701, and whose Horse-ſhoeing Aſus-
Öandry, published in 1731, ekhibits the first decided step
in advance upon the principles and practices of his pre-
decessors. Not contented with a careful attention to
details, Tull set himself, with admirable skill and perse-
verance, to investigate the growth of plants, and thus
to arrive at a knowledge of the principles by which the cul-
tivation of field-crops should be regulated. Having
arrived at the conclusion that the food of plants consists
of minute particles of earth taken up by their rootlets, it
followed, that the more thoroughly the soilin which they
grew was disintegrated, the more abundant would be the
“pasture” (as he called it), to which their fibres would
have access. He was thus led to adopt that system of
sowing his crops in rows or drills, so wide apart as to
admit of tillage of the intervals, both by ploughing and
hoeing, being continued until they had well-nigh arrived
at maturity.
As the distance between his rows appeared much
greater than was necessary for the range of the roots of
the plants, he begins by showing that these roots extend
much farther than is commonly believed, and then pro-
ceeds to inquire into the nature of their food. After
examining several hypotheses, he decides this to be fine
particles of earth. The chief, and almost the only use
of dung, he thinks, is to divide the earth, to dissolve
“this terrestrial matter, which affords nutriment to the
mouths of vegetable roots; ” and this can be done more
completely by tillage. It is therefore necessary not
only to pulverise the soil by repeated ploughings before
it be seeded, but, as it becomes gradually more and more
compressed afterwards, recourse must be had to tillage
while the plants are growing; and this is hoeing, which
also destroys the weeds that would deprive the plants of
their nourishment.
The leading features of Tull's husbandry are his
practice of laying the land into narrow ridges of five or
six feet, and upon the middle of these drilling one, two,
or three rows, distant from one another about seven
inches when there were three, and ten when only two.
The distance of the plants on one ridge from those on
the contiguous one he called an interval; the distance
between the rows on the same ridge, a space or parti-
£ion; the former was stirred repeatedly by the horse-
hoe, the latter by the hand-hoe. t
In the culture of wheat, he began with ridges six feet
Throad, or eleven on a breadth of 66 feet; but on this he
afterwards had fourteen ridges. After trying different
numbers of rows on a ridge, he at last preferred two,
with an intervening space of about Io inches. He
allowed only three pecks of seed for an acre. The first
hoeing was performed by turning a furrow from the row,
as soon as the plant had put forth four or five leaves; so
that it was done before or at the beginning of winter.
The next hoeing was in spring, by which the earth was
returned to the plants. The subsequent operations
depended upon the circumstances and condition of the
land and the state of the weather. The next year's crop
of wheat was sown upon the intervals which had been
unoccupied the former year; but this he does not seem
to think was a matter of much consequence.
Drilling and horse and hand hoeing seem to have been
in use before the publication of Tull's book. “Hoe-
ing,” he says, “may be divided into deep, which is our
horse-hoeing ; and shallow, which is the English hand-
hoeing; and also the shallow horse-hoeing used in some
places betwixt rows, where the intervals are very nar-
row, as I6 or 18 inches.”
Tull's doctrines and practices being quite in advance
of his own times, were, as usual in such cases, vehe-
mently opposed by his contemporaries. He was, in con-
sequence, involved in frequent controversy, in conduct-
ing which he occasionally showed an asperity of temper
which excites our regret, but which is not to be wondered
at, when we consider the trials of patience which he
encountered from the unreasonable opposition of the
agricultural community to his improvements, the
thwarting of his experiments by his own laborers, who,
in their ignorant zeal against innovations, wilfully broke
his machines and disregarded his orders; and from
acute and protracted bodily disease.
Before entering upon a description of the agriculture
of Great Britain at the present day, it may help to set
matters in a clearer light if we take just so much of a
retrospect as will serve as a background to our picture.
At the beginning of the 18th century the agriculture
of that country was still of the rudest kind. With the
exception of certain parts of England, the land was still
for the most part unenclosed, the livestock of each town-
ship grazing together, and the arable land being occu-
pied in common field or run-rig. The practice of fal-
lowing annually a portion of the arable land, and of
interposing a crop of peas betwixt the cereal crops, was
becoming a common practice, and was a great improve-
ment upon the previous and yet common usage of grow-
ing successive crops of white-corn until the land was
utterly exhausted, when it was left to recruit itself by
resting in a state of nature, while other portions were
undergoing the same process. Clover and turnips had
been introduced before this date, and were coming grad-
ually into cultivation as field crops in the more advanced
parts of England. Potatoes were commonly grown in
gardens, but had not yet found their way to the fields.
The gradual advance in the price of farm produce soon
after the year 1760, occasioned by the increase of popu-
lation and of wealth derived from manufactures and com-
merce, gave a powerful stimulus to rural industry, aug-
mented agricultural capital, and called forth a more skil-
ſul and enterprising race of farmers. The arable lands
of the country, which, under the operation of the feudal
system, had been split up into minute portions, culti-
vated by the tenants and their families without hired
labor, began now to be consolidated into larger holdings,
and let to those tenants who possessed most energy and
substance. This enlargement of farms, and in Scotland
the letting of them under leases for a considerable term
of years, continued to be a marked feature in the agri-
cultural progress of the country until the end of the
century, and is to be regarded both as a cause and a
consequence of that progress.
Hitherto the husbandry of England had been very
superior in every respect to that of Scotland. Improve-
ments now, however, made rapid progress in the latter.
Mr. Dawson, at Frogden, in Roxburghshire, is believed
to have been the first who grew turnips as a field crop to
any extent. This enterprising farmer having heard of
the success with which this crop was cultivated in certain
parts of England, took the precaution of seeing for him-
self the most approved mode of doing so before attempt-
ing to introduce it on his own farm.
A few years after this the Messrs. Culley — one of
them also a pupil of Bakewell — left their paternal
property on the banks of the Tees, and settled on the
Northumbrian side of the Tweed, bringing with them
the valuable breeds of live stock and improved husbandry
IO6
A G R
of their native district. The improvements introduced
by these energetic and skilful farmers spread rapidly, and
exerted a most beneficial influence upon the border
counties. An Act passed in 1770, which relaxed the
rigor of strict entails, and afforded power to landlords
to grant leases and otherwise improve their estates, had
a beneficial effect on Scottish agriculture. From 1784
to 1795 improvements advanced with steady steps. This
period was distinguished for the general adoption and
industrious working out of ascertained improvements.
The agriculture of the country was thus steadily
improving, when suddenly the whole of Europe became
involved in the wars of the French Revolution. In
1795, under the joint operation of a deficient harvest,
and the cutting off of foreign supplies of grain by the
policy of Napoleon, the price of wheat, which, for the
twenty preceding years, had been under 50s. a quarter,
suddenly rose to 81s. 6d., and in the following year
reached to 96s. . In 1797 the fear of foreign invasion
led to a panic and run upon the banks, in which emer-
gency the Bank Restriction Act, suspending cash pay-
ment, was passed, and ushered in a system of unlimited
credit transactions. Under the unnatural stimulus of
these extraordinary events, every branch of industry
extended with unexampled rapidity. But in nothing
was this so apparent as in agriculture; the high prices of
roduce holding out a great inducement to improve
ands then arable, to reclaim others that had previously
lain waste, and to bring much pasture-land under the
plough. Nor did this increased tillage interfere with
the increase of live stock, as the green crops of the
alternate husbandry more than compensated for the
diminished pasturage. This extraordinary state of
matters lasted from 1795 to 1814; the prices of produce
even increasing towards the close of that period. The
average price of wheat for the whole period was 89s.
7d. per quarter; but for the last five years it was Io'7s.,
and in 1812 it reached to 126s. 6d. The agriculture of
Great Britain, as a whole, advanced with rapid strides
during this period; but nowhere was the change so great
as in Scotland. Indeed, its progress there, during these
twenty years, is probably without parallel in the history
of any other country. This is accounted for by a con-
currence of circumstances.
But of the causes which have influenced the agriculture
of the period under review, none have been so powerful
as the extraordinary increase of our population, which,
in round numbers, has twice doubled during the past
seventy years. Not only are there four times as many
people requiring to be fed and clad now as there were
then, but from the increased wealth and altered habits
of the people, the individual rate of consumption is
greater now than formerly. This is particularly appar-
ent in the case of butcher-meat, the consumption of
which has increased out of all proportion to that of
bread-corn. To meet this demand, there behooved to be
more green crops and more live stock; and from that
has resulted more wool, more manure, and more corn.
While this ever-growing demand for farm-produce has
stimulated agricultural improvement, it has also operated
in another way. The productiveness of thesoil has been
greatly increased, and will no doubt be still more so in
future; but the area of the country cannot be increased.
Land — the raw material from which food is produced—
being thus limited in amount and in increasing demand,
has necessarily risen in price.
The abundant erop of 1813, and restored communi-
cation with the continent of Europe in the same year,
gave the first check to these unnaturally exorbitant
prices and rents. The restoration of peace to Europe,
and the re-enactment of the Corn Laws in 1815, mark
the commencement of another era in the history of our
national agriculture. It was ushered in with a time of
severe depression and suffering to the agricultural com-
munity. The immense fall in the price of farm-produce
which then took place was aggravated, first, by the un-
propitious weather and deficient harvest of the years
1816, 1817; and still more by the passing in 1819 of the
Bill restoring cash payments, which, coming into opera-
tion in 1821, caused serious embarrassment to all persons
who had entered into engagements at a time of depre-
ciated currency, which had now to be met with the lower
prices of an enhanced one. The much-debated Corn
Laws, after undergoing various modifications, and prov-
ing the fruitful source of business uncertainty, social dis-
content, and angry partizanship, were finally abolished
in 1846, although the act was not consummated until
three years later.
Another class of outward events, which has had an
important influence upon agriculture, requires our notice.
We refer to those mysterious diseases affecting both the
animal and vegetable kingdoms, the causes and remedies
for which have alike baffled discovery. The murrain,
or “vesicular epizootic,” appeared first in 1841, having
been introduced, as is supposed, by foreign cattle. It
spread rapidly over the country, affecting all our domes-
ticated animals, except horses, and causing everywhere
great alarm and loss, although seldom attended by fatal
results. It has prevailed ever since, in a greater or less
degree, and has been more widely diffused as well as
more virulent in 1871 and 1872 than ever before. It
was soon followed by the more terrible lung-disease, or
pleuro-pneumonia, which continues to cause serious
mortality among our herds. In 1865 the rinderpest, or
steppe murrain, originating among the vast herds of the
Russian steppes, where it would appear to be never alto-
gether wanting, had spread westward over Europe, until
it was brought to London by foreign cattle. Several
weeks elapsed before the true character of the disease
was known, and in this brief space it had already been
carried by animals purchased in Smithfield market to all
parts of the country. After causing the most frightful
losses, it was at last stamped out by the resolute
slaughter of all affected animals and of all that had been
in contact with them. In the autumn of 1872 this cattle
plague was again detected in several cargoes of foreign
cattle brought to our ports.
Before the close of the past century, and during the
first quarter of the present one, a good deal had been
done in the way of draining the land, either by open
ditches, or by Elkinton's system of deep covered drains.
This system has now been superseded by one altogether
superior to it, both in principle and practice. In 1835
James Smith, of Deanston, promulgated his now well-
known system of thorough draining and deep ploughing.
It has been carried out already to such an extent as
to alter the very appearance and character of whole
districts of our country, and has prepared the way for all
other improvement. The words “Portable Manures”
indicate at once another prominent feature in the agricul-
ture of the times.
The labor of agriculture has been greatly lightened,
and its cost curtailed, by means of improved implements
and machines. The steam-engine has taken the place of
the jaded horses as a thrashing power. About 1818–2O.
several steam-engines on the condensing principle were
erected in East Lothian, solely for the propelling of
thrashing-machinery. One of these, put up by Mr.
Reid of Drem, at a cost of £600, is still doing its work
there, and, strange to say, after the lapse of fifty-five
years, looks as well and is as efficient as when first
erected.
The railways, by which the country is now intersected
in all directions, have proved of great service to farmers
A G. R.
Io?
Joy conveying their bulky produce to distant markets
cheaply and quickly, and by making lime and other
manures available to the occupiers of many inland and
remote districts. In nothing has this benefit been more
apparent than in the case of fatted live stock, which is
now invariably transported by this means, with manifest
economy to all concerned. :
During the whole of this period there has been going
on great improvement in all our breeds of domesticated
animals. This has been manifested not so much in the
production of individual specimens of high merit — in
which respect the Leicesters of Bakewell, or the short-
horns of Colling, have perhaps not yet been excelled —
as in the diffusion of these and other good breeds over
the country, and in the improved quality of our live
stock as a whole. The fattening of animals is now con-
ducted on more scientific principles. Increased attention
has also been successfully bestowed on the improvement
of our field crops. Improved varieties, obtained by
cross-impregnation, either naturally or artificially brought
about, have been carefully propagated, and generally
adopted. Increased attention is now bestowed on the
cultivation of the natural grasses. The most impor-
tant additions to our list of field crops during this period
have been Italian rye-grass, winter beans, white Belgian
carrot, Sugar beet, and alsike clover. -
The soil constituting the subject-matter on which the
husbandman operates, its character necessarily regulates
to a large extent the nature of his proceedings. The soil
or surface covering of the earth in which plants are pro-
duced is exceedingly varied in its qualities. Being derived
from the disintegration and decomposition of the rocks
which constitute the solid crust of the globe, with a
mixture of vegetable and animal remains, soils take their
character from that of the rocks from which they have
chiefly been derived. There is thus a generally prevailing
resemblance between the soils of a district and the rocks
over which they lie, so that a knowledge of the composi-
tion of the one affords a key to the character of the other.
But this connection is modified by so many circumstances,
that it is altogether impossible by the mere study of
geology to acquire an easy and certain rule for determin-
ing the agricultural character of the soil of any particular
district or field, as it has been the fashion with some
writers of late years to assert. “When, indeed weregard
a considerable tract of land, we can for the most part
trace a connection between the subjacent deposits and the
subsoil, and consequently the soil. Thus, in a country
of sandstone and arenaceous beds, we shall find the soil
sandy; in one of limestone, more or less calcareous; in
one of schistose rocks, more or less clayey. But even in
tracts of the same geological formation, there exist great
differences in the upper stratum, arising from the preva-
lence of one or other member of the series, or from the
greater or less inclination of the strata, by which the debris
of the different beds are more or less mixed together on the
surface. The action of water, too, in denuding the sur-
face at one part, and carrying the debris in greater or
maller quantity to another, exercises everywhere an im-
portant influence on the character of soils. Thus the
fertility of a soil on the higher ground, from which the
earthy particles are washed, is found to be very different
from that of the valley to which these particles are carried.
It is seen, accordingly, that within the limits of the same
geological formation, soils are greatly varied, and that
the mere knowledge of the formation will not enable us
to predict the character of the soil in any given tract,
either with respect to its texture, its composition, or its
productiveness.” Even a very limited acquaintance
with the geology of Great Britain serves, however, to
account for the exceedingly diversified character of its
soils. The popular definitions of soils—and to these it
is safest for practical farmers to adhere—have respect to
their most obvious qualities. Thus they are designated
from their composition, as clays, loams, sands, gravels,
c/a/As, or peats; or from their texture, in which respect
those in which clay predominates are called heazy, stiff,
or impervious; and the others light, friable, or porous."
From the tendency of the former to retain moisture, they
are often spoken of as wet and cold, and the latter, for
the opposite reason, as dry and warm. According to
their measure of fertility, they are also described as rich
or poor. The particular crops for the production of
which they are respectively considered to be best adapted
have also led to clays being spoken of as w/eat or bean
soils, and the friable ones as barley and turnip soils.
But if diversity of soil necessarily modifies the prac-
tice of the husbandman, that of climate does so far
more powerfully. The soils of the different parts of the
globe do not very materially differ from each other, and
yet their vegetable products vary in the extreme. This
is chiefly owing to difference of temperature, which de-
creases more or less regularly as we recede from the
equator, or ascend from the sea-level. Places in the
Same latitude and at the same elevation are found, how-
ever, to vary exceedingly in temperature, according to
their aspect, the prevailing winds to which they are ex-
posed, their proximity to seas or mountains, and the
condition of their surface.
Besides those variations in the agricultural practice
which arise from diversities of soil and climate, there
are others which are due to the distribution of the popu-
lation. The proximity of cities and towns, or of popu-
lous villages, inhabited by a manufacturing or mining
population, implies a demand for dairy produce and
vegetables, as well as for provender and litter, and at
the same time affords an ample supply of manure to aid
in their reproduction. Such commodities, from their
bulk or perishable nature, do not admit of long carriage.
The supplies of these must therefore be drawn from com-
paratively limited areas, and the character of the hus-
bandry pursued there is determined apart from those
general influences previously referred to. Indeed, it is
so well known that there are peculiarities of character
attaching to almost every individual field and farm, and
still more to every different district or county, which
demand corresponding modifications of treatment in order
to their successful cultivation, that a prudent man, if
required to take the management of a farm in some dis-
trict greatly inferior in its general system of farming to
that which he may have left, will yet be very cautious in
innovating upon specific practices of the natives.
In pursuance of the plan already indicated, let us now
refer for a little to Farm-Buildings. We have spoken
of the soil as the raw material upon which the farmer
operates: his homestead may, in like manner, be regarded
as his manufactory. That it may serve this purpose in
any good measure, it is indispensable that the accommo-
dation afforded by it be adequate to the extent of the
farm, and adapted to the kind of husbandry pursued
upon it. It should be placed upon a dry, Sunny, shel-
tered site, have a good supply of water, and be as near
as possible to the centre of the farm. The buildings.
should be so arranged as to economise labor to the
utmost. It should be constructed of substantial mate-
rials, so as to be easily kept in repair, and to diminish,
to the utmost, risk from fire.
The most cursory examination of existing homesteads
will suffice to show that in their construction these
obvious conditions have been sadly neglected. For one
farm really well equipped in this respect, hundreds are
to be met with in all parts of the kingdom, and more
especially in England, most wretchedly deficient. Wher-
ever this is the case, it is impossible that the farmer,
- * sº-
IO8
A G R *
however skilful or industrious, can make the, most of his
materials, or compete on equal terms with his better
furnished neighbors.
In erecting new homesteads, or in making considera-
able additions to or alterations upon existing ones, it
is of much importance to call in the aid of an architect
of ascertained experience in this department of his art,
and then to have the work performed by contracts founded
upon the plans and specifications which he has ſurnished.
While protesting against the utter rudeness and inade-
quacy of the great majority of homesteads, we must
also deprecate the hurtful expenditure sometimes lav-
ished in erecting buildings of an extent and style alto-
gether disproportionate to the size of the farm, and out
of keeping with its homely purposes. When royalty
or nobility, with equal benefit to themselves and their
country, make agriculture their recreation, it is alto-
gether befitting that in such cases the farm-yard should
be of such a style as to adorn the park in which it is sit-
uated. And even those intended for plain, everyday
farming need not be unsightly; for ugliness is some-
times more costly than elegance. Let utility, economy,
and comfort, first be secured, and, along with these, as
much as possible of that pleasing effect which arises
from just proportions, harmonious arrangement and man-
ifest adaptation to the use the buildings are designed for.
The barn, with its thrashing-machinery, and other
appurtenances, naturally forms the nucleus of the home-
stead, and regulates the distribution of the other build-
ings. The command of water-power will often deter-
mine the exact site of the barn, and indeed of the
whole buildings. The cheapness and safety of this
motive-power render it well worth while to make con-
siderable sacrifices to secure it, when a really sufficient
and regular supply of it can be had. But the difficulty
of securing this when the adjoining lands are thoroughly
drained, and the great efficiency and facility of applica-
tion of steam-power, are good reasons why precărious
supplies of water-power should now be rated very
differently than they were when a horse-wheel or wind-
mill were the only alternatives. A very usual and
suitable arrangement is to have the whole buildings,
forming a lengthened parallelogram, facing south or
southeast; the barn being placed in the centre of the
north range, with the engine-house behind it, and the
straw-house at right angles in front, with doors on both
sides for the ready conveyance of litter and fodder to
the yards, &c. It is always advantageous to have the
barn of sufficient height to afford ample accommodation
to the thrashing and winnowing machinery. When the
disposition of the ground admits, it is a great con-
venience to have the stackyard on a level with the upper
barn, so that the unthrashed corn may be wheeled into
it on barrows, or on a low-wheeled truck drawn by a
horse. Failing this, the sheaves are usually pitched in
at a wide opening from a framed cart. The space on
which the cart stands while this is going on is usually
paved, that loose ears and scattered grain may be
gathered up without being soiled; and it is a further
improvement to have it covered by some simple roof, to
protect the sheavés from sudden rain.
It is a good arrangement to have the straw-barn
fitted up with a loft, on the level of the opening at which
the straw is discharged from the thrashing-mill, so as to
admit of fodder being stored above and litter below. A
sparred trap-door in front of the shaker retains the
straw above, or lets it fall to the ground as required.
This upper floor of the straw-barn is the most con-
venient place for fixing a chaff-cutter to be driven by the
thrashing-power. The granary should communicate
with the upper barn, that the dressed grain may be raised
to it by machinery.
A loft over the engine-room, communicating with the
upper barn and granary, forms a suitable place for fixing
a grinding-mill, bruising rollers, and cake-breakers, as it
affords opportunity for having these machines easily con-
nected with the steam-power. It suits well to have the
house in which cattle food is cooked attached to and
under the same roof as the engine-house. One coal store
and chimney thus serves for both. Over this cooking-
house, and communicating with the grinding-loft, may
advantageously be placed a kiln, to be heated by the
waste steam from the engine. An open shed outside the
barn, for the accommodation of a circular saw, is also a
desideratum. By the aid of the latter machine and a
handy laborer, the timber required for ordinary repairs
on the farm may be cut out at trifling expense.
The cattle-housing, of whatever description, where
there are the largest and most frequent demands for
straw, is placed nearest to the straw-house, and in com-
munication with the turnip-stores, and the house (if
any) in which food is cooked or otherwise prepared.
Where cattle are bred, the cow-house and calf-house are
kept together. A roomy working court is always a
great convenience, and it suits well to have the stable
opening to it, and the cart-shed and tool-house occupy-
ing another side. Costly machines, such as corn-drills
and reaping machines, require to be kept in a locked
place, to preserve them from the collisions, and the loss
or derangement of their minute parts, to which they are
exposed in an open cart-shed.
An abundant supply of good water is a most impor-
tant matter. The best source is from Springs, at such an
elevation as to admit of its being brought in a pipe,
with a continuous flow. Failing this a well and pump is
the usual alternative, although it is sometimes necessary
to collect the rain-water from the roofs, and preserve it
in a capacious and carefully-made tank. In every case
it is desirable to have a regulating cistern, from which it
is distributed by pipe to every part of the homestead
where it is required. It is, in every case, of importance
to have the eaves of the whole building spouted, and the
rain-water carried where it can do no mischief. Where
fattening cattle are kept in open yards with sheds, by
spouting the eaves, and slightly hollowing the yards
towards their centres, the urine to a large extent is ab-
sorbed by the litter, and retained in the manure.
An important part of the buildings of a farm are the
cottages for its laborers. It is in all cases expedient to
have the people required for the ordinary working of a
farm resident upon it; and it is always much better to
have families, each in its own cottage, than a number
of young people boarded in the farm-kitchen, or with
the farm-overseer. These cottages are usually a little
removed from the other farm-buildings, and it is, on
various accounts, better to have them so. There is,
however, an advantage in having the cottages of the
farm-steward and cattleman either within the courtyard,
or close to its entrance, that these responsible function-
aries may at all times be near their charge, and especially
that they may be at hand when any of the live stock
require night attendance. -
The position and style of the farmer's dwelling also
claims a remark here. The approved mode used to be,
to place it either directly in front or rear of the farm-
yard, on the ground that the farmer would thus have his
premises and cattle under his eye even when in his
parlor or bed-room. As has been well remarked, “The
advantages of this parlor-farming are not very apparent,
the attendant evils glaringly so.” If the condition of
ready communication be obtained, a farm-house should
be placed where the amenities of a country residence can
be best enjoyed.
The fences by which farms are generally enclosed
A G R
IO9
and subdivided form another part of what may be termed
their fixtures, and may therefore be suitably noticed here.
When lands are let to a tenant, the buildings and fences
are usually put into sufficient repair, and he is taken
bound to keep and leave them so at the issue of his occu-
pancy. Although there are some persons who advocate
the total removal of subdivision fences, it is admitted on
all hands that the farm as a whole, and the sides of public
thoroughfares which may intersect it, should be guarded
by sufficient fences of some kind. The general belief
has hitherto been, that there is a further advantage in
having the land subdivided by permanent fences into
enclosures of moderate size. The use of such partition
fences is not only to confine the live stock to particular
fields, or restrain them from trespassing on the other
crops, but to afford shelter from cutting winds. It is
now frequently urged, that the heavier cattle should
never be turned to pasture at all, but kept on roots and
green forage the whole year round, and that sheep can
be managed Satisfactorily by means of movable hurdles.
When the soil and climate are favorable to the growth
of the common white thorn, hedges formed of it com-
bine efficiency, economy, and ornament, in a greater de-
gree than any other fence. But to have a really efficient
thorn hedge, much attention must be paid to its planting,
rearing, and after management. In proceeding to run
a new line of thorn hedge, care must be taken that the
Soil is clean and in good heart, and that the subsoil is
porous and dry. When these conditions do not obtain,
they must be secured by fallowing, manuring, draining,
and trenching. The young quicks should be stout and
well rooted; not taken indiscriminately as they stand in
the nurserymen’s beds, but of uniform stoutness. Such
selected plants are always to be had for a small additional
price, which will be found to be well repaid in the supe-
rior progress of such plants, when contrasted with that of
others taken as they chance to come to hand. The em-
bryo fence must be kept free of weeds, and secured from
the encroachments of cattle by a line of rails on both
sides. Some persons advise that the young hedge should
from the first be trimmed into line by using the pruning-
hook after each year's growth. It is certainly better not
to touch it with the knife, or, at least, only to restrain an
occasional shoot that unduly overtops its neighbors, un-
til the centre stems are at least a couple of inches in di-
ameter. If the plants are then headed over fence-high,
and the lateral shoots pruned to a straight line, a close
fence with a substantial backbone in it is secured;
whereas by pruning annually from the first, a fence is
obtained that pleases the eye, but, which, consisting only
of a mass of spray, presents no effectual barrier to cattle.
When a thorn hedge has reached the stage just referred
to, the protecting rails may be removed, and the hedge
kept in a meat and efficient state by annual pruning. On
good, deep soil, thorns will stand this constant removal
of the annual growth of spray for many years without
injury, especially if the pruning is delayed until the leaf
has fallen. In less favorable circumstances, it is found
necessary ſrom time to time to withhold the pruning-
knife for a few years togcthcr. When the hcage has
been reinvigorated by such periods of unrestrained
growth, it can again be cut back to the centre stems,
and subjected anew to a course of annual pruning. To
insure a close fence, the bottom of the hedge must at all
times be kept clear of tall weeds. The constant use of
the weeding-iron is, however, objectionable; for, besides
being expensive, it injures the bark of the thorns, and
thereby impairs their health. It is quite sufficient to cut
the weeds close to the surface twice a year by means of
a reaping-hook or short Scythe.
Although the white thorn forms a better hedge than
any shrub yet tried for the purpose in this country, there
are many upland situations where the beech and horn-
beam grow more freely, and are to be preferred either
alone or in mixture with it. These plants, and also crab
or sloe, are sometimes useful in filling a gap occasioned
by the removal of a hedgerow tree or the death of a
portion of thorn hedge.
That the cultivation of the soil may be carried on to
the best advantage, it is necessary that the farmer be
provided with a sufficient stock of machines and imple-
ments of the best construction. Very great improvement
has of late years taken place in this department of
mechanics. In many instances the quality of the article
has been improved and its cost reduced. There has
hitherto been a tendency to produce implements need-
lessly cumbrous and elaborate, and to introduce varia-
tions in form which are not improvements. The invent-
ors of several valuable implements, the exclusive manu-
facture of which they have secured to themselves by
patent, appear to have retarded their sale, and marred
their own profits by the exorbitant prices which they
have put upon them. Some, however, have become
alive to the advantages of looking rather to large sales
with a moderate profit on each article, and of lowering s
prices to secure this.
The extended use of iron and steel in the construction
of agricultural implements is materially adding to their
durability, and generally to their efficiency, and is thus a
source of considerable saving. While great improvement
has taken place in this department, it too commonly
happens that the village mechanics, by whom a large
portion of this class of implements is made and repaired,
are exceedingly, unskilled, and lamentably ignorant of
the principles of their art. They usually furnish good
materials and substantial workmanship, but by their
unconscious violation of mechanical laws, enormous
waste of motive power is continually incurred, and poor
results are attained.
We begin our brief notice of the implements of the
farm with those used for the tillage of the soil. Of
these the first place is unquestionably due to the plough.
A history of this implement, tracing its gradual prog-
ress from the ancient Sarcſe to its most improved form
at the present day, is necessarily a history of agriculture.
So much is this the case, that a tolerably correctestimate
of the progress of the art in any country, whether in
ancient or modern times, may be formed by ascertaining
the structure of the plough. Much attention has been
paid to its construction in Britain for the last hundred
years, and never more than at the present day. After
all that has been done, it is still, however, an unsettled
point which is the best plough for different soils and
kinds of work; and accordingly, many varying forms of
it are in use in those parts of the kingdom which have
the reputation of being most skilfully cultivated. Those
who know the difficulty of getting a field ploughed uni-
formly, and especially of getting the depth of furrow
specified by the master adhered to over a field, and by
all the ploughmen, can best appreciate the value of an
implement that, when once properly adjusted, will cut
every furrow of an equal width and depth, and lay them
all over at exactly the same angle. The diversity in the
quality of the, work at those ploughing competitions, to
which only the picked men of a neighborhood are sent,
and where each may be supposed to do his very best,
shows conclusively how much greater it must be on
individual farms, even under the most vigilant superim-
tendence. In every other art the effect of improved
machinery is to supersede manual dexterity; and it does
seem absurd to count that an objection in agriculture
which is an advantage in everything else. There is
more force in the objection that wheel-ploughs are infe-
rior to swing ones in ploughing cloddy ground, or in
I IO
A G. R.
crossing steep ridges, and that they cannot be used for
forming drills for turnip or other crops. This objection
vanishes when it is known that in the most improved
wheel-ploughs the wheels can be laid aside at pleasure,
and that they can be used in all respects as swing-ploughs.
A mould-board, Somewhat higher and wider behind than
that best adapted for ordinary work, is required for
forming turnip-drills. This, however, is easily managed
by having two distinct mould-boards for each plough, or,
better still, by using only the double mould-board or
bulking plough for drilling.
Ploughs which break and stir the subsoil, without
bringing it to the surface, by following in the wake of the
common plough, are now much used. Since the intro-
duction of thorough drainage, it is found beneficial to
loosen the soil to a much greater depth than was formerly
practicable, and this class of implements is well fitted for
the work. It is always advisable to use this implement,
and to mark and dig out the large stones encountered by
it, before introducing steam cultivation.
Broadshare or paring-ploughs are much used in vari-
ous parts of England in the autumn cleaning of stubble.
A broad-cutting edge is made to penetrate the soil to the
depth of three or four inches, so as to cut up the root-
weeds which at that season lie for the most part near the
surface. These, as well as the stubble, being thus
detached from the firm soil, are removed by harrowing
andraking ; after which the land is worked by the com-
mon plough. An implement of this kind is frequently used
in carrying out the operation of paring and burning.
Nextin importance to the plough is the class of imple-
ments variously called grubbers, cultivators, drags, or
scarifiers. To prepare the soil for the crops of the hus-
bandman, it is necessary to pulverize it to a sufficient
depth, and to rid it of weeds. The appropriate function
of the plough is to penetrate, break up, and reverse the
firm surface of the field. This, however, is only the first
step in the process, and does but prepare for the more
thorough disintegration which has usually been accom-
plished by harrowing, rolling, and repeated ploughings.
Now, however excellent in its own place, the plough is
a cumbrous and tedious pulverizer, besides needlessly
exposing a fresh surface at each operation, and cutting
the weeds into minute portions, which renders their
removal more difficult. These defects were long felt,
and suggested the desirableness of having some imple-
ment of intermediate character betwixt the plough and
harrow, which should stir the soil deeply and expe-
ditiously without reversing it, and bring the weeds
unbroken to the surface. The whole tribe of grubbers,
&c., has arisen to meet this demand, and we shall now
consider the comparative merits of the more prominent
of the group.
The progress of invention has at last made the steam-
engine practically available for this purpose, and accord-
ingly we here introduce some notice of what has now
been accomplished in applying steam power to the culti-
vation of the soil.
After many abortive attempts to do this by moving
the engine itself over the land to be operated upon, it is
now admitted on all hands that the only available method
is to communicate the power from the engine to the im-
lements by means of steel wire-ropes and windlasses.
#. is done in a variety of ways, some of the most
prominent of which we shall now describe. The sys-
tems actually in operation fall under two general classes,
which are known severally as the “Direct” and the
“Roundabout.” The first of these is the system intro-
duced by Messrs. John Fowler & Co., of Cornhill, Lon-
don, and now so well known in connection with their
name. The late Mr. John Fowler's first efforts were
directed to the production of a draining apparatus, and
it was after succeeding in this apparently more arduous
effort that he adapted his tackle to the hauling of tillage
implements. After various tentative changes, Mr. Fow-
ler settled on the form which is still in extensive use. It
consists of a single locomotive engine, usually of 12 or
I4 horse-power, with a windlass attached to it under the
boiler. Around this windlass an endless steel wire-rope
passes with a single turn in a groove, which, by means
of hinged clips, lays hold of nearly the entire circum-
ference of the rope, and that with a force proportioned
to the strain upon the rope, which thus obtains sufficient
grip to convey the necessary hauling power without risk
of slipping upon the drum. This wire-rope, which re-
quires to be just twice as long as the field to be tilled is
wide, passes round a sheave upon a self-acting anchor
placed at the farther side of the field opposite to the
engine. This anchor is a prominent ſeature in Mr.
Fowler's apparatus. It consists of a low truck on four
wheels, with sharp disc edges, which cut deeply into the
soil, and thus obtain a hold sufficient to resist the strain
of the wire rope. A box, loaded with stones, is fixed
on the outer side of this truck to hinder it from canting
over. The sheave mounted upon this truck, besides
serving its primary use, gives motion, when required, to
a drum, which winds up a rope, the other end of which
is fixed well a-head in the direction in which the truck is
required to move. Thus the apparatus warps itself
along the headland as the ploughing progresses, and is
kept always z/is-à zis to the engine, which moves itself
forward by its own locomotive power at every bout of
the ploughs, and keeps abreast of them. That the rope
may not drag upon the ground, friction rollers or rope-
porters, as they are called, are placed at suitable inter-
vals. These being mounted on wheels and strung upon
the rope, are now in a good measure self-acting, as the
tautness of the rope keeps them in its own line. The
ploughs are fixed to a balance frame carried on two
wheels, and are in duplicate, pointing to each other, so
that when the set at one end of the frame is in work, the
opposite set is carried aloft in the air. The plough frame
is thus hauled to and fro, across the field, between the
engine and movable anchor, by reversing the action of
the windlass; and it is adapted for taking from two to
eight furrows at once, according to the power of the
engine employed, or the nature of the soil that is oper-
ated upon.
Messrs. Fowler have made this form of their appa-
ratus more generally available by adapting it for attach-
ment to the ordinary 8-horse power threshing-engine.
When thus used the clip-drum is mounted on a separate
frame and connected with the engine, which being sta-
tioned in a corner of the field to be ploughed, the rope
is carried to two self-acting anchors, one at each side of
the field, and thus encloses a triangle. The plough is
drawn to and fro betwixt these anchors, and as it grad-
ually approaches the engine at each successive bout, the
gearing on the plough-frame tightens up the rope and
accommodates it to the diminishing length required.
To work Fowler's apparatus there is required one
engine-driver, one ploughman, a stout lad to attend to
the anchor, two boys to shift the rope-porters, and a
horse and boy to supply the engine with water and fuel.
About 1865 Messrs. Fowler made an important addi-
tion to their apparatus by substituting a second engine
for their movable anchor. In this arrangement, now
well known as the “Double Engine system,” a pair of
locomotive engines, each having a plain winding drum
instead of the clip-drum, are placed opposite to each
other at the ends of the field to be operated upon; the
rope of each of the engines is attached to the plough,
or other tillage implement, which is drawn to and frº
betwixt them by each working in turn. While the
A G R III
engine in gear is coiling in its rope and drawing the
plough towards itself, the rope of the other engine is
paid out with merely so much drag on it as to keep it
from kinking or getting ravelled on the drum. The
advantages claimed for this system are, economy of
power from the direct pull of the engines on the imple-
ment; the facility and rapidity with which the engines
move themselves and the whole apparatus from field to
field, or farm to farm, and take up their positions and
get to work without the aid of horses; and the few
hands required to work it. Its drawbacks are the large
first cost, and corresponding charge for wear and tear,
depreciation, and interest; its unsuitableness for working
in small, and irregularly shaped fields; and the injury
done to headlands in wet weather. Its special adapta-
tion is for large farms, and for working for hire; and for
these it is undoubtedly without a rival.
Mr. William Smith of Woolston, Bedfordshire, may
fairly be regarded as the pioneer of cultivation by steam
power. At the meeting of the Royal Agricultural
Society of England at Carlisle in 1855, he witnessed the
performance of the late John Fowler’s steam draining-
plough, and then contracted with him to construct for
him a windlass and other tilling apparatus, with which
he got to work on his own farm in the autumn of that
year. These two leaders in steam-cultivation did not
long work together. They had decided and diverse
opinions as to the best road to success, and accordingly
each for the future took his own course. Mr. Smith's
merit is not largely that of an original inventor of
machinery, but rather that of a zealous, persevering,
and successful applier of the inventions of others. But
by his own example and his vigorous writings, he has
contributed very largely indeed to the success of steam
cultivation. He makes use of the ordinary portable
engine, such as is employed as a thrashing power, which
gives motion to a detached windlass with two drums,
from which a wire-rope is carried round the area to be
operated upon, and hence the name “Roundabout ’’
applied to this system. This rope being attached by a
turning bow to a powerful grubber, the implement is
drawn to and fro across the field by reversing as required
the action of the windlass, the slack half of the rope
being uncoiled from the one drum as the part in work
is wound up upon the other. His mode of working is
to break up the ground by using a three-tined grubber,
and then to go over it again with a seven-tined one,
working at right angles to the first.
When a field has been broken up by the plough, it is
usually next operated upon by the harrow, whether the
object be to prepare it for and to cover in seeds, or to
bring clods and roots to the surface. This is vir-
tually a rake dragged by horses. In its most ordinary
form, the framework is of wood with iron tines,
of which each harrow contains twenty. Formerly each
horse dragged a single harrow, although two or more
were worked abreast. Under this arrangement the har-
rows had too much independent motion, and were liable
to get foul of each other. This has been remedied, first,
partially, by coupling them loosely by riders, and then
more effectually by a hinge-like joining, which allows a
separate vertical motion, but only a combined horizontal
one. A rhomboidal form is also given to this pair of
harrows—usually called bražes—so that when properly
yoked, no two times run in the same track. This descrip-
tion of harrow is now frequently made entirely of iron.
Howard's patent harrows are a further improvement
on this implement. The ziz-zag form given to each sec-
tion enables the whole so to fit in, that the working parts
are equally distributed, over the space operated upon.
The number of tines is 75, instead of 40, as in the form
last noticed, and yet, from the form of frame and man-
ner of coupling, the times are well apart, and have each
a separate line of action. Practical farmers speak very
highly of the effective working of this implement. By
an exceedingly simple contrivance, the centre part when
turned on its back forms a sledge on which its fellows can
be piled and drawn along from one field to another. A
light description of harrows, with smaller and more nu-
merous times, is sometimes used for covering in grass-seeds.
If a harrow is to be used at all for this purpose, Howard’s
is a very suitable kind, but a much better implement is
Cartwright’s chain-harrow, which abrades the surface
over which it is drawn to a degree that could not be
anticipated from a mere inspection of the implement.
It is formed by attaching to a draught-bar pairs of Square-
linked chains, each 7% feet long, connecting them by
cross links, and keeping the whole expanded by two
movable stretchers. The old-fashioned ponderous break
harrow is now entirely discarded, and the more efficient
cultivator used in its stead. A form of the latter, from
its close resemblance to harrows, is noticed now rather
than before. It is a very strong iron harrow, with the
times made longer, and very considerably curved forwards.
An iron rod with a loop handle is fixed to the hind bar,
by means of which the driver can easily hitch it up and
get rid of weeds, &c. Two such harrows are coupled
together and drawn by four horses. Its pulverising
power is very considerable. But when clods have been
brought to the surface, they are most effectually reduced
by various kinds of rollers. 3.
Those formerly used were solid cylinders of timber or
stone attached to a frame and shafts, for which hollow
ones of cast-iron are now generally substituted. The
simplest form of these has a smooth surface, and is cast
in sections to admit of more easy turning. They are
made of diverse weights, so as to be adapted for the
draught of one or two horses, as required. Those of the
former description, weighing in all 6 cwt., and costing as
many pounds sterling, are exceedingly useful for all pur-
poses where expedition rather than heavy pressure is
wanted. From their great durability, smoother surface,
and less liability to clog, the readiness with which they
can be cast of any weight that is required, and their
moderate price, it is probable that cast-iron cylinders will
speedily supersede all others.
Several important variations on the common smooth
roller have been introduced of late years. Of these the
first notice is due to Crosskill’s clod-crusher, on the
ground both of its intrinsic merit and the date of its in-
troduction. It consists of cast-iron discs 2% feet in
diameter, with serrated edge and a series of sideway-
projecting teeth. Twenty-three of these discs are strung
loosely upon a round axle, so as to revolve independ-
ently of each other. The free motion thus given to each
disc, and which has latterly been increased by casting
each alternate one of greater diameter in the eye, adds
at once to the pulverising and self-cleaning power of
the roller. Three horses yoked abreast are required to
work it. The axle is prolonged at each end sufficiently
to receive travelling wheels, on which it is transported
from place to place.
Cambridge's roller possesses several features in com-
mon with Crosskill’s, and is used for similar purposes.
In the form in which it was first brought out it consisted
of discs, fitting close to each other, with fluted instead
of serrated edges. In its recently improved form the
discs are not made of uniform diameter as formerly, but
each alternate one in the set is raised about two inches,
and has the centre hole, not circular and close fitting to
the axle, but triangular and wide. The result is that
while the discs press uniformly on the surface over which
they are rolled, the larger ones rise above their fellows
with a jerking motion, which gives a most efficient Self-
II 2
A G R
cleaning power to the implement, and thus admits of its
being used when other rollers would be clogged.
Under this head may be noticed press drills, which, by
means of a series of narrow cylinders with conical edges,
form corresponding grooves in loose soil. Seeds sown
broadcast over a surface thus treated come up in rows.
The land-presser is a modification of the press-roller.
It is made with two or three conical edged cylinders to
fit into the seams of as many plough furrows, the other
end of the axle on which they are fixed being supported by
a plain carriage-wheel. It is drawn by one horse, and
follows in the wake of two or three ploughs, according
to the number of its cylinders. When wheat is sown
after clover lea, this implement is ſound exceedingly
useful in closing the seams and forming a uniform seed-
bed.
The Norwegian, or, as it should rather be called, the
Swedish harrow is strictly a clod-crushing implement.
From its radiating spikes penetrating the surface over
which it is drawn, it has been called a harrow ; but its
revolving motion entitles it rather to be classed with
rollers. In its usual form it consists of three rows of
cast-iron rowels, arranged upon parallel axles fixed in
an iron frame, which is supported on three wheels,
one in front and two behind. The outline and arrange-
ments are in fact the same as in Finlayson's grubber,
only substituting parallel rows of rowels for times.
There is also the same leverage for raising and depress-
ing the frame. But this implement has recently been
"constructed on a much simpler and cheaper plan, in
which the wheels and lever apparatus are discarded
altogether. It thus consists of a simple wrought-iron
frame with four rows of rowels. A few boards are laid
across the frame, forming a platform over the rowels,
on which the driver stands when it is wished to increase
the weight and efficieney of the implement. On the
upper side at either end is fixed a piece of wheel-tire, on
which the implement, when turned on its back, can
slide along, sledge-fashion, when it is wished to move it
from place to place.
Aarzesting /mplements.- These, till little more
than twenty years ago, comprised only the reaping-
hook and scythe. An implement by means of which
horse-power could be made available for this import-
ant operation has long been eagerly desired by farm-
ers. Repeatedly during the first half of the present
century their hopes had been excited, only to be disap-
pointed, by the announcement of successful inventions
of this kind. These hopes were revived, and raised
to a higher pitch than ever, by the appearance, in the
Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations, of two
reaping-machines, known as M'Cornick’s and Hussey’s,
from the United States of America, where for several
years they had been used extensively and successfully.
These implements were subjected to repeated trials in
different parts of England, on crop 1851, but never
in circumstances which admitted of their capabilities
being tested in a thoroughly satisfactory manner.
At the first of these trials, made under the auspices of
the Royal Agricultural Society, the preference was
given to M'Cormick’s, to which the Exhibition Medal
was in consequence awarded. It turned out, however,
that at this trial Hussey’s machine had not a fair chance,
being attended by a person who had never before seen it
at work, for, when a further trial took place before the
Cleveland Agricultural Society, with Mr. Hussey him-
self superintending his own machine, an all but unani-
mous decision was given in his favor.
Early in 1852 a very important communication from
the pen of the late Mr. James Slight, curator of the
museum of the Highland and Agricultural Society,
appeared in the Transactions of the Society, by which
the attention of the public was recalled to a reaping-
machine of home production, viz., that invented by the
Rev. Patrick Bell, minister in the parish of Carmylie in
Forfarshire, and for which a premium of £50 had been
awarded to him by the Highland Society. This machine
attracted much attention at that time. Considerable
numbers were made and partially used, but from various
causes the invention was lost sight of, until, by the
arrival of these American machines, and the notoriety
given to them by the Great Exhibition, with concur-
ring causes about to be noticed, an intense interest was
again excited regarding reaping by machinery. Mr.
Slight further, stated that at least four specimens of it
had been carried to America, and that ſrom the identity
in principle between them and those now brought thence,
with other corroborating circumstances, there is little
doubt that the so-called American inventions are after
all but imitations of this Scottish machine. When it
became known that Bell’s machine was to be exhibited,
and, if possible, subjected to public trial, at the meeting
of the Highland and Agricultural Society at Perth, in
August 1852, the event was looked forward to by
Scottish farmers with eager interest. On that occasion
it was accordingly again brought forward, with
several important improvements made upon it by
Mr. George Bell, already referred to, and was fully
tested in competition with Hussey's, as made by Cross-
kill. To the disappointment of many, Mr. M'Cormick
did not think fit to enter the lists at this or at some sub-
sequent opportunities.
The success of Bell's machine on this occasion, and
at some subsequent public trials, gave it a high place in
public estimation, and accordingly many of the imple-
ments manufactured by Mr. Crosskill of Beverly, were
sold to farmers in all parts of Great Britain, and espe-
cially in Scotland. After a hopeful start the success of
this machine has not been so decided as was at first
anticipated. By-and-by it was in a great measure super-
seded by other self-delivery machines, such as Burgess &
Key's M'Cormick, with its Archimedean screw, which,
like Bell's, lays off the reaped grain in a continuous
swathe, and by others which, by means of revolving
rakes, lay it off in quantities suitable to form a sheaf.
In crops of modern bulk and standing erect, these self-
delivery machines make rapid and satisfactory work, but
when the crop is lodged and twisted they are nearly use-
less. The consequence is that for several years, and
especially in those districts where reaping by machinery
is most practised, the preference is given to manual-
delivery machines, on the ground that they are lighter of
draught, less liable to derangement, less costly, more
easily managed, and thus more to be depended upon
for the regular performance of a fair amount of daily
work, than their heavier rivals. And, accordingly, light
machines on Hussey’s principle, but with endless varia-
tions, are at present most in demand.
Another class of labor-saving machines, closely allied
to those we have just described, for which we are in-
debted to our American cousins, is mowing-machines.
Several different forms of these were introduced and
brought into somewhat general use during the years 1858
and 1859. Having used such machines for the past four-
teen years we can testify to their thorough efficiency, and
to the very great saving of labor, and still more of time,
which can be secured by means of them. In one instance
30 acres of clover — a very full crop, and partially
lodged — were mown in 32 hours, and this under all the
disadvantages of a first start. This machine being of
very light draught, a pair of horses can work it at a
smart pace without difficulty. By employing two pairs
of horses, and working them by relay, it can, in the long
days of June and July, be kept going sixteen hours a
A G. R.
II 3
day, and will easily mow from 16 to 18 acres of seed or
meadow in that time, making, moreover, better work
than can ordinarily be obtained by using the scythe.
Haymakers are valuable implements, and well deserv-
ing of more general use. They do their work thor-
oughly, and enable the farmer to get through a great
amount of it in snatches of favorable weather. Where
manual labor is scarce, or when, as in Scotland, hay-
making and turnip-thinning usually come on hand to-
gether, the mower and haymaker render the horse-power
of the farm available for an important process which
cannot be done well unless it is done rapidly and in
SeaSOI). -
Horse-rakes are in frequent use for gathering together
the stalks of corn which are scattered during the process
of reaping, for facilitating the process of haymaking,
and also for collecting weeds from fallows. By an inge-
nious contrivance in the most improved form of this
implement, the teeth are disengaged from the material
which they have gathered without interrupting the prog-
ress of the horse.
Although many attempts have been made to adapt
the locomotive steam-engine for the conveyance both of
passengers and goods on common roads, the results
hitherto have not been altogether satisfactory. Progress
is, however, undoubtedly being made in this effort; and, in
not a few instances, such engines are actually in use for
the carriage of heavy goods.
The extent to which steam-power is now employed
for the purposes of the farm is another marked feature
in the recent progress of agriculture. We have already
referred to the value of water-power for propelling agri-
cultural machinery when it can be had in sufficient and
regular supply. As it is only in exceptional cases that
farms are thus favored, the steam-engine is the power
that must generally be reckoned upon, and accordingly
its use is now so common that a tall chimney has become,
over extended districts, the prominent feature of nearly
every homestead. It has been satisfactorily shown that
grain can be thrashed and dressed by well-constructed,
steam-propelled machinery, at one-fourth the cost of
thrashing by horse-power, and dressing by hand-fanners.
So great, indeed, is the improvement in steam-engines,
and so readily can the amount of power be accommo-
dated to the work to be done, that we find them every-
where superseding the one-horse gin, and even manual
labor, for pumping, churning, coffee-grinding, &c.
Wherever, then, a thrashing-mill is used at all, it may
be safely asserted that, next to water, steam is the cheap-
est power by which it can be propelled. The portable
engine is the form which has hitherto found most favor
in the southern parts of the kingdom.
A fixed engine can be erected and kept in repair at
greatly less cost than a portable one of the same power.
It is much easier to keep the steam at working pressure
in the common boiler than in the tubular one, which,
from its compactness, is generally adopted in portable
engines. It is, no doubt, very convenient to draw up
engine and machinery alongside a rick and pitch the
sheaves at once upon the feeding-board, and very pleas-
ant to do this in the sunshine and “caller air; ” but we
should think it neither convenient nor pleasant to have
engine and thrashing-gear to transport and refix every
time of thrashing, to have grain and chaff to cart to the
barn, the thrashed straw to convey to the respective
places of consumption, and all this in circumstances un-
favorable to accurate and cleanly disposal of the products,
and excessive exposure to risk of weather. Sudden
rain will no doubt interrupt the carrying in of a rick in
the one case as the thrashing of it in the other; but
there is this vast difference in favor of the former, that
the partially carried rick is easily re-covered; machinery,
products of thrashing, and work-people, are safely
under cover; and the engine is ready by a slight change
of gearing for other work, such as bruising, grinding, or
chaff-cutting.
Whenever tillage by steam-power is fairly available,
there will undoubtedly be an inducement to use the port-
able engine as a thrashing-power that has not hitherto
existed, as there will be a manifest economy in having
both operations performed by the same engine. Even
then, however, there is a high probability of its being
found impracticable to withdraw the engine even once a
week for the needful thrashing during the six or eight
weeks immediately after harvest, when it will be of such
consequence to make diligent use of every available hour
for pushing on the tillage.
It is now sixty-five years since an ingenious Scotch
machinist, Andrew Meikle, produced a thrashing-ma-
chine so perfect that its essential features are retained
unaltered to the present day. Indeed, it is frequently
asserted that, after all the modifications and supposed
improvements of the thrashing-machine which have been
introduced by various parties, the mills made by Meikle
himself have not yet been surpassed, so far as thorough
and rapid separation of the grain from the straw is con-
cerned. The unthrashed corn is fed evenly into a pair
of slowly revolving fluted rollers of cast-iron, by which
it is presented to the action of a rapidly revolving cylin-
der or drum armed with four beaters, which are square
spars of wood faced with iron, fixed parallel to its axis,
and projecting about four inches from its circumference.
The drum is provided with a dome or cover, and the
corn being partly held by the fluted rollers as it passes
betwixt the drum and its cover, the rapid strokes of the
beaters detach the grain from the ears, and throw the
Straw forward upon slowly revolving rakes, in passing
over which the loose grain is shaken out of the straw,
and falls through a grating into the hopper of a win-
nowing and riddling machine, which rids it of dust and
chaff, and separates the grain from the unthrashed ears
and broken straw, called roughs or shorts. The grain and
roughs are discharged by separate spouts into the apart-
ment below the thrashing-loft, whence the corn is fed
into the rollers, and the thrashed straw falls from the
rakes into the straw barn beyond. Since Meikle’s time
further additions have been made to the machinery. In
the most improved machines driven by steam or a suffi-
cient water power, the grain is raised by a series of
buckets fixed on an endless web into the hopper of a
double winnowing-machine, by which it is separated into
clean corn, light, whites or capes, and small seeds and
sand. The discharging spouts are sufficiently elevated
to admit of sacks being hooked on to receive the differ-
ent products as they fall. When barley is thrashed, it
is first carried by a separate set of elevators, which can
be detached at pleasure, into a “hummeller,” in which
it is fed from the awns, and then raised into the second
fanners in the same manner as other grain. The hum-
meller is a hollow cylinder, in which a spindle fitted with
transverse blunt knives revolves rapidly. The rough
grain is poured in at the top, and, after being acted
upon by the knives, is emitted at the bottom through an
opening which is enlarged or diminished by a sliding
shutter, according to the degree of trimming that is re-
quired. A large set of elevators is usually employed to
carry up the roughs to the feeding-board, and they may
again be subjected to the action of the drum. The
roughs are emptied, not directly on the feeding-board,
but into a riddle, from which the loose grain passes by a
canvas funnel direct to the winnower in the apartment
below, and only the unthrashed ears and short straw are
allowed to fall upon the board.
The alterations that have been made upon the thrash-
8 A
A G R
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º I4.
ing-machine since Meikle's time chiefly affect the drum.
Meikle himself tried to improve upon his beaters by fix-
ing a projecting ledge of iron on their outer edges, so as
to give them a scutching action similar to that of flax-
mills. This strips off the grain from oats or barley very
well when thinly fed in ; but its tendency is to rub off
the entire ears, especially of wheat, and also to miss a
portion of the ears, whenever there is rapid feeding in.
More recent trials of drums on the scutching principle
show them to be on the whole inferior to the plain
beater.
Another form of drum, acting on the same principle
as that just referred to, but cased with plate-iron, and
having for beaters eight strips of iron projecting about
one-fourth of an inch from its surface, and which works
within a concave which embraces it for three-fifths of
its circumference, is in use when it is desired to preserve
the straw as straight and unbroken as possible. These
are made of sufficient width to admit of the corn being
fed in sideways, and are called bolting machines, from
the straw being delivered in a fit state for being at once
made up into bolts or bundles for market. Although
the term beaters is retained in describing these drums, it
is evident that the process by which the grain is separated
from the ears is rubbing rather than beating.
A further and more recent modification is the peg-
drum. In this case the drum is fitted with parallel rows
of iron pegs, projecting about 2% inches from its sur-
face, which in its revolutions pass within one-fourth of
an inch of similar pegs fixed in the concave in rows run-
ning at right angles to the drum.
There is thus a great variety of thrashing-machines to
be found in different parts of the country, the compara-
tive merits of which are frequently and keenly discussed
by agriculturists. The extraordinary discrepancies in.
the amount and quality of the work performed by dif-
ferent machines, and in the power required to effect it,
are due quite as much to the varying degrees of skill
with which their parts are proportioned and put together,
as to varying merits in the respective plans of construc-
tlCI).
We have already referred to the fanners, which, except
in portable machines, are almost invariably found in
combination with thrashing-machinery, so as to deliver
the grain into the corn-chamber in a comparatively clean
state; and we have also noticed the further contrivances
by which, when there is a sufficient motive power at
command, the complete dressing of the grain goes on
simultaneously with the thrashing. The winnowers used
in such cases do not differ in construction from those
worked by hand. Indeed, it is usual to have one at
least that can be used in either way at pleasure. In these
machines the separation of the clean from the light grain
and of both from dust, Sand, and seeds of weeds, or
other rubbish, is effected by directing an artificial blast
of wind upon a stream of grain as it falls upon a riddle.
The now frequent use of various kinds of grain in the
fattening of live stock creates a necessity for machines to
prepare it for this purpose, either by breaking, bruising,
or grinding. A profusion of these, to be worked by
land, is everywhere to be met with. Such machines are
always most economically worked by steam or water
power.
Machines for breaking linseed-cake into large pieces
for cattle, or smaller ones for sheep, are now in general
use. The breaking is performed by passing the cakes
Between serrated rollers, by which it is nipt into morsels.
These are usually driven by hand; but it is always expe-
dient to have a pulley attached to them, and to take ad-
vantage of mechanical power when available.
The use of chaff-cutters has increased very much of
late years. Fodder, when cut into lengths of from half-
an-inch to an inch, is somewhat more easily masticated
than when given to animals in its natural state, but the
chief advantages of this practice are, that it prevents
waste, and admits of different qualities — as of hay
and straw, straw and green forage, or chaff and pulped
roots — being so mixed that animals cannot pick out the
one from amongst the other, but must eat the mixture as
it is presented to them. Such cut fodder also forms an
excellent vehicle in which to give meal or bruised grain,
either cooked or raw, to live stock. This applies par-
ticularly to sheep feeding on turnips, as they then require
a portion of dry food, but waste it grievously when it is
not thus prepared.
Cattle and sheep which have arrived at maturity are
able to scoop turnips rapidly with their sharp, gouge-like
front teeth, and so can be fattened on this kind of food
without an absolute necessity of slicing it for them.
Even for adult animals there is, however, an advantage
in reducing turnips to pieces which they can easily take
into their mouths, and at Once get between their grinders
without any preliminary Scooping; but for young stock,
during the period of dentition, it is indispensable to their
bare subsistence. It is largely through the use of
slicing-machines that certain breeds of sheep are fattened
on turnips, and got ready for the butcher at fourteen
months old.
In cattle feeding it is not usually thought necessary to
divide the roots given to them so minutely as for sheep.
A simple machine, fashioned much on the principle of
nut-crackers, by which at each depression of the lever
handle, one turnip ic forced through a set of knives
which divide it into slices each an inch thick, is very
generally used for this purpose. Many persons, how-
ever, prefer to have the turnips put into the cattle-
troughs whole, and then to have them cut by a simple
cross-bladed hand-chopper, which at each blow quarters
the piece struck by it. The mode of housing fattening
cattle largely determines whether roots can be most con-
veniently sliced before or after being put into the feed-
ing-troughs.
An opinion now obtains, and is on the increase, that
it is advantageous to rasp roots into minute fragments
and mix them with chaff before giving them to cattle,
as this not only facilitates mastication, but in wintry
weather prevents the chilly effects of a bellyful of such
watery food as turnips are when eaten alone. This
system is peculiarly appropriate when it is desired to
give a few roots to store cattle which are being fed
mainly upon straw or coarse hay. When a few turnips
or mangolds are put down in their natural state there is
a scramble for the better food, in which the stronger
cattle get more than their share, and the weaker are
knocked about. But by pulping the roots and mixing
them with a full allowance of chaff, every animal gets
its fill, and there is nothing to quarrek about.
In the United States, of late years, the preservation
of green food, by packing in subterranean pits, under
heavy pressure, has claimed a great deal of attention, and
provoked a great deal of discussion as to relative merits
and demerits. It will be treated at length under heads
of ENSILAGE and SILO.
we have several times alluded to the cooking of food
for cattle. This is performed either by boiling, in a
common pot, by steaming in a close vessel, or by in-
fusion in boiling water. Varieties of apparatus are in
use for these purposes. A convenient one is a clºse
boiler, with a cistern over it, from which it supplies
itself with cold water by a self-acting stop-cock. This
is alike suitable for cooking either by steaming or in-
fusing.
It is of course indispensable for every farm to be pro-
vided with beam and scales, or other apparatus, for
A G R
II 5
ascertaining the weight of grain, wool, and other com-
modities, in quantitles varying from I lb. to 3 cwt.
But, besides this, it is very desirable to have a machine by
which not only turnips, hay, manures, &c., can be
weighed in cart-loads, but by which also the live weight of
pigs, sheep, and bullocks can be ascertained. Such a
machine, conveniently placed in the homestead, enables
the farmer to check the weighing of purchased manure,
linseed-cake, coal, and similar commodities, with great
facility. It affords the means of conducting various
experiments for ascertaining the comparative productive-
ness of crops, the quantities of food consumed by cattle,
and their periodic progress, with readiness and precision.
To persons unable to estimate the weight of cattle by
. eye readily and accurately, such a machine is invalu-
.a. Olć.
Before those simple tillage operations which are
necessary in every instance of committing seeds to the
earth can be gone about, there are more costly and
elaborate processes of preparation which must be
encountered in certain circumstances, in order to fit the
Soil for bearing cultivated crops. It is now only in
exceptional cases that the British agriculturist has to
reclaim land from a state of nature. The low-country
farmer does occasionally meet with a patch of wood-
land, or a bank covered with gorse or brushwood, which
he sets about Converting into arable land. In break-
ing up land that has been for a course of years under
pasturage, paring and burning are also frequently
resorted to in all parts of the country. The grand
improvement of all, thorough underground drainage, is
common to every district and class of soils.
To drain land is to rid it of its superfluous moist-
ure. The rivers of a country with their tributary
brooks and rills are the natural provisions for removing
the rain water which either flows directly from its surface,
or which, after percolating through porous strata to an
indefinite depth, is again discharged at the surface by
springs. The latter may thus be regarded as the out-
lets of a natural underground drainage. This provision
for disposing of the water that falls from the clouds is
usually so irregular in its distribution, and so imperfect
in its operation, that it leaves much to be accomplished
by human labor and ingenuity. The art of the drainer
accordingly consists —
1st. In improving the natural outfalls by deepening,
straightening, or embanking rivers; and by supplement-
.# these, when necessary, by artificial canals and ditches:
..all Cl,
2d. In freeing the soil and subsoil from stagnant water,
by means of artificial underground channels.
The first of these operations, called trunk drainage,
is the most needſul; for until it be accomplished there
are extensive tracts of land, and that usually of the
most valuable kind, to which the secondary process
either cannot be applied at all, or only with the most
partial and inefficient results. Much controversy has
taken place as to what this minimum depth is. Suffice
it to say, that opinion is now decidedly in favor of a
greater depth than was considered necessary even a few
years ago, and that the best authorities concur in stat-
ing it at from three to four feet. There are persons
who doubt whether the roots of our ordinary grain
or green crops ever penetrate to such a depth as has
now been specified. A careful examination will satisfy
any one who makes it, that minute filamentary rootlets
are sent down to extraordinary depths, wherever they
are not arrested by stagnant water. It has also been
questioned whether any benefit accrues to crops from
this deep descent of their roots. Some persons have
even asserted that it is only when they do not find food
near at hand that they thus wander. But it must be
borne in mind that plants obtain moisture as well as
nourishment by means of their roots, and the fact is
well known that plants growing in a deep soil resting on
a porous subsoil seldom or never suffer from drought.
It is instructive, too, on this point, to observe the
practice of the most skilful gardeners, and see the
importance which they attach to trenching, the great
depth at which they often deposit manure, and the stress
which they lay upon thorough drainage. On the other
hand, it is well known that soils which Soonest become
saturated, and run from the surface in wet weather, are
precisely those which parch and get chapped the Soonest
in drought. The effectual way to secure our crops at
once from drowning and parching, is to put the land in
a right condition with respect to drainage.
All soils possess more or less the power of absorbing
and retaining water. Pure clays have it in the greatest
degree, and gritty siliceous ones in the smallest. In dry
weather this power of attracting moisture is constantly
operating to supply from below the loss taking place
by evaporation at the surface. In heavy rains, as soon
as the entire mass has drunk its fill, the excess begins to
flow off below; and therefore a deep stratum, through
which water can percolate, but in which it can never
stagnate—that is, never exceed the point of Saturation —
is precisely that in which plants are most Secure from the
extremes of drought and drowning.
If a perfect condition of the soil with respect to drain-
age is of importance for its influence in preserving it in a
right condition as respects moisture, it is still more so for
its effects upon its temperature. . All who are conversant
with rural affairs are familiar with that popular classifi-
cation of soils in virtue of which such as are naturally
dry are also invariably spoken of as zwarm and early;
and conversely, that wet soils are invariably described as
being cold and late. This classification is strictly accu.
rate, and the explanation of it is simple. An excess of
water in soil keeps down its temperature in various ways.
In passing into the state of vapor it rapidly carries off
the heat which the soil has obtained from the Sun’s rays.
Water possesses also a high radiating power ; so that,
when present in the soil in excess, and in a stagnant
state, it is constantly carrying off heat by evaporation
and radiation. On the other hand, stagnant water con-
veys no heat downwards; for although the surface is
warmed, the portion of water thus heated being lightest,
remains floating on the surface, and will give back its
heat to the atmosphere, but conveys nome downwards.
But while the presence of stagnant water in a soil has
this injurious power of lowering its temperature, a very
different effect ensues when rain water can sink freely
into it to a depth of several feet, and then find a ready
exit by drainage; for in this case the rain water carries
down" with it the heat which it has acquired from the
atmosphere and from the sun-heated surface, and im-
parts it to the subsoil. There is as yet a lack of pub-
lished experiments to show the ordinary increase of tem-
perature at various depths and in different soils, as the
result of draining wet land. The temperature and other
conditions of the atmosphere, which we call climate,
are placed beyond human control; but this power of
raising the temperature of all wet, and consequently
cold soils, becomes tantamount in some of its results to
a power of improving the climate. There are, accord-
ingly, good grounds for stating that in numerous cases
grain crops have ripened sooner, by ten or twelve days
than they would have done but for the draining of the
land, on which they grew.
The points which we have thus briefly touched upon
are so essential to an intelligent appreciation of the sub-
ject, that we have felt constrained to notice them, how-
ever meagrely. But our space forbids more than a
I IG
A. G. R.
mere enumeration of some of the many evils inseparable
from the presence of stagnant water in the soil, and of
the benefits that flow from its removal. Wet land, if
in grass, produces only the coarser grasses, and many
sub-aquatic plants and mosses, which are of little or no
value for pasturage; its herbage is late of coming in
spring, and fails early in autumn ; the animals grazed
upon it are unduly liable to disease, and sheep, espe-
cially, to the fatal rot. When land is used as arable,
tillage operations are easily interrupted by rain, and the
period always much limited in which they can be prose-
cuted at all; the compactness and toughness of such
land renders each operation more arduous, and more of
them necessary, than in the case of dry land. The sur-
face must necessarily be thrown into ridges, and the
furrows and cross-cuts duly cleared out after each
process of tillage, on which surface expedients as much
labor has probably been expended in each thirty years
as would now suffice to make drains enough to lay it
permanently dry. With all these precautions the best
seed-time is often missed, and this usually proves the
F. to a Scanty crop, or to a late and disastrous
arvest.
The beneficial effects of thorough draining are of a
very decisive and striking kind. The removal of stag-
nant water from a stratum of 4 feet in depth, and the
establishing of a free passage for rain water and air from
the surface to the level of the drains, speedily effect
most important changes in the condition of the soil and
subsoil. Ploughing and other tillage operations are per-
formed more easily than before in consequence of a more
friable state of the soil. Moderate rains which formerly
would have sufficed to arrest these operations do so no
longer, and heavy falls of rain cause a much shorter
interruption of these labors than they did when the land
was in its natural state. Deep tillage, whether by the
common or subsoil plough (which formerly did harm),
now aids the drainage, and is every way beneficial.
Ridges and surface furrows being no longer needed the
land can be kept flat, with great benefit to crops and
furtherance to field operations. An earlier seed-time
and harvest, better crops, a healthier live stock, and an
improved style of husbandry, are the usual and well
known sequents of judiciously conducted drainage oper-
ations.
Although it has been reserved to the present times to
See land draining reduced to a system based on scientific
principles, or very great improvement effected in its de-
tails, it is by no means a modern discovery. The Ro-
mans were careful to keep their arable lands dry by means
of open trenches, and there are even some grounds for
surmising that they used covered drains for the same pur-
pose. Indubitable proof exists that they constructed
underground channels by means of tubes of burned earth-
enware; but it seems more probable that these were
designed to carry water to their dwellings, &c., than that
they were used simply as drains.
In setting about the draining of a field, or farm, or
estate, the first point is to secure, at whatever cost, a
proper outfall. The lines of the receiving drains must
next be determined, and then the direction of the paral-
lel drains. The former must occupy the lowest part of
the natural hollows, and the latter must run in the line
of the greatest ascent of the ground. In the case of
flat land, where a fall is obtained chiefly by increasing
the depth of the drains at their lower ends, these lines
may be disposed in any direction that is found conven-
ient; but in undulating ground a single field may require
several distinct sets of drains lying at different angles, so
as to suit its several slopes. When a field is ridged in
the line of the greatest ascent of the ground, there is an
obvious convenience in adopting the furrows as the site
of the drains; but wherever this is not the case the
drains must be laid off to suit the contour of the
ground, irrespective of the ſurrows altogether. When
parts of a field are flat, and other parts have a consid-
erable acclivity, it is expedient to cut a receiving drain
near to the bottom of the slopes, and to give the flat
ground an independent set of drains. In laying off
receiving drains it is essential to give hedge-rows and
trees a good offing, lest the conduit should be obstructed
by roots. When a drain must of necessity pass near to
trees, we have found it practicable to exclude their roots.
from it by the use of coal-tar. In our own practice, a
drain carried through the corner of a plantation has by
this expedient remained free from obstruction for now
fourteen years. In this instance the tar was applied in.
the following manner: — Sawdust and coal-tar being
mixed together to the consistency of ordinary mortar, a
layer of this was laid in the bottom of the trench; the
drain-pipes were then laid, and completely coated over
with the same mixture to the thickness of an inch, and
the earth carefully replaced in the ordinary way. When
a main drain is so placed that parallel ones empty into
it from both sides, care should be taken that the inlets
of the latter are not made exactly opposite to each
other. Indeed, we have found it expedient in such cases.
to have two receiving drains parallel to each other, each
to receive the subordinate drains from its own side only.
The depths of the parallel drains must next be deter-
mined. In order to obtain proper data for doing so, the
subsoil must be carefully examined by digging test-holes,
in various places, and also by taking advantage of any
quarries, deep ditches, or other cuttings in the proximity,
that afford a good section of the ground. We have
already expressed an opinion that the drains should not
be less than four feet deep; but it is quite possible that
the discovery at a greater depth than four feet of a seam
of gravel, or other very porous material charged with
water, underlying considerable portions of the ground,
may render it expedient to carry the drains so deep as to
reach this seam. Such a seam, when furnished with
sufficient outlets, supplies a natural drain, to the whole
area under which it extends. When such exceptional
cases are met with, they are precisely those in which
deep drains, at wide intervals, can be trusted to dry the
whole area. When the subsoil consists of a tenacious.
clay of considerable depth, it is considered by many per-
sons that a greater depth than three feet is unnecessary.
The greater depth is, however, always to be preferred ;
for a drain of four feet, if it works at all, not only does
all that a shallower one can do, but frees from stagnant
water a body of subsoil on which the other has no effect
at all. It has indeed been alleged that such deep drains.
may get so closed over by the clay that water will stand
above them. If the surface of clay soil is wrought into
puddle by improper usage, water can undoubtedly be
made to stand for a time over the shallowest drains as:
easily as over the deepest. But the contraction which
takes place in summer in good alluvial clays gradually
establishes fissures, by which water reaches the drains.
In such soils it is usually a few years before the full effect
of draining is attained. The tardy percolation of water
through clay soils seems also a reason why in such cases.
it should get the benefit of a greater fall, by making the
drain deep. *
Draining is always a costly operation, and it is there.
fore peculiarly needful to have it executed in such a way
that it shall be effectual and permanent. We advocate
a minimum depth of four feet, because of our strong
conviction that such drains carefully made will be found
to have both these qualities. And this opinion is the
result of dear-bought experience, for we have found it
necessary in our own case to re-open a very considerable
A G R
I 17
extent of 30-inch drains in consequence of their having
totally failed to lay the land dry, and to replace them by
four-foot ones, which have proved perfectly efficacious.
In doing this we have seen a 30-inch drain opened up
and found to be perfectly dry, and yet when the same
trench was deepened to four feet there was quite a run
of water from it. Now also that steam power has
become available for the tillage of the soil, and is certain,
at no distant day, to be in general requisition for that
purpose, it is peculiarly expedient to have the drains laid
at such a depth as to admit of that potent agent being
used for loosening the subsoil to depths hitherto unat-
tainable, not only without hazard to the drains, but
with the certainty of greatly augmenting their efficiency.
The distance apart at which the drains should be cut
must be determined by the nature of the subsoil. In
the most retentive clays it need not be less than 18
feet. On the other hand, this distance cannot safely be
exceeded in the case of any subsoil in which the clay
predominates, although it should not be of the most
retentive kind. In all parts of the country instances
abound in which drains cut in such subsoils, from 24 to
30 feet apart, have totally failed to lay the land dry.
When ground is once pre-occupied by drains too far
apart, there is no remedy but to form a supplementary
one betwixt each pair of the first set ; and thus, by
exceeding the proper width at first, the space betwixt
the drains is unavoidably reduced to 12 or 15 feet,
although 18 feet would originally have sufficed. It is
only with a decided porosity in the subsoil, and in pro-
F. to the degree of that porosity, that the space
etween drains can safely be increased to 24, or 30, or
6 feet.
3 Cylindrical pipes with collars are undoubtedly the best
draining material that has yet been discovered. The col-
lars referred to are simply short pieces of pipe, just so
wide in the bore as to admit of the smaller pipes which
form the drain passing freely through them. In use one of
these collars is so placed as to encase the ends of each
contiguous pair of tubes, and thus forms a loose fillet
around each joining. The ends of these pipes being by
this means Securely kept in contact, a continuous canal for
the free passage of water is infallibly insured, the joinings
are guarded against the entrance of mud or vermin, and
yet sufficient space is left for the admission of water.
Pipes of all diameters, from 1 inch to 16 inches, are now
to be had; those from I to 2 inches in the bore are used
for subordinate drains; the larger sizes for sub-main and
main receiving drains.
If a quicksand is encountered in constructing a drain,
it will be found expedient to put a layer of straw in the
bottom of the trench, and them, instead of the ordinary
pipe and collar, to use at such a place a double set of
pipes — one within the other — taking care that the join-
ings of the inner set are covered by the centres of the
outer ones. By such precautions the water gets vent,
and the running sand is excluded from the drain. When
a brook has been diverted from its natural course for
mill-power or irrigating purposes, it often happens that
portions of land are thereby deprived of the outfall
required to admit of their being drained to a proper
depth. In such cases it is frequently practicable to
obtain the needed outlet by carrying a main drain
through below the water-course, by using at that point
a few yards of cast-iron pipe, and carefully filling up the
trench with clay puddle, so that there may be no leakage
from the water-course into the drain. While this is
being done the water must either be turned off or carried
over the temporary gap in a wooden trough.
Various attempts have from time to time been made
to lower the cost of draining land by the direct applica-
tion of animal or steam power to the work of
excavation. A six-horse portable steam-engine is
anchored in one corner of the field to be drained. It
gives motion to two drums, to each of which a rope 500
yards long is attached, the one uncoiling as the other is
wound up. These ropes pass round blocks which are
anchored at each end of the intended line of drain, and
are attached one to the front and the other to the hinder
end of the draining apparatus. This consists of a frame-
work, in which is fixed, at any required depth not ex-
ceeding 3% feet, a strong coulter terminating in a short
horizontal bar of cylindrical iron, with a piece of rope
attached to it, on which a convenient number of drain
pipes are strung. This frame being pulled along by the
engine, the coulter is forced through the soil at a regu-
lated depth, and deposits its string of pipes with unerring
accuracy, thus forming, as it proceeds, a perfect drain.
The supply of pipes is kept up by means of holes pre-
viously dug in the line of the drain, at distances corre-
sponding to the length of the rope on which they are
Strung.
Newly reclaimed lands, and even those that have long
been under tillage, are frequently much encumbered with
earthfast stones. Their removal is always desirable,
though necessarily accompanied with much trouble and
expense. In our personal practice we have proceeded
in this way. In giving the autumn furrow preparatory
to a fallow crop, each ploughman carries with him a few
branches of fir or beech, one of which he sticks in above
each stone encountered by his plough. If the stones
are numerous, particularly at certain places, two labor-
ers, provided with a pick, a spade, and a long wooden
lever shod with iron, attend upon the ploughs, and re-
move as many of the stones as they can, while yet par-
tially uncovered by the recent furrow. Those thus dug
up are rolled aside upon the ploughed land. When the
land gets dry enough in spring, those not got out at the
time of ploughing are discovered by means of the twigs,
and are then dug up. Such as can be lifted by one man
are carted off as they are, but those of the larger class
must first be reduced by a sledge hammer. They yield
to the hammer more easily after a few days’ exposure to
drought than when attacked as soon as dug up. Before
attempting to break very large boulders a brisk fire of
dried gorse or brushwood is kept up over them until they
are heated, after which a few smart blows from the ham-
mer shiver them completely. Portions of otherwise good
land are sometimes so full of these boulders, that to
render it available, the stones must be got rid of by
trenching the whole to a considerable depth. When
ploughing by steam-power becomes general, a prelimi-
nary trenching of this kind will in many cases be requisite
before tillage instruments thus propelled can be used with
safety.
Paring and burning have, from an early period, been
resorted to for the more speedy subduing of a rough un-
cultured surface. This is still the most approved method
of dealing with such cases, as well as with any tough old
sward which is again to be subjected to tillage. In set-
ting about the operation, which is usually done in March
or April, a turf, not exceeding an inch in thickness, is
first peeled off in successive stripes by a paring-plough
drawn by two horses, or by the breast-plough already
described. These turfs are first set on edge and partially
dried, after which they are collected into heaps, and
burned, or rather charred. The ashes are immediately
spread over the surface, and ploughed in with a light fur-
row. By this process the matted roots of the pasture
plants, the seeds of weeds, and the eggs and larvae of in-
numerable insects, are at once got rid of, and a highly
stimulating top-dressing is supplied to the land. A crop
of turnips or rape is then drilled on the flat, and fed off
by sheep, after which the land is usually in prime condi-
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tion for bearing a crop of grain. This practice is un-
suitable for sandy soils, which it only renders more ster-
ile; but when clay or peat prevails, its beneficial effects
are indisputable. We shall, in the sequel, give an ex-
ample of its recent successful application.
Land, when subjected to the plough for the first time,
abounds not unfrequently with abrupt hollows and pro-
tuberances, which impede tillage operations. These can
be readily levelled by means of a box shaped like a huge
dust-pan, the front part being shod with iron, and a pair
of handles attached behind. This levelling-box is drawn
by a pair of horses. Being directed against a prominent
part, it scoops up its fill of soil, with which it slides along
sledge-fashion to the place where it is to discharge its
load, which it does by canting over, on the ploughman
disengaging the handles.
But for its tediousness and costliness, trenching two or
three spits deep by spade or fork is certainly the most
effectual means for at once removing obstructions, level-
ling the surface, and perfecting the drainage by thoroughly
loosening the subsoil. For the means mentioned, it is
seldom resorted to on a large scale. But it is becoming
a common practice, with careful farmers, to have those
patches of ground in the corners, and by the fences of
fields, which are missed in ploughing, gone over with
the trenching-fork. The additional crop thus obtained
may fail to compensate for this hand-tillage, but it is
vindicated on the ground that these corners and mar-
gins are the nurseries of weeds which it is profitable to
destroy.
When the natural green sward, or ground that has
been cleared of a cultivated crop, is to be prepared for
the Sowing or planting of further crops, the plough leads
the way in breaking up the compact surface, by cutting
from it successive slices, averaging about ten inches in
breadth by seven in depth, which it turns over upon
each other to the right-hand side. This turning of the
slices or furrows to one side only renders it necessary to
Square off the space to be ploughed into parallelograms,
half the slices of which are laid the one way, and the
other half the other, by the going and returning of the
plough. These parallel spaces are variously termed
*idges, Stetches, lands, or ſeirings, which in practice
vary in width from a few ſurrows to 30 yards. When
very narrow spaces are used, a waste of labor ensues,
from the necessity of opening out and then reclosing
an extra number of index or guiding furrows; while
very wide ones involve a similar waste from the distance
which the plough must go empty in traversing at the
ends. The spaces thus formed by equal numbers of
furrow-slices turned from opposite sides have necessarily
a rounded outline, and are separated by open channels.
In a moist climate and impervious soil, this ridging of
the surface causes rain-water to pass off more rapidly,
and keeps the soil drier than would be the case if it was
kept flat.
In ploughing for a seed-bed the furrow-slice is usually
cut about five inches deep. In the case of lea, it should
be turned over unbroken, of uniform thickness, and lay
quite close upon the preceding one, so as to hide all
green sward. The improved wheel-plough already
referred to does this work very beautifully, cutting out
the slice perfectly square from the bottom of the ſurrow.
The perfect uniformity in the width and depth of the
slices cut by 1t permits the harrows to act equally upon
the whole surface. When the slice is cut unevenly, they
draw the loosened soil from the prominences into the
hollows, so that one part is scraped bare and the other
remains untouched and unbroken. This must necessarily
yield a poor seed-bed, and cóntrasts unfavorably with
the uniform tilth produced by harrowing after such work
as these wheel-ploughs invariably produce.
;
In the autumn ploughing of stubble-ground in prepa-
ration for the root-crops of the following season, a much
deeper furrow is turned over than for a seed-furrow. In
ordinary cases it should not be less than nine inches,
while in very many, if ten or twelve can be attained, so
much the better. In all deep soils this bringing up and
mixing with the surface of fresh material from below is
highly beneficial. It must not, however, be practised
indiscriminately. Siliceous and peaty soils need com-
pactness, and to have the soil that has been artificially en-
riched kept a-top. For such deep work as we have noticed
above, three or even four horses are frequently yoked to
the plough. When a field slopes considerably one way,
it is good practice to work the plough down the slope
only, and return without a furrow. A pair of horses
working in this way will turn as deep a furrow, and get
Over as much ground, as three will do taking a furrow
both ways, and with less fatigue to themselves and to the
ploughman. After bringing a heavy ſurrow downhill,
they get recruited in stepping briskly back with only the
plough to draw. This mode of ploughing one fur-
row down the slope tends less to gather the soil toward
the bottom than by using a turn-wrest plough across the
slope. It is while giving this deep autumn furrow that
the subsoil plough is used. It follows in the wake of
the common plough, and breaks and stirs the subsoil,
but without raising it to the surface. This is a laborious
operation, and engrosses too much of the horse-power
of the farm to admit of large breadths being overtaken
in any one season. In all indurated subsoils, however,
it repays its cost; for when once thoroughly done, it
diminishes the labor of ordinary ploughings for several
succeeding rotations, aids the drainage, and adds to the
fertility of the soil. It is in the performance of this deep
autumn tillage and breaking up of the subsoil, that the
steam-engine, with appropriate tackle, has begun to play
an important part, and for which it will one day super-
sede all other means.
The harrow, cultivator, and roller, are all more sim-
ple in their action and more easily managed than the
plough. Harrowing is most effective when the horses
step briskly along. The times are then not merely drawn
through the soil, but, in their combined swinging and for-
ward movement, strike into it with considerable force.
It is with reference to this that a single application of
this implement is called a stroke of the harrows. Rollers.
are used to aid in pulverising and cleaning the soil, by
bruising clods and lumps of tangled roots and earth
which the other implements have brought a-top ; in
smoothing the surface for the reception of small seeds,
or the better operation of the scythe and other imple-
ments; and for consolidating soil that is too loose in its
texture. Except for the latter purpose, light rollers are
much superior to heavy ones. When it is wanted, for
example, to bruise clots of quickens, that the after har-
rowing may more thoroughly free the roots from the
adhering earth, a light cast-iron roller, say of 5 cwt.,
drawn by one horse, effects this purpose as thoroughly
as one double the weight drawn by a pair, and does it,
moreover, in much less time, at less than half the ex-
pense, and without injuriously consolidating the free
soil. These light rollers are conveniently worked in
pairs, the ploughman driving one horse and leading the
other. With a pair of active horses, and such rollers, a
good deal more than double the space can be rolled in a
day, than by yoking them both to one heavy one of the
same length of cylinder. e
As a general rule, none of these tillage operations can
be performed to advantage when the soil is wet. When
rain falls inopportunely there is a strong temptation to
push on the field operations, before the soil has recov-
ered the proper state of dryness. When this is done
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the farmer almost invariably finds in the issue that the
more haste he makes the worse he speeds. Soils with a
good deal of clay in their composition are peculiarly
susceptible of injury in this way. Nice discrimination
is needed to handle them aright. They require, more-
over, a full stock of well-conditioned horses, that the
work may be pushed rapidly through in favorable
weather. To manage such soils successfully, especially
when root crops are grown, tries the skill of the farmer
to the utmost. So at least it has hitherto been ; but
with steam-power to aid him, there is now a probability
that the clay land farmer, by being able to break up his
soil without treading it, and to get through with a large
extent of tillage when his land is in trim for it, may
find it practicable to grow root crops on equal terms
with the occupier of freer soil.
When, by such operations as have now been described,
land has been reclaimed from its natural state, and ren-
dered fit for the purposes of the husbandman, it is
everywhere so charged with the germs of weeds, most of
which possess in a remarkable degree the power of re-
production and multiplication, that it is only by the
most incessant and vigorous efforts he can restrain them
from encroaching upon his cultivated crops, and regain-
ing entire possession of the soil. He can do much
towards this by ordinary tillage, and by sowing his crops
in rows, and hoeing in the intervals during the early
stages of their growth. But if his efforts are restricted
to such measures only, the battle will soon go against
him. Besides this, all arable soils in which clay pre-
dominates, particularly when undrained, have such a
determined tendency to become compact and soured,
that under ordinary efforts they fail to yield a genial
seed-bed. There is a necessity, therefore, for having
recourse, from time to time, to that ameliorating process
of lengthened tillage called fallowing. This process
begins in autumn, immediately after the removal from
the ground of the cereal crop, which had been sown
upon the land newly broken up from clover lea or nat-
ural sward, and extends either to the time for sowing
turnips and amalogous crops in the following spring, or
is continued during the entire summer in preparation
for autumn-sown wheat.
The object aimed at being the thorough disintegration
and cleaning of the soil, the usual practice is to begin by
ploughing as deeply as is found practicable. This first
or autumn furrow is accordingly turned over to a depth
of 8 or 9 inches; or by using a stronger plough drawn
by three or four horses, it is carried to I2 inches in
depth; and in some cases, by following with a subsoil
plough in the wake of the common one, the soil is
stirred to the depth of 14 or 16 inches. All cultivators
are agreed as to the importance of deeply and effectually
disintegrating all soils that are naturally dry or thoroughly
drained. In the case of undrained lands, and even of
very unctuous clays, although well drained, such a deep
stirring of the soil in autumn does but increase its capa-
city of retaining the rains of winter, and of being thereby
more effectually soured, and is therefore to be avoided.
Assuming, however, that we have to do . with soil
thoroughly drained and moderately friable, it is undoubt-
edly beneficial to loosen it deeply and thoroughly at this
stage. But before this deep ploughing is set about, it
will be worth while to consider well its bearing upon the
cleaning part of the process. On carefully examining
the fields at the time of reaping the grain-crops, and from
week to week thereafter, the roots of the couch-grass
are found at first lying close to the surface; but instantly,
on their getting the ground to themselves, they begin to
send out fresh fibres, and to push their shoots deeply into
the soil. In these circumstances, to proceed at once,
according to the customary practice, to plough deeply,
the surface by a turn of the harrows.
allows these weeds much time to increase, while this
laborious and tedious operation is going on; and,
although, when performed, it gives some present check
to their progress, by burying them under a mass of loos-
ened soil, it not only increases the difficulty of their
after removal, but places them out of the reach of frost,
and in the best possible position for pervading the entire
soil, on the first recurrence of mild weather. The con-
sequence is, that ſallows so treated are invariably found
in the spring more fully stocked with quickens than
they were at the time of the autumn ploughing.
In the case of farms that have for a lengthened period
been carefully cultivated, the stubble may be found so
clean as not to require the whole area to be scarified in
the manner now described. Instead of this, it may suffice
to have the ground carefully examined, and such patches
or stray plants of coach-grass, or other perennial weeds,
as are met with, forked out. By this means the fallows
are kept clean at little expense, and when spring arrives,
those repeated ploughings, and other tedious and costly
operations, are wholly avoided, in performing which the
condition of the soil is marred and the best seed-time
often missed. When fallows are thus cleaned in autumn,
it is highly advantageous to cart on to them at once, and
cover in with a deep furrow, all the farm-yard dung that
is on hand up to the completion of their first ploughing.
From the length of time which must elapse before the
land can again be touched, it is quite safe, or rather it is
highly advantageous, to apply all the recently made dung,
although in a very rough state. In doing this, it is
necessary that a person precede each plough, and trim
the rank litter into the previous furrow, that it may be
properly covered up and regularly distributed. Unless
this precaution is observed, the ploughs are constantly
choked and impeded, the manure is drawn together into
unsightly hassocks, and the whole operation is imperfectly
performed. The recommendations to this practice are —
First, An important saving of labor ; for the mamure
being carted direct from the yards, &c., on to the land,
and evenly spread over it, there is no forming, covering
up, and turning of dunghills, or refilling and carting in
spring. This heavy work is accomplished at a season
when time is less pressing than in spring, and the sowing
of the crop can be proceeded with more rapidly when the
time for it arrives, and while weather favors. Second,
There is a saving of manure by burying it at once in its
rough state, instead of first fermenting it in large heaps;
and a large portion of the fallow-break can thus be
dressed with home-made manure. Third, The rough
dung thus ploughed in decomposes slowly, its virtues are
absorbed and retained by the soil, with the whole mast
of which it is thoroughly incorporated by the spring
tillage, and which, in consequence, is found, after such
treatment, in a peculiarly mellow and favorable condition
for receiving the seed.
The autumn tillage of the fallows having been accom-
plished in one or other of the ways described, the land is
left untouched till the return of spring. If it is infested
by annual weeds, it is expedient, as soon as it is dry
enough to bear treading with impunity, to level and stir"
This slight mov-
ing of the mellowed surface-soil induces the seeds of
weeds to germinate more quickly than they would other-
wise do, and thus a crop of them is got rid of by the next
tilling. This preliminary harrowing is useful also in af-
fording a level course for the tillage implements. By
the time that the labor connected with the sowing of spring
crops is over, the ſallows are usually dry enough to be
stirred with safety. This point must, however, be well
seen to, as irreparable mischief is often done by going
upon them too soon. And now it is, that, instead of
rigidly following any customary routine of so many
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ploughings, harrowings, and rollings, the skilful cultiva-
tor will regulate his procedure by the actual circumstances
of his soil, and the object which he has in view. What
is needed for the successful growth of green crops is to
have the soil free from weeds, thoroughly disintegrated
to the depth of six or eight inches, and yet moist enough
to insure the ready germination of seeds deposited in it.
Where such autumn cleaning and manuring as we have
described have been successfully carried out, all that is
needed, in order to obtain a proper tilth, is to go to work
with light grubbers, first in the line of the previous fur-
rows and then across them, and then to harrow, roll,
and remove any weeds that have been missed in autumn,
after which the soil will be in the best possible condition
for drilling. On friable soils, this method of performing
the spring tillage by means of the grubber instead of the
plow is perfectly practicable, and has manifold advan-
tages to recommend it. The saving of labor is very
great, as a man and pair of horses will more easily grub
four acres than plow one acre. Weeds are more easily
removed, as the grubber pulls them out unbroken,
whereas the plow cuts them in pieces. The soil that has
been all winter subjected to the mellowing influences of
the weather, and which, in consequence, is in the best
possible condition to yield a genial seed-bed, is retained
a-top, whereas ploughing buries it and brings up clods in
its stead. And, lastly, the soil being merely stirred, with-
out having its surface reversed, its natural moisture (or
winter sap) is retained, whereby the germinating of seeds
sown in it becomes almost a certainty. When once the
ridgelets are made up in good condition, they can with-
stand a fall of rain with comparative impunity; and hence
the occurrence of a course of fine weather, when the sea-
son is yet too early for sowing, is sometimes taken ad-
vantage of by preparing the land and making it up into
ridgelets, although it should require to remain in this
state weeks, or even months, before sowing takes place.
In such a case, immediately before sowing, the ridgelets
are first partially levelled by harrowing length-wise, in
order to loosen the soil and destroy annual weeds, and
then again made up by using a double-breasted plough.
We must here, however, insist upon the importance of
having the grubbing thoroughly performed, which it can-
not be unless the times penetrate the soil as deeply as the
plow has done at the autumn plowing. It is owing to
the neglect of this that the system has failed in the hands
of many farmers, who first mismanage the operation, and
then throw the blame upon the grubbers. To ensure
success, the implement must be set so as to work at its
full depth, sufficient motive power being applied by yok-
ing three horses, if necessary, to each grubber at the first
and also at the second going over, and there must be
vigilant superintendence exercised lest the plowman do
the work slightly. It is sometimes objected to this sys-
tem of spring tillage, that it fails to rid the land of this-
tles and other tap-rooted weeds; but it is surely easier
to fork these out as they appear, than to plow a whole
field to destroy as many thistles as a man, it may be,
would dig up in a day. By taking advantage of the tilth
obtained by the action of the elements, instead of first
plowing down the mellowed surface, and then attempting
laboriously to reduce the obdurate furrows by mechanical
means, skilful and emergetic farmers now succeedin pre-
paring even tenacious soils for drilled green-crops, at
little expense, and with a good measure of certainty.
On these opposite classes of soil, then — the very
loose and the tenacious— spring tillage, in preparation
for root-crops, is performed to better purpose by means
of the grubber than the plough. Betwixt these extremes,
however, lies the most valuable class of soils — the strong
fertile loams — on which the heaviest crops and best
quality of Swedes are grown. With these it is usually
expedient to have recourse to at least one spring plough-
ing, as soon, but only as soon, as the soil is dry enough
to crumble freely to the very bottom of the furrow. As
this usually occurs from four to six weeks before the
time of sowing the crop, it is advisable to plough the
entire field, and leave it so until rain falls, whº, a mod-
erate use of the grubber, harrows and light roller, usually
suffices to produce a good tilth for ridging. When
operations are not thus facilitated by a seasonable fall
of rain, it is necessary to proceed somewhat differently.
The field is lying as it was left by the plough, with a
rough dried surface. If harrowed while in this state, an
abundant crop of clods is brought to the surface, which
quickly harden when thus fully exposed to drought. To
avoid this inconvenience, the field is first rolled with a
heavy roller, and then grubbed across the direction in
which it was last ploughed. By this means the clods,
being partially crushed and pressed down amongst the
loose earth, resist the grubber, and are crumbled by it,
instead of being merely raked out and left entire on the
surface, as would happen but for this preliminary rolling.
The grubbers are followed closely by harrows and a light
roller, and these again by the grubbers ; but this time
with seven times on instead of five, after which a sufficient
tilth is usually obtained.
It may be well indeed to remind the reader that
although the fallowing process can most conveniently be
gone about during the period which intervenes betwixt
the removal of a grain-crop from the ground and the
sowing of the succeeding root-crop, and on this account
is often spoken of in a loose way as being performed
“ in #. for the root-crop,” it is a fallacy to
regard this laborious and costly process of tillage and
cleaning as undertaken solely or mainly for the benefit of
the turnip or other root-crops, then about to be sown.
The other crops of the rotation benefit by it in a far
greater degree, and it would be required on their account
although turnips were not grown at all, as may be seen
in the case of clay lands with their periodic naked fal-
lows.
Having thus described at length that modification of
the fallowing process by which the soil is prepared for
the sowing of green crops, we shall now, as proposed,
speak of that prolonged form of it called a summer or
naked fallow. From the facilities now afforded, by
means of tile-draining and portable manures, for an
extended culture of green crops, this laborious and costly
process, which in its day was justly regarded as the very
key to good and profitable farming, is now restricted to
the more obdurate clay soils, or to cases where draining
and modern improvements are neglected. The manifold
advantages of having abundant crops of turnips, or
mangel-wurzel, instead of naked fallow, sometimes tempt
the occupiers of clay soils to push the cultivation of these
crops beyond due bounds. We know of cases where,
after large expenditure in draining, the cultivation of
turnips has been carried to such an extent, and conducted
so injudiciously, that the land has got foul and soured, and
its gross produce has been reduced below what it was
while the land was undrained, and under a regular system
of all but exclusive naked fallows. However thoroughly
drained, clay soils retain their ticklish temper, and are so
easily disconcerted by interference during unfavorable
weather, that the preparing of them for the cultivation
of root-crops, and still more the removing of these
crops when grown, is at best a hazardous business, and
requires to be conducted with peculiar tact. Judicious
farmers, who know by experience the difficulties that
have to be overcome in cultivating such soils, are of
opinion that all that can be ventured upon with safety is
to prolong the period of the naked fallow's recurrence,
rather than entirely to dispense with it. After a series
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of alternate grain and cattle crops, it is accordingly still
their practice to wind up witn, a summer fallow, by
which they rectify unavoidable defects in the tillage of
preceding years, and put their land in good humor for
entering again upon a fresh course of cropping.
This process is begun by a deep ploughing in autumn,
in performing which the land is gathered into ridges,
that it may be kept as dry as possible during winter.
When the more urgent labors of the following spring are
so far disposed of as to afford leisure for it, a second
ploughing is given to the fallow, usually by reversing the
furrows of autumn. This is followed at intervals by two
cross-ploughings, which are made to reverse each other,
in order to keep the land level. As it is the nature of
these soils to break into lumps, under the action of the
plough, rather than to crumble down, the clods thus pro-
duced get so thoroughly parched in dry weather, that
root-weeds enclosed in them are killed by sheer desicca-
tion. To further this cheap mode of getting rid of
them, the land is not rolled, but stirred by the grubber
and harrow as frequently as possible, so as to expose the
clods freely to the drought. We know by experience
that fallows can be cleaned effectually by thus taking
advantage of the tendency in clay soils to bake exces-
sively under exposure to the hot weather which usually
prevails in June and July. Should the season happen to
be a showery one, this line of tactics must needs be
abandoned, and recourse had to the judicious use of the
grubber, Norwegian and common harrow, in order to
free the weeds from the soil, and then clear them off by
raking or hand-picking. This is more costly, and, as
we believe, less beneficial to the soil than the simple
method first noticed, which should therefore be attempted
in the first place. As in hay-making, much can here be
done in a few favorable days, by keeping grubbers and
harrows at work, and turning the clods frequently.
When farm-yard dung is to be applied to such fallows,
it is desirable that it should be carted on and ploughed
in before July expires. In applying it, two methods are
followed. That usually adopted is, after marking off
the ridges, to put down the dung in small heaps, at
regular distances, and forthwith to spread it and plough
it in. In the other, the land is formed into ridgelets,
running diagonally across the intended line of the ridges,
and the dung is enclosed in them in the manner to be
hereafter described in treating of turnip culture. In
either way, after the lapse of several weeks, the surface
is levelled by harrowing, and the land is gathered into
ridges by the last of this series of ploughings, hence
called the seed-furrow. When lime is to be applied to
such land, this is the stage of the rotation which is usu-
ally chosen for doing so. It is spread evenly over the
surface immediately before the last ploughing. In fin-
ishing off this fallowing process, it is necessary, on
undrained lands, to be careful to clean out the ridge-
furrows and cross-cuts, in anticipation of winter rains.
But if such land is worth cultivating at all, it is surely
worth draining, and this operation once thoroughly per-
formed puts an end to all further solicitude about fur-
TOWS.
There are few agricultural facts more fully ascertained
than this, that the growth, year after year, on the same
soil, of one kind of plants, or family of plants, and the
removal from it, either of the entire produce, or at least
of the ripened seeds of such plants, rapidly impairs the
general fertility of that soil, and, in particular cases, un-
fits it for bearing further crops of the kind by which it
has been exhausted. The explanation of the causes of
this phenomenon belongs to the agricultural chemist or
vegetable physiologist, to whom we willingly leave the
task. What we have to do with is the fact itself, and
its important bearing on agricultural practice. There is
no natural tendency in the soil to deterioration. If at
any time, therefore, the earth fails to yield its increase
for the use of man, it is owing to his own ignorance and
cupidity, and not to any defect in the beneficent arrange-
ments of the Creator. The aim, then, of the agricul-
turist, and the test of his skill, is to obtain from his
farm abundant crops at a remunerative cost, and with-
out impairing its future productiveness. In order to
this, two conditions are indispensable, – first, that the
elements of fertility abstracted from the soil by the crops
removed from it be duly and adequately restored ; and,
second, that it be kept free from weeds. The cereal
grains, whose seeds constitute the staple food of the
human family, are necessarily the most important and
valuable of our ordinary crops. The stated removal from
a farm of the grain produced on it, and its consumption
elsewhere, is too severe a drain upon its productive
powers to admit of these crops being grown every year
on the whole, or greater part of it, without speedily im-
pairing its fertility.
No better rotation has yet been devised for friable
soils of fair quality than the well-known four-field or
Norfolk system. By this course half the arable lands
are in grain-crops, and half in cattle-crops, annually.
It is indeed true that, in the way in which this course
has hitherto been usually worked, both turnips and
clover have recurred so frequently (every fourth year) on
the same fields, that they have become subject to disease,
and their produce excessively precarious. But the excel-
lence of this course is, that its main features can be
retained, and yet endless variation be introduced in its
details. For example, instead of a rigid one-fourth of
the land being each year under turnips, barley, clover,
and wheat or oats, respectively, half only of the barley
division is frequently in practice now sown with clover
seeds, and the other half cropped in the following year
with beans, peas, potatoes, or vetches. On the same
set of fields, coming around again to the same point,
the treatment is reversed by the beans, &c., and clover,
being made to change places. An interval of eight
years is thus substituted for one of four, so far as these
two crops are concerned. Italian rye-grass, unmixed
with any other plant, is now frequently taken in lieu of
clover on part of the division usually allocated to it,
and proves a grateful change both to the land and to the
animals which consume it. In like manner, instead of
sowing turnips unvaryingly every fourth year on each
field, a portion of the annual division allotted to this
crop can advantageously be cropped with mangel-wurzel,
carrots, or cabbages, care being taken to change the
site occupied by each when the same fields again come
in turn. The same end is even so far gained by alter-
nating Swedish with yellow or globe turnips.
In our remarks on tillage operations and on the suc-
cession of crops, we have seen how much the practice of
the husbandman is modified by the kinds and amount of
manures at his disposal. In describing the crops of the
farm and their culture, frequent reference will also neces-
sarily be made to the use of various fertilising substances;
and we shall, therefore, before proceeding to that depart-
ment of our subject, enumerate and briefly remark on
the most important of them. . In such an enumeration,
the first notice is unquestionably due to farm-yard dung.
This consists of the excrements of cattle, their litter,
and the refuse of their fodder; usually first trodden down in
successive layers, and partially fermented in the farm-yard,
and then removed to some convenient place and thrown
together in heaps, where, by further fermentation and
decay, it is reduced to a dark-colored, moist, homo-
geneous mass, in which state it is usually applied to the
land. It is thus the residuum of the whole products of
the farm, minus the exported grain, and that portion of
I22
A G R
the other crops, which, being first assimilated in the
bodies of the live stock, is sold in the form of butcher-
meat, dairy produce, or wool. In applying farm-yard
dung to land there is thus a returning to it of what it
had previously produced, less the above exceptions, and
such waste as may occur during the process of decay by
gaseous exhalation or liquid drainage. It is obvious that
the value of such dung as a fertilising agent must depend
much on two circumstances, viz., 1st, The nature of the
food consumed by the animals whose excrements are
mingled with it; and 2d, The success with which waste
from drainage and exhalation has been prevented.
When cattle used during the winter months to be barely
kept alive on straw and water, and were confined in an
open yard, which, in addition to its own share of rain,
received also the drip from the eaves of the surrounding
buildings—which, after percolating the litter, flowed
unchecked into the neighboring ditch—it is needless to
say that the dung resulting from such a process was all but
worthless. It is much to be regretted that, from the faulty
construction of farm-buildings, farmers still find it impos-
sible to guard their dung-stores from injury and waste.
Next to farm-yard manure, which must ever be looked
to as the chief means of maintaining the fertility of a
farm, guano claims our notice. This substance is the
dung of seafowl, and is found on rocky islets in parts of
the world where rain seldom falls. The droppings of
the myriads of birds by which such places are frequented
have in many cases been permitted to accumulate during
untold ages, and are now found in enormous deposits.
The principal supply, both for quantity and quality, has
hitherto come from the Chincha Islands, on the coast of
Peru. The introduction of this powerful and exceed-
ingly portable manure gave a prodigious impetus to
agricultural improvement. It is about thirty years since
a few casks of this article were brought to Liverpool
from Peru, where it has been known and prized as a
valuable manure from the remotest periods.
Discoveries have from time to time been made of
other deposits on the African coast and in Australia.
The quality of both is much inferior to that from Peru.
It is in a more advanced state of decay, and contains
more moisure and sand. Great as was the deposit of
this valuable fertiliser on the Chincha Islands, it rapidly
diminished under the excessive demand for it from Great
Britain and other countries. Gradually the quality be-
came very inferior, and, in 1871 it was announced
that this deposit was entirely exhausted. Consider-
able supplies are still obtained from other parts of
the Peruvian coast; but unfortunately the quality
is very inferior to that formerly obtained from the
Chinchas. This circumstance would not be of much
consequence if the guano was offered for sale on fair
terms; but as the agents of the Peruvian Government
sell it only at one uniform price per ton, although differ-
ent cargoes, and even different portions of any one cargo,
vary excessively in quality, it is now an unsafe article for
farmers to purchase.
The dung of birds, from its including both liquid and
solid excrements, is superior as a manure to that of
quadrupeds. Pigeons’. dung has long been in high
repute as an excellent fertiliser, and brought a high price
in days when portable manures were scarcely to be
had. It is now little heard of; guano, the excrement
of fowls which feed upon fish, being superior, weight
for weight. The dung of domestic poultry is usually
mixed with the general dung-heap, but it could be
turned to better account if kept by itself. It has been
recommended to strew the floor of poultry-houses
daily with sawdust or sand, and to rake this with the
droppings into a heap to be kept under cover and used
like guano.
It is now about sixty years since ground bones began
to be used by farmiers in the east side of Fngland as a
manure for turnips. At first bones were roughly
Smashed by hammers and applied in great quantities.
By and by mills were constructed for grinding them to a
coarse powder, in which state they continued to be used
as a dressing for turnips, at the rate of sixteen to twenty
bushels per acre, in all parts of the kingdom, and to a
very great extent, until the admirable discovery, by
Baron Liebig, of the mode of preparing superphosphate
of lime by dissolving bones in sulphuric acid. We shall
not attempt to explain on chemical principles the won-
derful superiority of this substance over simple bone-
dust in promoting the growth of the turnip plant.
What we should do indifferently, by borrowing from
others, will be found well done by various accomplished
chemists who write specially on these subjects. In
climates and seasons which may be characterised as
moist and cool, guano will show best results, whereas
in those which are rather hot and dry, superphosphate
has the advantage. Accordingly, we find guano the
comparative favorite in Scotland, and its rival in the
drier counties of England.
Guano is believed to encourage a great expanse of
foliage, and to be more especially suited for early sow-
ings; and superphosphate to influence development of
bulb, and to deserve the preference for a later seed-
time. The obvious inference is that, for the turnip.
crop at least, these valuable fertilisers should be used in
combination; and actual experiment has verified its
soundness. The use of them is universal and ever on
the increase. They constitute also the standard by
which farmers estimate the cost and effects of other
purchased manures. The extent to which they are used,
their high price, and the facility with which they can be
adulterated with comparatively worthless ingredients,
have led to almost unparalleled frauds. The adultera-
tion of manures has, in fact, become a regular trade.
Had farmers only their bodily senses to aid them, the
detection of this fraud would be difficult — perhaps
impossible. Here, however, they can call the chemist
to their aid, with the certainty of ascertaining the real
character of the articles which they are invited to
purchase. If purchasers of manures would but insist in
every instance on getting from the seller an analysis by
some competent chemist, and along with it a written war-
randice that the stock is of the quality therein indicated,
detection and punishment of fraud would be easy. In
regard to superphospate of lime, the farmer can pur-
chase bone-dust and sulphuric acid and prepare it him- .
self. There is also great convenience in using the
finest portion of the bone-dust for drying the other, as
suitable material for this purpose is sometimes difficult
to procure. The homely process now described is quite
inferior to, and more costly than, that pursued in
factories, and should only be resorted to when a genuine
article cannot otherwise be obtained.
Rape-cake reduced to powder forms an excellent
manure for wheat and other crops. It is usually applied
at the rate of from four to eight cwt. per acre. The
cakes resulting after oil has been expressed from camelina,
hemp, and cotton seeds, and from pistachio and castor-
oil nuts, from beech and other mast, all possess con-
siderable value as manure, and were at one time avail-
able for that purpose. Most of them now command a
price for cattle-feeding that forbids their use as manure
unless when in a damaged state.
All parts of the carcases of animals form valuable
manure, and are now carefully used in that way when-
ever they are unfit for more important uses. The blood
and other refuse from shambles and from fish-curers’
yards, when mixed with earth and decomposed, make a
A G R
I 23
valuable manure, and are eagerly sought after by farm-
ers to whom such supplies are accessible. In London a
company has been formed by whom the blood from the
sh.ambles is purchased, and employed instead of water
in preparing superphosphate of lime, which, when thus
manufactured, contains an amount of ammonia which
adds considerably to its efficacy as a manure. In Aus-
tralia and South America it has long been the practice
to slaughter immense numbers of sheep and cattle for
the sake of their hides and tallow only, there being no
market for them as beef and mutton. To obtain the
whole tallow, the carcases are subjected to a process of
boiling by steam and afterwards to pressure, and are then
thrown aside in great piles. This dried residuum is after-
wards used as a fuel in the ſurnaces of the steaming ap-
paratus, and the resulting ashes constitute the bone-ash
of commerce, which is now an important raw material in
our manure factories.
The refuse from glue-works; the blubber and dregs
from fish-oil; animal charcoal that has been used in the
F. of sugar-refining; the shavings and filings of
orn and bones from various manufactures, and woollen
rags, are all made available for manure.
AVåg/ºt-Soil is a powerful manure; but owing to its
offensive odor it has never been systematically used.
Various plans are tried for obviating this objection, that
most in repute at present being its mixture with charred
peat. From the universal use of water-closets in pri-
vate dwellings, the great mass of this valuable fertilising
matter now passes into sewers, and is carried off by
streams and rivers, and is for the most part totally lost
as a manure. When sewage water is used for irrigation,
as in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, it is to the night-soil
dissolved in it that its astonishing effects in promoting
the growth of grass are chiefly due. We have already
expressed our views in regard to the use of it in this
diluted form of sewage water. That mode of applying
it is necessarily restricted to lands in the vicinity of
towns. Hitherto the numerous and costly attempts
that have been made to separate the fertilising matter
from the water in which it is contained have proved utter
failures.
Along our sea-board large supplies of useful manure
are obtained in the shape of drifted sea-weed. This is
either applied as a top-dressing to grass and clover,
ploughed in with a light furrow, for various crops, or
mixed in dung-heaps. It requires to be used in large
quantities per acre — from 40 to 60 loads — and is evan-
escent in its effects. Grain grown on land manured with
sea-weed is generally of fine quality, and is in repute
as seed corn.
Crops of Buckwheat, Rape, Vetches and Mustard are
Sometimes ploughed in, while in a green, succulent state,
to enrich the land. It is, however, more usual to fold
sheep on such crops, and so to get the benefit of them
as forage, as well as manure to the land. The leaves of
turnips are frequently ploughed in after removing the
bulbs, and have a powerful fertilising effect.
Besides manure of an animal and vegetable origin,
various mineral substances are used for this purpose.
The most important and extensively used of these is
lime. In the drier parts of England it is not held in
much esteem, whereas in the western and northern coun-
ties, and in Scotland, its use is considered indispensable
to good farming. Experienced farmers in Berwickshire
consider it desirable to lime the land every twelve years,
at the rate of from 120 to 200 bushels of the unslacked
lime per acre. It is found especially beneficial in the
reclaiming of moory and boggy lands, on which neither
green nor grain crops thrive until it has been applied to
them. Its use is found to improve the quality of grain,
and to cause it in some cases to ripen earlier. It facili-
tates the cleaning of land, certain weeds disappearing
altogether for a time after a dressing of lime. It is the
only known specific for the disease in turnips called
“fingers-and-toes,” on which account alone it is fre-
quently used in circumstances which would otherwise
render such an outlay unwarrantable.
When bare fallowing was in use, it was commonly
towards the close of that process that lime was applied.
Having been carted home and laid down in large heaps,
it was, when slacked, spread evenly upon the surface
and covered in by a light furrow. It is now frequently
spread upon the autumn furrow preparatory to root
crops, and worked in by harrowing or grubbing, and
sometimes by throwing the land into shallow ridgelets.
Another method much used is to form it into compost
with decayed quickens, parings from road-sides and mar-
gins of fields, &c., which, after thorough intermixture
by frequent turnings, is spread evenly upon the land
when in grass. A cheap and effectual way of getting a
&ressing of such compost thoroughly comminuted and
incorporated with the surface soil, is to fold sheep upon
it, and feed them there with turnips for a few days.
The value of such compost is much enhanced by mixing
common salt with the lime and earth, at the rate of one
Aart of salt by measure to two parts of lime. A mix-
ture of these two substances in these proportions pre-
pared under cover, and applied in a powdery state, is
much approved as a spring top-dressing for corn crops
on light soils.
Our remarks hitherto have had reference to carbon-
ate of lime in that form of it to which the term /; me is
exclusively applied by farmers. But there are other sub-
stances frequently applied to land which owe their value
chiefly to the presence of mineral. The most important
of these is marl, which is a mixture of carbonate of lime
and clay, or with clay and Sand, and other compounds.
When this substance is found in the proximity of, or
lying under, Sandy or peaty soils, its application in con-
siderable doses is attended with the very best effects.
As the composition both of peat and of clay marl varies
exceedingly, it is always prudent, either by limited experi-
ment or chemical analysis of both substances, to ascer-
tain the effect of their admixture. Lime is always
present in those cases which prove most successful; but
an overdose does harm.
Under some mosses and fresh-water lakes extensive
deposits of shell-marl are frequently found. It contains
a larger percentage of lime than clay marl, and must be
applied more sparingly.
Charred peat has been excessively extolled for its
value as a manure, both when applied alone, and still
more in combination with might-soil, sewage water, and
similar matters, which it dries and deodorises. So great
were the expectations of an enormous demand for it,
and of the benefits to result to Ireland by thus disposing
of her bogs, that a royal charter was granted to a com-
pany by whom its manufacture was commenced on an
imposing scale. This charcoal is doubtless a useful sub-
stance ; but, as Dr. Anderson has proved, peat, merely
dried, is a better absorber and retainer of ammonia than
after it is charred.
Soot has long been in estimation as an excellent top-
dressing for cereal crops in the early stage of their
growth, and for grasses and forage plants. It is applied
at the rate of 15 to 3o bushels per acre. On light soils
the addition of 8 or IO bushels of salt to the above
quantity of soot is said to increase materially its good
effect. This mixture trenched, or deeply ploughed in, is
also recommended as one of the most powerful of all
manures for carrots.
Common salt has often been commended as a valuable
manure, but has never been used in this way with such
124
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tuniform success as to induce a general recourse to it.
We have already spoken of it as forming a useful com-
pound with lime and earth. It can also be used benefi-
cially for the destruction of slugs, for which purpose it
must be sown over the surface, at the rate of four or
five bushels per acre, early in the morning, or on mild,
moist days, when they are seen to be abroad. It is used
also to destroy grubs and wireworm, for which purpose
it is sown in considerable quantity on grass land some
time before it is ploughed up. It can be used safely on
light soils, but when clay predominates, it causes a hurt-
ful wetness, and subsequent incrustation of the surface.
Its application in its unmixed state as a manure is at best
of doubtful benefit; but in combination with lime, soot,
nitrate of soda, and perhaps also superphosphate of lime,
it appears to exert a beneficial influence.
Cubic saltpetre, or nitrate of soda, has now become
one of our staple manures. The fertilizing power of
common saltpetre or nitrate of potassa has been known
from the earliest times, but its high price has hitherto
hindered its use as a manure, except in the form in
which it is obtained as refuse from the gunpowder mills.
The cubic nitre is brought from Peru, where there are
inexhaustible supplies of it. The principal deposits of
nitrate of soda are in the plain of Tamarugal, at a dis-
tance of 18 miles from the coast. The beds are some-
times 7 or 8 feet in thickness, and from these it is quar-
ried with ease. It is not found in a perfectly pure state,
but contains a mixture of several substances, chiefly
common salt. To fit it for certain uses in the arts, it is
subjected to a process of purification by boiling and
evaporation. But for its use as a manure this is alto-
gether unnecessary, and the cost would be greatly
lessened if the nitrate were imported as quarried. As
cubic nitre and guano contain very nearly the same per-
centage of nitrogen (the element to which the fertilising
power of all manures is mainly due), it may seem sur-
prising that the former should ever be used in preference
to the latter. In practice, however, it is found that
when applied as a top-dressing in spring, the former
frequently yields a better profit than the latter; and
hence the importance to farmers of getting it at a more
reasonable price. Nitrate of soda is used as a manure
for grain and forage crops. It is now extensively used
as a top-dressing for wheat. For this purpose it is
applied at the rate of 84 lb. per acre, in combination
with 2 cwt. of salt. The nitre and salt are thoroughly
mixed, and carefully sown, by hand, in two or three
equal portions, at intervals of several weeks, beginning
early in March, and finishing by the third week in April.
If nitre alone is used, it has a tendency to produce over-
luxuriance, and to render the crop liable to lodging and
mildew. But the salt is found to correct this over-lux-
uriance, and a profitable increase of grain is obtained.
Crude potash, or kianite, has of recent years been
largely imported from Germany, and has been some-
what extensively used in combination with other
manures fêr potatoes and other root crops— two cwt.
per acre being a common rate for the potash.
Besides those substances, the most important of which
we have now enumerated, which are available as manure
in their natural state, there are various chemical prod-
ucts, such as Salts of ammonia, potash, and soda, cop-
peras, sulphuric and muriatic acid, &c., which, in com-
bination with lime, guano, night-soil, and other sub-
stances, are employed in the preparation of manures,
with a special view to the requirements of particular
crops. In some cases these preparations have been
eminently successful, in others but doubtfully so. Many
failures are probably due to the spuriousness of the
article made use of ; as it is known that enormous quan-
tities of worthless rubbish have, of late years, been sold
to farmers, under high sounding names, and at high
prices, as special manures.
In applying these concentrated manures, those only of
a slowly operating character should be used in autumn or
winter, and at that season should invariably be mixed
with the soil. Those in which ammonia abounds should
in spring also be mixed with the soil when crops to
which they are applied are sown. When used for top-
dressing growing crops they should be applied only in
wet weather. -
Pursuing the plan announced at the outset, we have
now to speak of field crops, and shall begin with the
cereal grasses, or white-corn crops, as they are usually
called by farmers.
It is unnecessary to dwell upon the value of this grain
to the farmer and to the community. It constitutes
emphatically our bread-corn— our staff of life. While
its increased consumption is, on the one hand, an indica-
tion of an improved style of living among the general
population, its extended culture points, on the other, to
an improving agriculture, as it is only on soils naturally
fertile, or that have been made so by good farming, that
it can be grown with success. Wheat is sown both in
autumn and spring, from which circumstance attempts
have been made to classify its varieties by ranging them
under these two general heads. This distinction can
only serve to mislead; for while it is true that there are
varieties best adapted for autumn and for Spring sowing
respectively, it is also true that a majority of the kinds
most esteemed in Britain admit of being Sown at either
season, and in practice are actually so treated.
The season for wheat-sowing extends from September
to April, but ordinarily that succeeds best which is com-
mitted to the ground during October and November.
When summer-fallows exist the first sowings are usually
made on them. It is desirable that the land neither be
wet nor very dry when this takes place, so that the pre-
cise time of sowing is determined by the weather; but it
is well to proceed as soon after Ist October, as the land
is moist enough to insure a regular germination of the
seed.
Over a large portion of England wheat is the crop
usually sown after clover or one year’s “seeds.” In such
cases the land is ploughed in the end of September,
immediately harrowed, and wheat sown upon it by drill-
machine. On loose soils the land-presser is frequently
used to consolidate the soil and to form a channel for the
seed, which in such cases comes up in rows, although
sown broadcast. It is more usual, however, first to level
the pressed furrows by harrowing, and then to use the
drill, by means of which various portable manures are
frequently deposited along with the seed-corn. The
sowing of wheat after clover or “seeds,” as now described,
is rarely practised in Scotland, where it so invariably fails
as to show that it is unsuited to our northern climate. It
is here not unusual, however, to plough up such land in
July or August, and to prepare it for wheat-sowing by
what is called rag-fallowing. After the first ploughing
the land is harrowed lengthwise, so as to break and level
the surface of the furrows and close the interstices with-
out tearing up or exposing any green sward. It is then
allowed to lie for ten or fourteen days to allow the herb-
age to die, which it soon does at this season when light
is thus excluded from it. . A cross ploughing is next
given, followed by repeated grubbings, harrowing, and
rollings, after which it is treated in all respects as a sum-
mer-fallow.
The fallow and clover leas being disposed of, the land
from which potatoes, beans, pease, or vetches have been
cleared off will next demand attention. When these
crops have been carefully horse and hand hoed, all that
is required is to clear off the haulm to plough and sow.
A G R
I 25
If the land is not clean, recourse must be had to a short
fallowing process before sowing wheat. For this pur-
pose the surface is loosened by the broadshare and grub-
ber, the weeds harrowed out and raked off, after which
the land is ploughed and sown. On soils well adapted
for the growth of beans and wheat, viz., those in which
clay predominates, any lengthened process of autumn
cultivation is necessarily attended with great hazard of
being interrupted by rain, to the loss of seed-time alto-
gether. Every pains should therefore be taken to have
the land so cleaned beforehand that these unseasonable
efforts may be dispensed with; and to have the sowing
and harrowing to follow so closely upon the ploughing
as to diminish to the utmost the risk of hindrance from
wet weather. As the crops of mangolds, carrots, or
turnips arrive at maturity, and are either removed to the
store-heap or consumed by sheep where they grow, suc-
cessive sowings of wheat can be made as the plowing is
accomplished and as the weather permits. It is to be
noted, however, that it is only on soils naturally dry, or
made so by thorough draining, and which are also clean
and in a high state of fertility, that wheat-sowing can be
continued with advantage during the months of Decem-
ber and January.
The sowing of spring wheat is only expedient on dry
and fertile soils with a good exposure. Unless the whole
conditions are favorable, there is much risk of spring-
Sown wheat being too late to be properly ripened or
well harvested. On the dry and fertile soils in the val-
ley of the Tweed, where the entire fallow-break is sown
with turnips, and where consequently it is difficult to get
a large breadth cleared in time for sowing wheat in
autumn, it is the practice to sow it largely in Febru-
ary and March, and frequently with good success.
Many judicious farmers are, however, of opinion, that
taking the average of a twenty years' lease, barley is
a more remunerative crop than spring-sown wheat, even
under circumstances most favorable to the latter.
Much controversy has taken place about the quanti-
ties of seed-wheat which should be used per acre. The
advocates of thin seeding have been so unguarded and
extravagant in their encomiums of their favorite method,
—some of them insisting that anything more than a few
quarts per acre does but waste seed and lessen the prod-
uce,—that many persons have been induced to depart
from their usual practice to their serious cost. It is
true that with land in a high state of fertility, and kept
Scrupulously clean by frequent hoeings, a full crop of
wheat may be obtained from half a bushel of seed per
acre, provided that it is grown in September, and depos-
ited regularly over the surface. When clover and grass-
seeds are sown with the grain crop, it is believed also
that they thrive better from the grain being sown in
rows, probably because in this case light and air are less
excluded from them. It is believed also that in highly-
manured soils of a loose texture, grain deposited some-
what deeply in rows is less liable to lodge than when
sown broad-cast and shallower. When drilling and hoe-
ing are resorted to, the latter is effected most cheaply
and effectively by using Garret's horse-hoe. The mere
stirring of the soil is considered by many farmers to be
so beneficial to the wheat crop that they use the horse-
hoe irrespective of the presence of weeds. Others are
of opinion that apart from the destruction of weeds,
hoeing is injurious to grain crops, alleging that the cut-
ting of their surface roots weakens the stems and in-
creases their liability to fall over. Carefully conducted
experiments are required to settle this point. We have
no personal experience bearing upon it beyond this, that
we have repeatedly seen a wheat crop much benefited by
mere harrowing in spring. It is always useful to roll
wheat, and indeed all cereal crops, in order to facilitate
the reaping process, although no other benefit should
result from it.
In Great Britain barley is the grain crop which ranks
next in importance to wheat, both in an agricultural and
commercial point of view. Its use as bread-corn is con-
fined to portions of the lowlands of Scotland, where
unleavened cakes, or “bannocks o' barley meal,” still
constitute the daily bread of the peasantry. It is more
largely used in preparing the “barley broth” so much
relished by all classes in Scotland. To fit the grain for
this purpose, it is prepared by a peculiar kind of mill,
originally introduced from Holland by Fletcher of Sal-
toun, in which a thick cylinder of gritty sandstone is
made to revolve rapidly within a case of perforated sheet-
iron. The barley is introduced betwixt the stone and its
case, and there subjected to violent rubbing, until first
its husk and then its outer coatings are removed. It is,
however, in the production of malt liquor and ardent
spirits, and in the fattening of live stock, that our barley
crops are chiefly consumed. We have no doubt that it
would be better for the whole community if this grain
were more largely used in the form of butcher-meat and
greatly less in that of beer or whisky. It has been cus-
tomary for farmers to look on distillation as beneficial to
them from the ready market which it affords for barley,
and more especially for the lighter qualities of this and
other grain crops. But this is a very short-sighted view
of the matter; for careful calculation shows that,
when the laboring man spends a shilling in the dram-
shop, not more than a penny of it goes for the agricul-
tural produce (barley) from which the gin or whisky is
made; whereas, when he spends the same sum with the
butcher or baker, nearly the whole amount goes for the
raw material, and only a fraction for the tradesman's
profits. And not only so, but the man who spends a
part of his wages upon strong drink diminishes, both
directly and indirectly, his ability to buy wholesome food
and good clothing; so that, apart from the moral and
social bearings of this question, it can abundantly be
shown that whisky or beer is the very worst form for the
farmer in which his grain can be consumed.
Barley delights in a warm, friable soil, and thrives
best when the seed is deposited rather deeply in a tilthy
bed. Being the grain crop best adapted for succeeding
turnips that have been consumed by sheep-folding,
advantage must be taken of favoring weather to plough
up the land in successive portions as the sheep-fold is
shifted. So much of it as is ploughed before 1st Feb-
ruary will usually get so mellowed by the weather as
to be easily brought into suitable condition for receiv-
ing the seed.
Over a large portion of England oats are grown only
as provender for horses, for which purpose they are
fully ascertained to be superior to all other grains.
Except, therefore, on fen-lands and recently-reclaimed
muiry soils, the cultivation of oats in South Britain
bears a small proportion to the other cereals. It is in
Scotland, “the land o' cakes,” that this grain is most
esteemed and most extensively cultivated. Considerably
more than half of the annual grain crops of Scotland
consists, in fact, of oats. The important item which
oatmeal porridge forms in the diet of her peasantry,
and of the children of her other classes, has something
to do with this extensive culture of the oat; but it arises
mainly from its peculiar adaptation to her humid climate.
As with the other cereals, there are very numerous
varieties of the oat in cultivation. From 50 to 60.
bushels per acre is a usual yield of oats. A variety
which stands the winter is now frequently grown in
England, for the double purpose of first yielding a sea-
sonable supply of green food to ewes and lambs in early
spring, and afterwards producing a crop of grain. It
I 26
A G R
has already been stated that in Scotland wheat does not
prosper when sown after clover or pasture; but with the
oat it is quite the reverse, as it never grows better than
on land newly broken up from grass. It is, accordingly,
almost invariably sown at this stage of the rotation.
The land is ploughed in December or January, begin-
ning with the strongest soil, or that which has lain
longest in grass, that it may have the longest exposure
to the mellowing influences of wintry weather. In
March or April the oats are sown broadcast on this first
ploughing, and covered in by repeated harrowings.
These are given lengthwise until the furrows are well
broken down, for if the harrows are worked across the
ridges before this is effected, they catch hold of the
edges of the slices, and, partially lifting them, permit the
seed-corn to fall to the bottom, where it is lost alto-
gether. As it is only when a free tilth is obtained that
the crop can be expected to prosper, care must be taken
to plough early and somewhat deeply, laying the fur-
rows over with a rectangular shoulder, to sow when the
land is in that state of dryness that admits of its crum-
bling readily when trod upon, and then to use the harrows
until they move smoothly and freely in the loose soil, two
or three inches deep. The Norwegian harrow is an im-
portant auxiliary to the common ones in obtaining this
result. When wild mustard and other annual weeds
abound, it is advisable to drill the crop and to use the
horse-hoe. . When the land is clean, the general belief
in Scotland is that the largest crops are obtained by
sowing broadcast. When the latter plan of sowing is
adopted, from 4 to 6 bushels per acre is the quantity of
seed used. The latter quantity is required in the case
of the Hopetoun and other large-grained varieties.
The condition of the soil as to richness and friability
must also be taken into account in determining the
quantity of seed to be used. When it is in high heart
and likely to harrow kindly, a less quantity will suffice
than under opposite conditions. In breaking up a tough
old Sward, even 6 bushels per acre may be too little to
SOW.
When the young oat plants have pushed their second
leaf, it is always beneficial to use the roller, as it helps
to protect the crop from the evil effects of drought, and
facilitates the reaping of it. The oat frequently suffers
much from a disease called “segging” or “tulip root,”
which appears to be caused by the presence of a maggot
in the pith of the stems close to the ground. On land
which is subject to this disease it is advisable not to sow
early. A dressing of lime is also believed to be service-
able as a preventive. On muiry soils the crop is also
not unfrequently lost by what is called “sſaying.”
This seems to result from the occurrence of frosty nights
late in spring, when the crop is in its young stage, which,
when grown on such soils, it cannot withstand. The
application of large dressings of lime to light, muiry
soils greatly aggravates this tendency to slaying in the
oat crop. . The only effectual remedy is to improve the
texture of the soil by a good coating of clay. Oats
yield about I ton of grain and 1% ton of straw per
2CI e.
The extensive cultivation of this grain in any country
being alike indicative of a low state of agriculture, and
of a poor style of living among its peasantry, it must be
regarded as a happy circumstance that it has become
nearly obsolete in Great Britain. It is still occasionally
met with in some of our poorest sandy soils, and patches
are occasionally grown elsewhere for the sake of the
straw, which is in estimation for thatching, for making
Bee-hives, and for stuffing horse-collars. Its cultivation
as a catch crop, to furnish early food for sheep in spring,
is on the increase.
The only members of this family statedly cultivated
for their grain are beans and pease. Before the intro-
duction of clover and turnips these legumes occupied a
more important place in the estimation of the husband-
man than they have done since. Indeed, in many dis-
tricts maturally well adapted for the culture of turnips,
that of beans and pease, was for a time all but abandoned.
Recently, however, increasing precariousness in the
growth of clover, and even of turnips, where they have
been sown on the same ground every fourth year for a
lengthened period, has compelled farmers to return to
the culture of beans and pease for the mere purpose of
prolonging the intervals in the periodic recurrence of
the former crops. But it is found, in regard to the bean
itself, in districts where it has long occupied a stated
place in rotations of six or seven years, that its average
produce gradually diminishes. We have thus an addi-
tional illustration of the importance of introducing as
great a variety of crops as possible into our field culture.
It is on this principle that beans and pease are now
again extensively cultivated on dry friable soils. Win-
ter beans, or pease of some early variety, are generally
preferred in such cases. The grain of these legumes,
though partially used for human food, is chiefly con-
sumed by horses and by fattening cattle and sheep.
Being highly nutritious, they are well adapted for this
purpose. By growing beans on a limited portion of the
land assigned to cattle crops, a larger weight of beef and
mutton can be produced from a given number of acres,
than by occupying them wholly with roots, forage, and
pasturage. Beans should never be sown on land that is
foul. By diligent horse and hand hoeing, land that is
clean to begin with can be kept so under beans, and left
in fine condition for carrying a white corn crop; but in
opposite circumstances it is sure to get in utter con-
fusion. It is found advisable, therefore, to take beans
after the white crop that has succeeded roots or a bare
fallow. In cultivating this crop the land is ploughed
with a deep furrow in autumn, a dressing of dung being
first spread over the surface and turned in by the
plough. As early in March as the state of the soil ad-
mits, it is stirred by the grubber and harrowed. The
seeds are then deposited either in narrow rows 14 inches,
or in wider rows 27 inches apart. In sowing at the
wider intervals, the soil, having been prepared as already
stated, is formed, by a single turn of the common plough,
into shallow drills 27 inches apart. Ten or twelve such
drills being formed to begin with, the seed is scattered
broadcast, at the rate of 3 bushels per acre, by a Sower
who takes in six of these drills at a time, and gives them
a double cast, or by a drilling-machine, which sows three
rows at once. The beans either roll into the hollows as
they fall, or are turned in by the ploughs, which now pro-
ceed to open each a fresh drill, in going down the one side
of the working interval, and to cover in a seeded one in
returning on the other side. , Ten days or so after
sowing, the drills are º leveled by a turn of the
chain harrow; and if the land is cloddy, it is smoothed
by a light roller. If showers occur when the bean
plants are appearing above ground, or shortly after, the
common harrows may be used again with the best effect
in pulverizing the soil and destroying newly-sprung
weeds. A horse and hand hoeing is then given, and is
repeated if weeds again appear. When the plants have
got about 6 ifiches high it is beneficial to stir the soil
deeply betwixt the rows by using Tennant’s grubber,
diawn by a pair of horses. For this purpose the times
are set so close together as to clear the row of beans,
and the horses are yoked to it by a main tree, long
enough to allow the horses to work abreast in the rows
on either side of the one operated upon. The soil is
thus worked thoroughly to the depth of 6 or 8 inches,
without reversing the surface and exposing it to drought,
A G. R.
I 27
or risk of throwing it upon the plants. Just before the
blooms appear Some farmers pass a bulking-plough be-
twixt the rows, working it very shallow, and so as
merely to move the surface soil towards the plants.
A'ease are sown in circumstances similar to those just
detailed, but they are better adapted than beans to light
Soils. They too are best cultivated in rows of such a
width as to admit of horse-hoeing. The early stage at
which they fall over, and forbid further culture, renders
it even more needful than in the case of beans to sow
them only on land already clean. If annual weeds can
be kept in check until the pease once get a close cover,
they then occupy the ground so completely that nothing
else can live under them ; and the ground, after their re-
moval, is ſound in the choicest condition. A thin crop
of pease should never be allowed to stand, as the land is
sure to get perfectly wild. The difficulty of getting this
crop well harvested renders it peculiarly advisable to sow
only the early varieties.
Several distinct modes of reaping grain are in use.
The most ancient, and still the most common, is by the
sickle or reaping-hook, which is used either with a smooth
or serrated edge. The latter was at one time preferred,
as by it the work was performed most accurately. The
smooth-edged instrument is, however, now the favorite,
as it requires less exertion to use it, and the reaper can,
in consequence, get through more work in a day; and
also because in using it the stalks are less compressed,
and consequently dry faster when made into sheaves.
It is now agreed on all hands that grain should be
reaped before it becomes what is called dead ripe. In
the case of wheat and oats, when the grains have ceased
to yield a milky fluid on being pressed under the thumb-
nail, and when the ears and a few inches of the stem
immediately under them have become yellow, the sooner
they are reaped the better. Barley requires to be some-
what more matured. Unless the pink stripes on the
husk have disappeared, and the grain has acquired a firm
substance, it will shrink in drying, and be deficient both
in weight and color. When allowed to stand till it gets
cured in the neck, the straw of barley becomes so brittle
that many ears break short off in the reaping, and it then
suffers even more than other grain crops under a shaking
wind.
It is of great consequence to see that corn is dry when
it is tied up in sheaves, that these are not too tightly
bound, and that every sheaf is kept constantly on foot.
From the increased demand for harvest laborers and the
rapidity with which operations must be carried forward,
stooking is not now performed with the same accuracy that
it was wont to be. There is therefore the greater need
for employing a person to review the stooks daily, and
Keep every sheaf erect.
With proper machinery propelled by steam or water,
the thrashing and dressing of grain is a simple and inex-
pensive process. As grain is now universally sold with a
reference to its weight per bushel, its relative value de-
pends much upon its dryness and thorough freedom from
chaff, dust, light grain, and seeds of weeds. Farmers
who are systematically careful in the cultivation, harvest-
ing, thrashing, and dressing of their crops, can always
command the best prices of the day. In preparing a
parcel of grain for market, it is a good plan to measure
a few sacks very carefully, ascertain the average weight
of these, and then fill every remaining sack to that weight
exactly.
7%e Potato, - The events of late years render it
necessary to regard this root somewhat differently than
was warranted by its previous history. Its value as
an article of food, relished alike by prince and peas-
ant, its easy culture, its adaptation to a very wide
diversity of soil and climate, and the largeness of its
produce, justly entitled it to the high esteem in which
it was universally held. Like many other good gifts,
it was, however, grossly abused, and diverted from
its legitimate use ; and advantage was taken of its
amazing productive powers to elevate it from the
place of an agreeable, wholesale addition to the
daily food of the community to that of “the staff of
life.” In Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, the
people, already in a painfully degraded condition, and
contented with the potato as their sole food all the year
round, took occasion, from its very productiveness, under
the rudest culture, to subdivide their lands, and marry
prematurely, with reckless improvidence, and amid an
ever-deepening degradation. We know now, from the
utter prostration and helplessness into which this
wretched population was at once thrown by the memor-
able potato disease, the terrible penalty which the abuse
of “a good gift” has brought directly on the miserable
sufferers, and indirectly on the whole community. It
will be well if the stern lesson, enforced by famine and
pestilence, have the effect of leading to a better social
condition. Viewed in this light, the potato disease may
yet prove a blessing to the nation. Its continued prev-
alence, although in a mitigated form, cannot well be re-
garded otherwise, when we remember the frantic eager-
ness with which the Irish peasantry replanted their
favorite root on the first indication of its returning vigor,
and the desperate energy with which they cling to it
under repeated disappointments.
The varieties of the potato, whether for garden or
field culture, are exceedingly numerous, and admit of end-
less increase by propagating from seeds. When the
crop is grown for cattle food, bulk of produce will be
the primary consideration but for sale or family use,
flavor, keeping quality, and handsome appearance, will
be particularly attended to. Exemption from disease
is now a momentous consideration, whatever the use for
which it is grown. There is the difficulty, however,
connected with selections on the score of healthiness,
that while in each season since the disease broke out
certain varieties have escaped, it is observed from year
to year that the exempted list varies, certain kinds that
had been previously healthy becoming as obnoxious to
disease as any, and others in a great measure escaping
that had suffered much before. Indeed, certain parties,
from observing that diseased tubers left in the ground
have produced healthy plants in the following season,
have been induced purposely to plant diseased potatoes,
and with good results. This, however, is probably due
to the mere fact of their being kept in the earth.
In field culture the potato is frequently grown on a
portion of the fallow break; but its appropriate place
in the rotation is that usually assigned to beans, with
which, in an agricultural point of view, it has many ſea-
tures in common, and in lieu of which it may with
advantage be cultivated. As the potato requires to be
planted as early in spring as the weather will admit of,
thus leaving little opportunity for cleaning the land, and
as its mode of growth forbids any effective removal of
root-weeds by after culture, it is peculiarly necessary to
have the land devoted to this crop cleaned in autumn.
Winter dunging facilitates the planting, and is otherwise
beneficial to the crop by producing that loose and mellow
condition of the soil in which the potato delights. The
quality of the crop is also believed to be better when the
dung is thoroughly incorporated with the soil, than
when it is applied in the drill at the time of planting.
A liberal application of manure is necessary if a full
crop is expected. The rank growth thus induced ren-
ders it, however, more obnoxious to the blight, and hence
at present it is more prudent to aim rather at a sound
crop than an abundant one, and for this purpose to
I 28
A G R
stint the manure. When it is applied at the time of
planting, the mode of procedure is the same as that
which will presently be described in the section on turnip
culture. The potato sets are prepared a few days before
they are expected to be needed. Tubers about the size
of an egg do well to be planted whole; and it is a good
plan to select these when harvesting the crop, and to
store them by themselves, that they may be ready for
use without further labor. The larger tubers are cut into
pieces, having at least one sound eye in each, although
two are better. It is of great consequence to have seed-
potatoes stored in a cool and dry pit, so that if possible
they may be prepared for planting before they have
begun to shoot. If there has been any heating in the
pit, the potatoes are found to be covered by a rank
crop of shoots, which are necessarily rubbed off, and
thus the most vigorous eyes are lost, and much of the
substance which should have nourished the young plant
is utterly wasted. A sufficient number of dormant eyes
are no doubt left, but from the comparatively exhausted
state of the tubers, these produce stems of a weaker and
more watery character, and more liable to disease than
those first protruded.
Potato drills should not be less than 30 inches wide,
nor the Sets less than Io or 12 inches apart in the rows.
The usual practice is to take the sets to the field in sacks,
which are set down at convenient distances for replen-
ishing the baskets or aprons of the planters. When a
large breadth is to be planted, a better way is to have
the sets in carts, one of which is moved slowly along in
front of the planters. A person is seated in the cart,
who has by him several spare baskets which he keeps
ready filled, and which are handed to the planters in
exchange for empty ones as often as required.
When the crop is matured, which is known by the
decay of the tops and the firmness of the epidermis when
the tubers are forcibly rubbed by the thumb, advantage
is taken of every dry day in harvesting the crop. With
Small plots, the fork is certainly the most efficient im-
plement for raising the tubers; but on the large scale,
when expedition is of great consequence, they are always
unearthed by the double mould-board plough. Alternate
rows are split open in the first instance, and then the
intervening ones, as the produce of the first is gathered.
When a convenient breadth has thus been cleared a
turn of the harrows is given to uncover such tubers as
have been hid from the gleaners at the first going over.
This work is now very generally accomplished by means
of a bulking-plough divested of its wings, and having
attached to its sole a piece of iron terminating in radiating
prongs. This being worked directly under the row of
potato plants, unearths the tubers, and spreads them on
the surface by one operation. The potatoes are gathered
into baskets, from which they are emptied into carts and
conveyed at once to some dry piece of ground, where
they are piled up in long narrow heaps and immediately
thatched with straw. . The base of the heaps should not
exceed a yard in width, and should be raised above the
surface level rather than sunk below it, as is very usually
done. As the dangers to be guarded against are heating
and frost, measures must be taken with an eye to both.
The crop being put together in as dry and clean a state
as possible, a good covering of straw is put on, and
coated over two or three inches thick with the earth,
care being taken to leave a chimney every two yards along
the ridge. By thus keeping the heaps dry and secure
from frost, it is usually possible, even yet, to preserve
potatoes, in good condition till spring. Such diseased
ones as have been picked out at the gathering of the
crop can be used for feeding cattle or pigs.
Turnips.-The introduction of turnips as a field crop
constitutes one of the most marked epochs in British
agriculture. To the present day no better criterior:
exists by which to estimate its state in any district, or
the skill of individual farmers, than the measure of suc-
cess with which this or other root crops are cultivated.
Previous to the introduction of bone-dust and guano,
farm-yard dung formed, in the majority of cases, the
only available manure for the turnip crop. It was
almost invariably formed into heaps in the field to
which it was to be applied, and repeatedly turned, as
great stress was laid on having it well rotted. The
introduction of these invaluable portable manures, has,
however, not only immensely extended the culture of
the turnip, but has materially modified the course of
procedure. On the first introduction of bone-dust the
practice was to use the fold-yard dung as far as it would
go, and to apply bone-dust alone, in quantities of from
sixteen to twenty bushels per acre, to the remainder of
the crop. Guano, too, for a time was used to some
extent on the same principle; but now it is most satis-
factorily proved that whereas very good crops of tur-
nips can be obtained by manuring either with dung alone,
at the rate of from fifteen to twenty tons per acre, or
bones alone, at the rate of three or four cwt., much
better crops can be obtained by applying to each acre
its proportion of each of these kinds and quantities of
manures. A portion of the bones is now usually applied
in the form of superphosphate of lime; and as this sub-
stance, and also guano, have a remarkable power of
stimulating the growth of the turnip in its earliest stage,
forcing it to the state fit for thinning from ten to four-
teen days earlier than heretofore, there is now no occa-
sion for the dung being in the advanced state of decom-
position that was formerly found necessary. When
farm-yard dung alone was used, it behooved to be in a
soluble state, ready to furnish nourishment to the plant
from the beginning. But in bringing it to that state a
considerable loss is sustained by fermentation, and its
bulk is so much reduced that it becomes difficult to dis-
tribute evenly the allowance which would be available
for each acre, in order to give the whole crop a share of
it. This, however, it is most desirable to do, as good
farm-yard manure contains in itself the whole elements
required by the crop; and hence an additional reason
for the plans of applying farm-yard dung which have
already been noticed.
Mangel-Wurzel.— This root has been steadily rising
in estimation of late years. It is peculiarly adapted for
those southern parts of England where the climate is
too hot and dry for the successful cultivation of the tur-
nip. A competent authority declares that it is there
easier to obtain 30 tons of mangold than 20 tons of
Swedes, and that it is not at all unusual to find individ-
ual roots upwards of 20 lb. in weight. In Scotland it
is just the reverse, it being comparatively easy to grow a
good crop of Swedes, but very difficult to obtain 20 tons
of mangold. This plant is very susceptible of injury
from frost, and hence in the short summer of Scotland
it can neither be sown so early nor left in the ground So
late as would be requisite for its mature growth. These
difficulties may possibly be got over either by the selec-
tion of hardier varieties or by more skilful cultivation.
Its feeding quality is said to be nearly equal to that of
the swede; it is much relished by live stock—pigs espe-
cially doing remarkably well upon it; and it has the very
important property of keeping in good condition till
midsummer if required. Indeed, it is only after it has
been some months in the store heap that it becomes a
palatable and safe food for cattle. It is, moreover,
exempt from the attacks of the turnip beetle.
Cazzoz. – This root, though so deservedly esteemed
and universally grown in gardens, has not hitherto
attained to general cultivation as a field crop. This is
**.
A G. R.
I29
owing chiefly to certain practical difficulties attending
its culture on a larger scale. Its light, feathery seeds
cannot easily be sown so as to secure their regular ger-
mination; the tardy growth of the young plants, and the
difficulty of discriminating between them and weeds
makes the thinning a troublesome affair; the harvesting
of the crop is comparatively expensive; and it is only on
Sandy and light loamy soils, or those of a peaty character,
that it can be grown successfully. The increasing pre-
cariousness in the growth of potatoes, turnips and clover,
and the consequent necessity for a greater variety of
green crops, entitle the carrot to increased attention as a
field crop. Its intrinsic qualities are, however, very
valuable, especially since the introduction of the white
Belgian variety. On light soils it is alleged that larger
crops of carrots can be obtained than of turnips, and
with less exhaustion of their fertility, which is explained
as arising from the greater depth to which the carrots
descend for their nourishment. This root is eaten with
avidity by all kinds of farm stock. Horses, in particu-
lar, are very fond of it, and can be kept in working con-
dition with a considerably smaller ration of oats when
20 lb. of carrots are given to them daily.
A arszeź.— This plant bears so close a resemblance to
the carrot, and its culture and uses are so similar, that
they need not be repeated. . It can, however, be culti-
vated successfully over a much wider range of soils than
the carrot, and, unlike it, rather prefers those in which
clay predominates. It is grown extensively and with
reat success in the Channel Islands. The cows there,
fed on parsnips and hay, yield butter little inferior, either
in color or flavor, to that produced from pasture. About
Io Tb of seed are required per acre. It requires, like
that of the carrot, to be steeped before sowing, to hasten
germination, and the same care is needed to have it fresh
and genuine. It should be sown in April. The roots,
when matured, are stored like carrots.
Jerzęsalem Artic/hoke. — This root, although decidedly
inferior to the potato in flavor, is yet deserving of culti-
vation. It grows freely in inferior soils, is easily prop-
agated from the tubers, and requires little attention in
its cultivation. When once established in the soil, it
will produce abundant crops for successive years on the
same spot. In properly-fenced woods it might yield
abundant and suitable food for hogs, which could there
root it at their pleasure, without damage to anything.
Where they had mast along with these juicy tubers, they
would undoubtedly thrive apace. Aſter they had grubbed
up what they could get, enough would be left to repro-
duce a crop for successive seasons. Such a use of this
esculent seems well deserving of careful trial.
Caôôage. — On strong rich soils large crops of very
nutritious food for sheep or cattle, and of a kind very
acceptable to them, are obtained from the field culture
of the Drumhead cabbage. A seed-bed is prepared in a
garden, orchard, or other sheltered situation, about the
second week in August, either by sowing in rows 12
inches apart, and thinning the plants about 3 inches in
the rows, or broadcast in beds. As early in spring as
the land on which the crop is to be grown is dry enough
for being worked, let it be thoroughly and deeply stirred
by one or more turns of the grubber. Assuming that a
liberal dressing of dung has been put into it at the autumn
ploughing, 3 or 4 cwt. of guano are now Scattered
evenly over the surface and ploughed in by a deep Square
furrow. A lot of plants being brought ſrom the seed-
bed, a band of planters, each provided with a dibble and
a piece of rod 27 inches long, proceed to insert a row of
plants the length of the rods apart in each third plough-
seam, the result of which is that the plants stand in regu-
lar rows 27 inches apart every way, and can afterwards
be kept clean by horse and hand hoeing like any other
drilled green crop. Cabbages are much in repute with
breeders of rams and prize sheep, which fatten rapidly on
this food. Cabbages are usually drawn off and given to
sheep on their pastures, or to cattle in byres and yards;
but they are also fed off, where they grow, by sheep, in
the same way as turnips.
A’ape.— This plant is peculiarly adapted for peaty
soils, and is accordingly a favorite crop in the fen lands
of England, and on recently reclaimed mosses and moors
elsewhere. Its growth is greatly stimulated by the ashes
resulting from the practice of paring and burning. In
these cases it is sown broadcast; but when such soils are
brought into a regular course of tillage, it is drilled, and
otherwise treated in the same manner as turnips.
Aohl-Rabi...— This plant has been frequently recom-
mended to the notice of farmers of late years. Like
mangold, it is better adapted than the turnip for strong
soils and dry and warm climates. It may be either sown
on drills in the same manner as the turnip, or sown in a
seed-bed and afterwards transplanted. The latter plan
is expensive, if it is desired to cultivate the crops to any
extent; but is commendable for providing a supply of
plants to make good deficiencies in the rows of other
crops, or when a small quantity only is wanted. By sow-
ing a plot of ground in March in some sheltered corner,
and transplanting the º early in May, it is more likely
to prosper than in any other way. Cattle and sheep are
fond of it, and it is said not to impart any unpleasant
flavor to milk.
Grasses, &c.—Under this general heading we propose
to include what we have to say concerning the grasses,
whether natural or cultivated, and those other crops
which are grown expressly for the sake of the cattle food
yielded by their leaves and stems. This kind of farm
produce is either consumed where it grows by depastur-
ing with live stock, or mown and given to them in a
green state under cover, or dried and stored for after use.
It thus embraces the cultivation of these crops, and their
disposal, whether by grazing, soiling, or haymaking.
Following this method, we shall first of all briefly describe
the cultivation of those pasture and forage crops which
are of best repute in British husbandry.
Tillage lands are now everywhere cropped according
to some settled rotation, in which the well-recognised
principles of the alternate husbandry are carried out ac-
cording to the actual circumstances of each locality.
With rare exceptions, such lands at stated intervals bear
a crop of the clovers or cultivated grasses. As these are
usually sown in mixture, especially when intended for
pasturage, the resulting crop is technically called “seeds.”
As it is of importance to have the land clean and in good
heart when such crops are sown, they usually follow the
grain crop which immediately succeeds the fallowing
process. Being for the most part of a lower habit of
growth, these can be sown and grown along with white
corn crops without injury to either. When the latter
are harvested, the former, being already established in
the soil, at once occupy it, and grow apace. By this
arrangement there is therefore secured an important sav-
ing both of time and tillage. Barley being the crop
amongst which the seeds of the clovers and grasses are
most frequently sown, and amongst which, upon the
whole, they thrive best, it is customary to sow these
small seeds at the same time as the barley, and to cover
them in with a single stroke of the common harrows.
This is erroneous practice, both as regards the time and
manner of sowing these small seeds. We have already
mentioned, in the proper place, that barley should be
sown as early in March as possible. s
When it is intended to lay down arable land to grass
for several years, or to restore it to permanent pasture
or meadow, it is always advisable to sow the sceds with-
9 A
I3O
A G R
out a corn crop. This doubtless involves an additional
cost at the outset, but it is usually more than repaid by
the enhanced value of the pasture thus obtained. To
grow the grasses well, the soil should be pulverised to
the depth of 3 or 4 inches only, and be full of manure
near the surface. There is no better way of securing
these conditions than by first securing a crop of turnips
on the ground by sheep folding, and then pulverising the
surface by means of the grubber, harrow, and roller,
without ploughing it.
Much diversity of practice exists in regard to the kinds
and quantities of seeds used in sowing down with a grain
crop. In Scotland from 2 to 4 pecks of ryegrass seeds,
with from Io to 14 ft. of those of red, white, alsike, and
yellow clovers, in about equal proportions, is a common
allowance for an acre. A pound or two of field parsley
is occasionally added, or rather is substituted for an
equal weight of clover seeds. The natural grasses are
seldom sown, and only when the land is to be laid to per-
manent pasture.
When a good natural pasture is carefully examined, it
is found to consist of an amazing number of different
grasses and other plants. Not only does a natural pas-
ture contain a great variety of herbage at any one
time, but it has its plants which replace each other at
different seasons; and some also which are prominent
in wet years and others in dry ones. The provision thus
made for affording at all times such a variety of food as
is at once grateful and wholesome to the animals which
browse on it, and for keeping the ground fully occupied
under every diversity of seasons and weather, is truly
admirable, and the study of it well fitted to interest and
instruct the husbandman. The importance of this sub-
ject is beginning to be appreciated by agriculturists; as
one proof of which we now see our leading seedsmen
regularly advertising for sale an extensive list of grasses
and other pasture plants. Most of them also, for the
guidance of their customers, point out the kind and quan-
tities per acre which are appropriate for diversity of soils
and other circumstances.
When land has been thus sown for a permanent pas-
ture, care should be taken not to allow a sheep to set
foot upon it for the first two years, for if these indus-
trious nibblers are allowed to crop the tender clover
seedlings before they are fully established in the soil,
they are certain to remove the crown from most of
them, and thus ruin the pasture at the very outset. In-
numerable instances of failure in the attempt to obtain
good permanent pastures are entirely owing to this pre-
mature grazing by sheep. The first growth should
therefore be mown, care being taken to do so before
any of the grasses have flowered. Then roll repeatedly,
and stock with young cattle only until the second season
IS Over.
Having described the means to be used for obtaining
good pastures, let us now consider how to use them
profitably. The act of grazing embraces the practical
solution of two important problems, viz., 1st, How to
obtain the greatest amount and best quality of herbage
from any given pasture; and 2d, How to consume this
herbage by live stock so as to make the most of it. The
grazier has ever to keep in view what is best for his land
and what is best for his stock; and must take his meas-
ures throughout the entire season with an eye to both
these objects. As regards the first of them, experience
yields the following maxims for his guidance:–
Never, to stock his pastures in spring until genial
weather is fairly established.
Never to allow the grasses to run to seed, nor parts of a
field to be eaten bare, and others to get rank and coarse.
Duly to spread about the droppings of the cattle, to
remove stagnant water, and to extirpate tall weeds.
Some time about midsummer to make a point of
having the pasture eaten so close that no dead herbage or
“foggage” shall be leſt on any part of it.
In what more immediately concerns the welfare of the
live stock, he is in like manner taught in stocking his
pastures—
To adapt the stock, as regards breed, size, condition,
and numbers, to the actual capabilities of the pasturage.
To Secure to the stock at all times a full bite of clean,
fresh-grown, succulent herbage.
In moving stock from field to field, to take care that it
be a change to better fare—not to worse.
• Pasturage consists either of natural herbage or of
“Seeds.” In the south-eastern counties of Scotland
there is little good old grass; all the really fertile soils
being employed in arable husbandry, with the exception
of small portions around the mansions of landowners.
The pasturage consists, therefore, for the most part of
the cultivated clovers and grasses. Comparatively few
cattle are there fattened on grass; the object of graziers
being rather to stock their pastures with young and
growing animals, and to get them into forward condition
for being afterward fattened upon turnips. The grazing
season is there also much shorter than in England, old
grass seldom affording a full bite for a well-conditioned
bullock before the middle of May, or later than the
middle of September. It is quite otherwise in England,
various parts of which abound with old grass lands of
the very richest description, on which oxen of the largest
size can be fattened rapidly.
Cattle already well-fleshed are alone suitable for turn-
ing into these rich old pastures. When this is attended
to, and care taken not to over-stock the pastures until
they yield a full bite, the progress of the oxen will usually
be very rapid. It is now customary to hasten this
progress by giving about 4 Tb of oilcake to each beast
daily. The dust and crumbs being siſted out, the bits of
cake are strewn upon the clean sward, from whence they
are quickly and carefully gleaned by the cattle. This is
usually a profitable practice. It brings the beasts forward
rapidly, improves their appearance and handling, and,
besides enriching the land, admits of about twelve per
cent. more numbers being fed upon a given acreage.
These choice old pastures are usually occupied in combi-
nation with others of inferior quality. The most forward
lot of cattle having been fattened and sold off from the
former, they are ready to receive fresh stock. If it is
contemplated to get them also fattened before the expiry
of the season, they are not put on the best land instantly on
the first lot being sold; but a crowd of sheep or store-
beasts being turned upon it for a few days, the existing
herbage is cleared off, and the pasture (Anglice) “laid in "
or (Scottice) “hained,” until a fresh clean growth fits it
for receiving a suitable number of the best cattle from
the other pastures. It is inexpedient to graze sheep pro-
miscuously with cattle on these best lands, as they pick
out the sweetest of the herbage, and so retard the fatten-
ing of the oxen. Neither do we approve of having hòrses
among such cattle; not so much from their interfering
with their pasturage as from the disturbance which they
usually cause by galloping about. This does not apply
to the draught-horses of a farm, which are usually too
tired and hungry when turned out from the yoke to mind
anything but food and rest, but it is better thrift to soil
them , and frolicsome, mischievous colts are unsuitable
companions for sedate, portly oxen. In favorable
seasons, the grass often grows more rapidly than an
ordinary stocking of cattle can consume it, in which case
they select the best places, and allow the herbage on
some parts to get rank and coarse.
With the exception of the best class of rich old pastures,
grass is usually consumed to greater profit by a mixed

A G R
I 3 I
stock of sheep and store cattle than by one kind of animals
only. This holds true both as regards the natural herb-
age of pastures or water meadows, and cultivated grasses,
clovers, or sainfoin. When old pastures and mixed
“seeds” are grazed chiefly by sheep, the same rules apply
that have already been noticed in connection with cattle.
The herbage should if possible be established in a grow-
ing state, and so far advanced as to afford a full bite,
before the pasture is stocked in spring. If the sheep are
turned into it permanently, their close nibbling hinders
the plants from ever getting into a state of rapid growth
and productiveness, and the necessity imposed upon the
stock of roaming over the whole field, and keeping long
afoot before they can glean enough to appease their ap-
petite, is prejudicial alike to them and to their pasture.
This is attended with considerable risk of the sheep get-
ting tainted with rot, which must be guarded against as
much as possible. In the first place, it is well to give
them a daily allowance of bran, beans, or cake, and salt;
and besides this, to put on this land only such sheep as
are nearly ready for the butcher. They will thus fatten
very rapidly, and be slaughtered before there is time for
harm to ensue.
The modes of grazing which we have now described are
appropriate for sheep in forward condition. The poorer
pastures are usually stocked with nursing eves and lean
sheep brought in from higher grazings. Lambs, both
before and after weaming, require clean pastures, and of
course frequent changes. If kept on tainted pastures,
they are certain to become subject to diarrhoea, to be
stinted in their growth, and to have their constitution so
weakened that many of them will die when afterwards
put upon turnips. To avoid these evils, they must be
frequently moved from field to field. A sufficient num-
ber of store cattle must be grazed along with them, to
eat up tall herbage and rank patches avoided by thesheep.
After the lambs are weaned, the ewes require to fare
rather poorly for a time, and can thus be made use of to
eat up the worst pasturage, and the leavings of the young
and fattening sheep. When the latter, with the approach
of autumn, are put upon aftermath, clover stubbles, rape,
cabbages, or turnips, their previous pastures should in
succession be thickly stocked by the ewes and other store
stock, so as to be eaten bare and then left to freshen and
get ready for the ewes by rutting-time, when they require
better food. In depasturing sheep on poor soils it is
usually highly advantageous to give them a daily allow-
ance of grain or cake in troughs, which must be shifted
º, so as to distribute the manure regularly over the
3. Il Cl.
It is always advantageous to have pastures provided
with a shed, under which the stock can find shelter from
sudden storms, or from the attacks of insects and the
scorching rays of the summer's sun. When such sheds
are regularly strewed with dried peat or burnt clay,
much valuable compost for top-dressing the pasture can
be obtained. The dung of the cattle, thus secured and
applied, benefits the pasture more than that which is
dropped upon it by the animals. Such clots require to
be spread about from time to time.
J/a/ian Ryegrass.-Italian ryegrass can be cultivated
over as wide a range of soils and climate as any forage
crop which we possess, and its value for soiling is every
clay getting to be more generally appreciated. When
first introduced, and indeed until very recently, it was
chiefly sown in mixture with other grasses and clovers
for pasturage, a purpose to which it is well adapted from
its early and rapid growth in Spring. Its true function,
however, is to produce green food for Soiling, for which
purpose it is probably unrivalled. It is in connection
with the system of irrigation with liquid manure that its
astonishing powers have been most fully developed.
When grown for this purpose it is sown in April, on
land that has borne a grain crop after turnips or sum-
mer fallow. If sown zwith a grain crop as thickly as
is requisite, it grows to nearly the height of the
grain, and both are injured. A liberal dressing of farm-
yard dung is spread upon the stubble in autumn, and
immediately ploughed in. In the end of March or
beginning of April the land is prepared for the seed by
being stirred with the grubber and then well harrowed.
The seed, at the rate of 4 bushels per acre, is then
sown in the way already described for clover and grass
seeds. When the liquid manure system is practised,
the crop is watered as soon as the young plants are
about an inch high, and so rapid is its growth in favor-
able circumstances that a cutting of IO tons per acre has
in some cases been obtained six weeks after sowing.
When there is no provision for supplying liquid manure,
a top-dressing of guano, nitrate of soda, soot, or the first
two articles mixed, is applied by hand-sowing, care
being taken to give this dressing when rain seems at
hand or has just fallen. A similar top-dressing is
repeated after each cutting, by which means three cut-
tings are ordinarily obtained from the same space in
one season. A very great quantity of stock can thus be
supported from a very limited extent of ground. This
grass is also found to be very grateful to the palates of
horses, cattle, and sheep, which all thrive upon it.
Though so very succulent, it does not produce purging
in the animals fed upon it.
Crimson Clozer.—Crimson clover, though not hardy
enough to withstand the climate of Scotland in ordinary
winters, is a most valuable forage crop in England. It
is sown as quickly as possible after the removal of a
grain crop at the rate of 18 lb to 20 lb per acre. It is
found to succeed better when only the surface of the
soil is stirred by the scarifier and harrow than when a
ploughing is given. It grows rapidly in spring, and
yields an abundant crop of green food, peculiarly pal-
atable to live stock. It is also suitable for making into
hay. Only one cutting, however, can be obtained, as it
does not shoot again after being mown.
A'ed C/over. — This plant, either sown alone or in
mixture with ryegrass, has for a long time formed the
staple crop for soiling; and so long as it grew freely, its
power of shooting up again after repeated mowings, the
bulk of the crop thus obtained, its palatableness to stock
and feeding qualities, the great range of soils and climate
in which it grows, and its fitness either for pasturage or
soiling, well entitled it to this preference. Except on
certain rich calcareous clay soils, it has now, however,
become an exceedingly precarious crop. The seed, when
genuine, which unfortunately is very often not the case,
germinates as freely as ever, and no greater difficulty
than heretofore is experienced in having a full plant
during autumn and the greater part of winter; but over
most part of the country, the farmer, after having his
hopes raised by seeing a thick cover of vigorous looking
clover plants over his field, finds to his dismay, by March
or April, that they have ºther entirely disappeared, or
are ſound only in capriciot's patches here and there over
the field. No satisfactory explanation of this clover
failure has yet been given, nor any certain remedy, of a
kind to be applied to the soil, discovered. One impor-
tant fact is, however, now well established, viz., that
when the cropping of land is so managed that clover
does not recur at shorter intervals than eight years, it
grows with much of its pristine vigor.
When the four-course rotation is followed, no better
plan of managing this process has been yet suggested
than to sow beans, pease, potatoes, or tares, instead of
clover, for one round, making the rotation one of eight
years instead of four. The mechanical condition of the
I32
A G R
soil seems to have something to do with the success or
failure of the clover crop. We have often noticed that
head-lands, or the converging line of wheel tracks near
a gateway at which the preceding root crop had been
carted from a field, have had a good take of clover,
when on the field generally it had failed. In the same
way a field that has been much poached by sheep while
consuming turnips upon it, and which has afterwards
been ploughed up in an unkindly state, will have the
clover prosper upon it, when it fails in other cases where
the soil appears in far better condition. If red clover
can be again made a safe crop, it will be a boon indeed
to agriculture. Its seeds are usually sown along with a
grain crop, any time from 1st February to May, at the
rate of 12 lb. to 20 lb. per acre when not combined with
other clovers or grasses.
Italian ryegrass and red clover are now frequently
sown in mixture for soiling, and succeed admirably. It
is, however, a wiser course to sow them separately, as by
substituting the Italian ryegrass for clover, for a single
rotation, the farmer not only gets a crop of forage as
valuable in all respects, but is enabled, if he choose, to
prolong the interval betwixt the sowings of clover to
twelve years, by sowing, as already recommended, pulse
the first round, Italian ryegrass the second, and clover
the third.
When manure is broadcast over a young clover field,
and presently after washed in by rain, the effect is identi-
cal with that of first dissolving it in water, and then dis-
tributing the dilution over the surface, with this differ-
ence, namely, that the first plan costs only the price of
the guano, &c., and is available at anytime and to every
one, whereas the latter implies the construction of tanks
and costly machinery.
Vetc/ies.— Vetches are another very valuable forage
crop. Being indigenous to Britain, and not fastidious
in regard to soil, they can be cultivated successfully under
a great diversity of circumstances, and are well adapted
for poor soils. By combining the winter and spring
varieties, and making several sowings of each in its
season at intervals of two or three weeks, it is practica-
ble to have them fit for use from May till October, and
thus to carry out a system of soiling by means of vetches
alone. But it is usually more expedient to use them in
combination with grass and clover, beginning with the
first cutting of the latter in May, taking the winter
vetches in June, recurring to the Italian ryegrass or
clover as the second cutting is ready, and afterwards
bringing the spring vetches into use. Each crop can thus
be used when in its best state for cattle food, and so as
gratefully to vary their dietary.
When vetches are grown on poor soils, the most profit-
able way of using them is by folding sheep upon them,
a practice very suitable also for clays, upon which a root
crop cannot safely be consumed in this way. A different
course must, however, be adopted from that followed
when turnips are so disposed of. When sheep are turned
in upon a piece of tares, a large portion of the food is
trodden down and wasted. Cutting the vetches and
putting them into racks does not much mend the
matter, as much is still pulled out and wasted;
and the manure unequally distributed over the
land. To avoid those evils, hurdles with vertical
spars, betwixt which the sheep can reach with
head and neck, are now used. These are set close
up to the growing crop along a considerable stretch, and
shiſted forward as the sheep eat up what is within their
reach. This requires the constant attention of the shep-
herd, but the labor is repaid by the saving of the food,
which being always fresh and clean, does the sheep more
good. A modification of this plan is to use the same
kind of hurdles, but instead of shifting them as just
described, to mow a swathe parallel to them, and fork
this forward within reach of the sheep as required,
repeating this as often during the day as is found neces-
sary, and at night moving the sheep close up to the
growing crop, so that they may lie for the next twenty-
four hours on the space which has yielded food for the
past day. During the night they have such pickings as
have been left on the recently-mown space, and so much
of the growing crop as they can get at through the spars.
There is less labor by this last mode than the other, and
having practised it for many years we know that it
answers well.
As spring-sown vetches are in perfection at the season
when pastures usually get dry and Scanty, a common
practice is to cart them on to grass land and spread them
out in wisps, to be eaten by the sheep or cattle. It is,
however, much better either to have them eaten by sheep
and where they grow, or to cart them to the homestead.
Mustard.— Aſter a crop of vetches has been con-
sumed, if the season is too far advanced to admit of tur-
nips being sown, it is not unusual to take a crop of white
mustard or crimson clover.
By means of the crops now enumerated, the practice
of soiling can be carried out in all cases where it is prac-
ticable.
There are other valuable crops of this kind, several of
which we shall now describe ; but their culture is either
limited by their requirements in regard to soil and cli-
mate, or attended with too great expense. to admit of
their competing with those already described.
Sainfoiſt.—This very important forage plant would
be wellentitled to a more prominent place in our list but
for the circumstance that it is only on dry calcareous
soils that its excellences are fully developed; and to
these, accordingly, its culture may be said to be confined.
Zucerne. —Lucerne is much cultivated as a forage crop
in France and other parts of the continent of Europe,
but has never come into general use in Britain. It is,
however, frequently met with in small patches in districts
where the soil is very light, with a dry subsoil. Its thick
tap-roots penetrate very deeply into the soil ; and if a
good cover is once obtained, the plants will continue to
yield abundant cuttings of herbage for eight or ten years,
provided they are statedly top-dressed and kept free from
perennial weeds. In cultivating lucerne, the ground
must first be thoroughly cleaned, and put into good heart
by consuming a turnip crop upon it with sheep. In
March or April, the surface-soil having first been brought
to a fine tilth, the seed, at the rate of Io lb per acre, is
sown in rows 15 to 18 inches apart. As soon as the
plants appear they must be freed from weeds by careful
hoeing and hand-weeding, repeated as occasion requires.
Little produce is obtained from them the first season,
and not a very heavy cutting the second ; but by the
third year two or more abundant crops of herbage will
be produced, peculiarly suitable for horse-feed. It is
the slow growth of the plants at first, and the difficulty
of keeping them free from weeds on those dry soils
which alone are adapted for growing lucerne, that have
deterred farmers from growing it more extensively than
has hitherto been done. º
Chicory, &c. — Chicory, burnet, cow-parszlº, and
Arickly comfrey, all known to be palatable to cattle and
yielding a large bulk of produce, have probably been
less carefully experimented with than their merits gle-
serve. Although they have long figured in such motices
as the present, or in occasional paragraphs in agricultu-
ral periodicals, they have never yet, that we are aware
of, been subjected to such a trial as either conclu-
sively to establish their claim to more extended culture,
or to justify the neglect which they have hitherto experi.
enced."
A G. R.
I 33
Gorse oz. Whize — Notwithstanding its formidable
spines, the young shoots of this hardy evergreen yield a
palatable and nutritious winter forage for horses and
cattle. To fit it for this purpose it must be chopped and
bruised to destroy the spines. This is sometimes done
in a primitive and laborious way by laying the gorse
upon a block of wood and beating it with a mallet, flat
at one end and armed with crossed knife-edges at the
other, by the alternate use of which it is bruised and
chopped. To turn it to good account, it must be sown
in drills, kept clean by hoeing, and treated as a regular
green crop. If sown in March, on land fitly prepared
and afterwards duly cared for, it is ready for use in the
autumn of the following year. A succession of cuttings
of proper age is obtained for several years from the
same field. It is cut by a short stout scythe, and must
be brought from the field daily; for when put in a
heap after being chopped and bruised it heats rapidly.
It is given to horses and cows in combination with
chopped hay or straw. An acre will produce about
: faggots of green two-year-old gorse, weighing 20 lb
€3. Cll.
This plant is invaluable in mountain sheep-walks.
The rounded form of the furze bushes that are met with
in such situations shows how diligently the annual
growth, as far as it is accessible, is nibbled by the sheep.
The food and shelter afforded to them in snow-storms
by clusters of such bushes is of such importance that
the wonder is our sheep farmers do not bestow more
pains to have it in adequate quantity. , Young plants of
whin are so kept down by the sheep that they can sel-
dom attain to a profitable size unless protected by a
fence for a few years.
Tussac Grass. – The tussac grass of the Falkland
Islands has of late years attracted considerable attention
as a forage plant. From its gigantic growth, even in
those ungenial regions, and the extraordinary relish
maniſested for it by horses and cattle, Sanguine hopes
were entertained that it was to prove a truly valuable
addition to our present list of forage plants; but the at-
tempts hitherto made to introduce it in Britain have not
been of a very encouraging kind.
Having spoken of the cultivation and use in a green
state of herbage and forage crops, it remains to describe
the process by which they are preserved for use in a dry
state, or made into hay. On every farm a supply of
good hay, adequate to the wants of its own live stock,
is, or at least ought to be, steadily provided. . This is
no doubt an expensive kind of food, but, on the other
hand it is highly nutritious, and conduces much to the
healthfulness of the animals fed upon it. Many a val-
uable farm horse is annually sacrificed to a false economy
in feeding him solely on innutritious straw or ill-gotten
hay. The owners of such stock would do well to con-
sider that the death of a horse yearly, and the impaired
health and condition of the whole stud, more than coun-
terbalance any saving that can be effected by using bad
fodder instead of good. But the great consumption of
hay is by the numerous horses constantly required in this
country for other purposes than farm labor. In , the vi-
cinity of towns hay is therefore a staple of agricultural
product, and hay-making an important branch of rural
economy.
In converting the grasses and forage plants into hay,
the object is to get quit of the water which they con-
tain, amounting to nearly two-thirds of their weight,
with the least possible loss of their nutritive qualities.
In order to this, the crops must be mown at that stage
of their growth when the greatest weight of produce
with the maximum of nutritive value can be obtained;
and then it is necessary so to conduct the drying process
that the inspissated juices shall not be washed out and
lost by external wetting. A simple and sufficiently
accurate rule for determining the first point is to mow
when the plants are in full flower. If this stage is ex-
ceeded, both the quality of the hay and the amount of
the foggage or aftermath are seriously impaired. It
follows from this that mowing should be commenced
somewhat earlier than the stage indicated, otherwise,
before the whole can be cut, the last portion will have
exceeded the proper degree of ripeness. By Jutting a
part too soon, a slight loss of weight is incurred,
which, however, is compensated by a better aftermath;
whereas if part is allowed to mature the seeds, there is a
loss of weight, quality, and aftermath. Haymaking,
to be done well, must be done quickly, and, in order to
this, a full supply of laborers is indispensable. As a
good mower can cut on an average an acre in a day,
as many must be engaged as can overtake the extent of
crop while it is in the best state for cutting. It is of
great importance, too, to have the grass cut close to the
ground. A loss of from 5 to IO per cent. On the grass
produce is frequently incurred by unskilful or careless
mowers leaving the sward too high. Now that efficient
mowing-machines can be had, this work can be perform-
ed with a celerity and accuracy hitherto unattainable.
To admit of accurate and expeditious mowing, whether
by scythe or machine, care must be taken, at the proper
Season, to remove all stones and other obstructions, and
to make the surface Smooth by rolling.
When it is desired to save the seeds of Italian or
common ryegrass, the crop, after being mown, is allowed
to lie for a day or two in swathe, and is then neatly
gathered into sheaves, bound, and stooked, precisely like
a crop of oats. When sufficiently dried, the seed is
either thrashed out in the field, the straw stacked like
other hay, and the seed spread thinly over a granary
floor, and turned several times daily until it is dry
enough to keep in a bin or in sacks, or the sheaves are
built into small round stacks, which stand until the seed
is wanted, when it is thrashed out by machinery like
Tall l.
8. Of late years we have frequently secured considerable
quantities of useful hay by mowing fields that had been
pastured by sheep in the early part of the season. In
July we run the mowing-machines over such fields, tak-
ing care to set the cutting-bar high enough to leave the
fresh-grown herbage untouched, and to remove only that
of older and taller growth. The mown stuff is left
untouched for two or three days; is then drawn together
by the horse rake, and put into cocks for a short time,
or carted at once to the rick-yard as weather permits.
In this way much herbage that would otherwise go to
waste is converted into useful winter fodder, and a
ºgowº, clean pasture secured for lambs or other
Stock.
Plax. — Flax is probably the most important of these
crops. Indeed, from the rapid growth of our linen trade,
the growing demand for linseed and its products, and the
fitness of the soil and climate for the successful growth
of flax, it is not without cause that its more extended
cultivation has been so strenuously urged upon our farm-
ers, and that influential societies have been organized for
the express purpose of promoting this object. Viewed
merely as an agricultural crop, the cultivation of flax is
exceedingly simple, and could be practised as readily and
extensively as that of the cereal crops. The difficulty is,
that before it can be disposed of to any advantage, it
must undergo a process of partial manufacture; thus
there is required not only an abundant supply of cheap
labor, but such an amount of skill and personal super-
intendence on the part of the farmer as is incompatible
with due attention to corn and cattle husbandry. If a
ready and remunerative market were available for the
H.34
A G R
fibre in its simple form of flax straw, this, in combination
with the value of the seed for cattle feeding, would at
once hold out sufficient motive to our farmers to grow it
statedly and to any required extent. Until this is the
case, its culture cannot extend in the corn-growing dis-
tricts of Great Britain. In Ireland and parts of the
Highlands of Scotland, where there is a redundant pop-
ulation much in want of such employment as the flax
crop furnishes, and where the climate is suited for its
growth, it is highly desirable that its culture should ex-
tend, and probable that it will do so. Flax prospers
most when grown upon land of firm texture resting upon
a moist subsoil. It does well to succeed oats or pota-
toes, as it requires the soil to be in fresh condition without
being too rich. , Lands newly broken up from pasture
suit it well, as these are generally freer from weeds than
those that have been long under tillage. It is usually
inexpedient to #. manure directly to the flax crop, as
the tendency of this is to produce over-luxuriance, and
thereby to mar the quality of the fibre, on which its
value chiefly depends. For the same reason it must be
thickly seeded, the effect of this being to produce tall
slender stems, free from branches. The land having
been ploughed in autumn, is prepared for sowing by
working it with the grubber, harrow, and roller, until a
fine tilth is obtained. On the smooth surface the seed is
sown broadcast by hand or machine, at the rate of
3 bushels per acre, and covered in the same manner as
clover seeds. It is advisable immediately to hand-rake
it with common may-rakes, and thus to remove all stones
and clods, and to secure a uniform close cover of plants.
When these are about 3 inches long the crop must be
carefully hand-weeded. This is a tedious and expen-
sive process, and hence the importance of sowing the
crop on land as free as possible from weeds of all
kinds. ge
Aemp, although at one time very generally grown in
Great Britain, is now so rarely met with that it is un-
necessary to enter into details of its cultivation.
Aops.-The hop is an important crop in several of the
southern counties of England. Although an indigenous
plant, it was originally brought into England for cultiva-
tion from Flanders in 1525. It is cultivated to a consid-
erable extent in Belgium, Bavaria, in the United States
of America, and more recently in Australia. Hops, as
is well known, are chiefly used for preserving and impart-
ing a peculiar flavor to beer. Probably the only parts
of the hop flower which enter into the composition of
the beer are the seeds, and the yellow glutinous matter
which surrounds the outer integuments of the seed, and
lies at the bottom of the petals. This yellow matter
(technically termed the condition of the hop) has an in-
tensely bitter taste, and emits a peculiar and very agree-
able aroma, which, however, is extremely volatile; and
hence the necessity for close packing as soon as possible
after the hops are dried. When kept over a year, much
of this aroma flies off, and hence new hops are indispen-
sable in brewing the first kinds of beer. The hop is a
very exhausting crop for the land, requiring to be planted
only on the most fertile soils, and to have them sustained
by frequent and large dressings of manure rich in nitro-
gen. #
Sugar-Beet.— The Silesian white beet has long been
cultivated in the various states of continental Europe
for the production of sugar, and in several of them is
now a staple product of great value and importance.
The manufacture of sugar from beet-root has attained
to very great dimensions on the continent of Europe.
It is known that from the crop of 1872 there has been
produced 1,025,000 tons of sugar, worth £24 per ton,
and 250,000 tons of molasses, worth 4.3 per ton, and
that new factories, some of them on a gigantic scale,
are now in course of erection. A most important fact
connected with this rapidly-extending industry is that
the erection of a sugar factory is immediately accom-
panied by an improvement in the agriculture, and an
increase in the value of the land, of the surrounding
district. In many places farmers gladly contract to
supply beet-root at 18s. per ton for ten years, on condi-
tion that they receive back pulp in fair proportion to
the quantity of root supplied by them. Russia pro-
duces the finest quality of beet, instances being known
in which the roots yielded Io per cent. of loaf-sugar.
There are good grounds for concluding that Russia will
at no distant date take a prominent place as a sugar-
producing country.
There seems at present a reasonable prospect that the
cultivation of sugar-beet will be adopted in various
parts of our own country.
Chicory (for its A'oots).- The very extensive and
constantly increasing consumption of the roots of
chicory as a substitute for coffee, renders it now an
agricultural crop of some importance. The soils best
adapted for its growth are deep, friable loams. The
process of cultivation is very similar to that required
for that of the carrot, excepting only that it is not
sown earlier than the first week of May, lest the
plants should run to seeds. When this happens, such
plants must be thrown aside when the crop is dug, else
the quality of the whole will be injured. About 4 lb.
of seed is the quantity to Sow per acre, either broad-
cast or in rows. The latter is undoubtedly the best
mode, as it admits of the land being kept clean, and
yields roots of greater weight. The crop is ready for
digging up in November.
Oi!-Yielding Plants.-Various plants are occasion-
ally cultivated in Britain for the sake of the oil which is
expressed from their ripened seeds. We have already
noticed the value of flax-seed for this purpose, although
the fibre is the product which is chiefly had in view in
cultivating it. The plants most commonly sown ex-
pressly as oil-yielding crops are — rape (Brassica AVapus),
colza (Brassica campestris oleifera), gold of pleasure
(Camelama sativa), and the poppy (Papazer somez, iſ-
erum). Rape is the plant most frequently and exten-
sively grown for the production of oil. The colza is
said to yield better crops of seed than the other species.
This plant is much cultivated in Flanders for this purpose.
In Great Britain it seems rather on the decline. It is
chiefly on rich alluvial soils that this crop is grown. For
a seed-crop rape is sown in June or July, precisely in the
manner already described for turnips. Theyoung plants
are thinned out to a width of 6 or 8 inches apart, and
afterwards kept clean by hoeing. The foliage may be
eaten down by sheep early in autumn, without injuring it
for the production of a crop of seed. In spring the
horse and hand hoe must be used, and the previous ap-
plication of 1 or 2 cwt. of guano will add to the product-
iveness of the crop. It suits well to lay down land to
clover or grass after a crop of rape or turnip seed, and
for this purpose the seeds are sown at the time of giving
this spring culture. The crop must be reaped as Soon,as
the seeds are observed to acquire a light brown color.
The reaping is managed precisely as we have described
in the case of beans. As the crop, after being reaped
and deposited in separate handfuls on the ground, very
soon gets dry enough for thrashing, and as the seed is
very easily shed after this is the case, this process must
be performed as rapidly as possible. Of late years in
America cotton seed has become one of the most fruit-
ful sources of oil. This product, when carefully prepared
and rectified, is fully the equal of the best olive oil for
any of the purposes for which the latter is used. Its
cheapness recommends it, in its various forms of prepara-
t A G R
I 35
tion, for the housekeeper's use, while the residuum, or
oil cake, is one of the best of foods for fattening cattle.
[See Cotton.]
Seeds of Agricultural Crops.- In the case of seed-
corn it is customary for farmers either to select from the
best of their own growth, to exchange with or purchase
from neighbors, or, if they wish a change from a different
locality, to employ a commission agent to buy for them.
In all districts there are careful farmers who, by occupy-
ing land that produces grain of good appearance, and
being at pains to have good and pure sorts, are stated
sellers of seed-corn, and manage in this way to get a few
shillings more per quarter for a part of their produce.
It is therefore only in the case of new and rare varieties
that professional seedsmen ordinarily deal in seed-corn.
There are, however, other field crops, such as clovers,
grasses, turnip, mangold, carrots, winter vetches, &c.,
the seeds of which, to a large extent, pass through the
hands of seedsmen, and the growing of which is restricted
to particular districts, and is in the hands of a limited
number of farmers.
It is only in the southern parts of England that clozer
is grown for the sake of its seeds. When it is meant to
take a crop of seed, the clover is fed off with sheep, or
mown early in the season, and then allowed to produce
its flowers and ripen its seeds. This preliminary eating
or cutting over causes the plants to throw up a greater
number of seed-stems, and to yield a fuller and more
equally ripening crop. The crop is mown when the
seeds are seen to be matured. In the case of white
clover the cutting takes place while the dew is upon the
crop, as working amongst it when dry would cause a loss
of seed. After mowing and turning the crop, the ground
is raked with close-toothed iron rakes, to catch up loose
heads. The thrashing is a twofold process — first the
separation of the heads or cobs from the stem, called
“cobbing,” and then of the seeds from the husks, called
“drawing.”
Turnip seed is the next most important crop of this
kind. From the strong tendency in the best varieties of
turnips and Swedes to degenerate, and the readiness with
which they hybridise with each other, or with any mem-
ber of the family Brassica, no small skill and pains are
needed to raise seed that can be depended upon to yield
roots of the best quality. Turnip seed is saved either
from selected and transplanted roots, or from such as
have been sown for the express purpose, and allowed to
stand as they grow.
Mustard. — Both the white and brown mustard is
cultivated to some extent in various parts of England.
The former is to be found in every garden as a salad
plant; but it has of late been coming into increasing
favor as a forage crop for sheep, and as a green manure,
for which purpose it is plowed down when about to come
into flower. . The brown mustard is grown solely for its
seeds, which yield the well-known condiment.
LIVE STOCK — HORSES.
The breeding and rearing of domesticated animals has
ever been a favorite pursuit in Great Britain, and has
been carried to greater perfection than any other depart-
ment of rural affairs. In no other country of similar
extent can so many distinct breeds of each class of
these animals be found — most of them excellent of
their kind, and admirably adapted to the particular use
for which they are designed. Observing the usual order,
we notice first A/orses.
Breeds.-- Here we shall confine our attention to .
those breeds which are cultivated expressly for the
labors of the farm; for although the breeding of saddle-
horses is chiefly carried on by farmers, and forms in
some districts an important part of their business, it
tº
does not seem advisable to treat of it here. It is a
department of husbandry requiring such a combination
of fitness in the soil, climate, and enclosures of the
farm, of access to first-class stallions, and of taste and
judgment on the part of the farmer, that few indeed of
the many who try it are really successful. The morale
too of the Society into which the breeding of this class
of horses almost necessarily brings a man is so un-
wholesome, that none can mingle in it freely without
experiencing to their cost that “evil communications
corrupt good manners.” We have noted it as a fact of
peculiar significance, in this connection, that of the few
men who really make money by this business, scarcely
one desires to see it prosecuted by his sons.
The immense size and portly presence of the English
black horse entitle him to priority of notice. This
breed is widely diffused throughout England, though
found chiefly in the midland counties. It is in the fems
and rich pastures of these counties that the celebrated
dray horses of London are bred and reared. These
horses are too slow and heavy for ordinary farm-work,
and would not be bred but for the high prices obtained
for them from the great London brewers, who pride
themselves on the great size, majestic bearing, and fine
condition of their team horses.
horses employ brood mares and young colts exclusively
for their farm work. The colts are highly fed, and
worked very gently until four years old, when they
are sold to the London brewers, often at very great
r1CeS.
The Suffolk Punch is a well-marked breed which has
long been cultivated in the county from which it takes
its name. These horses are, for the most part, of a
Sorrel, bay, or chestnut color, and are probably of
Scandinavian origin. They are compact, as their name
imports, hardy, very active, and exceedingly honest
pullers.
7%e Cleveland Bays are properly carriage-horses;
but still in their native districts they are largely em-
ployed for field work. Mr. Milburn says — “The
Cleveland, as a pure breed, is losing something of its
distinctiveness. It is running into a proverb, that “a
Cleveland horse is too stiff for a hunter, and too light
for a coacher;' but there are still remnants of the breed,
though less carefully kept distinctive than may be wished
by advocates of purity.”
7%e C//desdale Horses are not excelled by any cart
breed in the kingdom for general usefulness. They
belong to the larger class of cart-horses, sixteen hands
being an average height. Brown and bay are now the
prevailing colors.
Breeding of Carº-Aſorses.— In breeding cart-horses
regard must be had to the purpose for which they are
designed. If the farmer contemplates the raising of
colts for sale, he must aim at a larger frame than if he
simply wishes to keep up his own stock of working cattle.
These considerations will so far guide him as to the size
of the mares and stallions which he selects to breed from ;
but vigorous constitutions, perfect freedom from organic
disease, symmetrical forin, and good temper are qualities
always indispensable. Nothing is more common than to
see mares used for breeding merely because, from lame-
ness or age, they have ceased to be valuable for labor.
Lameness from external injury is, of course, no disquali-
fication: but it is mere folly to expect valuable progeny
from unsound, mis-shapen, ill-tempered or delicate dams,
or even from really good ones when their vigor has
declined from age. A farmer may grudge to lose the
labor of a first-rate mare for two or three months at his
busiest season; but if he cannot make arrangements
for doing this, he had better let breeding alone alto-
gether; for it is only by producing horses of the best
The breeders of these --
I 36
A G R
quality that it can be worth his while to breed them
at all. It is always desirable that both sire and dam
should have arrived at maturity before being put to
breed. *
The head of the cart-horse should not be large, at
least not heavy in the bones of the face and jaws, nor
loaded with flesh. Full development of brain is, indeed,
of great importance, and hence a horse somewhat wide
between the ears is to be preferred. Prick ears and
narrow forehead have by Some been reckoned excellences,
bitt we have so invariably noticed such horses to be
easily startled, given to shying, and wanting in courage
and intelligence, that we regard such a form of head as
a defect to be avoided. The eye should be bright, full
and somewhat prominent, the neck inclining to thick-
ness, of medium length, and slightly arched, and the
shoulders oblique. Upright shoulders have been com-
mended as an advantage in a horse for draught, it being
alleged that such a form enables him to throw his
weight better into his collar.
Sixteen hands is a good height for a farm-horse.
Except for very heavy land, we have always had more
satisfaction from horses slightly below this standard than
above it.
We have repeatedly put a well-bred saddle mare to a
cart-horse, and have invariably found the produce to
prove excellent farm-horses. The opposite cross,
betwixt a cart-mare and blood stallion, is nearly as cer-
tain to prove ungainly, vicious, and worthless. These
horses are generally much stronger than their appear-
ance indicates, have great powers of endurance, and can
be kept in prime working condition at much less cost
than bulkier animals. It is on muscular power and
nervous energy that the strength of animals depends,
and this, therefore, should be sought after in the farm-
horse rather than mere bulk.
Cart-mares should not foal earlier than May. Pro-
vided they are not unduly pushed or put to draw heavy
loads, they may be kept at work almost up to their time
of foaling, and are thus available for the pressing labors
of Spring. It is of importance, too, that the pasture
should be fresh, and the weather mild ere their nursing
duties begin. Mares seldom require assistance in bring-
ing forth their young, and although it is well to kezp an
eye upon them when this event is expected, they should
be kept as quiet as possible, as they are impatient of
intrusion, and easily disturbed in such circumstances. A
sheltered paddock with good grass, and where there are
no other horses, is the most suitable quarters for a mare
that has newly foaled. There must be no ditch or pond
in it, as young foals have a peculiar propensity for getting
drowned in such places. A mare, in ordinary condition,
receives the stallion on the ninth or tenth day after
foaling, and with a greater certainty of conceiving than
when it is delayed until she is again in heat. If the
mare's labor can at all be dispensed with, it is desirable
to have her with her foal for two months at least. She
may then be put to easy work with perfect safety, so
that she is not kept away from the foal longer than two
or three hours at a time. When the foal has got strong
enough, it may even be allowed to follow its dam at her
work, and to get suck as often as it desires it. Towards
the end of September foals are usually weaned, and are
then put under cover at night, and receive a little corn,
along with succulent food. Good hay, bran, carrots, or
Swedes, and a few oates, must be given regularly during
the first winter, with a warm shed to lie in, and an open
court for exercise. At weaning it is highly expedient to
put a cavasin on colts, and lead them about for a few
times. A few lessons at this early age, when they are
easily controlled, saves a world of trouble afterwards.
Before being turned to grass in the spring, they should,
on the same principle, be tied up in stalls for a week or
So... It is customary to castrate colts at a year old.
When they have got familiar with the harness, they
should be yoked to a log of wood, and made to draw
that up and down the furrows of a fallow field, until
they become accustomed to the restraint and exertion,
after which they may, with safety be put to plough
alongside a steady and good-tempered horse, and, what
is of equal consequence, under the charge of a steady,
good-tempered ploughman. As they should not have
more than five hours’ work a-day for the first summer,
it is always an advantage to have a pair of them to
yoke at the same time, in which case they take half-day
about, and do a full horse’s work betwixt them. With
such moderate work and generous feeding their growth
will be promoted. By midsummer, the press of field
labor being over, it is advisable to turn the striplings
adrift, and let them enjoy themselves in a good pasture
until after harvest, when they can again be put to
plough. Horses should not be required to draw heavy
loaded carts until they are five years old. When put
into the shafts earlier than this they frequently get
strained and stiffened in their joints. On every farm
requiring four or five pairs of horses it is highly expe-
dient to have a pair of young ones coming in annually.
LIVE STOCK — CATTI, E.
Areeds — 1st, Æea 1.9 Å reeds. – As our limits do not
admit of even a brief notice of all those breeds of cattle
for which Great Britain is so famous, we shall restrict
our remarks to some of the most important of them.
Without entering upon curious speculations as to the
origin of these breeds, we proceed to notice them in the
order suggested by their relative importance in practical
agriculture. The large lowland cattle thus claim our
first attention, and amongst them we cannot hesitate in
assigning the first place to the **
S/tort-horns.—It appears that from an early date
the valley of the Tees possessed a breed of cattle which,
in appearance and general qualities, were probably not
unlike those quasi short-horns which abound in various
parts of the country at the present day. These Durham,
Z'eeswater, or Short-horn cattle, as they were variously
called, were soon eagerly sought after, and spread over
the whole country with amazing rapidity. For a time
their merits were disputed by the eager advocates of
other and older breeds, some of which (such as long-
horns, once the most numerous breed in the kingdom)
they have utterly supplanted, while others, such as the
Herefords, Devons, and Scotch polled cattle, have each
their zealous admirers, who still maintain the superiority
to the younger race. But this controversy is meanwhile
getting practically decided in favor of the short-horns,
which constantly encroach upon their rivals even in their
headquarters, and seldom lose ground which they once
a.III. 3.
g It is said that the operations of an enterprising Can-
adian breeder — Mr. Cochran of Hillhurst—have had a
owerful effect in determining these extraordinary mar-
. rates for short-horns of the choicest type. One
cargo, including forty short-horn bulls and heifers, and
choice specimens of Cotswold sheep and Berkshire pigs,
taken out by this gentleman in 1870, is said to have cost
him £15,000. American breeders of short-horn cattle
have now established a herd-book of their own, and
have been so successful in their efforts that already they
have made numerous sales to English breeders at long
prices. While we write, accounts have come of the sale
by auction, on Ioth September 1873, of the herd of
Mr. Campbell of New York Mills, near Utica, when
Io8 animals realized $380,000. Of these Io were bought
by British breeders, 6 of which, of the Duchess family,
averaged $24,517, and one of them, “Eighth Duchess
IROMNIEY MARSHI BREED
TTE LARGE ENGLISHIIBRZlº)
SOW OF


- sº º
º:
Ialº, ICIE STEIR. I.A.M.
I, IEICE STEIR JEWIE


A. G. R.
I 37
of Geneva,” was bought for Mr. Pevan Davies of
Gloucestershire at the unprecedented price of 48,120.
Choice specimens of these cattle are now also being
sent in large numbers to our Australian colonies, and
to various parts of the continent of Europe. Indeed, it
may be said of them, that, like our people, they are
rapidly spreading over the world.
As already hinted, the Hereford is the breed which
in England contests most closely with the short-horns
for the palm of excellence. They are admirable grazier's
cattle, and when of mature age and fully fattened, pre-
sent exceedingly level, compact and massive carcases of
excellent beef. But the cows are poor milkers, and the
oxen require to be at least two years old before being
put up to fatten — defects which, in our view, are fatal
to the claims which are put forward on their behalf.
To the grazier who purchases them when their growth
is somewhat matured they usually yield a good profit,
and will generally excel short-horns of the same age.
But the distinguishing characteristic of the latter is that,
when properly treated, they get sufficiently fat, and
attain to remunerative weights at, or even under, two
years old. If they are kept lean until they have reached
that age their peculiar excellence is lost. From the
largeness of their frame they can cost more money,
consume more food, and yet do not fatten more rapidly
than bullocks of slower growing and more compactly
formed breeds. . It is thus that the grazier frequently
gives his verdict in favor of Herefords as compared with
short-horns.
Z2aizºy Breeds.-- The dairy breeds of cattle next
claim our attention, for although cattle of all breeds are
used for this purpose, there are several which are culti-
vated chiefly, if not exclusively, because of their fitness
for it. Dairy husbandry is prosecuted under two very
different and well-defined classes of circumstances. In
or near towns, and in populous mining and manufactur-
ing districts, it is carried on for the purpose of supply-
ing families with new milk. In the western half of
Great Britain, and in many upland districts, where the
soil and climate are more favorable to the production of
grass and other green crops than of corn, butter and
cheese constitute the staple products of the husbandman.
The town dairyman looks to quantity rather than quality
of milk, and seeks for cows which are large milkers,
which are long in going dry, and which can be readily
fattened when their daily yield of milk falls below the
remunerative measure. Large cows, such as short-horns
and their crosses, are accordingly his favorites. In the
rural dairy, again, the merits of a cow are estimated by
the weight and quality of the cheese or butter which she
yields, rather than by the mere quantity of her milk.
The breeds that are cultivated expressly for this purpose
are accordingly characterised by a less fleshy and robust
build than is requisite in grazier’s cattle.
Farm Management of Cattle.— We shall now en-
deavor to describe the farm management of this valuable
class of animals, under the heads of breeding, rearing,
fattening, and dairy management. The proceedings
of those engaged in the breeding and rearing of cattle
for the production of beef are, however, largely deter-
mined by the character of the soil and climate of par-
ticular districts and farms. The occupiers of all com-
paratively fertile soils carry forward to maturity such
animals as they breed, and dispose of them directly to the
butcher. Those who are less fortunately circumstanced
in this respect advance their young cattle to such a
stage as the capabilities of their farms admit of, and
then transfer them to others, by whom the fattening
process is conducted. It cannot be too strongly im-
pressed upon those who engage in this business that it
never can be profitable to breed inferior cattle; or
(however good their quality) to suffer their growth to be
arrested by cold or hunger; or to sell them in a lean
state. In selecting a breeding stock of cattle, the qual-
ities to be aimed at are a sound constitution and a sym-
metrical form, aptitude to fatten, quiet temper, and
large milk-yielding power in the cows. As all these
qualities are hereditary, cattle are valuable for breeding
purposes not merely in proportion as they are developed
in the individuals, but according to the measure in which
they are known to have been possessed by their progen-
itors. A really good pedigree adds therefore greatly to
the value of breeding-stock. It is doubtless important
to have both parents good ; but in the case of ruminants,
the predominating influence of the male in determining
the qualities of the progeny is so well ascertained, that
the selection of the bull is a matter of prime importance.
We are able to state, from ample personal experience,
that by using a bull that is at once good himself and of
good descent, a level and valuable lot of calves can be
obtained from very indifferent cows. It is indeed miser-
able economy to grudge the price of a good bull.
Coarse, mis-shapen, unthrifty cattle cost just as much
for rearing and fattening as those of the best quality,
and yet may not be worth so much by 43 to 44, a head
when they come ultimately to market. The loss which
is annually sustained from breeding inferior cattle is far
greater than those concerned seem to be aware of.
Cattle shows and prizes are useful in their way as a
means of improving the cattle of a district, but the In-
troduction of an adequate number of bulls from herds
already highly improved is the way to accomplish the
desired end cheaply, certainly, and speedily. We must
here protest against a practice by which short-horn bulls
are very often prematurely unfitted for breeding . Their
tendency to obesity is so remarkable that unless they are
kept on short commons they become unwieldy and un-
serviceable by their third or fourth year. Instead, how-
ever, of counteracting this tendency, the best animals are
usually “made up,” as it is called, for exhibition at cat-
tle shows or for ostentatious display to visitors at home,
and the consequence is, that they are ruined for breed-
ing purposes. ge , gº
Cows are an expensive stock to keep, and it is there-
fore of importance to turn their milk to the best ac-
count. It is poor economy, however, to attempt to
rear a greater number of calves than can be done justice
to. Seeing that they are to be reared for the produc-
tion of beef, the only profitable course is to feed them
well from birth to maturity. During the first weeks of
calf-hood the only suitable diet is unadulterated milk,
warm from the cow, given three times a day, and
not less than two quarts of it at each meal. By three
weeks old they may be taught to eat good hay, linseed
cake, and sliced swedes. As the latter articles of diet
are relished and freely eaten, the allowance of milk is
gradually diminished until about the twelfth week, when
it may be finally withdrawn. The linseed cake is then
given more freely, and water put within their reach.
For the first six weeks calves should be kept each in a
separate crib; but after this they are the better for
having room to frisk about. Their quarters, however,
should be well sheltered, as a comfortable degree of
warmth greatly promotes their growth. During their
first summer they do best to be soiled on vetches, clover,
or Italian ryegrass, with from I ſh. to 2 ft. of cake to
each calf daily. When the green foliage fails, white or
yellow turnips are substituted for it. A full allowance
of these, with abundance of Oat Straw, and not less than
2 ft. of cake daily, is the appropriate fare for them
during their first winter. Swedes will be substituted for
turnips during the months of spring, and these again will
give place in due time to green forage or the best pastur-
I38
A G R
age. The daily ration of cake should never be with-
drawn. It greatly promotes growth, fattening, and gen-
eral good health, and in particular is a specific against
the disease called blackleg, which often proves so fatal to
young cattle. Young cattle that have been skilfully
managed upon the system which we have now sketched,
are at 18 months old already of great size, with open
horns, mellow hide, and all those other features which
indicate to the experienced grazier that they will grow
and fatten rapidly. This style of management is not only
the best for those who fatten as well as rear, but is also
the most profitable for those who rear only.
Fattening cattle are usually allowed to remain in the
pastures to a later date in autumn than is profitable.
The pressure of harvest week, or the immature state of
his turnip crop, often induces the farmer to delay hous-
ing his bullocks until long after they have ceased to
make progress on grass. They may still have a full
bite on their pastures; but the lengthening nights and
lowering temperature lessen the nutritive quality of the
herbage, and arrest the further accumulation of fat and
flesh. The hair of the cattle begins also to grow rapidly
as the nights get chilly, and causes them to be housed
with rougher coats than are then expedient. To avoid
these evils the farmer should early in August begin to
spread on the pasture a daily feed of green forage, con-
sisting of vetches, peas, and beans grown in mixture in
about equal proportions, which, if well podded and full
of soft pulse, supplies exactly the kind of food required
to compensate for the deteriorating pasturage. Early
in September cabbages and white globe turnips should
be given on the pasture in lieu of the green forage.
After ten days or so of this treatment they should be
transferred to their winter quarters. For the first two
months after they go into winter quarters they make as
ood progress on yellow turnips as on any kind of roots;
or the three following months well stored Swedes are the
best food for them; and from the beginning of March
until the end of the season, mangolds and potatoes, in
the proportion of four parts of the former to one of the
latter. The chaff of wheat, oats, or beans, if tolerably
free from dust, is quite as suitable as cut straw for mix-
ing with the pulped roots and cooked food. The addi-
tion of a small quantity of chopped hay, or of the husks
of kiln-dried oats, to the other food, usually induces
cattle to feed more eagerly. In short, the animals must
be closely watched, and occasional variations made in
the quantity and quality of the food given to particular
individuals or of the general lot as their circumstances
may require. Besides the food given in the manger it is
desirable that each animal should receive a daily allow-
ance of fresh oat straw in a rack to which he has access
at pleasure.
A better appreciation of the effects of temperature
on the animal economy has of late years exerted a ben-
eficial influence upon the treatment of fattening cattle.
Observant farmers have long been aware that their cat-
tle, when kept dry and moderately warm, eat less and
thrive faster than under opposite conditions. They ac-
counted for this in a vague way by attributing it to their
#. comfort in such circumstances. Scientific men
ave now, however, shown us that a considerable por-
tion of the food consumed by warm-blooded animals is
expended in maintaining the natural heat of their bodies,
and that the portion of food thus disposed of is dissi-
pated by a process so closely analogous to combustion
that it may fitly be regarded as so much fuel. The fat
which, in favorable circumstances, is accumulated in
their bodies, may in like manner be regarded as a store
of this fuel laid up for future emergencies. The knowl-
edge of this fact enables us to understand how largely
the profit to be derived from the fattening of cattle is
dependent upon the manner in which they are housed,
and necessarily forms an important element in determin-
ing the question whether yards, stalls, or boxes are best
adapted for this purpose. A really good system of hous-
ing must combine the following conditions:—
Ist, Facilities for supplying food and litter, and for
ºng dung with the utmost economy of time and
abor;
2d, Complete freedom from disturbance;
3d, A moderate and unvarying degree of warmth;
4th, A constant Supply of pure air;
5th, Opportunity for the cattle having a slight degree
of exercise; and
6th, The production of manure of the best quality.
SHEEP.
When Fitzherbert so long ago said, “Sheep is the
most profitablest cattle that a man can have,” he ex-
pressed an opinion in which agriculturists of the present
day fully concur. But if this was true of the flocks of
his time, how much more of the many admirable breeds
which now cover the rich pastures, the grassy downs, and
the heath-clad mountains of our country. Their flesh
is in high estimation with all classes of the community,
and constitutes at least one-half of all the butcher meat
consumed by them. Their fleeces supply the raw mate-
rial for one of our most flourishing manufactures. They
furnish to the farmer an important source of revenue,
and the readiest means of maintaining the fertility of
his fields.
Areeds.- The distinct breeds and sub-varieties of
sheep found in Great Britain are very numerous. We
have no intention of describing them in detail, but shall
confine our observations to those breeds which by com-
mon consent are the most valuable for their respective
appropriate habitats. They may be fitly classed under
three heads — viz., the heavy breeds of the plains, those
adapted for downs and similar localities, and the mount-
ain breeds. * -
Aſeazy Breeds.— Of the first class, the improved
Zeicesters are still the most important to the country.
They are more widely diffused in the kingdom than any
of their congeners. Although, from the altered taste of
the community, their mutton is less esteemed than for-
merly, they still constitute the staple breed of the midland
counties of England. Leicester rams are also more in
demand than ever for crossing with other breeds. It is
now about a century since this breed was produced by
the genius and perseverance of Bakewell, in whose hands
they attained a degree of excellence that has probably
not yet been exceeded by the many who have cultivated
them since his day. The characteristics of this breed
are extreme docility, extraordinary aptitude to fatten,
and the early age at which they come to maturity. The
most marked feature in their structure is the smallness
of their heads, and of their bones generally, as con-
trasted with their weight of carcase. They are clean in
the jaws, with a full eye, thin ears, and placid counte-
nance. Their backs are straight, broad, and flat, the
ribs arched, the belly carried very light, so that they
present nearly as straight a line below as above; the
chest is wide, the skin very mellow, and covered with a
beautiful fleece of long, soft wool, which weighs on the
average from 6 to 7 ft). On good soils and under care-
ful treatment these sheep are currently brought to weigh
from 18 to 20 ft. per quarter at 14 months old, at which
age they are now usually slaughtered. At this age their
flesh is tender and juicy; but when feeding is carried on
till they are older and heavier, fat accumulates so unduly
as to detract from the palatableness and market value of
the mutton.
A. incolns.— These were at one time very large, un-
A G R
I 39.
gainly animals, with an immense fleece of very long
wool. By crossing them with the Leicesters the charac-
ter of the breed has been entirely changed, and very
greatly for the better. It is now, in fact, a sub-variety
of the Leicester, with larger frame and heavier fleece
than the pure breed. Their wool, however, retains its
distinctive characteristics—viz., great length of staple,
an unctuous feeling, and, in particular, a brightness or
Austre which adds largely to its value.
Cotswolds, sometimes called Glo’sters or New Oxfords,
are also large and long-woolled sheep, with good figure
and portly gait. Great improvement has been effected
in this breed during the last 30 years, in consequence of
which they are rising rapidly in public estimation. The
qualities for which they are prized are their hardiness,
docility, rapid growth, aptitude to fatten, and the great
weight to which they attain.
Zeeswaters.—This breed, found formerly in the vale
of the Tees, used to have the reputation of being one of
the largest and heaviest of our native breeds. They had
lighter fleeces than the old Lincolns, but greater apti-
tude to fatten.
The Kents or Romney Marsh Sheep are another dis-
tinct or long-woolled breed which have much in common
with the old Lincolns, although they never equalled them
in the weight or quality of their fleece. They too have
been much modified by a large infusion of Leicester
blood; but as their distinctive qualities fit them well for
a bleak and humid habitat, there is now an aversion to
risk these by further crossing.
Pown and Forest Breeds.—The breeds peculiar to
our chalky downs and other pastures of medium eleva-
tion next claim our notice.
Southdowns.—Not long after Robert Bakewell had
begun, with admirable skill and perseverance, to bring to
perfection his celebrated Leicesters, which, as we have
seen, have either superseded or totally altered the char-
acter of all the heavy breeds of the country, another
breeder, Mr. John Ellman of Glynde, in Sussex, equal to
Bakewell in judgment, perseverance, and zeal, and
wholly devoid of his illiberal prejudice and narrow self-
ishness, addressed himself to the task of improving the
native sheep of the downs, and succeeded in bringing
them to as great perfection, with respect to early matur-
ity and fattening power, as they are perhaps susceptible
of.
These sheep are now usually classed as Sussex Downs
and Hampshire Downs, the former being the most refined
type of the class, both as regards wool and carcase, and
the latter, as compared with them, having a heavier fleece,
stronger bone, and somewhat coarser and larger frame.
The Shropshire sheep, while partaking of the general
characteristics of the Southdown, is so much heavier both
in fleece and carcase, and is altogether so much more
robust an animal, that it now claims to be ranked as a
separate breed.
Mountain Breeds — Cheviots. – As we approach and
cross the Scottish border we find a range of hills covered
with coarser herbage than the chalky downs of the south,
and with a climate considerably more rigorous. Here
the Southdown sheep have been tried with indifferent suc-
cess. This, however, is not to be regretted, seeing that
the native Cheviot breed rivals them in most of their
good qualities, and possesses in addition a hardihood
equal to the necessities of the climate. This breed, besides
occupying the grassy hills of the border counties, is now
found in great force in the north and west Highlands of
Scotland. There is no breed equally well adapted for
elevated pastures, consisting of the coarser grasses with
a mixture of heath; but whenever, from the nature of
the soil or greater elevation, the heaths unmistakably
predominate, a still hardier race is to be preferred, viz. –
The Blackfaced or Heath Breed.— They are accord-
ingly found on the mountainous parts of Yorkshire, Lam-
cashire, Cumberland, and Westmoreland; over the whole
of the Lammermuir range, the upper gº. of Lanarkshire
and generally over the Highlands of Scotland.
Cross-Breeds. – We have thus enumerated the most
important of our pure breeds of sheep, but our list would
be defective were we to omit those cross-breeds which
are acquiring increased importance every day. With
the extended cultivation of turnips and other green crops,
there has arisen an increased demand for sheep to con-
sume them. Flockmasters in upland districts, stimu-
lated by this demand, happily bethought them of putting
rams of the improved low-country breeds to their Chev-
iot ewes, when it was discovered that the lambs pro-
duced from this cross, if taken to the low country as
soon as weaned, could be fattened nearly as quickly, and
brought to nearly as good weights, as the pure low-
country breeds. The comparatively low prime cost of
these cross-bred lambs is a farther recommendation to
the grazier, who finds also that their mutton, partaking
at once of the fatness of the one parent and of the juici-
ness, high flavor, and larger proportion of lean flesh of
the other, is more generally acceptable to consumers
than any other kind, and can always be sold at the best
price of the day. The wool, moreover, of these crosses,
being at once long and fine in the staple, is peculiarly
adapted for the manufacture of a class of fabrics now
much in demand, and brings in consequence the best
price of any British-grown wool. The individual fleeces,
from being close set in the pile, weigh nearly as much as
those of the pure Leicesters. On all these accounts,
therefore, these sheep of mixed blood have risen rapidly
in public estimation, and are produced in ever-increasing
numbers. This is accomplished in several ways. The
occupiers of uplying grazings in some cases keep part of
their ewe flock pure, and breed crosses from another
part. They sell the whole of their cross-bred lambs,
and get as many females from the other portion as keeps
up the number of their breeding flock. This system of
crossing cannot be pursued on the most elevated farms,
as ewes bearing these heavier crossed lambs require bet-
ter fare than when coupled with rams of their own race.
The surplus eve lambs from such high-lying grazings are
an available source of supply to those of a lower range,
and are eagerly sought after for this purpose. Others,
however, take a bolder course. Selecting a few of the
choicest pure Cheviot ewes which they can find, and put-
ting these to a first-class Leicester ram, they thus obtain
a supply of rams of the first cross, manage in this way .
to have their entire flock half-bred, and to go on con-
tinuously with their own stock without advancing beyond
a first cross. They, however, never keep rams from
such crossed parentage, but always select them from the
issue of parents each genuine of their respective races.
We know several large farms on which flocks of crosses
betwixt the Cheviot ewe and Leicester ram have been
maintained in this way for many years with entire suc-
cess; and one at least in which a similar cross with South-
down eves has equally prospered. Many, however,
prefer buying in females of this first cross, and coupling
them again with pure Leicester rams. In one or other
of those ways cross-bred flocks are increasing on every
side. So much has the system spread in Berwickshire,
that whereas, in our memory, pure Leicesters were the
prevailing breed of the county, they are now confined to
a few ram-breeding flocks. The cross-breed in best
estimation in England is that betwixt the Cotswold and
Southdown, which is in such high repute that it is virtu-
ally established as a separate breed under the name of
Oxford Downs. In Scotland the cross betwixt the Lei-
cester ram and Cheviot ewe is that which seems best
I4O
A G R
adapted to the climate and other conditions of the coun-
try, and is that accordingly which is most resorted to on
farms a portion of which is in tillage. On higher grounds
a cross betwixt the Cheviot ram and blackfaced ewe is
in good estimation, and has been extending considerably
in recent years. This cross-breed seems to equal the
pure blackfaced in hardiness, and is of considerably
greater value both in fleece and carcase. This cross-
breed is known by the name of Halftangs. As in the
case of the Leicester-Cheviot eves, flocks are main-
tained by using rams of the cross-breed.
Management of Zozº land Sheep.– As the manage-
ment of sheep is influenced mainly by the nature of the
lands upon which they are kept, we shall first describe
the practice of Lowland flockmasters, and afterwards
that pursued on Highland sheep-walks.
On arable farms, where turnips are grown, and a
breeding stock of sheep regularly kept, it is usual to
wean the lambs about the middle of July. When this
has been done, the aged and faulty eves are drafted out,
and put upon good aftermath or other succulent food,
that they may be got ready for market as soon as pos-
sible. In many districts it is the practice to take but
three crops of lambs from each eve. A third part of
the brooding flock—viz., the four-year-old ewes—is
thus drafted off every autumn, and their places supplied
by the introduction of a corresponding number of the
best of the ewe-lannbs of the preceding year’s crop.
These cast or draft ewes are then sold to the occupiers
of richer soils in populous districts, who keep them for
- another season to feed fat lambs. Such parties buy in
a fresh stock of ewes every autumn, and, as they phrase
it, “feed lamb and dam.” In other cases the ewes are
kept as long as their teeth continue sound, and after that
they are ſattened and sold to the butcher directly from
the farm on which they have been reared. When the
eves that are retained for breeding stock have been thus
overhauled, they are put to the worst pasture on the
farm, and run rather thickly upon it. Attention is
necessary, for some days after weaning, to see that none
of them suffer from gorging of the udder. When it
appears very turgid in any of them, they are caught and
partially milked by hand; but usually the change to
poorer pasturage, aided by their restlessness and bleating
for want of their lambs, at once arrests the flow of milk.
The time of admitting the ram is regulated by the pur-
pose for which the flock is kept, and by the date at
which fresh green food can be reckoned upon in spring.
When the produce is to be disposed of as fat lambs, it
is of course an object to have them early; but for a hold-
ing stock, to be reared and fattened at fourteen to six-
teen months old, from 20th September to 20th October,
according to the climate of the particular locality, is a
usual time for admitting rams to ewes. A few weeks
before this takes place the ewes are removed from bare
pasture, and put on the freshest the farm affords, or,
better still, on rape; failing which, one good feed of
white turnips per diem is carted and spread on their
pastures, or the ewes are folded for part of the day on
growing turnips. The rams are turned in amongst them
just when this better fare has begun to tell in their im-
proving appearance, as it is found that in such circum-
stances they come in heat more rapidly, and with a greatly
increased likelihood of conceiving twins. On level
ground, and with moderate-sized enclosures, one ram
suffices for sixty eves; but it is had economy to over-
task the rams, and one to forty eves is better practice.
Sometimes a large lot of ewes are kept in one flock,
and several rams, at the above proportion, turned among
them promiscuously. It is better, however, when they
can be placed in separate lots. The breasts of the rams
are rubbed with ruddle, that the shepherd may know what
they are about. Those who themselves breed rams, or
others who hire in what they use at high prices, have
recourse to a different plan for the purpose of getting
more service from each male, and of knowing exactly
when each eve may be expected to lamb; and also of
putting each ewe to the ram most suitable to her in point
of size, figure and quality of flesh and fleece. The rams
in this case are kept in pens in a small enclosure. What
is technically called a teaser is turned among the general
flock of ewes, which, on being seen to be in heat, are
brought up and put to the ram that is selected for them.
They are then numbered, and a note kept of the date,
or otherwise a common mark, varied for each successive
week, is put on all as they come up.
The period of gestation in the ewe is twenty-one
weeks. No lambs that are born more than twelve days
short of this period survive. Before any lambs are
expected to arrive a comfortable fold is provided, into
which either the entire flock of ewes, or those that by
their markings are known to lamb first, are brought
every night. This fold, which may either be a perma-
nent erection or fitted up annually for the occasion, is
provided all round with separate pens or cribs of size
enough to accommodate a single eve with her lamb or
pair. The pasture or turnip fold to which the flock is
turned by day is also furnished with several temporary
but well-sheltered cribs, for the reception of such eves
as lamb during the day. It is of especial consequence
that ewes producing twins be at once consigned to a
separate apartment, as, if left in the crowd, they fre-
quently lose sight of one lamb, and may refuse to own it
when restored to them, even after a very short separa-
tion. Some ewes will make a favorite of one lamb, and
wholly repudiate the other, even when due care has been
taken to keep them together from the first. In this case
the favorite must either be separated from her or be
muzzled with a piece of network, to prevent it from get-
ting more than its share of the milk in the shepherd’s
absence. Indeed the maternal affection seems much
dependent on the flow of milk, as ewes with a well-filled
udder seldom trouble the shepherd by such capricious
partialities. As soon as the lambs have got fairly afoot,
their dams are turned with them into the most forward
piece of seeds, or to rape, rye, winter-oats, or water-
meadow, the great point being to have abundance of suc-
culent green food for the ewes as soon as they lamb.
Without this they cannot yield milk abundantly, and
without plenty of milk it is impossible to have good
lambs. -
All sheep are liable to be infested with certain vermin,
especially “fags” or “kaids” (Meſophagus ovinus) and
lice. To rid them of these parasites various means are
resorted to. Some farmers use mercurial ointment,
which is applied by parting the wool, and then with the
finger rubbing the ointment on the skin, in three or four
longitudinal seams on each side, and a few shorter ones
on the neck, belly, legs, &c. Those who use this salve
dress their lambs with it immediately after shearing their
ewes, and again just before putting them on turnips.
More frequently the sheep are immersed, all but their
heads, in a bath in which arsenic and other ingredients
are dissolved. On being lifted out of the bath, the ani-
mal is laid on spars, over a shallow vessel so placed that
the superfluous liquor, as it is wrung out of the fleece,
flows back into the bath. If this is done when the ewes
are newly shorn, the liquor goes farther than when the
process is deferred until the lambs are larger and their
wool longer. It is a good practice to souse the
newly-shorn eves, and indeed the whole flock at the
same time, in a similar bath, so as to rid them all of
vermin.
As turnips constitute the staple winter fare of sheep, it
A G R
14 I
is necessary to have a portion of these sown in time to
be fit for use in September. Young sheep always show
a reluctance to take to this very succulent food, and
should therefore be put upon it so early in autumn that
they may get thoroughly reconciled to it while the
weather is yet temperate. Rape or cabbage suits ad-
mirably as transitionary food from grass to turnips.
When this transference from summer to winter fare is
well managed, they usually make rapid progress during
October and November. Some farmers recommend
giving the hoggets, as they are now called, a daily run
off from the turnip-fold to a neighboring pasture for the
first few weeks after their being put to this diet. The
extraneous food both supplies the lack of nutrition in the
turnips and fertilises the soil for bearing succeeding
crops. An immense improvement has been effected in
the winter feeding of sheep by the introduction of ma-
chines for slicing turnips. Some careful farmers slice the
whole of the turnips used by their fattening sheep, of
whatever age; but usually the practice is restricted to
hoggets, and only resorted to for them when their milk-
teeth begin to fail. In the latter case the economy of
the practice does not admit of debate.
As the season when frost and snow may be expected
approaches it is neccessary to provide in time for the
flock having clean unfrozen turnips to eat in the hardest
weather. To secure this, care must be taken to have
always several weeks' supply put together in heaps and
covered with earth to a sufficient thickness to exclude
frost. The covering with earth is the only extra cost
incurred from using this precaution, for if slicing the
roots is practised at all, it necessarily implies that the
roots must be pulled, trimmed, and thrown together,
and this again should be done in such a way as to insure
that the dung and urine of the sheep shall be equally
distributed over the whole field. This is secured by
throwing together the produce of 18 or 20 drills into
Small heaps, of about a ton each, in a straight row and
at equal distances apart. For a time it will suffice to
cover these heaps with a few of the turnip leaves and a
spadeful of earth here and there to prevent the leaves
from being blown off.
The general management of these hill-country half-
bred flocks does not differ materially from those of the
plains. They require generous feeding, and being pro-
lific and good nurses, they pay well for it. . The oats
grown on such farms are disposed of most profitably
when consumed by the flock.
We begin our description of the management of
strictly hill flocks with autumn, and assume that the
yearly cast of lambs and aged ewes has been disposed of,
and only as many of the ewe lambs retained as are re-
quired to keep up the breeding stock. A former prac-
tice was to keep these ewe lambs or hoggets by them-
selves on the best portions of the respective walks, or
rakes as they are called on the Borders. Now, however,
they are kept apart from their dams only as long (eight
or ten days) as suffices to let the milk dry up; whereupon
they are returned to the flock or hirsel to which they
belong, and at once associate again each with its own
dam. The hoggets, under the guidance of the ewes, are
thus led about over the ground, according to varying sea-
sons, and under the promptings of an instinct which far
surpasses the skill and care of the best shepherd. . The
latter, indeed, restricts his interference chiefly to keep-
ing his flock upon their own beat, and allows, them. to
distribute themselves over it according to their own
choice. When thus left to themselves each little Squad
usually selects its own ground, and may be found, the
º individuals about the same neighborhood day after
a V.
Å. the autumn advances, the flockmaster makes his
preparations for smearing or bathing. , The Smearing
material is a salve composed of tar and butter, which is
prepared in the following manner: — Six gallons of Arch-
angel tar and 50 lb of grease-butter are thoroughly incor-
porated, and as much milk added as makes the salve
work freely. This quantity suffices for sheep. This
salve destroys vermin, and by matting the fleece is Sup-
posed to add to the comfort and healthiness of the sheep.
It adds considerably to the weight of the fleece, but
imparts to it an irremediable stain, which detracts se-
riously from its value per ſp. A white salve introduced
by Mr. Ballantyne of Hoyle, is now in repute on the
borders. It is prepared as follows: — 30 ft), butter,
14 lb rough turpentine, and 3 Tb soft soap are melted and
mingled in a large pot; 2 ft, soda and 3% ft arsenic are
then dissolved in a gallon of boiling water, and this,
along with 12 gallons of cold water, is intimately mixed
with the other ingredients and yields enough for dressing
Ioo sheep at the rate of a quart to each. Some persons,
believing the arsenic an unsafe application, substitute for
it half-a-gallon of tobacco juice. Instead of the
rough turpentine, some also use half-a-gill of Spirit
of tar for each sheep; this ingredient being mixed
in each quart-potful at the time of application.
In applying these salves, the sheep are brought to
the homestead in daily detachments, according to the
number of men employed, each man getting over about
sixty in a day.
Except in heavy falls of snow and in intense frosts,
the flocks subsist during the entire season on the natural
produce of their pastures. It is necessary, however, to
be provided for such emergencies both as regards food
and shelter. For this purpose each shepherd has at
suitable places of his beat several stells or artificial shel-
ters, and beside each of them a stack of hay from which
to fodder the flock when required. So long as the sheep
can get at heather or rushes by scraping away the Snow
with their feet, they will not touch the hay, but when the
whole surface gets buried and bound up, they are fain to
take to it. The hay is laid out in handfuls over the Snow,
twice a day, if need be. The hay should, however, be
administered with caution, and never to a greater extent
than is absolutely necessary. Whenever there is a lull in
the storm, the shepherd should use his utmost endeavor
to move the flock out from their shelter to the nearest
piece of rough heather or ground from which the wind
has drifted off the snow, and where the sheep can by Scrap-
ing with their feet get at their natural food. This should
be done not merely to economise hay, but because it is
found that sheep invariably come through the hardships
of winter in better condition when thus encouraged to
shift as much as possible for themselves, than when fed
to the full on hay, and allowed to keep to their shelter
all the day. .
The lambing season is one of much anxiety to the
master; and to the shepherds and their faithful sagacious
dogs it is one of incessant toil. They must be a-foot
from “dawn till dewy eve,” visiting every part of their
wide range several times a-day, to see that all is right,
and to give assistance when required. The ewes of these
hardy mountain breeds seldom require man’s assistance
in the act of parturition, but still cross presentations and
difficult cases occur even with them. Deaths occur also
among the newly-dropt lambs, in which case the dam is
taken to the nearest stell, and a twin-lamb (of which
there are usually enough to serve this purpose) put in the
dead one’s place. The dead lamb's skin is stripped off,
and wrapped about the living one, which is then shut up
beside the dam in a small crib or parić, by which means
she is usually induced in a few hours (and always the
sooner the more milk she has) to adopt the supposititious
lamb. As the lambing season draws to a close, each
I42
*
A 9 R
shepherd collects the unlambed ewes of his flock into an
inclosure near his cottage, and examines them one by one
to ascertain which are pregnant. To the barren ones he
affixes a particular mark, and at once turns them again
to the hill, but the others are retained close at hand until
they lamb, by which means he can attend to them closely
with comparatively little labor. The lambs are cas-
trated and docked at from Io to 20 days old. For this
and for all sorting and drafting purposes an ample fold
and suit of pens, formed of stout post and rail, are pro-
vided on Some dry knoll convenient for each main divis-
ion of the flock.
On these elevated sheep-walks shearing does not take
place until July. It cannot, in fact, be performed until
the young wool has begun to grow or rise, and so admit
of the shears working freely betwixt the skin and the
ald matted fleece. The sheep are previously washed by
causing them to swim repeatedly across a pool with a
gentle current flowing through it. They are made to
plunge in from a bank raised, either naturally or artifi-
cially, several feet above the surface of the water. This
Sousing and swimming in pure water cleanses the fleece
far more effectually than could be supposed by persons
accustomed only to the mode pârsued in arable districts.
Shearing takes place three or four days after washing,
and in the interim much vigilance is required on the part
of the shepherd to prevent the sheep from rubbing
themselves under banks of moss or earth, and so undoing
the washing. In the case of blackfaced flocks washing
is now not unfrequently altogether dispensed with,
because the greater weight of unwashed wool more than
counterbalances the difference in price betwixt washed
and unwashed fleeces. Each man usually shears about
60 sheep a-day.
Weaning takes place in August or early in September.
A sufficient number of the best eve lambs of the pure
breeds are selected for maintaining the flock, and are
treated in the way already noticed. With this excep-
tion, the whole of the lambs are sold either to low-
country graziers or as fat lambs to the butcher. The
wether lambs usually go to the former, and the ewe
lambs of the cross betwixt blackfaced ewes and Leicester
rams to the latter. These ewes being excellent nurses,
make their lambs very fat in favorable seasons, in which
case they are worth more to kill as lambs than to rear.
Immediately after the weaning, the ewes which have
attained mature age are disposed of, generally to low-
country graziers, who keep them for another year, and
fatten lamb and dam. To facilitate the culling out of
these full-aged ewes, each successive crop of ewe lambs
receives a distinctive ear mark, by which all of any one
age in the flock can be at once recognised.
GOATS, &C.
Goats.- Goats never occupied an important place
among the domesticated animals of the British Islands,
and, with the exception of Ireland, their numbers have
been constantly diminishing. By the statistical returns
it appears that in 1871 there were 232,892 goats in
Ireland, which in 1872 had increased to 242,310. The
value of goat’s milk, as a source of household economy,
is much greater than is usually supposed.
Aogs.- Although occupying a less prominent place
in the estimation of the farmer than the ox and sheep,
the hog is nevertheless an animal of great value. He
is easily reared, comes rapidly to maturity, is not very
nice as to food, consuming offal of all kinds, and yields
a larger amount of flesh in proportion to his live
weight and to the food which he has consumed, than
any other of our domesticated animals whose flesh is
used for food. To the peasantry he is invaluable,
enabling the laboring man to turn the scraps even from
his scanty kitchen, and from his garden or allotment, to
the best account. On such fare, aided by a little barley
or pollard, he can fatten a good pig, and supply his
family with wholesome animal food at the cheapest
possible rate.
It too frequently happens that less care is bestowed
on the breeding of pigs than of the other domesticated
animals. º
From the early age at which they begin to breed there
is need for constant change of the male, to prevent the
intermingling of blood too near akin. These animals,
too, are exceedingly sensitive to cold, and oſten suffer
much from the want of comfortable quarters. Whether
for fattening hogs, or sows with young pigs, there is no
better Fº than to lodge them in a roomy house with a
somewhat lofty thatched roof, the floor being careſully
paved with stone or brick, and the area partitioned off
into separate pens, each furnished with a cast-iron feed-
ing-trough at the side next the dividing alley, and with
adequate drainage, so that the litter in them may be
always dry. The period of gestation with the sow is
sixteen weeks, and as her pigs may be weaned with
safety at six weeks old, she usually farrows twice in the
€3.I.
y Aoultry is a class of stock deserving more attention
than farmers generally give it. There are, indeed, few
farm-yards untenanted by fowls of some sort, and few
homesteads without a poultry-house. It is rare, how-
ever, to meet with an instance where the breeding and
management of poultry is conducted with the care and
intelligence so frequently bestowed on other kinds of
live stock. Now, if poultry is kept at all, whether for
pleasure or profit, it is surely worth while to use rational
means for securing the object in view. To have good
ſowls, it is necessary to provide a dry, warm, well-venti-
lated house, in which they may roost and deposit their
eggs. This house must be kept clean, and its tenants
regularly supplied with abundance of suitable food.
Constant and careful attention is also absolutely indis-
pensable. On farms of the lesser sort, this duty is
usually undertaken by the farmer's wife or daughters.
It will, however, in most cases be better to entrust
the entire charge of the poultry to some elderly
female servant, who shall give her undivided attention
to it.
The kinds of poultry most suitable for a farm-yard
are the common fowls, geese and ducks. Turkeys and
guinea fowl are difficult to rear, troublesome to manage,
and less profitable than the other sorts. Of the com-
mon ſowl there are now many excellent and distinct
breeds. The Cochin C/lina or Shanghai is the largest
breed we have. They are hardy and very docile; their
flesh is of good quality when young; their eggs, of a
buff color, are comparatively small but excellent in
flavor, and are produced in great abundance. The
hens resume laying very soon after hatching a brood;
sometimes so soon as three weeks. They are the more
valuable from the circumstance that their principal lay-
ing season is from October to March, when other fowls
are usually unproductive. The Dorkings, of which
there are several varieties, as the speckled, the silver,
and the white, are not excelled by any breed for general
usefulness. The hens are peculiarly noted for their
fidelity in brooding, and their care of their young. The
Spanish fowls are very handsome in their plumage and
form, have very white and excellent flesh, and lay larger
eggs than any other breed. The Polish and Dutch
every-day layers are peculiarly suitable where eggs
rather than chickens are desired, as the hens of both
these breeds continue to lay for a long time before
showing any desire to brood.
It is to be recommended that, except in situations
A G R
I43
where a good price can be got for chickens, trie return
should be sought for chiefly in eggs. -
A suitable stock of fowls being selected, pains must be
taken to preserve their health, and other good qualities,
by breeding only from the best of both sexes, and these
not too near akin. A very simple plan for securing this
is to select a cock, and not more than six or eight hens,
of the best that can be got, to entrust these to the care
of some neighboring cottager, whose dwelling is suffi-
ciently apart to prevent intercourse with other fowls, and
then to use only the eggs from these selected fowls for
the general hatching. There are many advantages in
Such a course. The whole stock of fowls can thus be
had of uniform character and superior quality. Besides
having the run of the barn-door, cattle-courts, and stack-
yard, fowls are greatly benefited by having free access to
a pasture or roomy grass-plot. If the latter is inter-
spersed with evergreen shrubs so much the better, as
fowls delight to bask under the sunny side of a bush,
besides seeking shelter under it from sudden rain. Their
court should also be at all times provided with clean
water, and a heap of dry sand or coal-ashes, in which
they wallow, and free themselves from vermin. To keep
them in profitable condition, they require, besides scraps
from the kitchen and refuse of garden stuffs, &c., a daily
feed of barley and oats at the rate of a fistful to every
three or four fowls. In cold weather they are the better
of having some warm boiled potatoes thrown down to
them, as also chopped liver or scraps of animal food of
any kind. There is an advantage in having the poultry-
house adjoining to that in which cattle-food is cooked in
winter, as, by carrying the flue of the furnace up the
partition-wall, the fowls get the benefit of warmth thus
imparted to their roosting-place. Saw-dust, dried peat,
or burnt clay, are suitable materials for littering poultry-
houses, and are preferable to straw. By strewing the
floor with such substances two or three times a week, each
time carefully removing the previous application, and
storing it with the mingled droppings of the fowls under
cozer, a valuable manure can be secured. When Ioo
common fowls, a score of geese, and a dozen or two of
ducks are kept, the quantity and value of the manure
produced by them, if kept by itself and secured from the
weather, will surprise those who have not made trial of
such a plan.
Z'reatment of Zize Stock under ZOisease. — Time was
when every such treatise as the present was expected to
contain a description of the diseases to which the domesti-
cated animals are most subject, and instructions for their
treatment under them. But now that farriery is dis-
carded, and veterinary medicine is taught in colleges, the
handling of such a subject is obviously beyond the
province of a practical farmer. A few general observa-
tions is all, therefore, that we offer regarding it.
The province of the stockmaster obviously is to study
how to prevent disease, rather than how to cure it. For
this end let him exercise the utmost care, first, in select-
ing sound and vigorous animals of their respective kinds,
and then in avoiding those errors in ſeeding and general
treatment which are the most frequent causes of disease.
When cases of serious disease occur, let the best pro-
fessional aid that is available be instantly resorted to ;
but in all those cases which farmers usually consider
themselves competent to treat, we advise that they should
trust rather to good nursing, and to the healing power of
nature, than to that indiscriminate bleeding and purging
which are so commonly resorted to, and which in the
majority of cases do harm instead of good.
The amount of capital that is required in order that
the business of farming may be conducted advantage-
ously, is largely determined by the mature of the soil,
&c., of each farm, the system of management appro-
priate to it, the price of stock and of labor, and the
terms at which its rents are payable.
But the mere possession of capital does not qualify a
man for being a farmer, nor is there any virtue inher-
ent in a lease to insure his success. To these must be
added probity, knowledge of his business, and diligence
in prosecuting it. These qualifications are the fruits of
good education (in the fullest sense of that term), and
are no more to be looked for without it than good crops
without good husbandry. Common school instruction
will, of course, form the groundwork of a farmer’s edu-
cation; but to this should be added, if possible, a classi-
cal curriculum. It has been the fashion to ask, “Of
what use are Greek and Latin to a farmer?” Now,
apart from the benefit which it is to him, in common
with other men, to know the structure of language, and
to read with intelligence the literature of his profes-
sion, which more and more abounds in scientific term-
inology, we believe that no better discipline for the
youthful mind has yet been devised than the classical
course which is in use in our best public schools. Of
this discipline we desire that every future farmer should
have the advantage. But the great difficulty at pres-
ent lies in finding appropriate occupation for such
youths between their fifteenth and twentieth years. In
many cases the sons of farmers are during that period
put to farm labor. If they are kept statedly at it, and
are made proficient in every kind of work performed on
a farm, it is a good professional training as far as it
goes. The more common one —at least as regards the
sons of the larger class of farmers—which consists of
loitering about without any stated occupation, attend-
ing fairs and markets, and probably the race course and
hunting-field;—is about the most absurd and pernicious
that can be well imagined. Such youths are truly to be
pitied, for they are neither inured to bodily labor nor
afforded the benefits of a liberal education. It need
not surprise any one that such hapless lads often prove
incompetent for the struggles of life, and have to yield
their places to more vigorous men who have enjoyed the
benefit of “bearing the yoke in their youth.” Unless
young men are kept at labor, either of mind or body,
until continuous exertion during stated hours, confine-
ment to one place, and prompt obedience to their
superiors have ceased to be irksome, there is little hope
of their either prospering in business or distinguishing
themselves in their profession. Owing to the altered
habits of society, there is now less likelihood than ever
of such young persons as we are referring to being sub-
jected to that arduous training to bodily labor which
was once the universal practice; and hence the necessity
for an appropriate course of study to take its place.
Many Scottish farmers endeavor to supply this want by
placing their sons for several years in the chambers of
an attorney, estate-agent, or land surveyor, partly in
order that they may acquire a knowledge of accounts,
but especially for the sake of the wholesome discipline
which is implied in continuous application and subjec-
tion to superiors. It is also common for such youths to
be sent to Edinburgh for a winter or two to attend the
class of agriculture in the University, and perhaps that
also of chemistry, and the Veterinary College classes.
This is well enough in its way; but there is wanting in
it an adequate guarantee that there is real study — the
actual performance of daily mental work. The agri-
cultural college at Cirencester appears to come more
fully up to our notion of what is needed for the profes-
sional training of farmers than any other institution
which we yet possess. .
Aſarm Zaborers.-The agriculture of a country must
ever be largely affected by the condition and character
of the peasantry by whom its labors are performed. An
I44
A G R
acute observer has shown that in England a poor style
of farming and low wages—that good farming and high
wages, usually go together; and that a low rate of
wages is significantly associated with a high poor-rate.
The worst paid and worst lodged laborers are also the
most ignorant, the most prejudiced, the most reckless
and insubordinate. The eminence of the agriculture of
Scotland is due in large measure, to the moral worth
and intelligence of her peasantry. For this she is
indebted to the early establishment of her parochial
schools, and to the sterling quality of the elementary
education which the children of her tenantry and
peasantry have for generations received in these schools
together. These schools, had unfortunately, become
inadequate to the increased population; but still in the
rural districts of the Scottish lowlands it is a rare thing
to meet with a farm laborer who cannot both read and
write. Apart from higher benefits, the facilities which
the services of such a class of laborers have afforded for
the introduction and development of improved agricul-
tural practices, the use of intricate machinery, and the
keeping of accurate accounts, cannot well be over-rated.
It is an interesting testimony to the value of a sound
system of national education that our Scottish peasantry
should be in such request in other parts of the kingdom
as bailiffs, gardeners, and overseers. Recent legislation
warrants the expectation that this inestimable blessing
will speedily be enjoyed by our entire population.
AGRIGENTUM, in Ancient Geography, a city on
the south coast of Sicily, part of the site of which is
now occupied by a town called Girgenti, from the old
name. (See GIRGENTI.) It was founded by a colony
from Gela, 582 B.C. An advantageous situation, a free
government, and an active commercial spirit raised the
city to a degree of wealth and importance unknown to
the other Greek settlements, Syracuse alone ex-
cepted. The prosperity of Agrigentum was interrupted
by the usurpation of Phalaris, which lasted about fifteen
years. He met with the common fate of tyrants, and
after his death the Agrigentines enjoyed their liberty
for sixty years; at the expiration of which term Theron
usurped the sovereign authority. Soon after his de-
cease, 472 B.C., his son Thrasydeus was deprived of the
diadem, and Agrigentum restored to her old democratical
government, which she retained till the Carthaginian
invasion in 406 B.C. The total number of the inhabit-
ants at this period was estimated by Diodorus at 200,000.
During the first Punic war Agrigentum was the head-
quarters of the Carthaginians, and was besieged by the
Roman consuls, who, after eight months’ blockade, took
it by storm. At the close of the war Agrigentum finally
fell under the dominion of Rome.
Of its many celebrated edifices, the most magnificent
was the temple of Olympian Jupiter.
AGRIONIA, festivals celebrated annually by the
Boeotians in honor of Dionysus, in which the women,
after playfully pretending for some time to search for
that god, desisted, saying that he had hidden himself
among the Muses. They were solemnised at night by
women and the priests only.
AGRIPPA, HEROD, the son of Aristobulus and Bere-
nice, and grandson of Herod the Great, was born about
II B.C. Josephus informs us that, after the death of his
father, Herod, his grandfather, sent him to Rome to the
court of Tiberius. The emperor conceived a great affec-
tion for Agrippa, and placed him near his son Drusus,
whose favor he very soon won, as well as that of the
empress Antonia. On the death of Drusus, Agrippa,
who had been recklessly extravagant, was obliged to
leave Rome, overwhelmed with debt, and retired to the
castle of Malatha. After a brief seclusion, Herod the
tetrarch, his uncle, who had married Herodias, his sis-
ter, made him principal magistrate of Tiberias, and
presented him with a large sum of money; but his uncle
grudging to continue his support, and reproaching him
with his bad economy, Agrippa left Judea, and soon
after returned to Rome. There he was received with
favor by Tiberius, and commanded to attend Tiberius
Nero, the Son of Drusus. Agrippa, however, chose
rather to attach himself to Caius, who at that time was
universally beloved, and so far won upon this prince
that he kept him continually about him. Agrippa being
one day overheard by Eutyches, a slave whom he had
made free, to express his wishes for Tiberius's death and
the advancement of Caius, was betrayed to the emperor
and cast into prison. Tiberius soon after died, and
Caius Caligula ascended the throne 37 A.D. The new
emperor heaped wealth and favors upon Agrippa,
changed his iron ſetters into a chain of gold, set a royal
diadem upon his head, and gave him the tetrarchy of
Batamaea and Trachomitis, which Philip, the son of
Herod the Great, had ſormerly possessed. To this he
added that held by Lysanias; and Agrippa returned very
soon into Judea to take possession of his new kingdom.
On the assassination of Caligula, Agrippa, who was
then at Rome, contributed much by his advice to main-
tain Claudius in possession of the imperial dignity, to
which he had been advanced by the army; and while he
made a show of being in the interest of the Senate, he
secretly advised Claudius to maintain his position with
firmness. The emperor, as an acknowledgment of his
services, gave him the government of Judea; and the
kingdom of Chalcis, at his request, was given to his
brother Herod. Thus Agrippa became of a sudden one
of the greatest princes of the East, the territory he pos-
sessed equalling in extent that held by Herod the Great,
his grandfather. He returned to Judea, and governed
it to the great satisfaction of the Jews. But the desire
of pleasing them, and a mistaken zeal for their religion,
impelled him to acts of cruelty, the memory of which is
preserved in Scripture (Acts xii. 1, 2, &c.). About the
feast of the Passover, 44 A.D., James the elder, the son
of Zebedee and brother of John the evangelist, was
seized by his order and put to death. He proceeded
also to lay hands on Peter, and imprisoned him, delay-
ing his execution till the close of the festival. Peter
being delivered from prison, the designs of Agrippa
were frustrated. After the Passover, he went from
Jerusalem to Caesarea, where he had games performed
in honor of Claudius, and the inhabitants of Tyre and
Sidon waited on him to sue for peace. Agrippa having
come early in the morning to the theatre to give them
audience, seated himself on his throne, dressed in a robe
of silver tissue, which reflected the rays of the rising sun
with such lustre as to dazzle the eyes of the Spectators.
When the king had delivered his address, the parasites
around him shouted out that it was not the voice of a
man but of a god. The vain Agrippa received the
impious flattery with complacent satisfaction; but in the
midst of his elation, looking upward, he saw, with
superstitious alarm, an owl perched over his head. . Dur-
ing his confinement by Tiberius he had been startled by
a like omen, which had been interpreted as portending
his speedy release, with the warning that whenever he
should behold the same sight again, his death was to ſol-
low within the space of five days. Seized with terror,
he was immediately smitten with disease, and after a few
days of excruciating torment, died, according to the
Scripture expression, “eaten of worms,” 44 A.D.
AGRIPPA, HEROD, II., son of the preceding, born
about 27 A.D., was made king of Chalcis on the death
of his uncle Herod, 48 A.D. He died at Rome in the
third year of Trajan, Ioo A.D.. He was the seventh and
last of the family of Herod the Great. It was before
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A G. R.
I45
him and Berenice, his sister, that St. Paul pleaded his
cause at Caesarea (Acts xxvi.)
AGRIPPA, MARCUs VIPSANIUS, according to Taci-
tus, was born of humble parents about 63 B.C. At the
age of eighteen he was the chosen companion of Octa-
vius (afterwards Octavianus), the nephew and successor
of Julius Caesar, many of whose successes were mainly
due to the courage and military talents of Agrippa. On
the assassination of Caesar, 44 B.C., Agrippa accompanied
his friend to Italy, and rendered essential service in the
conduct of the first war against M. Antonius, which
terminated in the capture of Perusia in 40 B.C. Three
years after this Agrippa was made consul, and had the
command in Gaul, when he defeated the Aquitani, and
led the Roman eagles beyond the Rhine to punish the
aggressions of the Germans on his province. . But
Agrippa was soon summoned to Italy by the critical
state of the affairs of Octavianus, the whole coast being
commanded by the superior fleets of Sex. Pompeius.
His first care was the formation of a secure harbor for
the ships of Octavianus, and this he accomplished by
uniting the Lucrine lake with the sea. He made an
inner haven also by joining the lake Avernus to the
Lucrime. In these secure ports the fleet was equipped,
and 20,000 manumitted slaves were sedulously trained in
rowing and naval manoeuvres until they were able to
cope with the seamen of Pompeius. Agrippa was thus
enabled in the following year to defeat Pompeius in the
naval action of Mylae; and soon after won a more signal
victory near Naulochus. These victories gave Octavianus
the empire of the Mediterranean, and secured to him
Sicily, the granary of Rome, after an easy triumph over
his feeble colleague Lepidus; and they prepared the
way for the overthrow of the power of M. Antonius, the
other triumvir. The merit of all these successes was
very much due to the skill, resolution, and sagacity of
Agrippa.
Agrippa was chosen aedile 33 B.C., and signalised his
tenure of office by great improvements in the city of
Rome, in the repair and construction of aqueducts and
fountains neglected or injured during the civil wars,
and in the enlargement and repair of the sewers. He
appears also to have introduced an effectual mode of
flushing the sewers by conducting into them the united
waters of several different streams. From these useful
labors Agrippa was again called away in 31 B.C. to com-
mand the Roman fleet, which, by the victory at Actium,
fixed the empire of the world on Octavianus. The
services of Agrippa made him a special favorite with
Octavianus, who gave him his niece Marcella in mar-
riage, 27 B.C., when he was consul for the third time.
In the following year the servile senate bestowed on
Octavianus the imperial title of AUGUSTUS. Agrippa,
in commemoration of the naval victory of Actium, dedi-
cated to Jupiter and all the other gods the Pantheon,
now called Za Rotonda. The inscription on its portico
still remains, M. AGRIPPA L. F. COs. TERTIUM FECIT.
In 25 B.C. we find this eminent man employed in Spain,
where he reduced the insurgent Cantabri, the ancestors
of the present Biscayans.
The friendship of Augustus and Agrippa seems to
have been clouded by the jealously of Marcellus, which
was probably fomented by the intrigues of Livia, the
second wife of Augustus, in dread of his influence with
her husband. The consequence was that Agrippa left
Rome; and though, to cloak his retirement, he was
appointed proconsul of Syria, he went no farther than
Mytilene. Marcellus dying within a year, Agrippa was
recalled to Rome, and being divorced from Marcella,
became the husband of the widowed Julia, who was no
less distinguished by her beauty and abilities than after-
wards by her shameless profligacy.
f
In 19 B.C. Agrippa again led an army into Spani,
where he subdued the Cantabri, who had been for two
years in insurrection against the Romans. While in
Gaul, where he also pacified the insurgent inhabitants,
he constructed four great public roads, and the splendid
aqueduct at Nemausus (now Nismes), the ruins of
which even yet excite admiration. On his return to
Rome, 18 B.C., he was invested with the tribunician
power, along with the emperor, for five years. After
that he was a second time made governor of Syria, I7
B.C., where, by his just and wise administration, he
obtained general commendation, especially from the
Hebrew population of his province, of which Judea
formed a part. This resulted from his having, at the
request of Herod the Great, gone up to Jerusalem, and
granted special privileges for their religious worship to
the Jewish subjects of the empire. In this journey,
too, he colonized Berytus (now Beyrout) as a military
and commercial settlement.
The last military employment of Agrippa was in Pan-
nonia, 13 B.C., where his character for equity was of
itself sufficient to put down insurrection without blood-
shed. Returning to Italy, he lived there in retirement,
greatly honored, and died at Campania, 12 B.C., two
years before his imperial father-in-law. He was the
greatest military commander of Rome since the days of
Julius Caesar, and the most honest of Roman governors
in any province.
Under the care of Agrippa, Julius Caesar’s design of
having a complete survey of the empire made was car-
ried out. He had a chart of the entire empire drawn
up, and projected a great work on the geography of its
provinces. His materials were placed in the public ar-
chives, where Pliny consulted them (Nat. Hist., iii.)
Agrippa also wrote an account, now lost, of the transac-
tions in which he had taken part.
Agrippa left several children: by his first wife he had
Pomonia Vipsania, who became the first wife of Tibe-
rius, and was the mother of Drusus; and by Julia he was
the father of Caius and Lucius Caesar, who were adopted
by Augustus; of Julia, married to Lepidus; of Agrip-
pina the elder; and of Agrippa Posthumus. (See Dio
Cassius; Appianus; Suetonius; Velleius Paterculus;
Ferguson's Atom. Æep. ; Merivale's Aomans under the
Ampire.)
AGRIPPA, HENRY CoRNELIUS (voN NETTESHEIM),
knight, doctor, and by common reputation a magician,
was born of a noble family at Cologne on the 14th Sept.
1486. Educated at the university of Cologne, he
entered when still very young into the service of the
Emperor Maximilian, who sent him on a diplomatic
mission to Paris in 1506. During the next three years
he was engaged in a military expedition to Catalonia,
and then in the formation of a secret society of theos-
ophists, the first of those alternations between the
career of the knight and the career of the student in
which his whole life was passed. In 1509 he went by
invitation to the university of Dôle in Burgundy, and
read lectures on Reuchlin's De Verão Mirifico, which
gained for him the degree of doctor of divinity and a
stipend. It was these lectures that first stirred against
him that malignant hatred of the monks which embit-
tered his life and blackened his memory. He was
denounced as an impious and heretical cabalist by an
obscure monk named Catilinet, in lectures delivered at
Ghent (1510) before Margaret of Burgundy, and his
hopes of securing the patronage of that princess were
thus for the time disappointed. To win her favor he
had composed (1509) and dedicated to her a treatise,
De Mobilitate et Præcellantia Farminei Sexus, the pub-
lication of which was delayed from motives of prudence
until 1532. For the same reason the same course was
IO A
146
A G R — A G T
followed in regard to his treatise De Occulta Philo-
sophia, which, though completed in the spring of 1510,
did not appear until 1531. In writing it he had the
advice and assistance of the abbot Trithemius of Würz-
burg. Failing to secure encouragement as a man of
letters, Agrippa was forced again to enter the diplo-
matic service. In 1510 the emperor sent him on a
mission to London, where he became the guest of Dean
Colet at Stepney. Soon after he returned home he was
summoned to follow his imperial master to the war in
Italy, where he won his spurs—probably at the battle
of Ravenna. In the autumn of 1511, on the invitation
of the Cardinal de Santa Croce, he attended the schis-
matic council of Pisa as theologian, and by so doing
still further provoked the hostility of the papal party.
After a period spent in the service of the Marquis of
Montferrat, during which he visited Switzerland,
Agrippa was invited in 1515 to the university of Pavia,
where he delivered lectures on the Pimazza'er of Hermes
Trismegistus, the first of which is preserved among
his published works, and received a doctor’s degree in
law and medicine. He was still doomed, however, to
a harassed, unsettled life. Three years were spent in
the service of the Marquis of Montferrat and the Duke
of Savoy. In 1518 he became syndic at Metz, where
he was involved in disputes with the monks, and espe-
cially with the inquisitor Nicolas Savin, before whom he
boldly and persistently defended a woman accused of
witchcraft. He was, chiefly in consequence of this,
compelled to resign his office, and quitted Metz for
Cologne in January 1520. After two years spent in
seclusion in his native city, he went to Geneva, where
he practised medicine for a short time. In 1523 he
removed to Friburg, having been appointed town
physician. In the following year he was induced to go
to Lyons as court-physician to the queen-mother,
Louisa of Savoy, but the change did not better his con-
dition, since, though he received several empty honors,
his salary remained unpaid. It was probably amid the
privations of poverty that he composed, in 1526, his
AXa /ncertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium
atgue Axcellentia Perói Dei Declamatio, which was
first published in 1530. The work is remarkable for
the keenness of its satire on the existing state of science
and the pretensions of the learned, and when published
furnished fresh occasion for the malicious misrepresen-
tation of his enemies. A quarrel with the queen com-
pelled Agrippa to leave Lyons and betake himself to
the Netherlands. In 1529 he was appointed historio-
grapher to the Emperor Charles V., and in that capacity
wrote a history of the emperor's reign. The salary
attached to the office was, however, left unpaid, and
Agrippa was consequently imprisoned at Brussels, and
afterwards banished from Cologne, for debt. He died
at Grenoble in 1535.
The character of Agrippa has been very variously
represented. The earlier accounts are grossly disfig-
ured by the calumnies of the Dominicans, whose hatred,
following him even to the grave, placed over it an
inscription that is probably unique in its spiteful
malignity. In later times full justice has been done
to his memory. A Life of Agrippa by Henry
Morley (London 1856) contains a detailed analysis
of his more important works. A complete edition
of his writings appeared in two volumes at Leyden in
1550, and has been several times republished.
AGRIPPINA (the ELDER), the virtuous and heroic
but unfortunate offspring of M. Agrippa by a very aban-
doned mother, and herself the parent of a still
more profligate and guilty daughter of the same
name. She was early married to Germanicus, the
son of Drusus and Antonia, the niece of Augustus. On
the death of Augustus she joined her husband in his
German campaigns, where she had several opportunities of
showing her intrepidity, sharing with Germanicus his toils
and his triumphs. The love which the army showed for
this leader was the cause of his recall from the Rhine by
the suspicious Tiberius. He was soon afterwards sent
into Syria, where he died at Antioch from the effects, as
was believed, of poison administered to him by Piso, the
governor of Syria.
On his deathbed Germanicus implored his wife, for
the sake of their numerous children, to submit with resig-
nation to the evil times on which they were fallen, and
not to provoke the vengeance of the tyrant Tiberius.
But, unhappily, this prudent advice was not followed by
the high-spirited woman, who, on landing at Brundusi-
um, went straight to Rome, entered the city bearing the
urn of her deceased husband in her arms, and was received
amid the tears of the citizens and the soldiery, to whom
Germanicus was dear. She boldly accused l’iso of the
murder of her husband; and he, to avoid public infamy,
committed suicide. She continued to reside at Rome,
watched and suspected by Tiberius, who for some time
dreaded to glut his vengeance on the widow and family
of so popular a prince as Germanicus. She soon had
the temerity to upbraid the tyrant with his hypocrisy in
pretending to worship at the tomb of Augustus. He
began by putting to death both men and women who
had shown attachment to the ſamily of Germanicus; and
finally he arrested Agrippina and her two eldest sons,
Nero and Drusus, and transported them to the isle of
Pandataria, where her mother Julia had perished; and
there she was starved, or starved herself to death, in the
33d year of our era. . Tiberius also ordered the execution
of her two eldest sons; yet it is remarkable that by his
will the emperor leſt her youngest son Caius, better
known by the name of Caligula, as one of the heirs of
the empire.
AGRIPPINA, daughter of Germanicus and Agrip-
pina the elder, sister of Caligula, and mother of Nero,
was born about 15 A. D., at Oppidum. Ubiorum, which
was at that time the headquarters of her father’s legions,
and which was after her named Colonia Agrippinp
Cöiorum (now Cologne). She wrote memoirs of her
times, which Tacitus quotes and Pliny commends; but
her life is notorious for intrigue and perfidy. In 28
A. D. she became the wife of Cn. Dom. Ahenobarbus,
who died 40 A.D. Her next husband was Crispus
Passienus, whom some years afterwards she was ac-
cused of poisoning. For flagitious conduct, Caligula
banished her to the isle of Pontia; but on the accession
of her uncle Claudius, 41 A.D., she was set ſree, and
began to succeed in her ambitious schemes. After
Messalina had been put to death, 48 A.D., Agrippina
was raised by Claudius to her place as his imperial con-
sort, 49 A.D. She prevailed upon him to discard Brit-
annicus, his own son, and to adopt her son Domitius
in his stead. She removed from her path all whom she
feared or envied, and in 54 A.D. poisoned Claudius at
Sinuessa that she might reign as regent for her son.
Nero in a short time grew tired of her interference, and
when she first intrigued against and then frowned upon
him, he ordered her to be slain at her villa on the Lu-
crine lake. After having been slightly wounded by
Anicetus, she perished by the sword of a centurion,
60 A.D.
AGROTERAS THUSIA, an annual festival at Athens
in honor of Artemis or Diana, in fulfillment of a vow
made by the city before the battle of Marathon to offer
in sacrifice a number of goats equal to that of the Per-
sians slain in the conflict. The number was afterwards
restricted to Koo.
AGTELEK, a village of Hungary, in the county of
A G U – A H A
I 47
‘Gömör, near the road from Pest to Kaschau. In the
neighborhood is the celebrated stalactite grotto of Ba-
radla, one of the most remarkable in Europe. The en-
trance is extremely narrow, but the interior spreads out
into a labyrinth of caverns, the largest of which, called
the Flower Garden, is 96 feet high and 90 feet wide, and
extends nearly 900 feet in a straight line. In these
caverns there are numerous stalactite structures, which,
from their curious and fantastic shapes, have received
such names as the Image of the Virgin, the Mosaic
Altar, &c.
AGUA, VOLCANO DE, a huge mountain in Central
America, 25 miles S.W. of Guatemala. It is of a coni-
cal shape, and rises to a height of 15,000 feet above the
level of the sea. At the summit there is a crater, meas-
uring about 140 yards by I2O, from which stones and
torrents of boiling water are occasionally discharged.
In close proximity to Agua are the volcanoes of Pacaya,
on the S.E., and Fuego on the W., and the three pre-
sent together a scene of great magnificence.
AGUADO, ALEXANDER MARIA, one of the most
famous bankers of modern times, was born of Jewish
parentage at Seville in 1784. He commenced life as a
soldier, fighting with distinction in the Spanish war of
independence on the side of Joseph. After the battle of
Baylen (1808) he entered the French army, in which he
had risen to be colonel and aide-de-camp to Marshal
Soult, when he took his discharge in 1815. He imme-
diately commenced business as a commission-agent in
Paris, and chiefly through his connection with Spain
and the Spanish colonies, acquired in a few years wealth
enough to enable him to undertake banking. The Span-
ish government gave him full powers to negotiate the
loans of 1823, 1828, 1830, and 1831; and Ferdinand VII.
rewarded him with the title of Marquis de las Marismas
del Guadalquiver, and the decorations of several orders.
Aguado also negotiated the Greek loan of 1834. In
1828, having become possessed of large estates in France,
including the Chateau Margaux, famous for its wine, he
was naturalised as a French citizen. He died in 1842,
leaving a fortune computed at 60,000,000 francs. The
designs of the leading pictures in an extensive and
admirable art collection which he had formed were
published by Gavard under the title Galerie Aguado
(1837–42).
AGUAS CALIENTES, a town in Mexico, capital of
the state of the same name, situated 270 miles N. W. of
the city of Mexico, in 22° N. lat., and IoI9 45' W. long.
It takes its name from the hot springs in its vicinity.
The climate is fine, and the extensive and beautiful
gardens surrounding the town produce an abundance of
Olives, figs, grapes, and pears. It has a large manu-
factory of woollen cloth, and the general trade is con-
siderable. Population, 40,000.
AGUILAR, GRACE (1816–47), an admired English
authoress, was the daughter of a Jewish merchant in
London. She was educated wholly by her parents, and
commenced her literary career at an early age. Her
works, written in a pleasing, elegant, and impressive
style, consist chiefly of religious fictions, such as Zhe
Martyr and Home Influence. She also wrote, in defence
of her faith and its professors, Zhe Spirit of Judaism,
and other works. Her services in the latter direction
were acknowledged gratefully by the “women of Israel,”
in a testimonial which they presented shortly before her
death. In 1835 she had a severe attack of measles,
from the effects of which her constitution never wholly
recovered. After a long struggle with increasing bodily
infirmities, she died at Frankfort, on her way to Schwal-
bach, in the autumn of 1847.
AGUILAR DE LA FRONTERA, a town of Spain,
stands near the river Cabra, 22 miles S.S.E. of Cor-
dova. The houses are well built, and distinguished by
their cleanness, and regularity. . The town has, three
handsome public squares, and the principal buildings
are the parish church, the chapter-house, a new town-
hall, the prison, and the markets. Near the church are
the ruins of a once magnificent Moorish castle. The
district produces excellent wines, which go by the
name of Montilla, and there is also some trade in corn
and oil. Population, 12,000.
AGUILLON, FRANCOIs D', an eminent mathemati-
cian, born at Brussels in 1566. He entered the Soci-
ety of Jesus in 1586, and was successively professor of
philosophy at Douay and rector of the Jesuit College at
Antwerp. Eminent for his skill in mathematics, he was
the first to introduce the study of that science among
the Jesuits in the Low Countries. He wrote a treatise
on Optics in six books (Antwerp, 1613), and was em-
ployed in finishing another on Catoptrics and Dioptrics
when he died, in 1617.
AGUIRRA, Josef SAENz D', a distinguished Span-
ish ecclesiastical and theological writer, was born at
Logrogno on the 24th March 1630. He belonged to
the Benedictine order, and was abbot of St. Vincent,
professor of theology at the university of Salamanca,
and afterwards secretary to the Spanish Inquisition.
For a work (Defensio Cathedra S. Petri adversus Dec-
larationes Cleri Gallici, 1682), which he wrote in sup-
port of the papal authority against the four proposi-
tions of the Gallican Church, he was promoted to the
rank of cardinal by Pope Innocent XI. in 1686. Of
his other works the chief are a Collection of the Cozen-
cils of Spainz (1693–4), and a Treatise on the Zheology
of Anse/m, only three volumes of which appeared, the
fourth and last being still incomplete when the author
died, August 19th, 1699. To judge from a warm eulo-
gium of Bossuet, his opponent in controversy, Aguirra
had a very high reputation for piety.
AGULHAS, CAPE, the most southern point of
Africa, Ioo miles E.S.E. of the Cape of Good Hope, in
34° 51' 30" S. lat., and 19° 56' 30" E. long. At a dis-
tance of a mile from the sea it rises to a height of 455
feet. In 1849 a lighthouse was opened on it nearer, the
shore, the light in which stands 128 feet above high-
water mark. An immense bank, the Agulhas Bank,
extends from the Cape of Good Hope along the coast to
the great Fish River, a distance of 560 miles, with a
breadth, opposite to the Cape, of 200 miles. The great
oceanic current from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic
sets along its outward edge, and has sharply defined it.
This current has such velocity that ships are often car-
ried far to the westward, and round the Cape of Good
Hope, even against a smart breeze. The bank abounds
with fish; and the approach to it is denoted by the
appearance of many whales, sharks, and seals, and
innumerable sea-birds.
AHAB, king of Israel, was the son and successor of
Omri. He ascended the throne in the 38th year of Asa,
king of Judah, i.e., 918 B.C., and reigned over Sama-
ria 22 Having married Jezebel, daughter of
Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, he was brought into closer
connection with the neighboring powers in the north,
and strengthened himself considerably, so that he was
able to consolidate the disunited kingdom, and render
it powerful against Judah. Some notices out of Menan-
der, preserved by Josephus, lead to the conclusion
that Ethbaal, father of Jezebel, was identical with Itho-
bal, priest of Astarte, who usurped the throne of Tyre
after murdering Pheles the king. It is not improbable
that Ahab's marriage with such a princess was the
means of procuring him great riches, which brought
pomp and luxury in their train, along with the material
and social influences that give a certain security to
* * * *-* *
I48
A H A
monarchy. We read of his building an ivory palace
and founding new cities, the effect perhaps of a share
in the flourishing commerce of Phoenicia. But his mat-
rimonial connection with Tyre and Sidon, however fruit-
ful in wealth, was in many respects detrimental. His
wife was a strong-minded, passionate devotee of idola-
try, who exercised an injurious influence over him. Led
by her, he gave a great impulse to the worship of Baal
and Astarte in his kingdom. For the former he built a
temple with an altar; of the latter he made that well-
known image which existed long aſter. Under the pa-
tronage of Jezebel, the Phoenician cultus assumed impor-
tant dimensions, for Baal is said to have had 450, Astarte
400 priests and prophets. The infatuated queen was
especially hostile to the prophets and priests of Jehovah,
whom she tried to exterminate; but the former in par-
ticular, though sore pressed, were not entirely cut off.
They still held their ground; and Elijah, the most con-
spicuous of them, came off victor in the contest with
Baal’s ministers. Jehovism triumphed in the person of
the intrepid Tishbite, whom the queen was unable to get
into her power. Ahab was a public-spirited, courageous
monarch. He defeated the Syrians twice, and con-
cluded a peace with Benhadad on favorable terms.
Metha, king of Moab, paid him a large yearly tribute.
In conjunction with Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, he
went forth to battle a third time against the Syrians, and
was slain at Ramoth-Gilead. It speaks favorably for
his disposition that he repented of the cruel measures
taken against Naboth, and that he humbled himself be-
fore the Lord. Though he feared Elijah and Micaiah,
he was not insensible to their utterances; nor could he
have suffered so many as 400 prophets to live in his king-
dom without some little regard for their office. The
prophetic voice, held as it was in small esteem, must
have had some influence upon his administration,
especially when political grounds coincided with it.
His evil courses were due much more to the influence
of Jezebel than to his own vicious impulses.
As the accounts of Ahab are fragmentary, it is not
always easy to make out from them a clear or connected
history of his reign. There is room for conjecture and
misconception. Thus Ewald represents him as building
a splendid temple, with an oracle-grove of Astarte near
his favorite palace at Jezreel, on the basis of 1 Kings
xvi. 32, xviii. 19; but this is imaginary, since the original
does not speak of a groze but of Astarte (xviii. 19); nor
is it probable that a second structure of the kind men-
tioned existed elsewhere in addition to Baal's temple in
Samaria. Neither can it be held as likely that a large
statue of Baal was set up in front of his temple, and
small statues of him in the interior, merely because we
read in 2 Kings x. 26, 27, first of bringing forth the images
of Baal, and then of breaking the image of the same
sun-god. Rather were the smaller images in the porch
and the chief one in the interior, so that the reading or
punctuation of verse 26 should be slightly altered.
Whether the 450 or 4oo prophets were distinct from the
priests is doubtful. Identifying them, we believe that
the priests acted as prophets, procuring for themselves
greater renown among the ignorant people by their arts
of necromancy and magic.
For the biography of this monarch we are indebted
almost exclusively to the books of Kings, where the
writers consider him in a theocratic rather than a polit-
ical aspect. , Viewing him from their later prophetic
standpoint, their portrait is somewhat one-sided, though
correct in the main. It is observable that the portions
of the Kings in which he is spoken of are somewhat dif-
ferent in character and expression, betraying the use of
different sources by the compiler. I Kings xvi. 29–33,
xxii. 39, 2 Kings x. 25–28, are more historical than the
rest, which contain almost all that is related of Ahab,
and were derived from tradition. It has been conjectured
by Hitzig that the 45th psalm owes its origin to Ahab,
being the joyous poetical expression of a matrimonial
connection with Tyre, which augured unusual prosperity
for the distracted kingdom. But the assumption is im-
probable, because, as De Wette observes, an event
belonging to Ephraim was hardly a fitting subject in-
cluded in the canon.
Another Ahab, a false prophet in the time of the
Babylonian exile, is mentioned by Jeremiah (xxix. 21),
and threatened with terrible punishment.
AHALA, a noble Roman family of the gens Servilia,
which produced many distinguished men. Of these the
most celebrated is C. Servilius Structus Ahala, master
of the horse to the dictator Cincinnatus, B. c. 439. He
signalised himself by his boldness in slaying in the forum
with his own hand the popular agitator Sp. Maelius, for
refusing to appear before the dictator on a charge of
conspiracy against the state. For this act Ahala was
brought to trial. He saved himself from condemnation
by retiring into exile.
AHANTA, a territory on the Gold Coast of Africa,
lying on the second parallel of W. long. It is one of
the richest and most fertile districts in that part of the
continent. Axim, the chief settlement, was founded by
the Dutch, but now belongs to Britain.
AHASUERUS, the Latinised form of the Hebrew
Ahashverosh, tyimºns (in the LXX. A660%mpos
once in Tobit 'A61%mpos), occurs as a royal Persian or
Median name in three of the books of the canonical
Scriptures, and in one of the books of the Apocrypha.
In every case the identification of the person thus
named with those found in profane history is matter of
controversy. The hypothesis of Fürst and others, that
in all the passages one and the same person is meant,
viz., the well-known Xerxes, may be set aside as quite
inapplicable to the facts; and it becomes necessary to
glance at the particular places.
In Dan. ix. I, Ahasuerus appears as the father of
Darius the Mede, who “was made king over the realm
of the Chaldeans” after the conquest of Babylon and
death of Belshazzar. Who this Darius was is one of
the most difficult and disputed questions of ancient
history. If, as is very generally supposed, he is
Astyages, the grandfather of the great Cyrus, and the
last independent king of Media, then, Ahasuerus is to
be identified with Cyaxares, the father of Astyages.
The passage in Tobit where the name occurs (xiv. 15)
lends confirmation to this view. It is there stated that
Nineveh was captured and destroyed by “Nabuchod-
nosor and Assuerus.” According to Herodotus (i. IO6
cf. Rawlinson's Her., vol. i. 412), it was the Medes
under Cyaxares who took Nineveh.
In Ezra iv. 6 Ahasuerus is mentioned as a king of
Persia, to whom the enemies of the Jews sent repre-
sentations opposing the rebuilding of the temple at
Jerusalem. Here the sequence of the reigns, in the
sacred writer and in the profane historians—in the one,
Cyrus, Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, Darius; in the other,
Cyrus, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius—leads naturally to
the identification of Ahasuerus with Cambyses. Qther
circumstances, especially the known policy of the
usurper Smerdis, and its reversal by Darius (see Inser.
of Béhistun, col. i \ 14), corroborate this conclusion.
In the book of Esther, Ahasuerus is the name borne
by that king of Persia, certain events of whose court
and empire (which will be noticed elsewhere, see
Esther) form the subject of the whole narrative.
(Throughout this book the LXX, render the name
*Apraśćp£ms.). The hypothesis of certain writers, that
this Ahasuerus is the Cyaxares, king of Media, already
A H A —
A H M I 49
referred to, may be at once dismissed. . That of others,
identifying him with Artaxerxes Longimanus, the son
and successor of Xerxes, though countenanced by
Josephus, deserves scarcely more consideration. Re-
cent inquirers are all but universally of opinion that
he must be a monarch of the Achaemenian dynasty,
earlier than this Artaxerxes; and opinion is divided
between Darius Hystaspis and his son and successor
Xerxes. In support of the former view it is alleged,
among other things (see Tyrwhitt’s Asther and
21/asuerus, p. 162), that Darius was the first Persian
king of whom it could be said, as in Esther i. 1, that
he “reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over an
hundred and seven and twenty provinces;” and that
it was also the distinction of Darius that (Esther x. I)
he “laid a tribute upon the land and upon the isles of
the sea” (cf. Herod. iii. 89). In support of the latter
view it is alleged—(1.) That the Hebrew Ahashzerosſ,
is the natural equivalent of the old Persian Å% sha-
yars/a, the true name of the monarch called by the
Greeks Xerxes, as now read in his inscriptions; (2.)
That there is a striking similarity of character between
the Xerxes of Herodotus and the Ahasuerus of Esther;
(3.) That certain coincidences in dates and events cor-
roborate this identity, as, e. g., “In the third year of his
reign Ahasuerus gave a grand feast to his nobles,
lasting one hundred and eighty days (Esther i. 3); and
Xerxes in his third year also assembled his chief officers
to deliberate on the invasion of Greece (Herod. vii. 8).
Again, Ahasuerus married Esther at Shushan in the
seventh year of his reign; in the same year of his reign
Xerxes returned to Susa with the mortification of his
defeat, and sought to forget himself in pleasure.
Lastly, the tribute imposed on the land and isles of the
sea also accords with the state of his revenue, exhausted
by his insane attempt against Greece’’ (Kitto's Cyclo-
pardia, s.v., Ahasuerus). To this it may be added that
the interval of four years between the divorce of Vashti
and the marriage of Esther is well accounted for by the
intervention of an important series of events fully occu-
pying the monarch’s thoughts, such as the invasion of
Greece. It may be added that by the advocates of
both views appeal is made, with more or less of con-
fidence, to the names of the queens of the respective
sovereigns; Atossa, wife of Darius, answering to
Hadassah, and Amestris, wife of Xerxes, to Esther
(Esther ii. 7); and also to the number of generations,
indicated in the genealogy of Mordecai from the depor-
tation of the Jews into Babylon (Esther ii. 5; cf.
Tyrwhitt, p. 95, with Rawlinson, Bamptom Zect., p.
186). If, as seems probable, the name Ahasuerus is
the transcription of the Persian Khshayarsha (written
J/isiarsa in Babylonian) which, according to Sir H.
Rawlinson, means “venerable king” (see Rawlinson’s
Aſer. iii. 363), then this name may be reasonably sup-
posed to have been originally, an appellative, and its
application, especially by foreigners like the Jews, to
different royal persons, is explained.
A HAZ (literally Possessor), son of Jotham, and the
eleventh king of Judah, reigned 16 years, from 741 to
725 B.C. He was the most weak-minded and corrupt
of all the kings that had hitherto reigned over j.
About the time of his accession, Pekah, king of Israel,
and Rezin, king of Syria, had formed an alliance with
the view of acquiring the kingdom of Judah by con-
quest. They invaded the country, laid siege to Jeru-
salem, and carried away an immense number of captives,
though they failed to secure their ultimate object. At
the same time incursions were made by the Edomites
and Philistines, and Ahaz was fain to call in the aid of
Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, who destroyed the
power of Syria, but took care to exact heavy tribute for
the service thus rendered. - Ahaz was even compelled to
appear as a vassal at Damascus, and so to bring his
kingdom to the lowest point of political degradation.
In religion Ahaz was a heathem. He broke in pieces the
vessels of the temple of God, and at last ventured to
close its gates altogether. He sacrificed to Syrian
deities, erected altars on which incense was to be offered,
and caused his son to pass through the fire to Moloch.
He was succeeded by his son Hezekiah. In the inscrip-
tions of Tiglath-Pileser II., King of Assyria, Yahu-
AE/hazi ža/audai, that is, Joahaz or Ahaz of Israel, appears
among the names of those who acknowledged his sover-
eignty and paid tribute. (Schrader’s Die Kei/inschriſten
tend das Alte 7 estament.)
AHAZIAH (lit. Whom the Zord sustains), son and
successor of Ahab, and eighth king of Israel, reigned
scarcely two years, from 897 to 896 B.C. He continued
in the idolatrous practices of his father, worshipping
Baal and Astarte. Upon his accession the Moabites
revolted, and refused any longer to pay the tribute which .
had been exacted from them since the establishment of
Israel as a separate kingdom. Before Ahaziah could
take measures to subdue them, he was seriously injured
by a fall from the lattice of an upper chamber in his
palace. He immediately sent messengers to the oracle
of the god Baalzebub at Ekron, to inquire the issue of
his illness. While on their way they were met by Elijah
the prophet, who bade them return and tell the king #.
he would surely die.
AHAZIAH, son of Jehoram and Athaliah, daughter
of Ahab, and sixth king of Judah, reigned one year,
885 B.C. Under the evil influence of his mother, he
walked in the ways of Ahab's house, and was an idola-
trous and wicked king. He was slain by Jehu, the son
of Nimshi. -
AHENOBARBUS, the name of a plebeian Roman
family of the gens Domitia, which rose in the course of
time to considerable distinction. The name was derived
from the red beard and hair by which many of the family
were distinguished. The emperor Nero was of this
family.
AHITHOPHEL (lit. Brother of Foolishmess, i.e.
foolish), the very singular name of one of the sagest
politicians in Old Testament history. In regard to his
family relationships it is almost beyond doubt that he
was the grandfather of Bathsheba, and it has been sug-
gested as probable that he was first introduced at court
through this connection. He was one of David's most
trusted counsellors, and his defection to the cause of
Absalom was a severe blow to the king, who prayed that
God would bring his counsel to “foolishness,” probably
alluding to his name. David's grief at the desertion is
expressed in Ps. xli. 9, lv. 12–14. Ahithophel's advice
was at first acceptable to Absalom's party, and probably
laid down the policy which alone was likely to be success-
ful; but Hushai's counsel of delay, given in the secret
interest of David, was ultimately adopted. Ahitho-
phel's political foresight enabled him to see that this reso-
lution would prove fatal to the rebel cause, and he at
once returned to his home at Giloh, “put his household
in order, and hanged himself.” This is the only case of
deliberate suicide that is mentioned in the Old Testa-
ment.
AHMADABAD, a district and city of British India,
in the province of Gujrt, within the jurisdiction of the
governor of Bombay. The DISTRICT lies between 21°
4' and 23° 5' N. lat, and between 71°2' and 73° 25' E.
long. It is bounded by the province of Kátiwár on the
N. and W., by the Mahi Kánta on the N. and E., by
the Kaira collectorate on the E. and S., and by the gulf
of Cambay on the S. The area of the district is re-
turned at 3844 Square miles. The river Sábarmati and
I 50
A H M
its tributaries, flowing from the north-east to south-west
into the gulf of Cambay, are the principal streams that
water the district. The north-eastern portion is slightly
elevated, and dotted with low hills, which gradually sink
into a vast plain, subject to inundation on its western
extremity. With the exception of this latter portion,
the soil is very fertile, and some parts of the district are
beautifully wooded. The total population of Ahmadá-
bád is returned at 829,637 souls, the average density, as
compared with the area, being 216 to the square mile,
and the proportion of females 891 to every 1000 males.
About 86 per cent. of the population are returned as
Hindus, Io per cent. as Mahometans, and 4 as Buddhists.
The percentage of persons of other denominations is in-
finitesimal, their total number being only 1237 Souls.
The hamlets for the most part consist of substantial
houses of bricks and tiles, with only a small portion of
huts. Some of the larger villages contain houses with
upper stories, and the general appearance of the inhab-
itants indicates prosperity. The principal agricultural
products are rice, wheat, bajrá, and cotton, with a little
sugar-cane, tobacco, and oil-seeds. Silk manufacture
forms an important industry of the city. The total
revenue of the district in 1871 amounted to 4, 152,344,
of which 4, 147,283 was derived from the land ; the total
met expenditure on civil administration in the same year
amounted to £21,700. The fiscal system consists for
the most part of settlements direct with the husbandman,
technically known as rayatwārí; but some villages are
“td/ukddiri,” in which the “tálukdār '' or landholder col-
lects the revenue, and pays 70 per cent. of it to Govern-
ment, retaining the remaining 30 per cent, for himself.
The excise revenue is generally farmed out, but a gov-
ernment distillery exists in the city. The land settlement
is fixed for a period of thirty years, and expires in differ-
ent parts of the district between the years 1884 and 1888.
Seventy-five per cent. of the total area of the district is
cultivable, of which 55 per cent. is actually under culti-
vation, the other 20 per cent. remaining fallow. The
principal marts in Ahmadābād are Dhollerá, Gogo,
Dholkä, and Víramgáon. , Municipalities have been
established in the towns of Ahmadābād, Dholkä, Mandā,
Gogo, Dhandiáka, Prāntej, and Moráshá; the rate of the
municipal taxation per head of population varies from
2s. 6%d. in Ahmadābād to 4%d., in Morāshā, the average
throughout the eight towns being 1s. 7%d. per head.
The municipal income is chiefly derived from octroi
duties, which in some of the towns are farmed. Thirteen
towns are returned as containing a population exceeding
5000 souls, namely, Ahmadābād, population I 16,873;
Dholkä, 20,854; Víramgáon, 19,661; Dhollerá, 12,468;
Dhandúka, 9782; Gogo, 9571; Prántej, 834I; Moráshá,
7436; Sanand, 7229; Mandā, 6774; Patrí, 63.20; Barwālā,
5813; and Ranpur, 5796. The district contains 145
schools, in eight of which English is taught. The police
force numbers 1189 men. The Kolís contribute most
largely to the criminal population.
AHMADABAD CITY, the capital of the district, is
situated on the east or left bank of the river Sábarmati,
in 23° N. lat., and 72° 36' E. long. It was formerly
one of the largest towns in India, celebrated for its com-
merce and manufactures of gold and silver, silk and cot-
ton fabrics, articles of gold, silver, steel, enamel, mother
of pearl, lacquered ware, and fine wood-work. Excellent
paper was also manufactured, and a large trade carried
on in indigo, Scotton and opium. With the rise of the
Marhattá power, however, Ahmadābād became the scene
of repeated struggles between the Marhattás and the
Mussulmans, whose power was then on the wane, and
from this period its prosperity declined. It was captured
by the Marhattás in 1755, and again by the British in
1780. The latter soon afterwards gave the town back
to the Marhattás, who held it till it finally came into the
hands of the English in 1818. The present state of the
city is flourishing. It contains a population of 116,873
souls, and is a large and important station on the Bom-
bay, Baroda, and Central India Railway. It is the seat
of important silk manufacturers, and has two cotton-
mills worked by steam-power.
The principal objects of architectural interest are the
Jain temple of Seth Hathisinh and the Juma Masjid or
Great Mosque. The Jain temple is a modern edifice,
having been erected about twenty-five years ago by
Hathi Sinh, a rich Jain merchant, who dedicated it to
Dharmnáth. This modern style shows that the Jain
style of architecture has hardly degenerated from its
ancient excellence. The external porch, between two
circular towers, is of great magnificence, most elabo-
rately ornamented, and leads to an outer court, with six-
teen cells on either side. In the centre of this court is
a domed porch of the usual form, with twenty pillars.
The court leads to an inner porch of twenty-two pillars,
two stories in height, with a roof of a shape very fash-
ionable in modern Jain temples, though by no means.
remarkable for beauty. This inner porch conducts to a
triple sanctuary. The exterior of the temple expresses
the interior more completely than even a Gothic design;
and whether looked at from its courts or from the out-
side, it possesses variety without confusion, and an
appropriateness of every part to the purpose for which
it was intended. The Juma Masjid or Great Mosque
of Ahmadābād, although not remarkable for its size, is.
one of the most beautiful mosques in the East, the Jain
style of architecture being plainly visible in its construc-
tion. Its external dimensions are 382 feet by 258 feet.
AHMADNAGAR, a district and city in British India,
in the province of Gujrát, within the jurisdiction of the
Governor of the Presidency of Bombay. The collect-
or ATE extends from 18° 6' to 19° 50' N. lat., and
from 73° 40' to 75° 37' E. long, and contains the fol-
lowing eleven tålukás or sub-districts:—Nagar, Jám-
khair, Pármair, Srigonda, Karat, Newasa, Kopargâm,
Sangamnair, Rahuri, Siogám, and Ankolá. . A natural
boundary is formed on the west of the Ankolá taluká
by the Western Gháts, and further south, by the edge of
the table-land of Pärnair; on the S.W. the district is
bounded by the Gor fiver; on the S. by the Bhimá and
Sholápur collectorates; on the E. by the Nizām's domin-
ions; on the N.E. by the Godāvari river; and on the N.
by the Nāsik district. The total area of the district is.
returned at 4,209,036 acres, or 6576.62 Square miles.
Of the total area, 3,068, I62 acres, or 4794. Oo Square
miles, are cultivated; I21,474 acres, or 189.80 Square
miles, are cultivable, but not actually under tillage; and
1,019,400 acres, or 1592.81 Square miles, are uncultiv-
able. The last portion includes (besides arable lands)
village sites, roads, tanks, rivers, &c. The population of
the district, according to the census taken on the night
of the 21st February 1872, numbered 773,938 souls,
divided into the following five classes:— Hindus, 716,82O,
or 96.62 percent. of the total population; Mahometans,
42,435, or 5.49 per cent. ; Buddhists, 12,547, or 1.62 per
cent.; Christians, 941, or O. 12 per cent. ; and other
denominations, 1195, or o. 15 per cent. The bulk of the
population consists of Marhattás and Kunbis, the latter
being the agriculturists. On the north, the district is
watered by the Godāvari and its tributaries the Prawara
and the Mülá; on the north-east by the Dor, another
tributary of the Godāvarí; on the east by the Séphani,
which flows through the valley below the Bālā Ghāt
range; and in the extreme south by the Bhimá and its
tributary the Gor. The Siná river, another tributary of.
the Bhimá, flows through the Nagar and Karjat télukás.
The collectorate on the whole is fairly well watered,
A H M — A H R
I 5 I
although in some villages among the hills and spurs of
the Western Ghâts the supply is insufficient. The dis-
trict is intersected by the Bombay and Agra road; a
second road connects Punā zia Serur with the town of
Ahmadnagar, and is continued thence towards Măligăm;
a third road leads from Pună to Nārāyangám, besides
various cross-tracts and minor roads connecting the dif-
ferent towns of the district.
The only important industry is weaving. The princi-
pal agricultural products are wheat, gram, bajrá, joãr,
and tur dél. The early or spring crop is bajrá and tur-
dál ; wheat, gram, and joár being sown later in the
Season. Several other food grains are also raised; and
sugar-cane, betel leaves, a little cotton, and all descrip-
tions of vegetables are sown on suitable soils. The
staple food of the people is bajrá and joir (coarse kinds
of millet). The total revenue of the district is returned
at nearly 4, 170,000; about 4, 140,000 being derived from
the land revenue. The total annual expenditure is re-
turned at £50,000. The present land settlement was
introduced about 1844–45, and the thirty years’ leases
are now beginning to fall in. In a few villages which
were transferred to Ahmadnagar from the Násik collect-
orate the leases have already expired, and a revision of
, the settlement is in progress (1873). The following eight
towns are returned as containing a population of up-
wards of 5000 Souls: Ahmadnagar, population 32,841 ;
Sangamnair, 9978; Páthardi, 71 17 ; Khurdá, 6889;
Srigonda, 6175; Bhingar, 5752; Karjat, 5535; and
Sonái, 5254. The municipal system has been introduced
into the towns of Ahmadnagar, Sangamnair, and
Bhingar. In the two first named, the municipal revenue
is derived from a house tax and octroi duties on goods
and articles imported into the town for consumption.
In Bhingar the municipal revenue is raised by the levy
of a classified tax on professions and trades carried on
within the town. The municipal revenue and expendi-
ture in 1872, together with the incidence of municipal
tax per head of the population in each of the three
towns, was as follows:– Ahmadnagar, municipal in-
come, 4.361 1, 18s. ; municipal expenditure, £3557, 12S.;
incidence per head of population, 2s. 2%d. Sangam-
nair, municipal income, £275, 4S., -6%d. per head ;
expenditure, 4,217. Bhingar, municipal revenue, £259,
18s. – 8%d. per head; expenditure, 4,259, 18s. Ahmad-
nagar district contains I high school, I first-grade
Anglo-vernacular school, 3 middle-class schools, 164
lower-class Schools, and I girls' School. Education is
making fair progress, and the number of Schools is an-
nually increasing as funds become available. For the
protection of person and property, a regular police force
of 594 men of all grades is maintained, at a cost, during
1872–73, of £9869. A village police, numbering 2042
men, is also kept up, at a cost of 4, 1978 per annum.
There are no special criminal classes in the district ex-
cept a few Bhils, and they are now much less trouble-
some than formerly.
AHMADNAGAR City, the capital of the district of the
same name, is situated in 19° 6' N. lat., and 74° 46' E.
long. It is a town of considerable antiquity, having been
founded, in 1494, by Ahmad Nizām Sháh, on the site of
a more ancient city, Bhingar. This Ahmad established
a new monarchy, which lasted until its overthrow by
Sháh Jahān in 1636. In 1759 the Peshwá obtained pos-
session of the place by bribing the Mahometan com-
mander; and in 1797 it was ceded by the Peshwá to the
Marhattá chief Daulat Ráo Sindhiá. During our war
with the Marhattás in 1803 Ahmadnagar was invested
by a British force under General Wellesley, and cap-
tured. It was afterwards restored to the Marhattás,
but again came into the possession of the British in
1817, according to the terms of the treaty of Punā. The
town has rapidly advanced in prosperity under British
rule. It now contains a population of 32,841 souls, is
an important station on the Great Indian Peninsular
Railway, and has been created a municipality, as is men-
tioned above.
AHMED SHAH, founder of the Duráni dynasty in
Afghanistan, born about 1724, was the son of Sammaun-
Kahn, hereditary chief of the Abdali tribe. While still
a boy Ahmed ſell into the hands of the hostile tribe of
Ghilzais, by whom he was kept prisoner at Kandahar.
In March 1738 he was rescued by Nadir Shah, who soon
afterwards gave him the compland of a body of cavalry
composed chiefly of Abdalis. On the assassination of
Nadir in 1747, Ahmed, having failed in an attempt to
seize the Persian' treasures, retreated to Afghanistan,
where he easily persuaded the native tribes to assert
their independence, and accept him as their sovereign.
He was crowned at Kandahar in October 1747, and
about the same time he changed the name of his tribe to
Duráni. Two things may be said to have contributed
greatly to the consolidation of his power. He interfered
as little as possible with the independence of the different
tribes, demanding from each only its due proportion of
tribute and military service; and he kept his army con-
stantly engaged in brilliant schemes of foreign conquest.
Being possessed of the Koh-i-moor diamond, and being
fortunate enough to intercept a treasure on its way to
the Shah of Persia, he had all the advantages which
great wealth can give. He first crossed the Indus in
1748, when he took Lahore; and in 1751, after a feeble
resistance on the part of the Mahometan viceroy, he
became master of the entire Panjāb. In 1750 he had
taken Nishapúr, and in 1752 he subdued Kashmir. His
great expedition to Delhi was undertaken in 1756 in
order to avenge himself on the Great Mogul for the
recapture of Lahore. Ahmed entered Delhi with his
army in triumph, and for more than a month the city
was given over to pillage. The Shah himself added to
his wives a princess of the imperial family, and bestowed
another upon his son Timur Shah, whom he made gov-
ernor of the Panjāb and Sirhind. As his viceroy in
Delhi he left a Rohilla chief in whom he had all con-
fidence, but scarcely had he crossed the Indus when the
Mahometan vizier drove the chief from the city, killed
the Great Mogul, and set another prince of the family, a
tool of his own, upon the throne. The Mahratta chiefs
availed themselves of these circumstances to endeavor to
possess themselves of the whole country, and Ahmed
was compelled more than once to cross the Indus in
order to protect his territory from them and the Sikhs,
who were constantly attacking his garrisons. In 1758
the Mahrattas obtained possession of the Panjāb, but on
the 6th January 1761 they were totally routed by Ahmed
in the great battle of Pánipat. In a later expedition he
inflicted a severe defeat upon the Sikhs, but had to hasten
westwards immediately afterwards in order to quell an
insurrection in Afghanistan. Meanwhile the Sikhs again
rose, and Ahmed was now forced to abandon all hope of
retaining the command of the Panjáb. After length-
ened suffering from a terrible disease, said to have been
cancer in the face, he died in 1773, leaving to his son
Timur the kingdom he had founded.
AHRIMAN or ARIMANES, the principle of evil,
opposed to Ormuzd, the principle of good, the one
being symbolised by darkness and the other by light.
Both were visible manifestations of the Infinite Time,
and existed from all eternity, according to the doctrine
of the Magians. Zoroaster himself, however, seems to
have taught that Ormuzd alone was eternal, while
Ahriman was created. In the Azesta this world is
represented as the theatre of a fierce conflict between
the two spirits, which is to last for 12,000 years. In
I 52
A H W — A I N
the end Ahriman is to acknowledge the supremacy of
Ormuzd.
AHUACHAPAN, an important trading town of San
Salvador, Central America. Population, 1889, 8,000.
AHWAZ, a town in Persia, on the left bank of the
river Karoon. Though now an insignificant place,
this ancient city extended 12 miles along the bank of the
river. Ahwaz reached the height of its prosperity in
the time of the earliest Mahometan caliphs.
AI, a royal city of the Canaanites, east of Bethel. It
existed in the time of Abraham, who pitched his tent
between the two cities, but it is chiefly noted for its
capture and destruction by Joshua, who made it “a
heap for ever, even a desolation.” At a later period Ai
was, however, rebuilt.
AIDAN, a king of Scottish Dalriada, who reigned
about the close of the 6th century. During Aidan's
reign the Scottish I)alriada was completely freed from
subjection to the Irish monarchs.
AIDAN, ST., first bishop of Lindisfarne or Holy
Island, embraced a religious life in the monastery of
Iona. Oswald, king of Northumbria, having re-
quested a mission of monks from Iona to labor for the
conversion of his subjects, Aidan was chosen by the
abbot as leader of the expedition, and was consecrated a
ºp about 634–5 A.D. Aidan died on the 31st August
5.I.
AIDE-DE-CAMP, a confidential officer attached to
the “personal" or private staff of a general. In the
field he is the bearer of the chief’s written or verbal
orders, and when employed as the general's mouthpiece,
must be implicitly obeyed. In garrison and quarters
his duties are more of a social character—he superin-
tends the general’s household, writes and answers invi-
tations, &c. Officers above the rank of captain are
seldom taken as aides, and none of less than two years'
Service.
AIDIN, or GUZEL-HISSAR, a town of Turkey in
Asia, in the pashalic of Anatolia, about 70 miles S.E. of
Smyrna. . It is beautifully situated near the river Mean-
der, and is the residence of a pasha. Aidin is a place
of very extensive trade, and is celebrated for its figs,
which are grown in great abundance in the beautiful
Orchards between the town and the river, and form an
important article of export. Among the inhabitants are
considerable numbers of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews;
and there are several churches and synagogues in ad-
dition to the fine Turkish mosques. Population, 30,000.
AIDS, a pecuniary tribute under the feudal system,
paid by a vassal to his lord on particular occasions;
originally a voluntary grant which in process of time
became exigible as a right.
AIKIN, JOHN, M.D. (1747–1822), was born at Kib-
worth-Harcourt. He commenced his professional career
as a surgeon at Chester; but being unsuccessful, he at
an early period devoted himself to literary pursuits.
Dr. Aikin's reputation chiefly rests on his endeavor to
popularise scientific inquiries. In conjunction with his
sister, Mrs. Barbauld, he commenced the publication of
a series of volumes on this principle, entitled Ævenings
at Æome (6 vols., 1792–5), a popular and interesting
work, chiefly commendable for the purity of the princi.
ples it inculcates, and the pleasing views it gives of
human nature. It has been translated into almost
every European language. In 1798 Dr. Aikin retired
from professional life, and devoted himself with great
industry to literary undertakings of numerous and varied
kinds, among which his valuable Biographical Z)iction-
.ary (IO vols., 1799–1815) holds a conspicuous place.
AIKIN, LUCY, daughter of the preceding, a well-
known historical writer, was born at Warrington on 6th
Mov. 1781. After rendering valuable assistance to her
father in several of his later works, she commenced her
own career as an authoress by the publication of several
books for the young, the most important of which were
the Adventures of Rolando, a translation, and Zorimer,
a tale. In 1818 she published her Memoirs of the Court
of Queen Ælizabeth, the first and best of the series of
historical works on which her reputation rests. It was
very popular, and passed through several editions. The
Memoirs of the Court of Åing James Z. (1822) was
highly commended in the Ædinburgh Review, which
pronounced it “a work very nearly as entertaining as a
novel, and far more instructive than most histories.”
Miss Aikin died at Hampstead, where she had resided
for forty years, on the 29th Jan. 1864.
AIKMAN, WILLIAM, a celebrated portrait-painter,
born at Cairney, Forfarshire, on the 24th Oct. 1682.
He was intended by his father for the bar, but followed
his natural bent by becoming a pupil under Sir John
Medina, the leading painter of the day in Scotland.
Perhaps his most successful work was the portrait of
the poet Gay. He died in June 1731, leaving unfin-
ished a large picture of the royal family. 3r
AILRED, EALRED, ETHELREDUS, ALUREDUs, an
English ecclesiastic and historian, born at Hexham in
IIo9. The king is said to have offered him a bishopric,
which he refused, preferring to become a monk in the
Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx, Yorkshire. He died in
I 166. The accounts which state that he was transferred
to Revesby in Lincolnshire are probably founded on a
confusion of names. Leland says that he had seen his
tomb at Rievaulx adorned with gold and silver orna-
ments. Ailrêd was the author of a large number of
historical and theological works. The former are of
little value, owing to his credulity, except for the occa-
sional glimpses they give of contemporary life and man-
ners. His theological works, including a volume of
homilies, a treatise on charity, and a treatise on friend-
ship, are somewhat in the style of St. Bernard.
AILSA CRAIG, a remarkable island-rock at the
mouth of the Firth of Clyde, off the coast of Ayrshire,
Scotland. It is of a conoidal form, with an irregular
elliptic base, and rises abruptly from the sea to the
height of II39 feet. A columnar cave exists towards the
north side, and on the eastern are the remains of a
tower, with several vaulted rooms.
AIN, a department on the eastern frontier of France.
It has an area of 2241 square miles. The east of the
department is very mountainous, being traversed by the
southern portion of the Jura range, but in the north-
west the surface is comparatively level, and in the south-
west flat and marshy. The climate is usually cold, but
on the whole healthy, except in the damp marshy dis-
tricts on the west. The soil in the valleys and plains of
the department is fertile, producing wheat, barley,
maize, rye, and fruits of various kinds, as well as wine
of excellent quality. The chief mineral product is
asphalt, besides which potter's clay, iron, building stone,
and the best lithographic stone in France, are produced
in the department. There are many corn and saw mills
on the mountain streams; and cotton, linen and silk
fabrics, coarse woollen cloth, paper, and clocks, are
manufactured to a limited extent. Ain is divided into
five arrondissements — Bourg and Trevoux in the west,
and Gex, Nantua, and Belley in the east; containing
in all 36 cantons and 452 communes. Bourg is the
capital, and Belley is the seat of a bishop. Population
of Ain in 1872, 363,290.
AINAD, a town of Arabia, in the province of Hadra-
maut. Near it is the tomb of a Moslem prophet much
frequented by pilgrims, at which a great annual fair is
also held. The population is said to be about Io,000.
AINMULLER, MAXIMILIAN EMANUEL, founder of
A I N — A I R
I 53
a new school of glass-painting, was born at Munich on
the 14th of February 1807. He was induced, by the
advice of Gärtner, director of the royal porcelain manu-
factory, to devote himself to the study of glass-painting,
both as a mechanical process and as an art, and he
made such progress that in 1828 he was appointed di-
rector of the newly-founded royal painted-glass manu-
factory at Munich. The method which he gradually
perſected there was a development of the enamel pro-
ºcess adopted in the Renaissance, and consisted in actu-
ally painting the design upon the glass, which was sub-
jected, as each color was laid on, to carefully-adjusted
eating. With a few exceptions, all the windows in
Glasgow cathedral are from his hand. Specimens may
also be seen at St. Paul’s cathedral and St. Peter’s Col-
lege, Cambridge. On the Continent it must suffice to
mention Cologne cathedral as containing some of his
finest productions. He died 9th December 1870.
AINOS, the name of a small but remarkable tribe
in Japan, found chiefly in the Island of Yesso. They are
different in race and character from the ordinary Japan-
ese, and seem to have been the earliest inhabitants of
the country. They are probably less than 50,000 in
number.
AINSWORTH, HENRY, divine and scholar, was
born “about 1560’’ at Pleasington, near Blackburn,
Tancashire, having been second son of Lawrence Ains-
worth of Pleasington Hall. According to tradition, he
was a Roman Catholic, and a younger brother, John,
a Protestant; and the two brothers, entering into a writ-
ten controversy, mutually converted each other—Henry
having embraced Protestantism, and John, Popery. He
associated with the Puritan party in the Church of Eng-
land, and eventually adopted the platform of the Inde-
pendents as represented by the Brownists. He was
driven from his native country by the state proscription
of the sectaries before the year 1593. He is found resi-
dent in “a blind lane at Amsterdam ” 1595–6. His exile
must have reduced him to extreme poverty. He is stated
to have been a “porter’ to a scholarly bookseller in
Amsterdam, who, on discovering his skill in the Hebrew
language, made him known to his countrymen. Roger
Williams, in one of his fiery tractates, reproaches Ains-
worth as “living upon ninepence a week and some
boiled roots.” Of Ainsworth it may be said, that while
he never put himself forward or sought notoriety, he was
beyond comparison the most steadfast and most resolute
and most cultured champion of those principles of civil
and religious freedom represented by the now large and
influential body of Nonconformists in Britain and
America called Independents or Congregationalists.
His ablest and most arduous minor work in controversy
was his crushing reply to the notorious Smyth, entitled
A defence of the Aſo/y Scriptures, Worship, and Minis-
try, used in the Christian Church separated from Anti-
</rist, against the Challenges, Cazils, and Contradic-
Zions of AZ. Smyth (1609). His memory abides through
his rabbinical learning. The ripe fruit of many years'
diligence appeared in his Notes on Genesis, 1616; Exo-
dus, 1617; Leviticus, 1618; Numbers, 1619; Deuter-
onomy, 1619; Psalms, 1612, 2d edition 1617; Song of
Solomon, 1623. These were collected in folio in 1627,
and again in 1639, and later in various forms. From
the outset the Annotations have taken a commanding
place, especially among Continental scholars, as witness
Clement, Dornius, Voght, Lilienthal, and Simon, the
last urging Catholics to study and value them. There
is nothing more striking in the career of Ainsworth than
the reported manner of his death, which took place at
Amsterdam in 1622–3. It is stated that, having found
a diamond of great value, he advertised it; and when
the owner, who was a Jew, came to demand it, he offered
the finder any gratuity he sought. Ainsworth, though
poor, requested only of the Jew that he would procure
him a conference with some of his rabbis upon the
prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the Messiah,
which the Jew promised; but not having interest to ob-
tain such a conference, it is thought that he contrived to
get Ainsworth poisoned (Neal, Puritans, ii. 47).
AINSWORTH, Robert (1660-1743), author of a
well-known Latin dictionary, was born at Woodvale,
near Manchester. After teaching for some time in
Bolton, he removed to London, where he conducted a
boarding-school, first at Bethnal Green, and then at
Hackney. Proposals for the preparation of a Latin
dictionary were made to him in 1714, but the work was .
not published till 1736.
AINTAB, a large garrison town on the northern
frontier of Syria. It has a considerable trade, chiefly
in hides and leather, and cotton of coarse quality is
grown in the district. Population, about 20,000.
AIR was the name formerly given to all gaseous sub-
stances. The gas now known as oxygen, for instance,
was named by Priestley dephlogisticated air, in contra-
distinction to nitrogen or azote, which was phlogisticated
air. So hydrogen gas was known to the early chem-
ists as inflammable air, carbonic acid gas as fixed air,
&c. The name is now ordinarily restricted to what is
more accurately called atmospheric air — the air we
breathe – the invisible elastic fluid which surrounds the
earth, extending to an unknown height. The proper-
ties of this fluid will be fully considered under such
headings as ATMOSPHERE, BAROMETER, CHEMISTRY,
VENTILATION, &c. Reference may be made here to
the mechanical use of air as a moving power, or rather
as a means for transferring power, just as it is trans-
ferred by a train of wheelwork. Compressed air can
be employed in this way with great advantage in mines,
tunnels, and other confined situations, where the dis-
charge of steam would be attended with inconvenience.
AIR-ENGINE. Engines which have for their work-
ing fluid heated air instead of steam are called “air-
engines.” The name “caloric engine" has also been
applied to them, but is not to be commended, for they
have no more right to that title than steam-engines —
the useful effect of both machines being due to the trans-
formation of heat into mechanical energy, the air in the
one case and the steam in the other being merely con-
venient media through which to effect that transforma-
tion.
The utilisation of the expansion of heated air for driv-
ing an engine has for many years been a subject which
has exercised the ingenuity of inventors. The history
of air-engines has, however, been little more hitherto
than a history of failures, and they are as far now from
superseding steam-engines as they were fifty years ago.
This is owing mostly to the fact that the inventors have
too often worked empirically, without any real knowl-
edge of the conditions under which, and under which
only, the real advantage of the fluid could be attained,
and have therefore continually violated these conditions.
There are also certain constructive difficulties in the way
of making a successful air-engine which have never been
fully overcome. It should be distinctly understood that,
regarded simply as a medium for transforming heat into
work, air possesses no advantage over steam or any other
fluid. Its advantage is, that it can be used with safety
at much higher temperatures than steam (and therefore
a larger proportion of the heat given to it can be trans-
formed into work), and that by employing the gases of
combustion in the cylinder much heat can be utilised
which with steam-engines is necessarily wasted.
AIR-GUN, a weapon like a common gun in shape, in
which the force employed to propel the bullet is the elas.
I 54
A I T
A I R —
ticity of condensed atmospheric air. It has attached to
it, or constructed in it, a strong metal chamber, into
which air is forced by a condensing syringe (see PNEU-
MAtics). In this way a pressure may be obtained of
several hundred atmospheres. When a trigger is touched,
the condensed air rushes into a space behind the bullet
with such force as to propel it from the barrel to a con-
siderable distance. If only a little air be allowed to
escape each time, a single charge will propel a number
of bullets in succession, with a constantly diminishing
force. -
AIR-PUMP, an apparatus by means of which a closed
vessel can have the air it contains removed from it. It
consists essentially of two parts—a receiver, from which
the air is to be exhausted; and a pump, to perform the
work of exhaustion. The receiver is in general made
of glass, in order that the condition of objects placed
within it for the purpose of experiment may be readily
seen by the operator. It is open at the bottom, and has
its lower edge accurately ground; when in its place in
the air-pump it stands upon a smooth brass plate. The
pump itself is a brass cylinder, having a piston in it,
which can be moved backwards and forwards by means
of a rod, in the usual way. At the end of the cylinder
nearest the receiver is placed a small valve, in the piston
itself is another (or some mechanism which serves the
purpose of a valve), and there is frequently a third in
the outer end of the cylinder. All these valves open
outwards from the receiver. The action of the pump,
when arranged in this way, is exactly similar to the
action of an ordinary well-pump, with air as fluid instead
of water. The air-pump was invented about 1654 by
Otto von Guericke, a magistrate of Magdeburg, and a
man who devoted great attention to various problems in
pneumatics. See PNEUMATICS.
AIR-PUMP, in steam-engines, is the pump which
draws the condensed steam, along with the air which is
always mixed with it, and also condensing water (except
where a surface condenser is used), away from the con-
denser, and discharges into the hot well. See STEAM-
ENGINE.
AIR, or ASBEN, a country of central Africa, lying be-
tween 15° and 19° N. lat. and 6° and Io9 E. long. The
northern and best known portion of this region is of a
very diversified character. It has numerous mountain
ranges, some of which rise to a height of 5000 feet, with
richly-wooded hollows and extensive plains interspersed.
The mimosa, the dum-palm, and the date are abundant;
and the valleys are covered with the exuberant vegeta-
tion of the tropics. Some of the plains afford good
pasturage for camels, asses, goats, and cattle; others
are desert table-lands. In the less frequented districts
wild animals abound, notably the lion and gazelle. The
country generally is of sandstone or granite formation,
with occasional trachyte and basaltic ranges. There are
no permanent rivers; but during the rainy season, from
August to October, very heavy floods convert the water-
courses in the hollows of the mountains into broad and
rapid steams. Numerous wells supply the wants of the
people and their cattle.
AIRAY, HENRY, D.D. This celebrated Puritan
president of Queen’s College, Oxford, was born at
Kentmere, near Windermere, but no record remains of
the date of either birth or baptism. Anthony à Wood
names Westmoreland as his birthplace. In the well-
known Zife of Bernard Gilpin it is told that when he
was making preparations for martyrdom, he “received
the account with great composure; and immediately
after called up William Airay, a favorite domestic, who
had long served him as his almoner and steward.”
From the great kindness shown to our Airay by Gilpin,
and from the vicinity of Kentmere to the Rectory, it
does not appear to be hazarding too much to assume
that this William Airay was his father, and that the
family tradition is right in assigning Kentmere, not Bar-
ton or Wilford, as his birthplace. He died on 6th Oc-
tober 1616. His character as a man, preacher, divine,
and as an important ruler in the university, will be
found portrayed in the Epistle by Potter, prefixed to the
Commentary. He must have been a fine specimen of
the more cultured Puritans—possessed of a robust com-
mon-sense in admirable contrast with some of his con-
temporaries.
AIRDRIE, a parliamentary and municipal burgh and
market-town of Scotland, in the parish of New Monk-
land, Lanarkshire, I 1 miles E. ...]” Glasgow and 32 W.
of Edinburgh. The high road between these cities
passes through Airdrie, forming its principal street,
from which others diverge at right angles. It is well
built, paved, and lighted with gas, but it contains little
that is beautiful or attractive.
AIRE, an English river which rises in the West
Riding of Yorkshire and pursues a south-easterly course
through the populous “clothing district” of which
Leeds is the capital.
AIRE, a fortified town of France, on the river Lys,
in the department of Pas-de-Calais, Io miles S.E. of St.
Omer. Population, 88o3.
AIRE, a town in the south of France, in the depart-
ment of Landes, on the left bank of the Adour, 14 miles
S.S. E. of St. Sever. Population, 5144.
AISLE, sometimes written ISLE, YLE, and ALLEY
(Lat. and Ital. Ala, a wing; Fr. Aile, Bas câté, Ger.
Seitenschiff, Seitenchor), in its primary sense, the wing
of a house, but generally used to describe the alleys or
passages at the sides of the naves and choirs of
churches. In reckoning their number, the nave is usu-
ally counted. Thus a nave with an aisle on each side is
generally called a three-aisled church; if with two aisles
on each side, a five-aisled church. In England there
are many churches with one side-aisle only; but there
is only one cathedral with five aisles, that at Chiches-
ter. There are, however, very many such on the Con-
tinent, the most celebrated of which are at Milan and
Amiens.
AISNE, a frontier department in the north-east of
France, bounded on the N. by the department of Nord
and the kingdom of Belgium, on the E. by the depart-
ment of Ardennes, on the S.E. by that of Marne, on
the S. by that of Seine-et-Marne, on the W. by those
of Oise and Somme; extending at the widest points 75
miles from N. to S., and 53 from E. to W., with an
area of 2838 square miles.
AITON, WILLIAM (1731–1793), an eminent botanist
and gardener, was born near Hamilton, in Scotland.
Having been regularly trained to the profession of a
gardener, he travelled to England in the year 1754,
where he became assistant to Philip Miller, then super-
intendent of the physic garden at Chelsea. He was for
many years honored with the friendship of Sir Joseph
Banks, the president of the Royal Society, and was
aided by the Swedish naturalists, Solander and Dryan-
der, in the preparation of his Hortus Aewensis.
AITZEMA, LEON VAN, Dutch historian and states-
man, was born at Doccum, in Friesland, on the 19th
November 1600, and died at the Hague on the 23d
February 1669. In his youth he published a volume of
Latin poems under the title of Poemata Juvenilia. . His
most important work was the Historie of Perhaal van
Saáken Jan Staet in Oorlogh (14 vols. 4to., 1657–71),
embracing the period from 1621 to 1668. It contains a
large number of state documents, and is an invaluable
authority on one of the most eventful periods of Dutch
history.
A I X —
A J M I 5*
AIX, an ancient city of France, the chief town of the
arrondissement of the same name, in the department of
the Bouches-du-Rhone. It was the Aquae Sextiae of the
Romans, and between this and Arelate (Arles) is the
field on which Marius gained his great victory over the
Teutons. Under the counts of Provence, Aix became
celebrated as a seat of learning; and it still retains many
relics of its former splendor, and is distinguished by the
number and excellence of its literary institutions. Pop-
ulation (1872), 29,020.
AIX, or AIX-LE-BAINS, a town of France, in the de-
partment of Savoie, near Lake Bourget, 8 miles north
of Chambéry. Population, 4430.
AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, the German AACHEN, the
capital of a district of the same name in Rhenish
Prussia, situated near the Wurm, a tributary of the
Meuse, in a pleasant and fertile valley about 40 miles
west of Cologne, with which it is connected by railway.
It is well built, and is enclosed by ramparts that have
been converted into promenades, and its appearance is
rather that of a prosperous modern town than of an
ancient city full of historical associations. Its town-
house, built in 1353 on the ruins of Charlemagne’s pal-
ace, contains the magnificent coronation hall of the
German emperors, 162 feet long by 60 feet wide, and a
fountain, with a statue of Charlemagne, which was
erected in 162o. The chief manufactures of Aix-la-
Chapelle are woollen cloths, stockings, shawls, silks,
leather, glass, needles, pins, machines, general iron-
mongery, carriages, beer, brandy, tobacco, and chemi-
cals. There is a good trade in these articles, not only
with Germany and other continental countries, but also,
in the case of cloth especially, with the United States of
America. Charlemagne, who perhaps was born and
certainly died in the town, made it the second city of
his empire and the capital of his dominions north of the
Alps. From 813 to 1531 the emperors of Germany
were crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, which during that
period became one of the most important free imperial
cities, although it was ravaged by the Normans in 851,
and again in §. By the removal of the coronations to
Frankfort, Aix-la-Chapelle lost its leading position in
Germany, and its internal prosperity was much injured
by a disastrous fire in #6. During the revolution it
for a time belonged to France, but in 1815 it was ceded
to Prussia, and has now become one of the chief seats
of commerce in that kingdom. Population of Aix-la-
Chapelle (1871), 74,238.
AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, Congresses and Treaties of
The first congress of Aix-la-Chapelle concerned the suc-
cession of Maria. Theresa to the empire. It was held in
1748, and resulted in the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle,
signed in the same year, by which Maria. Theresa was
left in possession of most of her hereditary dominions,
the chief exception being Silesia, which was ceded to
Prussia. The second congress, held in 1818, resulted in
the convention of Aix-la-Chapelle. The object of this
congress was the regulation of the affairs of Europe,
especially of France, after the war.
AJACCIO, the chief town of Corsica, one of the de-
partments of France. It is a seaport, situated on the
west coast of the island. The harbor is commodious,
and sheltered on all sides save the South-west. It is the
seat of a bishop and a court of justice, and has a com-
mercial college. Wine, fruits, and olive oil are the
chief articles of trade ; and anchovy and coral fisheries
are extensively prosecuted along the coast. Ajaccio is
celebrated as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte.
The house where he was born (15th August 1769) is
still standing in good preservation. Population (1872),
I6,545.
§N, a tract which forms the eastern horn of Africa.
The coast towards the south is low and Sandy, but north-
ward, near Cape D'Orfui, it becomes high and mount-
ainous, with some fertile valleys interspersed. The
land for the most part is barren. The inhabitants carry
on a trade with the Arabs in ivory and gum, and the
country possesses an excellent breed of horses. º
AJAX, the son of Telamon. In Greek legend Ajax
represents throughout only physical qualities, like Her:
cules. The child Ajax was born at the prayer of
Hercules in behalf of his friend Telamon. Hercules
was present at the birth of the infant, and by wrapping
it in his lion's skin made it invulnerable, except in the
armpit.
AJAX OILEUS, or the LESSER AJAX, was a son of
the King of Locri, whose subjects he led before Troy,
contributing a contingent of forty ships. In boldness
he was in the first rank among the Greeks there, equal
to make a stand against Hector, and Swift of foot next
to Achilles. But, compared with the other leaders, he
is impatient and overbearing.
AJEHO, or A-SHE-HoH, also called ALCHUKU, a
considerable and rapidly increasing city of Manchuria,
30 miles south of the river Soongari, and about 120
north of Kerin. The country around is very fertile,
producing in abundance various kinds of grain, besides
pulse and opium. The population of the district con-
sists entirely of Chinese immigrants, who are engaged
in the reclamation and cultivation of the soil, which is
given to them at a nominal price. In the shops quan:
tities of porcelain and other ornamental articles exposed
for sale indicate its growing wealth. The population is
about 40,000.
AJMIR, a district and town of British India, in
Rájputáná. The population in 1865 was returned at
426,268; of whom 363,539, or 85 per cent., were
Hindus, and the remainder chiefly Mahometans. The
eastern portion of the district is generally flat, broken
only by gentle undulations, but the north-western parts
are intersected by the great ARAVALLI range. Ajmír is
almost totally devoid of rivers, the Bandás being the
only stream which can be dignified with that name, and
it only touches the south-eastern boundary of the district
so as to irrigate the Parganá of Samur. The principal
products of the district are wheat, barley, rice, sugar:
cane, peas, bajará, maize til (oil-seed), tobacco and
cotton. With the exception of woollen blankets, tar-
bans, &c., manufactures can be scarcely said to exist
in Ajmír. Salt is made in a rude method at Râmsur,
from the saline exudations of the soil, to the extent of
3000 cwt. per annum. After supplying local wants,
the surplus is exported towards Málwa and Ságar. The
principal trade is in wool, cotton, opium, printed cloths,
and tobacco. Oil is also a profitable article of trade.
The domestic animals are sheep, horses, bullocks,
and goats. Cattle, and especially bullocks, are much
valued, but are very scarce, owing partly to the want
of sufficient pasturage and partly to frequent droughts.
The imperial revenue obtained from the district in 1867
amounted to 4,61,791, 8s., exclusive of local funds
raised by a road, tank, and postal cess.
AJMIR City, the capital of Ajmir district, is situated
in a picturesque and fertile valley surrounded by mount:
ains. The town is partly built on the lower slope of
the Tågågarh hill, and is surrounded by a stone wall
with five handsome gates. To the north of the city is
a large artificial lake called the Anaságar, whence the
water supply of the place is derived. The town is clean,
and possesses several handsome streets, the dwellings
of the better class being large and well built.- The
population in 1867 numbered 34,763. The city trade
chiefly consists of salt and opiuin. Oilmaking is also
a profitable branch of trade. Cottom cloths are manu-
I 56
A. K. E.
A J U —
factured to some extent, for the dyeing of which the city
has attained a high reputation. The Ajmir college,
affiliated to the Calcutta university, had 320 pupils in
1867. The college buildings being inadequate to this
number of pupils, the foundation-stone of a new struc-
ture was laid on the 17th February 1868. It is likewise
a station of a Scotch Presbyterian mission.
AJURUOCA, a town of Brazil, in the province of
Minat Geraes, 117 miles N. of Rio de Janeiro. It is
situated on the Ajuruoca river, which is here crossed by
a bridge. The people are chiefly engaged in agricul-
ture, and in rearing animals for the markets of Rio.
The land is fertile and produces millet, mandioca, cof-
fee, sugar-cane and tobacco. The population of the
town and district is 12,000.
AKABAH, THE GULF of. It penetrates into Ara-
ºbia Petraea in a N.N.E. direction, a distance of IOO
miles, and its breadth varies from 12 to 17 miles; its
navigation is dangerous on account of its numerous
scoral reefs, and the frequent squalls which sweep down
from the adjacent mountains, many of which rise per-
pendicularly to a height of 2000 feet. The only well-
sheltered harbor is that called Golden Port, situated on
its western shores about 33 miles from the entrance,
and 29 miles E. of Mount Sinai. In the vicinity of the
village there are extensive date groves; and there is
abundance of good water, fruit and vegetables. It is
supposed to occupy the site of the Elath of Scripture,
which in remote ages carried on an extensive com-
11] erCe.
AKBAR, AKHBAR, or AKBER, JELLALADIN MO-
HAMMED, one of the greatest and wisest of the Moghul
emperors, was born at Amerkote in Sindh on the 14th
October 1542. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun,
in 1556, under the regency of Bahram Khan, a Turko-
man noble, whose energy in repelling pretenders to the
throne, and severity in maintaining the discipline of the
army, tended greatly to the consolidation of the newly-
recovered empire. Bahram, however, was naturally
despotic and cruel; and when order was somewhat re-
stored, Akbar found it necessary to take the reins of
government into his own hands, which he did by a
proclamation issued in March 1560. When Akbar as-
cended the throne, only a small portion of what had
formerly been comprised within the Moghul empire
owned his authority, and he devoted himself with great
determination and marvellous success to the recovery of
the revolted provinces. He tried by every means to
develop and encourage commerce; he had the land
accurately measured for the purpose of rightly adjust-
ing taxation; he gave the strictest instructions to pre-
vent extortion on the part of the tax-gatherers, and in
many other respects displayed an enlightened and equita-
ble policy. Thus it happened that, in the fortieth year
of Akbar's reign, the empire had more than regained
all that it had lost, the recovered provinces being re-
duced, not to subjection only as before, but to a great
degree of peace, order, and contentment. Akbar's
method of dealing with what must always be the chief
difficulty of one who has to rule widely diverse races,
affords perhaps the crowning evidence of his wisdom
and moderation. In religion he was at first a Mussul-
man, but the intolerant exclusiveness of that creed was
quite foreign to his character. He conciliated the Hin-
doos by giving them freedom of worship; while at the same
time he strictly prohibited certain barbarous Brahminical
practices, such as trial by ordeal and the burning of
widows against their will. He also abólished all taxes
upon pilgrims as an interference with the liberty of
worship, and the capitation tax upon Hindoos, proba-
bly upon similar grounds. Matters like these gained
for him during his lifetime the title of “Guardian of
Mankind,” and caused him to be held up as a model
to Indian princes of later times, who in the matter of
religious toleration have only too seldom followed his
example. , Akbar was a munificent patron of literature.
He established schools throughout his empire for the
education of Hindoos as well as Moslems, and he gath-
ered around him many men of literary talent, among
whom may be mentioned the brothers Feizi and Abul-
fazl. It is also said that Akbar employed Jerome
Xavier, a Jesuit missionary, to translate the four Gos-
pels into Persian. The closing years of Akbar's reign
were rendered very unhappy by the misconduct of his
sons. Two of them died in youth, the victims of in-
temperance; and the third, Selim, afterwards the em-
peror Jehanghir, was frequently in rebellion against his
father. He died at Agra on the 13th October 1605.
His body was deposited in a magnificent mausoleum at
Sicandra, near Agra.
AKEN, or ACKEN, a town in Prussian Saxony, sit-
uated on the Elbe, 25 miles E.S.E. of Magdeburg,
close to the frontiers of Anhalt. It has manufactures of
cloth, leather, chemicals, and optical instruments; large
quantities of beetroot sugar are produced in the neigh-
borhood. Population (1871), 5274.
AKENSIDE, MARK. Like young Henry Kirke
White, the poet of the Pleasures of Zmagination was
the son of a butcher. He was born at Newcastle-on-
Tyne on November 9th, 1721. In his sixteenth year
he sent to the Gentleman's Magazine a copy of verses
entitled “The Virtuoso.” Sylvanus Urban graciously
printed the poem; but the old gentleman was not diffi-
cult to please. In his nineteenth year, being intended
for the clerical profession, he proceeded to the university
of Edinburgh; but within one session, like many others,
he changed his purpose, and transferred his name from
the theological to the medical classes. On his change
he honorably returned certain moneys which his fellow
Presbyterians had advanced towards his theological edu-
cation. He attended the university for only two years.
Some of his minor poems belong to this period, such as
his Ode “for the Winter Solstice,” the elegy called
“Love,” and the verses “to Cordelia.” In the summer
or autumn of 1743 Dodsley carried with him to Pope at
Twickenham a MS. for which the writer asked £120.
The oracle of Twickenham having read the poem, coun-
selled the publisher to make no niggardly offer, because
“this was no every-day writer.” The MS. was the
Pleasures of Imagination, which Dodsley published in
1744. In his twenty-third year the author, like Byron,
awoke to find himself famous. He went to Leyden,
and there pursued his medical studies with ardor. He
obtained the degree of M.D., May 16th, 1744; his
inaugural dissertation describing the formation and
growth of the human foetus with original observation
and acuteness. He now returned to England. He
chose Northampton as the place wherein he should com-
mence practice. It was an unfortunate selection. . At
Northampton Akenside wrote his “Epistle to Curio,”
which Lord Macaulay pronounced his best production,
as “indicating powers of elevated satire, which, if dili-
gently cultivated, might have disputed the pre-eminence
of Dryden.” Not succeeding in his profession at North-
ampton, he removed. In three years he left Hamp-
stead for London. He set up in Bloomsbury Square in
a “fine house,” and with an annuity of £300. In 1753
the university of Cambridge bestowed on him the de-
gree of doctor of medicine. In 1754 he was elected a
fellow of the College of Physicians. In 1765–6 he was
working upon the revised and enlarged copy of the
Pleasures of Imagination. His ſame was widening pro-
fessionally and poetically, when a putrid ſever carried
him off suddenly on June 23d, 1770.
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A K E — A L A
I 57
AKERBLAD, JAN DAVID (1760–1819), a learned
Swede, distinguished for his researches in Runic, Coptic,
Phoenician, and ancient Egyptian literature. After an
interval spent at Göttingen, he was appointed ambas-
sador to Paris. His last years were passed at Rome,
where he enjoyed a pension from the Duchess of Devon-
shire.
AKERMAN, a town of Russia in Europe, in the
province of Bessarabia, on a tongue of land projecting
into the estuary of the Dniester. Large quantities of salt
are obtained from the saline lakes in the neighborhood;
and corn, wine, wool and leather are among the other
exports. Akerman derives some historical celebrity
from the treaty concluded there in 1826 between Russia
and the Porte, securing considerable advantages to the
former. Population (1889), 35,600.
AKERMAN, JOHN YONGE, an antiquarian, dis-
tinguished chiefly in the department of numismatics,
was born in Wiltshire on the 12th June 1806. In 1848
he was elected secretary to the Society of Antiquaries,
an office which he was compelled to resign in 1860 on
account of failing health. He died on 18th November
*1873. Akerman published a considerable number of
works on his special subject, the most important being
a Catalogue of Æoman Coins. r
AKHALZIKH, a city of Georgia, in Asiatic Russia,
on an affluent of the Kur, I IO miles west of Tiflis.
It contains a strong castle, a college and library, and a
fine mosque, and has a considerable trade in silk, honey,
and wax. Population (1889), 22,3OO.
AKHISSAR, a town of Turkey in Asia, in Anatolia,
58 miles N.E. of Smyrna. The inhabitants are Greeks,
Armenians, and Turks. There are six or seven mosques,
which are all of marble. Cotton of excellent quality is
grown in the neighborhood, and the place is celebrated
for its scarlet dyes. Population, about 6000.
AKHTYRKA, a town of Russia in Europe, in the
Ukraine, situated on a river of the same name, 45 miles
N.W. of Kharkov. It has eight churches, one of
which, containing an image of the Virgin, is held in
great veneration. The town is enclosed by ditches;
and the environs are fertile, the orchards producing ex-
cellent fruit. There are some manufacturers of light
woollen stuffs, and a great market is held annually in
May. Population (1889), 25,250.
AKIBA, BEN JOSEPH, a famous rabbi who flourished
about the close of the first and the beginning of the
second centuries. He became the chief teacher in the
rabbinical school of Jaffa, where, it is said, he had
24, ooo scholars. Whatever their number, it seems cer-
tain that among them was the celebrated Rabbi Meir,
and that through him and others Akiba exerted a great
influence on the development of the doctrines embodied
in the Talmud. He sided with Barchochebas in his re-
volt, recognized him as the Messiah, and acted as his
sword-bearer. Being taken prisoner by the Romans
under Julius Severus, he was flayed alive. . He is said
to have been a hundred and twenty years old at the time
of his death. .*
AKOLA, a district and city of British India. The
total area of the district contains about 2,697% square
miles, or 1,726,625 acres. The population of the dis-
trict numbers about 550,000 Souls, made up of various
races—Hindus, Mahometans, aborigines, Christians,
Parsees and Jews being the chief representatives.
The principal manufacture of the district is the
weaving of cotton. Carpets and coarse cloths are
woven in almost every village, with turbans at Bálápur,
and silk cloths for native women at Akolá and in the
larger towns. The principal agricultural products are
as follows:—Cotton, rice, Indian corn, indigo, oil seeds,
wheat, linseed, peas, tobacco and mustard.
| AKOLA Town, the headquarters of the district of
the same name, and also of the west Berar division of
the Haidarābād assigned territory, is situated on the
Nágpur extension of the Great Indian Peninsular rail-
way. A detachment of infantry is stationed at the
town. Population in 1889, 16,500.
A KRON, a flourishing city of Ohio, the capital of
Summit county, is situated at the junction of two canals.
and several railroads, 40 miles southeast of Cleveland,
and 246 northeast of Cincinnati. The city lies on a
high level, being about 400 feet above Lake Erie. It
is well built, and the population and prosperity of the
community are daily increasing. Among the public
buildings may be noticed the city hall and the public
schools, the latter of which are unsurpassed in any
city of equal size in the Union. In addition to the
common school system, the city has the advantage of a
college (Buchtel) of high standing. It also has a
public library of Io,000 volumes. The wants of the re-
ligious community are supplied by twenty-one churches.
The streets are lighted by electricity and the houses by
both gas and the former agent. An efficient electrical
street railway system, twelve miles in length, furnishes,
passenger transportation. An excellent fire depart-
ment is maintained at a cost annually of about $25,000,
while the police department, consisting of twenty-two.
men, costs about $20,000. The city receipts for the
fiscal year 1889–90 from all sources were $247,947.87,
while the expenditures for the same period were $219,-
872.51. The total rate of taxation for the last fiscal
year was 17 mills. The city has an efficient municipal
administration consisting of mayor and council, to-
gether with the usual department officers. There is
Some water-power here, which has been utilized to a
limited extent. The banking and telegraph facilities of
the city are good. Population (1890 census), 27,702.
AK–SU, a town of Chinese Turkestan. It has a
flourishing trade, and is resorted to for purposes of com-
merce by caravans from all parts of Central Asia. There
are some cotton manufactures; and the place is cele-
brated for its richly-ornamented saddlery made from
deer-skin. Population, 30,000.
AKYAB, a district and city within the Arákán divis-
ion of British Burmah. In 1871 the frontier of hill
tracts of the district were placed under a special admin-
istration, with a view to the better government of the
wild tribes which inhabit them. The district passed
into the hands of the British, together with the rest of
Arákán division, at the close of the first Burmese war
of 1825. Population, 300,000.
AKYAB, Town and Port, is the chief town of the
district of the same name, and the most flourishing city
of the Arákán division. Population (1889), 22,000. It
has connection with Calcutta by steamer. The princi-
pal export is rice. -
ALABAMA, one of the Southern states of the
North American Union. Its length is 330 miles, aver-
age breadth 154, and area .50,722 Square miles. The
Alleghany range stretches into the northern portion of
the state, but the elevation is nowhere great. The Ala-
bama is the chief river of the state. It is formed by
the junction of the Coosa and the Talapoosa, which
unite about 10 miles above the city of Montgomery.
Forty-five miles above Mobile the Alabama is joined by
the Tombigbee, and from that point is known as the
Mobile River. It is navigable from Mobile to
Wetumpka, on the Coosa, some 460 miles. The Tom-
bigbee is navigable to Columbus, and the Black War-
rior, one of its chief tributaries, to Tuscaloosa. The
Tennessee flows through the northern portion of the
state, and the Chattahoochee forms part of its eastern .
boundary. The climate of Alabama is semi-tropical. .
I 58
A L A
The temperature ranges from 82° to 18° Fahr. in win-
ter, and in summer from IoS9 to 609; the mean tem-
perature for the year being a little over 600. The aver-
age severity of the winter months is considered to have
increased—a result due, it is said, mainly to the ſelling
of the forests, which gives more unrestricted scope to
the cold north-west winds from the Rocky Mountains.
Alabama possesses a rich soil of varied character, and
produces corn and cotton in abundance. Of the former
there is an average crop of 35,000,000 bushels, and of
the latter nearly 1,000,000 bales are annually produced.
Wheat, oats, and hay also form important articles of
agricultural production. The State is heavily timbered,
especially in the southern tier of counties.
The “Piney Woods” also afford a large supply of
naval stores. Shipments of cotton are made from
Mobile, and through Savannah, Ga., New Orleans, and
Charleston, S. C. Rice and sugar cane, sweet potatoes,
and all kinds of vegetables and fruits are abundant, and
some tobacco is grown in the north. There is an
abundant rainfall, aggregating fifty to fifty-four inches
per annum, and well distributed throughout the seasons.
Much attention is given to stock-raising. The returns
of the department of agriculture show 150,000 horses;
140,000 mules, 320,000 milch cows, 500,000 oxen and
other cattle, 325,000 sheep, and over 1,500,000 hogs.
From Mobile alone more than 240,000 bales of cotton
and 50,000,000 feet of lumber were shipped in 1889.
The abundant mineral resources of Alabama were
practically unknown until a very few years ago, but
have been developed wonderfully during the last decade.
Coal is found in vast deposts, side by side with beds of
limestone and iron ore of enormous extent. In the
valleys of the Tennessee and upper Alabama rivers,
such enterprising cities as BIRMINGHAM (q.v.), BESE-
MER (q.v.), Sheffield, Roanoke, Huntsville, Decatur, and
others, ranking with the most energetic and rapidly-
growing mining and manufacturing cities of the North,
have sprung from nothing or from petty villages. It
is claimed that pig iron can be manufactured more
cheaply in Alabama than anywhere else in the Union.
There are large manufactures of cotton goods, and many
varied industries have been introduced. The railway
system has been rapidly extended since the war. In
1889 there were 2,985 miles of completed railroad,
assessed for purposes of State taxationatover:$40,000,000.
The population of Alabama, 1,262,505 in 1880,
increased 19.4 per cent. during the decade, and the
census of 1890 returns it at 1,508,073. There are over
half a million colored people in the State. The chief
towns are MONTGOMERY (7.7).), the capital, population,
21,290; Mobile, 41,000; Birmingham, 26, 24.I, Bessemer,
Anniston, and Huntsville. Mobile is the only seaport.
Alabama returns eight members to congress. The
State officers are governor, secretary of state, treasurer,
auditor, attorney-general, superintendent of public
instruction, and commissioner of agriculture, and there
is an elective board of railroad commissioners. The
State Senate consists of thirty-three members, elected
for four years, one-half returned every two years.
The House of Representatives consists of not more
than IOO members, elected for two years, and every
county is entitled to at least one representative. On
January I, 1889, there was a balance of $153,373 in the
State treasury. The bonded debt on January 1, 1890,
was $9,214,300; most of which bears 4 per cent.
interest. The tax rate this year is 4% mills, and will
be further reduced 9% mill in 1891.
There is a good school system, supplemented by
State-aided universities, and normal and training
schools. In the larger cities there are separate school
tlistricts, with 8,678 pupils. Aside from these, there
were in 1889, 3,744 schools for white, and 1,958 for
colored children. The enrollment included 159,671
white and 98,919 colored pupils, and the average daily
attendance was 98,675 white and 66,424 colored. The
schools were open on the average seventy days in the
year, and 5,793 teachers were employed. The total
available school fund was $540,000, to which the legis-
lature added $100,000. In the cities $180,000 was also
raised by local taxation for school purposes.
Alabama was first explored by the Spaniards under
De Soto, in 1541. It was originally included within the
domain of Georgia, but in 1802 became part of the
Territory of Mississippi. Early in this century the set-
tlers met with considerable trouble at the hands of the
Creek Indians, but in 1813 an expedition was sent
against them, and Gen. Andrew Jackson completely
defeated them at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. The
State was admitted to the Union in 1819, having been
for two years a Territory under its present name.
Mobile was founded by the French in 1711. Prior to
the war, Alabama ranked for a time first among the
cotton-producing States, and grew rapidly in wealth.
Early in 1861 an ordinance of secession was adopted.”
and Montgomery was made the temporary capital of the
Confederacy. The State was the theater of war in 1862,
and in 1864 Mobile was the scene of a naval battle, and
her forts were silenced by Farragut. In 1865 Mobile,
Selma, and Montgomery were taken by Federal troops,
and a provisional governor was appointed by President
Johnson later in that year. In 1868 a new constitution
was adopted, and the State was readmitted to repre-
sentation in congress. #
ALABASTER, a name properly restricted to the
fine massive variety of gypsum, or sulphate of lime, which
is used in the manufacture of ornamental vases, stat-
uettes, clock-frames, etc. When pure it is of a brilliant
pearly-white luster, so very soft as to be easily seratched
by the nail, and is soluble to a slight extent in water.
ALABASTER, WILLIAM, D.D., poet and scholar.
He was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk, England, about
I 567, was educated at Westminster School, and went
thence to Trinity College, Cambridge. His best known
verse is a Latin tragedy called Roxazza; this is praised
by Fuller, and is regarded by Dr. Johnson as the only
Latin verse in England worthy to be named previous to
Milton. Alabaster died about 1640.
ALACRANES, a group of coral reefs and islands in
the Gulf of Mexico, 80 miles off the north coast of Yuca-
tan, and extending 14 miles from north to South, and II
from east to west. On the 12th February 1847 the mail
steamer Tweed was wrecked on the Alacranes; and in
January 1849 a similar disaster befell the Forth, belong-
ing to the same company.
ALAGOAS, a maritime province of Brazil, district of
Pernambuco. It embraces an area of 15,036 Square
miles. The country, particularly in the north-west, is
very mountainous, but at the same time richly wooded.
The chief articles of produce and export are sugar-cane,
rice, cotton, hides, and rosewood. Tropical fruits of all
kinds are produced in abundance, and the forests, be-
sides admirable timber, yield various dyes and drugs.
The people are chiefly engaged in agriculture, and there
are no manufactures of importance. The population of
the province is 300,000. The town of ALAGOAS, for-
merly the capital of the province, is situated on Lake
Manguaba. It has déclined considerably since the trans-
fer of the local government to Maceio. Population, in-
cluding district, 12,OOO.
ALAIN DE LILLE (ALANUS AB INSULIS), theo-
logian and ecclesiastic, born at Lille or Ryssel about the
year II 14. All that can be said with certainty is that he
was a Cistercian monk. It is probable that he passed a
A L A
I 59
f
great part of his life in England, though he ended his
days in the abbey of Citeaux. His works are very num-
erous, the most important of them being entitled Anti-
Claudianus, size de Officio Viri Boni et Perfect.
ALAIS, a flourishing town of France, in the depart-
ment of the Gard, on the right bank of the Gardon, at
the foot of the Cevennes. In the 17th century it was
a stronghold of French Protestants. and was taken by
Louis XIII. in 1629.
ALAJU ELA, a city in the state of Costa Rica, Cen-
tral America. It is a place of considerable trade, and is
connected by a mule road with the port of Puntas
Arenas, the only good harbor possessed by Costa Rica on
the Pacific Ocean. The sugar-cane is cultivated in the
neighborhood. Population, 12,575.
ALA MANNI, or ALEMANNI, LUIGI, an Italian
statesman and poet, was born at Florence in 1495. He
was a favorite with Francis I. of France, who sent him
as ambassador to Charles V., after the peace of Crespi,
in 1544.
After the death of Francis, Alamanni enjoyed the con-
fidence of his successor Henry II., and in 1551 was sent
by him as his ambassador to Genoa. He died at
Amboise in 1556. He wrote a large number of poems,
distinguished by the purity and excellence of their style.
A1AMEDA, a city of Alameda county, Cal., occu-
pies a peninsula, about 2,300 acres in extent, on the
east side of San Francisco Bay, eight miles from the
city of San Francisco, and is accounted one of the best
situated towns in that portion of the State. The streets
are broad and shaded with magnificent live oaks, while
the structures in both the business/and residence portion
are commodious and handsomely appointed. It con-
tains six churches, one weekly and one semi-weekly
paper, schools, halls, etc., lumber and oil mills, rope
factories, and other works. It has street railways, and
is connected with Oakland and San Francisco by rail
and water. Population, 1890, IO,OOO.
ALAMO, THE, the name of a castle or fortress in
the city of San Antonio, Texas, in which occurred, dur-
ing the war for Texan independence, the massacre of all its
surviving garrison. The fortress, occupied by a devoted
band of Texans, had held out for a Gonsiderable time
against a vastly larger number of Mexicans under Gen-
eral Santa Aña, but was carried by Storm at last, and
all its occupants butchered —but one person, a female
infant, escaping. Among the slain were David Crockett
and Col. James Bowie.
ALAMOS, Los, a town of Mexico, in the state of
Sinaloa; provisions are dear and water scarce. The
surrounding district contains many rich silver mines.
Of the population, amounting to about 10,000, a large
proportion are employed in the mines.
ALAMOS DE BARRIENTOS, DON BALTHAZAR,
a Spanish philologist, born at Medina del Campo, in
Castile, about 1550. He died at the age of eighty-five.
ALAN, ALLEN, or ALLYN, WILLIAM (1532–94), car-
dinal, was born at Rossall in Lancashire. He studied
at Oriel College, Oxford, and was appointed principal
of St. Mary’s Hall in 1556. Two years later he was
made a canon of York; but being opposed to the
Reformation, was forced to flee to Louvain on the
accession of Elizabeth. He returned to England after
a time, and for some years resided chiefly at Oxford;
but his proselytising zeal being discovered, necessitated
a second flight. The great aim of his life seems to have
been to restore the papal supremacy in England. For
this purpose he founded the college at Douay, and sent
over the Jesuit priests trained there to his native land.
He was, of course, a bitter enemy of Elizabeth, who
expelled his emissaries, and even caused some of them
to be put to death. He was one of the chief intriguers
in the Spanish plot which led to the fitting out of the
Armada.
ALAND ISLANDS, an archipelago at the entrance
to the Gulf of Bothnia. The group consists of nearly
3oo islands, of which about 8o are inhabited, the
remainder being desolate rocks. They formerly
belonged to Sweden; and in the neighborhood the first
victory of the Russian fleet over the Swedes was gained
by Peter the Great in 1714. They finally passed into
the possession of Russia in 1809. The inhabitants,
amounting to about 16,000, are mostly of Swedish
descent, and are hardy seamen and fishermen.
ALANI, a number of nomadic tribes of eastern
origin, who spread themselves over Europe during the
decline of the Roman empire. It is supposed that
their first encounter with the Romans was during the
Mithridatic war, when Pompey led an expedition into
the Caucasus. In March 276 A. D. they received a
decisive check in an attempt to make their way east-
ward into Persia, being defeated by the emperor
Tacitus, who forced them to recross the Phasis. The
race thereupon divided, some retiring to the east, while
the great majority joined their conquerers in an inva-
sion of the kingdom of the Goths. In 418, however,
they were attacked and defeated by Wallia, king of the
Visigoths, with whom they had quarrelled. Their king,
Ataces, was slain in the battle, and they became sub-
ject to Gunderic, king of the Vandals, their national
independence being lost. In 572 they were allied with
the Armenians under King Saroes. In 1237 they were
so completely subjugated by Batu-Khan that their very
name disappears in subsequent history.
ALARCON, HERNANDO DE, a Spanish navigator of
the 16th century, known only in connection with the
expedition to the coast of California, of which he was
leader. He set sail on the 9th of May 1540, with
orders from the Spanish court to await at a certain point
on the coast the arrival of an expedition by land under
the command of Vasquez de Coronado. The junction
was not effected, though Alarcon reached the appointed
place and left letters, which were afterwards found by
Diaz, another explorer. Alarcon was the first to de-
termine with certainty that Lower California was a
peninsula and not an island, as had been supposed.
ALARCON Y MENDOZA, JUAN RUIz DE, one of
the most distinguished Spanish dramatists, born at
Tasco in Mexico about the close of the 16th century,
was descended from a noble family belonging to Alar-
con in Cuenca. In 1622 he had taken up his residence
at Madrid, and in 1628 he was appointed to the office of
relator (reporter) of the royal council of the Indies,
which afforded him a competency. In the same year he
published the first volume of his comedies, dedicating it
to “the rabble” in a daringly contemptuous address.
A further injustice was done him in the piracy of his
works by other and better known authors than himself.
To such an extent was this carried that Alarcon's repu-
tation as a dramatist was almost extinct even before the
close of his life, and it is only quite recently that it has
been revived. The date of his death is given, on doubt-
ful authority, as 1639. He is distinguished by the cor-
rectness of his language, the harmony of his verse, and
the elevation of his sentiment.
ALARIC (Al-ric, i.e., All rich), a chief, and after-
wards king of the Visigoths, was born of the noble
family of Balti (blatha, bold). He first appears in his-
tory (394 A.D.) as a commander in the army of subju-
gated Goths whom the Emperor Theodosius employed
in his war with Eugenius. On the death of Theodosius
in 395 the Goths asserted their independence, and under
the leadership of Alaric made an incursion from Thrace,
where they had been located, into the Morea. Athens
I6O
A L A
yielded to them without resistance, and Alaric enriched
himself with the movable treasures of the city. The
Gothic chief was chosen king by his people, and accord-
ingly about the year 400 A.D. he set out to invade the
Empire of the West. Alaric marched upon Rome (408)
by the Via Flaminia, and laid siege to the city. On
coming to treat with him, the Romans found his de-
mands so extravagant that they threatened a desperate
resistance, to which Alaric made the well-known reply,
“The closer hay is pressed, the easier is it mown.” At
last the barbarian was induced to retire by the promise
of 5000 pounds of gold and 30,000 pounds of silver, be-
sides other treasure. The respite, however, was but
for a time. Honorius, who had left Rome for Ravenna,
refused to ratify by treaty certain conditions, moderate
in themselves, on which Alaric firmly insisted, and the
capital was again at the mercy of the enemy. With
commendable forbearance, Alaric contented himself at
first with taking possession of Ostia, from which he
summoned the city to surrender, threatening the imme-
diate destruction of the food stores in case of refusal.
The terrified people at once opened their gates, and
agreed that the conqueror should appoint another em-
peror in place of Honorius. Alaric's choice fell upon
Attalus, the prefect of the city, who, though well re-
ceived at first, soon proved himself thoroughly incom-
petent, and Honorius had to be restored. While the
conferences as to the restoration were still being carried
on at Ravenna, the treachery of Honorius occasioned
yet another and more disastrous siege of Rome by the
Goths. Sarus, a barbarian and a hereditary enemy of
the house of Balti, was permitted by the emperor to
attack the camp of the Goths and return in triumph to
Ravenna. Alaric was naturally indignant, laid siege to
Rome for the third time, and gained an entrance by the
Salarian gate on the night of the 24th August 410. For
six days the city was given over to the horrors of a
pillage, which the humane orders of Alaric did but little
to mitigate. On the 26th August Alaric withdrew his
troops from Rome, and led them into southern Italy,
which he ravaged for several months. Towards the
close of the year, while engaged in the siege of Cosen-
tia (Cosenza), he was seized with an illness which proved
fatal after a very short duration. He was buried with
his treasures in the bed of the river Busentinus, which
was diverted from its channel for that purpose, and all
the prisoners who were engaged in the work were put
to death in order that the place of his sepulture might
remain unknown.
ALARIC II., eighth king of the Goths in Spain,
succeeded his father Euric or Evaric about 484. His
dominions not only included the greater part of Spain,
but extended into Gaul as far as the rivers Rhone and
Loire. In religion Alaric was an Arian. Clovis,
desiring to obtain the Gothic provinee in Gaul, found a
pretext for war in the Arianism of Alaric. The inter-
vention of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths and
father-in-law of Alaric, proved unavailing. The two
armies met in 507 at Voglade, near Poitiers, where the
Goths were defeated, and their king, who took flight,
was overtaken and slain by Clovis himself.
ALASCO, JOHN, a Polish nobleman, born in 1499,
who travelled extensively, in his youth, and during a
residence in Zurich imbibed the doctrines of the Ref-
ormation from Zwingli. At Basel in 1525 he had fre-
quent intercourse with Erasmus, who held him in great
esteem and bequeathed his library to him. Alasco
died in 1560.
ALA-SHEHR, a city of Asiatic Turkey. The city
occupies the site of the ancient Philadelphia, one of
the “seven churches in Asia” of the Apocalypse.
Ala-Shehr has an active trade, and the population is
about 18,000. *
ALASKA, one of the territories of the United
States, is situated on the northwestern coast of
America, and, besides the mainland, comprises a
great number of islands in the Pacific Ocean. The
Arctic Ocean forms its northern boundary, while on the
east lie the British possessions of the Northwest
Provinces and British Columbia; the south and west are
covered by the Pacific Ocean, Behring's Sea and the
Arctic Ocean. Its area is estimated at about 535,000
square miles, thus being equal in extent to Great
Britain, Ireland, France and Spain. The northern
portion of the territory consists of broken, mountain-
ous lands, interspersed with numerous lakes and rivers,.
with a vast expanse of swamp lands. Owing to its
high latitude the climate of this portion of the country
is excessively severe in winter, while the summer season
is rendered unendurable from the vast clouds of insects:
and the volume of effluvia given out by the thaw.
The river system of this portion of the territory is on
a grand scale; the Yukon river and its tributaries dis-
charging, it is claimed, more water than the Mississippi
into the sea. The population is varied and consists of
the Esquimaux in the north, and the Athabascans (North
Amercan Indians) in the south and southwest. The
chief resources of the inhabitants are the fur trade and
fisheries. Commerce is inconsiderable, and is almost
entirely obstructed owing to the lack of internal trans-
portation and the dearth of good harbors and navigable
waters on the coast. -.
The Aleutian Islands and a portion of the peninsula
of Alaska form a second section or division of the
territory. The topography of the country is distinct-
ively mountainous and volcanic. The population in
this portion of the country is very sparse, and the
characteristics of the inhabitants seem to be rather
Asiatic than American; their principal industry is the
seal fishery—the Pribyloff Islands in Behring Sea being
the most productive seal fishery in the world at the
present time. Still another section of the country,
with distinctive characteristics, is found in the South-
eastern portion of the territory. This region comprises.
a narrow strip of mainland, together with the Alex-
ander Archipelago, and is of a glacial character. The
climate is very mild, in view of the high latitude, but
the warm current of the ocean on the contiguous coast
induces excessive rains. The country is heavily tim-
bered, and the waters abound in fish of almost every
variety. The population here is very scant and con-
sists of many diverse races—Indians, Americans, Rus:
sians, etc. The mineral productions are gold, in limited
quantities, and coal of a very poor quality. Alaska,
owing to the poor quality of its soil, can never be an
agricultural country, and the broken, rocky nature of
its topography will ever prevent the domestication of a
large population. Sheep cannot be raised, on account
of the excessive moisture of the climate, and only a few
cattle are at present to be found. But few vegetables.
and potatoes are grown.
The fauna of the country consists mostly of fur-
bearing animals, but owing to the climate, with but few
exceptions, their furs are regarded as inferior to those
of other portions of Arctic America. The most com-
mon animals are reindeer, moose, Rocky Mountain
sheep, bears, wolves, foxes, rats, ermines, minks, sables,
lynxes, beavers, wolverines, squirrels, hares, porcupines,
marmots, otters, walruses, and seals of various kinds.
Among the most important food fishes are the cod,
halibut, herring, and salmon of various species.
The principal settlements are small and nearly all of
them are on the coast. Sitka is the capital, and the
rºsºfºrsº
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Copyright, 1890, by Rand, McNally & Co.
Greenwich
/Longitude

A LA —
, I61
A L B
other places, which can be called towns are Fort
Wrangell, Bilkofsky, Illolook, and Michaelofsky.
The population of the country in 1889 was estimated
at 49,000, the white population having of late rapidly
increased, owing to the attraction of the various in-
dustries newly begun.
The northwest coast of this part of America was dis-
covered and explored by a Russian expedition under
Behring in 1741; and at subsequent periods settlements
were made by the Russians at various places, chiefly for
the prosecution of the fur trade. In 1799 the territory
was granted to a Russo-American fur company by the
Emperor Paul VIII., and in 1839 the charter of the
company was renewed. New Archangel was the prin-
cipal settlement, but the company had about forty sta-
tions. They exported annually 25,000 skins of the seal,
Sea-Otter, beaver, etc., besides about 20,000 sea-horse
teeth. The privileges of the company expired in 1863;
and in 1867 the whole Russian possessions in America
were ceded to the United States for a money payment
of $7,200,000. The treaty was signed on March 30,
and ratified on June 20, 1867; and on October 9th fol-
lowing, the possession of the country was formerly
made over to a military force of the United States at
New Archangel.
ALATRI. A town of Italy. Population of com-
mune, I I,370.
ALAVA, one of the Basque provinces, in the north
of Spain, with an area of about 1,200 square miles. The
surface of Alava is very mountainous, especially on the
north, where a part of Pyrenees forms its natural
boundary. The soil in the valleys is fertile, yielding
wheat, barley, maize, flax, hemp, and fruits. Oil, and
a poor kind of wine called chacoli, are also produced.
Population in 1889, 150,000.
ALAVA, DON MIGUEL RICARDOD', a Spanish general
and statesman, born at Vittoria in 1771. In politics he
followed a very devious course. After the insurrection
of La Granja he refused to sign the constitution of
1812, and was obliged to retire to France, where he
died in 1843.
ALAY, a Turkish ceremony observed on the assem-
bling of the forces at the outbreak of war. Its essen-
tial feature is the public display of the sacred standard
of Mahomet, which may be seen only by Moslems and
touched only by the emirs.
ALB, or ALBE, a vestment of white linen, hanging
down to the feet, worn by priests at all the more solemn
services of the church. It corresponds to the surplice
of the English clergy, the difference being that the alb
is closer in the sleeves, and bound at the waist by a
girdle.
ALBA, the ancient Alba Pompeia, a town of Italy.
It has a large trade in cattle, and the surrounding dis-
trict is very fertile, producing silk, wine, oil, grain, and
fruits, and also marble and rock-salt. Population of
the commune (1885), 13,200.
ALBA LONGA, the most ancient town in Latium.
It derived its name probably from its elevated or Alpine
situation. Fourteen kings, whose names are all pre-
served, are said to have reigned over it in succession.
The city was destroyed by the Romans under Tullus
Hostilius, and its inhabitants removed to Rome.
ALBACETE, one of the new provinces of Spain, was
formed in 1833 out of districts taken from Murcia and
New Castile. The area is 5,971 square miles. Agricult-
ure is in a tolerably prosperous state, more advanced
than in the center of Castile. Cereals, pulse, and fruits
of all kinds are produced, as well as wine of fair quality,
and excellent honey. Saffron also is produced in large
quantities, and some attention is given to the keeping of
silk-worms. Many of the inhabitants devote themselves
-- - - ..º.
to the rearing of cattle, sheep, and goats.
'Albacete are in request for bull-fights.
1889, 300,000.
ALBACETE, a town of Spain, capital of the above pro-
vince, is situated about 140 miles S.E. of Madrid, and
is a station on the railway between Madrid and Valencia.
It has considerable trade in saffron and in the agricul-
tural products of the district. A great market, chiefly
for the sale of cattle, is held annually in September, and
extends over several days. Albacete is famous for its
daggers, which are held in high repute and much worn
by the Spaniards. They are formidable weapons, but
with richly-ornamented handles, and frequently bear
proverbial inscriptions suitable to their murderous ap-
pearance. Population, 17,900.
ALBAN, St., usually styled the protomartyr of Brit-
ain, was born at Verulamium, and flourished towards
the end of the third century. Alban suffered martyrdom
during the great persecution in the reign of Diocletian.
ALBANI, FRANCEsco (1578–1660), a celebrated
Italian painter, was born at Bologna. His father was,
a silk merchant. His first master was Denis Calvart,
with whom Guido Reni was at the same time a pupil.
Albani, after having greatly improved himself in the
school of the Caracci, went to Rome, where he opened
an academy and resided for many years. His best
frescoes are those on mythological subjects, of which
there is a large number in the Verospi Palace, now
Torlonia. His second wife and children were very
beautiful, and served him for models. The hearning
displayed in the composition of his pictures, and their
minute elaboration and exquisite finish, gave them great
celebrity, and entitle them to a distinctive place among
the products of the Bolognese school.
A great number of his works are at Bologna: Among
the most celebrated of his pictures are the “Four
Seasons;” “Diana and Venus,” in the Florentinegallery;
the “Toilet of Venus,” in the Louvre; “Venus landing
at Cythera,” in the Ghigi palace at Rome, &c. Among
the best of his sacred subjects are a “St. Sebastian”
and an “Assumption of the Virgin,” both in the church
of St. Sebastian at Rome. He was among the first of
the Italian painters to devote himself to the painting of
cabinet pictures.
ALBANIA, a country of considerable extent, which
though frequently ruled by turbulent and nearly inde-
pendent chiefs, ranks as one of the provinces of the
Turkish empire. The superficial area of Albania is
estimated at about 18,944 square miles, and it has a
coast-line of about 280 miles from north to south, with-
out reckoning indentations, &c. It nowhere extends
more than Ioo miles from the sea, and in the Southern
part not more than 30 miles.
The inhabitants of Albania are estimated at 1,200,000,
of whom a considerable proportion are Turks and
Greeks; but the basis of the population consists of the
original race, called Arnauts. About half of the entire
population are Mahometans; of the other moiety, about
520,000 belong to the Greek Church, and the remainder
to the Latin Church. The native Albanian is of middle
stature; his face is oval, with high cheek-bones; his
neck long; his chest full and broad. His air is erect
and majestic to a degree which never fails to strike the
traveller. He holds in utter contempt that dissimula-
tion which is characteristic of the Greek, and, unlike
the Turk, he is gay, lively, and active. Averse, how-
ever, to regular industry, his whole delight is in arms
and plunder.
This fierce and haughty race display a greater degree
of contempt for the female sex than is usual even among
the most barbarous nations. The females are literally
regarded as inferior animals, and treated accordingly;
The bulls of
Population in
II A
-I62
A L B
•but in the courtry districts they are not confined or
veiled, as is customary in Mahometan countries.
The national costume of the Albanians is handsome
in appearance, and bears some resemblance to the High-
land dress. It consists of a cotton shirt, a white woolen
or kilt, which reaches to the knees, and a jacket.
ALBANIA, in Ancient Geography, a country of
Asia. The ancient historians describe the Albanians as
tall, strong-bodied, and, generally speaking, of a very
graceful appearance. They became known to the Ro-
mans during Pompey's expedition in pursuit of Mith-
ridates (65 B. C.), against which they opposed a force of
60,000 infantry and 22,000 cavalry.
ALBANO, a town and lake in the Campagna di
Roma, Italy, about 14 miles S. E. of Rome. It is well
built, and the Roman aqueduct and other monuments of
antiquity are in tolerable preservation. It contains a
cathedral, and there are many handsome villas of the
Roman nobles in the vicinity. Population, 6,400.
ALBANY, the county seat of Lynn county, Oregon,
is situated on the east bank of the Willamette river,
twenty-eight miles south of Salem and eighty-one miles
southwest of Portland, at the junction of the Oregon
and California and Oregon Pacific railroads. The
country in the vicinity is well cultivated and highly pro-
ductive, and Albany is made the shipping point for the
produce, as also the supply depot for the residents of a
large area. The city contains three banks, one daily
and two weekly papers, also a periodical issued monthly,
seven churches, district schools, and the Albany Col-
legiate Institute, hotels, public halls, private residences,
stores, etc., besides manufactures of woolens, iron, lum-
ber, flour, furniture, sash, doors and blinds, etc. The
population in 1890 was 5,000.
ALBANY, a city of the United States, capital of the
State of New York and of the county of Albany, pictur-
resquely situated in a beautiful and fertile country on the
‘western bank of the Hudson, 145 miles from New York.
Albany is an important center of trade, being situated
at the point where the united Erie and Champlain canals
join the Hudson, and possessing good railway commu-
nication with most cities of the United States. The chief
articles of commerce are timber, wheat, barley, wool,
and tobacco, enormous quantities of which, especially of
the first-mentioned, pass through the city annually. Be-
sides its transit trade, its numerous foundries, its brew-
series, carriage and hat manufactories, and tanneries are
of importance. Albany was founded by the Dutch in
1623, and is thus one of the oldest European settlements
in the United States, dating sixteen years after that of
Jamestown in Virginia. It was captured by the British
in 1664, who changed its name from Beaverwyck or
Williamstadt in honor of the Duke of York and Al-
bâny. It received its charter in 1686, and became the
capital of the State of New York in 1797. Albany has
a fine city hall, a high school, one large and several
small public parks, a theater, an opera-house, and a
music hall, a celebrated county prison, Roman Catholic
and Episcopalian cathedrals, and many other handsome
churches; several academies and private schools, a noted
State normal School, a law school, a medical college,
an astronomical observatory, various hospitals and in-
firmaries, a large United States government building,
and a very costly and splendid State capitol, considered
the finest building of its class in the whole republic.
Population in 1890, 94,640.
ALBANY, the county seat of Dougherty county,
Ga., is situated on Flint river, at the head of navigation,
Io'7 miles from Macon. It is also on the southwestern
division of the Central Railroad of Georgia, and is an
important shipping point on the Savannah, Florida and
Western system. The city contains four banks, a
daily and weekly paper, eight churches; has a graded
school system, in addition to private schools and
academies; four hotels, an opera-house, public halls,
many stores, and handsome public buildings and private
residences. The manufactures carried on embrace car-
riages, lumber, sash, doors and blinds, foundry and
machine work, flour, oil, some agricultural implements,
etc. The population in 1890 was 6,ooo.
ALBANY, LOUISA MARIA CAROLINE, COUNTESS
of, daughter of Prince Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg-
Gedern, was born at Mons on the 27th September, 1753,
and assumed the title of Countess of Albany in 1772, when
she married the Pretender, Charles Edward, grandson
of James II., the deposed king of England. . In 1780
she obtained a legal separation, and entrusted herself to
the care of her husband’s brother, the Cardinal of York,
who placed her in a convent, and afterward removed
her to his own house at Rome. Here she was frequently
visited by the poet Alfieri, who made her the object of
what seems to have been the only pure attachment of
his life, and who, according to his own avowal, was in-
debted to her influence for all that was best in his works.
(See ALFIERI.) In 1788 she was freed from her bonds
by the death of the Pretender, and in the same year she
is said to have been secretly married to Alfieri. For the
remainder of her life she resided at Florence, where she
continued to be known as Countess of Albany, and dis-
tinguished herself as a patroness of literary men and
artists. She died in 1824.
ALBATEGNI, an Arabian astronomer. His astro-
nomical observations extended from 877 A.D. to his death
in 929, and were principally conducted at Rakkah or
Aracta, on the Euphrates, and at Antioch, in Syria.
ALBATROSS, a genus of aquatic birds closely allied
to the Petrels and Gulls. They have the beak large,
strong, and sharp-edged, the upper mandible terminat-
ing in a large hook; the wings are narrow and very
long; the feet have no hind toe, and the three anterior
toes are completely webbed. Of the three species that
the genus includes the best known is the common or
Wandering Albatross, which occurs in all parts of the
Southern Ocean, and in the seas that wash the coast of
Asia to the south of Behring Strait. It is the largest
and strongest of all sea-birds. Its strength of wing is
very great. It often accompanies a ship for days—not
merely following it, but wheeling in wide circles round
it—without ever being observed to alight on the water,
and continues its flight, apparently untired, in tempest-
uous as well as in moderate weather. It has even been
said to sleep on the wing.
ALBAY, a town of Luzon, the chief of the Philippine
Islands. It is the capital of the fertile province of the
same name, and the residence of the governor, and has
an active trade. Population, 13, I 15.
ALBERONI, GIULIo, cardinal and statesman, was
born near Piacenza, probably at the village of Fiorenzu-
ola, on the 31st May, 1664; died in 1752.
ALBERT (ALBRECHT) I., Duke of Austria, and
afterward King of Germany, born in 1248, was the
son of Rudolph of Hapsburg, the founder of the impe-
rial Austrian dynasty. Rudolph having acquired the
duchy of Austria by conquest, vested it in his son, with
consent of the electors, in 1282, and thus founded the
dynasty which still reigns. He also endeavored to
sécure for Albert the succession to the throne of Ger-
many, but was unsuccessful. On the death of his father
in 1291, Albert seized the insignia of sovereignty, and,
with characteristic presumption, declared himself king
of Germany, without regard to the decision of the
electors. Their choice fell (1292) upon Adolphus of
Nassau, and Albert, who was called to suppress a revolt
among his subjects in Switzerland, found it necessary to
A L B
163
acknowledge the superior claims of his rival. The
government of Adolphus having become displeasing to
the electors, they formally deposed him in 1298, and
named Albert his successor. As, however, the former
refused to recognise their verdict, the matter had to be
referred to the arbitrament of the sword. The forces
of the rival kings met at Gölheim, near Worms, where
the army of Adolphus was defeated, and he himself
slain by Albert's own hand. Upon this, Albert, wish-
ing probably to show his moderation, resigned his
claim to the throne; but he was re-elected, and crowned
at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 24th August 1298. Pope
Boniface VIII., however, denied the right of the elect-
ors, and refused to confirm their choice, alleging that
the empire belonged to him alone to hold or bestow
at his pleasure. In league with Philip the Fair of
France, Albert at first openly resisted the pope; but
soon finding it advisable to change his policy, he
deserted his ally, admitted the papal jurisdiction, and
was rewarded with the kingdom of the deposed
Philip. The attempt to bind his yoke more firmly upon
the Swiss cantons caused the revolt of Unterwalden,
Schwyz, and Uri, in January 1308, and thus laid the
foundation of the Swiss Confederation. It was while
endeavoring to check this revolt that Albert met his
death at the hand of his nephew, John of Habsburg,
whose claim to his father’s dominion of Swabia had
been refused in the most insulting terms by the king.
He died in the arms of a beggar woman, who happened
to be passing. -
ALBERT I., margrave of Brandenburg, surnamed
“The Bear,” from the heraldic emblem he assumed,
torn in I IO6, was the son of Otto the Rich, count of
Ballenstädt, by his marriage with Eilica, eldest daugh-
ter of the duke of Saxony. In 1121 he received from the
Emperor Lothario the marquisate of Lusatia, to be held
sin fief, and he served the empire faithfully in the war
with Bohemia in 1126. In 1131 Albert was deprived
of Lusatia. He still remained, however, loyal to the
empire, and received as a reward the margravate of
Brandenburg in 1134. The Emperor Conrad III. con-
ferred upon him Swabia in 1142. He died at Ballen-
städt on the 18th November 1170.
ALBERT, Margrave of Brandenburg and first Duke
of Prussia, third son of the Margrave Friedrich of Ans-
pach, was born on the 17th May 1490. His reign was
marked by zealous efforts, amid many difficulties, to
promote the welfare of his duchy. He interested himself
especially in the advancement of learning, inviting men
of letters to his court, and promoting the publication of
their writings. In 1544 he founded the university of
Königsberg, in spite of great opposition, chiefly from the
pope, Keen theological disputes between the professors
of this university were among the many troubles of his
later years. He died of the plague on the 20th of March
1568. His second wife, the Princess Anna Maria of
Brunswick, who had been attacked by the same disease,
survived him only a single day.
ALBERT, Cardinal Archbishop of Magdeburg and
Elector of Mentz, born 1489, was the youngest son of
John, Elector of Brandenburg. In 1513 he was conse-
crated archbishop of Magdeburg, and about the same
time he was chosen administrator of the diocese of Hal-
berstadt. For the pallium in connection with the ap-
pointment of archbishop the pope demanded the exorbi-
tant sum of 30,000 ducats, but enabled the archbishop
to recoup himself by granting him the privilege of sell-
ing indulgences throughout his diocese. It was his
employment of the Dominicar. Tetzel in this service
which, by calling forth Luther's famous ninety-five
theses, had so important an influence on the course of
-the Reformation. In 1518 he was created a cardinal as
a reward for his services to the Romish church. He
died at Mentz on the 24th September, I 545.
ALBERT (PRINCE), FRANCIS CHARLES A UGUS-
TUs ALBERT EMMANUEL, Prince Consort of England,
born at Rosenau on 26th August, 1819, was the second son
of the hereditary Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, by his
first wife, the Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.
The marriage of his parents proving an unhappy one,
time separated in 1824, and the young prince never again
saw his mother, who died in 1831. At the proper age
hy and his brother proceeded to the university of Bonn.
Prince Albert devoted himself especially to the natural
sciences, political economy, and philosophy, having for
teachers men of such world-wide fame as Fichte,
Schlegel, and Perthes. 4,
In 1836 the prince visited England in company with
his father, and met his future consort for the first time.
From the time of the queen's accession there seems to
have been a family understanding on the subject, though,
owing to the youth of the prince and his cousin, no
formal engagement was entered into till two years later.
In the winter of 1838–39 the prince travelled in Italy,
accompanied by Mr. Seymour, a young English gentle-
man. A year later the hopes of many were realized when,
on the 23d November, 1839, the queen announced to
the Privy Council her intended marriage with her cousin.
On the Ioth February, 1840, the marriage was celebrated
at the chapel-royal, St. James, amid universal rejoicings.
A few days before the event two bills had been passed
in parliament, one naturalizing the prince as a British
subject, and the other providing an annuity of £30,000
a year for the maintenance of his establishment. In
1857 he received by letters patent the formal title of
“Prince-Consort,” which was conferred upon him in
order to settle certain difficulties as to precedence that
had been raised at foreign courts.
It was in the prime of manhood and the full career of
his usefulness that the prince-consort was removed by
death. He had been greatly occupied during the autumn
of 1861 with the arrangements for the projected inter-
national exhibition, and it was just after returning from
one of the meetings in connection with it that he was
seized with his last illness. He died of typhoid fever on
the 14th of Deccember, 1861. Few have ever been more
sincerely or more universally mourned. The grief of
the queen was deep and ſasting, and the whole nation
sympathized in the truest sense with her in her sorrow.
ALBERT LEA, the capital of Freeborn county,
Minn., is a flourishing city of nearly 5,000 inhabitants,
situated on a small lake of the same name, 130 miles
west of La Crosse. It contains seven churches, a high
school, and several graded schools, two banks, foundries,
brickyards, breweries, flouring mills and planing mills.
It is an important shipping point for grain, and has five
elevators and good railroad connections. Two weekly
newspapers are published here. Albert Lea enjoys the
advantage of an especially fine location, and is a well-
built and handsome town. In 188o it had less than 2,000
inhabitants, and its growth has been steady and uniform.
ALBERT NYANZA, a large lake in East Central
Africa. Its surface is 2,720 feet above the level of the
sea. The White Nile, flowing in a northwesterly
direction from Lake Victoria Nyanza, enters Lake
Albert Nyanza, and issues from it near its northern
extremity.
ALBERTI, LEON BATTISTA, distinguished as a
painter, poet, philosopher, musician, and especially as
an architect, was descended from the noble family of the
Alberti, of Florence. He was born at Venice about the
year 1404. In music he was reputed one of the first or-
ganists of the age. He is generally regarded as one of
the restorers of the ancient style of architecture, and has
I64
A L B
been called by some writers the Florentine Vitruvius.
At Rimini he designed the celebrated church of San
Francesco, which is generally esteemed his finest work.
Alberti wrote works on sculpture, and painting, which
are highly esteemed; but his most celebrated treatise is
that on architecture, which has been translated into
Italian, French, Spanish, and English. He died at
Rome in 1472, or, according to others, in 1484.
ALBERTRANDY, JAN CHRzCICIEL, or JoHN
CHRISTIAN, historian, was born in Warsaw in 1731.
Educated in the public school of the Jesuits, he joined
their order in his fifteenth year, and gave such proof of
his ability that, at the early age of nineteen, he was ap-
pointed professor at the college of Pultusk. King Stan-
islaus Augustus appointed him, at the request of Lubien-
ski, keeper of his medals, and afterwards his reader and
librarian. The representations he made to the king as
to the extent and value of the materials for Polish history
that were scattered throughout the libraries of Rome, in-
duced Stanislaus to send him on a visit to Italy, in order
that he might collect these materials. He devoted three
years to the task. The Excerpta, all written with his
own hand, filled I IO volumes of manuscript. To com-
plete the collection, he subsequently visited Sweden,
where the difficulty of the work was greatly increased by
his being forbidden to copy any portions of the books or
manuscripts he consulted. An excellent memory, how-
ever, enabled him in great measure to overcome the diffi-
culty; and from the libraries of Stockholm and Upsala
he made extracts which increased the entire collection
to 200 volumes. In recognition of his merit the king
bestowed on him the bishopric of Zenopolis. He was
the first president of the Royal Society of the Friends of
Science in Warsaw, and took a large share in its pro-
ceedings up to the time of his death, which occurred on
the Ioth August 1808.
ALBERTUS MAGNUS, a celebrated scholastic
philosopher, was born of the noble family Von Bollstädt
at Lauingen in Suabia. The date of his birth is most
robably 1193. In 1223 he became a member of the
ominican order, and studied theology under its rules at
Bologna and elsewhere. Selected to fill the position of
lecturer at Cologne, where the order had a house, he
taught for several years there, at Regensburg, Freiburg,
Strasburg, and Hildesheim. In 1259 the people made
him bishop of Regensburg, which office he resigned
after three years. The remainder of his life he spent
partly in preaching throughout Bavaria and the adjoin-
ing districts; almost the last of his labors was the de-
fence of the orthodoxy of his former pupil, Thomas
Aquinas. He died in 1280, aged 87. Albert's works
have been published in twenty-one folios. He was the
most widely read and most learned man of his time.
ALBI, a city of France, capital of the department of
the Tarn, is situated on the river Tarn, 41 miles N.E.
of Toulouse. It is a place of great antiquity, and was a
stronghold of the early French Protestants, giving its
name to the Albigenses. Albi has woollen and linen
manufactures; coal, iron, and copper are wrought in
the vicinity; and the surrounding district is very fertile,
pºsing much grain and fruit. Population (1872),
I 7,469.
ALBIGENSES, a sect opposed to the Church of
Rome. The Albigenses were kindred in origin and
more or less similar in doctrine to the sects known in
Italy as Paterins, in Germany as Catharists, and in
France as Bulgarians, but they are not to be entirely
identified with any of these. Still less ought they to be
confounded, as has frequently been the case, with the
Waldenses, who first appear at a later period in history,
and are materially different in their doctrinal views.
The descent of the Albigenses may be traced with tol-
erable distinctness from the Paulicians, a sect that
sprang into existence in the Eastern Church during the
6th century. (See PAULIcIANs.)
ALBINO. The name Albinism, or Leucopathia, is
applied to a remarkable peculiarity in the physical con-
stitution of certain individuals, which consists, in the
skin and hair being perfectly white. Albinism is most
common and most marked in the negro and Indian
races, but it occurs in all parts of the world and among
all the varieties of the human race. The appearance
arises from the absence of the minute particles of color-
ing matter which ordinarily occur in the lowest and last.
deposited layers of the epidermis or outer skin, and to
the presence of which the skin owes its color. With
very rare exceptions, it affects the entire body, and con-
tinues through life. The skin of the albino is of a dull,
milky or pearly color, unrelieved by the slightest tint
of red or brown, and is generally of rough texture.
All the hair on the body is of the same dull hue, and is
commonly soft and silky. Another peculiarity that
invariably accompanies this whiteness of skin and hair
is an affection of the eyes: the pupil is a bright red,
and the iris that surrounds it is of a pale rose color.
ALBINUS (originally WEISS), BERNARD SIEGFRIED,
a celebrated anatomist, born in 1697 at Frankfort-on-
the-Oder. He died in 1770.
ALBION is a post-village of Calhoun county,
Mich., and is situated on the Kalamazoo river, twenty
miles west of Jackson, and forty miles southwest of
Lansing. It is at the intersection of two important
railroads, and is a busy town of 4,000 inhabitants.
Albion contains six churches, one national and two
other banks, several schools, and a public library.
Two weekly newspapers are published, and there
are manufactories of agricultural implements, sash,
doors and binds, wind-mills, and machinery. , Albion is
also the seat of a Methodist institution of learning,
Albion College, founded in 1860, which has over 200.
students.
ALBION, the capital of Orleans county, N. Y., is
eligibly situated on the Erie canal, thirty miles west of
Rochester, and fifty-two miles northeast of Buffalo. It
has good railroad service, contains two national banks,
two newspaper offices, six churches, and a full comple-
ment of schools. It is also the seat of the Albion
Academy, of the Phipps Union Seminary, and of a
Roman Catholic academy. The principal industry is
the milling of flour, and there are also manufactures of
iron and other articles. The population (1890) is re-
turned at 4,600; that of the township is estimated at
6,000. -
ALBORNOZ, GIL ALVAREZ CARILLO DE, a cardinal
of Spain, was born at Cuença early in the 14th century,
and died at Viterbo in 1367.
ALBRECHTSBERGER, JoHANN GEORG, a celer
brated musician, born at Kloster-Neuburg, near Wi-
enna, on the 3d of February, 1736. He became one of
the most learned and skillful contrapuntists of his age.
He was appointed in 1772 organist of the court of Vi-
enna, and in 1792 kapellmeister of St. Stephen's cathe-
dral. His ſame as a theorist attracted to him in the
Austrian capital a large number of pupils, some of whom
afterward became eminent musicians. Among these
were Beethoven, Hummel, Moscheles, Seyfried, and
Weigl. Albrechtsberger died, in the ſull fruition of his
fame and honors, in 1809.
ALBUERA, a small village of Spain, in the province
of Badajoz, 13 miles S.E. of the town of that name. Its.
population is about 1,600.
ALBUFERA DE VALENCIA, a lagoon, 7 miles.
south of Valéncia in Spain, about 12 miles in length
and 4 in breadth, 12 feet being its greatest depth. It
- - - --------- - - --- *
A L B — A L C
165
communicates with the sea by a narrow outlet, which
can be opened or closed at pleasure. The lake is crown
property, and is of great value from the fish and wild
fowl with which it abounds.
ALBUM (a/bus, white), originally denoted a tablet
on which decrees, edicts, and other public notices were
inscribed in ancient Rome. In modern times album
denotes a book in which verses, autographs, sketches,
photographs, &c., are collected.
ALBUMAZAR (ABU-MAASCHAR), a celebrated Ara-
bian astronomer, born at Balkh, in Turkestan, in 805
A. D., died at Wasid in 885. º
ALBUMEN, an organic substance of a very compli-
cated structure. It is typical of a group of bodies that
have the same chemical composition but very different
properties. The principal varieties are named albumen,
fibrin, and casein. They are sometimes called the his-
togenetic bodies, because they are essential to the build-
ing up of the animal organism. From its property of
coagulating when heated, albumen is employed in the
arts to remove coloring matter from liquids.
ALBUQUERQUE, one of the most important
cities of New Mexico, and the capital of Bernalillo
county, is situated on the Rio Grande, about sixty miles
Southwest of Santa Fé. It stands at an elevation of
5,000 feet above the sea, and is a handsome and pros-
perous town, with a population (1890) exceeding
7,OOO. The city is lighted by gas and electric lights,
and possesses a street railroad, a number of hotels,
churches, and schools, and a house of Jesuits.
Albuquerque has some manufactures, and is the princi-
pal market of the Territory for wool and hides. It
was formerly the seat of a Spanish mission, and was
visited in early days by the Spanish explorers and the
Jesuit fathers.
toric interest.
ALBUQUERQUE, a town of Spain, in the province
of Badajoz, 9 miles from the frontiers of Portugal. It
has woollen and linen manufactures, and exports cattle
and fruits. Population, 7000.
ALBUQUERQUE, ALPHONso D’, surnamed “The
Great,” and “The Portuguese Mars,” was born in
1453 at Alexandria, near Lisbon. Through his father,
Gonzalvo, who held an important position at court, he
was connected by illegitimate descent with the royal
family of Portugal, and through his mother, Dona
Lenora de Menezes, he could claim kindred with Zarco
and other illustrious navigators. He was appointed
estribeiro-mor (chief equerry) to João II. In 1503 he
set out on his first expedition to the East, which was to
be the scene of his future triumphs. In company with
his kinsman Francisco he sailed round the Cape of
Good Hope to India, and succeeded in establishing the
king of Coahin securely on his throne, obtaining in
return for this service permission to build a Portuguese
fort at Cochin, and thus laying the foundation of his
country’s empire in the East. Albuquerque's great
career had a painful and ignominious close. He had
several enemies at the Portuguese court who lost no
opportunity of stirring up the jealousy of the king
against him. On his return from Ormuz, at the
entrance of the harbor of Goa, he met a vessel from
Europe bearing despatches announcing that he was
superseded by his personal enemy Soarez. The blow
was too much for him, and he died at sea on the 16th
December 1515. Before his death he wrote a letter to
the king in dignified and affecting terms, vindicating his
conduct and claiming for his son the honors and rewards
that were justly due to himself. T
ALCAEUS, one of the great lyric poets of Greece,
was a native of Mitylene in Lesbos, and flourished about
the year 600 B.C. Horace looks upon Alcaeus as his
Many of the older buildings are of his-
great model, and has given a fine picture of the poetical
powers of the AEolian bard. The care which, Alcaeus
bestowed upon the construction of his verses was proba-
bly the reason why one kind of metre, the Alcaic, was
named after him.
ALCAICS, in Ancient Poetry, a name given to sev-
eral kinds of verse, from Alcaeus, their reputed in-
VentOr.
ALCAIDE, or ALCAYDE, a word of Moorish origin,
meaning to head, was applied by the Spanish, the Portu-
guese, and the Moors, to the military officer appointed
to take charge of a fortress or prison. See ALCALDE.
ALCALA DE GUADAIRA, a town of Spain, in
the province of Seville, Andalusia, situated on the
Guadaira, 7 miles E. of Seville. Nearly the whole of
the bread required by the town of Seville is made here.
Population, 7000.
ALCALA DE HENARES, an ancient Spanish city
on the river Henares, 17 miles E.N.E. of Madrid. In
later times it was renowned for its richly-endowed uni-
versity, founded by Cardinal Ximenes in 1510, which,
at the height of its prosperity, numbered more than Io,-
OOO students, and was second only to that of Salamanca.
Here the famous edition of the Holy Bible known as
Complutensian Polyglot was prepared. Alcalais further
celebrated as the birthplace of the German emperor
Ferdinand I., the poet Figueroa, the naturalist Busta-
mente de la Camera, the historian Solis, and last and
greatest of all, Cervantes, who was born here in I547.
Population, 8745.
ALCALA LA REAL, a town of the province of
Jaen in Spain. In 1810 the Spaniards were defeated
here by the French under Sebastiani. Some trade is
carried on at the place in wine and wool. Population,
II, 52 I.
ALCALDE, the judge, an official title given in Spain
to various classes of functionaries entrusted with ju-
dicial duties. Criminal judges, members of courts of
appeal, magistrates, and even parish officers are all
known by the name alcalde.
ALCAMENES, a famous Athenian sculptor, a pupil
of Phidias, who is celebrated for his skill in art by
Cicero, Pliny, Pausanias, Lucan, &c. He flourished
from about 448 to 400 B.C., and appears as one of the
great triumvirate of Greek sculptors, Phidias, Alcamenes,
and Polycletus.
ALCAMO, a city of Sicily, in the Italian province of
Trapani, is situated 22 miles E. of Trapani. It lies in
a district of peculiar fertility, which produces some of
the best wines in the island. Population (1889), 24,500.
ALCANTARA, a town of Spain, in the province of
Caceres, on a rocky height on the left bank of the
Tagus. Alcantara, the bridge, derived its name from
the magnificent Roman bridge which spanned the
Tagus at this point, and which was erected, according
to the inscription, A. D. IO4, in honor of the emperor
Trajan, who was a native of Spain. The population of
the town is 4200.
ALCANTARA, a seaport of Brazil, in the province
of Maranhao, on the bay of San Marcos. Excellent
cotton is grown in the vicinity, forming the chief article
of commerce. Rice and salt, obtained from the neigh-
boring lagoons, are also exported. Population, IO,OOO.
ALCANTARA, KNIGHTS OF, an order of knights of
Spain, instituted about I 156 A.D. by the brothers Don
Suarez and Don Gomez de Barrientos for protection
against the Moors. In 1177 they were confirmed as a
religious order of knighthood under Benedictine rule by
Pope Alexander III. Until about 1213 they were
known as the Knights of San Julian del Pereyro; but
when the defence of Alcantara, newly wrested from the
Moors by Alphonso IX. of Castile, was entrusted to
I66 *
A L C
them, they took their name from that city. When
Joseph Bonaparte became king of Spain in 1808, he de-
prived the knights of their revenues, which were only
partially recovered on the restoration of Ferdinand VII.
in 1814. The order ceased to exist as a spiritual body
in 1835, though it is still recognised in its civil capacity.
ALCARAZ, a small town in Spain, in the province
of Albacete, 34 miles W. S.W. of the town of that name.
Weaving, iron-founding, and agriculture are the chief
branches of industry. Copper and zinc are found in
the vicinity. Population, 73.25.
ALCAVALA, a duty formerly charged in Spain and
its colonies on all transfers of property, whether public
or private. . It was originally imposed by Alphonso XI.
to secure freedom from the Moors in 1341, as an ad
valorem tax of Io, increased afterwards to 14 per cent.,
on the selling price of all commodities, whether raw or
manufactured, which was chargeable as often as they
were sold or exchanged. It subjected every farmer,
every manufacturer, every merchant and shopkeeper, to
the continual visits and examination of the tax-gather-
ers, whose number was necessarily very great. This
monstrous impost was permitted to ruin the industry
and commerce of the greater part of the kingdom down
to the invasion of Napoleon. Catalonia and Aragon
purchased from Philip V. an exemption from the alca-
vala, and, though still burdened with other heavy taxes,
were in a comparatively flourishing state, in conse-
quence of their exemption from this oppressive duty.
(See M’Culloch On 7 axation.)
ALCAZAR DE SAN JUAN, a Spanish town, in the
province of Ciudad Real, 45 miles N.E. of Ciudad Real,
and on the railway between Alicante and Madrid. Pop-
ulation, 7800.
ALCAZAR KEBIR, a city of Marocco in Africa, 80
miles N.W. of Fez. It was formerly of great note as
the magazine and place of rendezvous for the Moorish
invasions of Spain. Population, 6000.
ALCESTER, pronounced Auster, a market town in
the county of Warwick, situated at the junction of the
Arrow and Alne, 14 miles W.S. W. of Warwick. Its
position on the Roman way known as the Ickenild
Street, and the discovery of numerous remains of ancient
art, as well as urns and coins, make it sufficiently evident
that this was a Roman encampment. Population of
parish, 2363.
ALCESTIS, or ALCESTE, the daughter of Pelias and
Anaxibia, and the wife of Admetus, king of Pherae in
Thessaly. . She consented to die in place of her husband,
and was afterwards restored to life by Hercules.
ALCHEMY, CHEMY, or HERMETIcs. Considering
the present state of the science and the advance of public
opinion, the old definition of alchemy as the pretended
art of making gold is no longer correct or adequate.
Modern science dates from three discoveries — that of
Copernicus, the effect of which (to borrow St. Simon’s
words) was to expel the astrologers from the society of
astronomers; that of Torricelli and Pascal, of the weight
of the atmosphere, a discovery which was the foundation
of physics; lastly, that of Lavoisier, who, by discovering
oxygen, destroyed the theory of Stahl, the last alchemist
who can be excused for not being a chemist.
Before these three grand stages in the progress of
Science, the reign of astrology, magic, and alchemy was
universal and almost uncontested. Even a genius like
Kepler, who by his three great laws laid the foundations
for the Copernican system, was guided in his investigations
by astrological and cabalistic considerations. Hence it
follows that a philosophical history of modern science is
certain to fall into the opposite superstitution of idolising
abstract reason, if it does not do i justice to this long
and energetic intellectual struggle which began in India,
Greece, and Egypt, and, continuing through the dark
ages down to the very dawn of modern enlightenment,
preceded and paved the way for the three above-mentioned
discoveries, which inaugurated a new era.
It was the alchemists who first stated, however con-
fusedly, the problems which science is still engaged in
Solving; and to them, in conclusion, we owe the enor-
mous service of removing the endless obstructions which
a purely rationalistic method, born before its time and
Soon degenerating into verbal quibbles and scholastic
jargon, had placed in the path of human progress.
Alchemy was, we may say, the sickly but imaginative
infancy through which modern chemistry had to pass
before it attained its majority, or, in other words, became
a positive science. The search for gold was only one
crisis in this infancy. This crisis is over, and alchemy is
now a thing of the past. Those ancient cosmogonies,
those poetical systems which the genius of each nation
and race has struck out to solve the problem of the uni-
verse and of the destiny of mankind, were the germs of
science no less than literature, of philosophy as well as
of religion. And as in the infancy of Science its various
branches were confused and confounded, so in a like
stage of society we often find the same person uniting
the parts of philosopher, savant, and priest. Besides
this, it is evident that in the absence of all scientific ap-
paratus or instruments, the ancients, if they had limited
themselves to the exercise of their reason, must have
remained observers and nothing more. It is true they
did observe, and that widely and well; but observa-
tion alone, even when aided by the strongest and subtlest
reason, can lead to nothing but contradictory theories,
irreconcilable, because they cannot be verified. And it
is not in human nature to remain a simple spectator.
Curiosity was first excited by fancy (and the fancy of
primitive man, we must remember, was far more active
and vigorous than ours), and when it found itself baffled
by a natural reaction, it had recourse to divination.
In a word, the ambition of these earliest philosophers
was more intense, because its sphere was narrower. In
the first stages of civilization the magician was the man
of science. The mysteries of this magic art being
inseparable from those of religion and philosophy,
were preserved, as it were, hermetically sealed in
the adyta of the temple. Its philosophy was the
cabala. We must consequently look on the various.
cabalas or oral traditions, transmitted from age to age as
the oracles of various faiths and creeds, as constituting
the elements of that theory which the Jewish cabala pro-
mulgated some centuries later in a condensed and muti-
lated form. Astrology and magic were the efforts made
in various ways to verify and apply this theory; magic,
indeed, or rather magical power, was at starting purely
cosmogenic, i.e., regarded as an attribute of God or
nature, before it was counterfeited by the magicians of
various countries. But, as St. Simon has well observed,
chemical phenomena are much more complicated than.
astronomical—the latter requiring only observation, the
former experiment — and hence astrology preceded
alchemy. But there was then no hard and fast line be-
tween the several branches of science, and hence the
most opposite were united, not, as now, by a common.
philosophical or philanthropical object, but by reason of
their common theological origin. Thus alchemy was
the daughter of astrology, and it was not till the end of
the 16th century A.D. that she passed from a state of
tutelage. Just in the same way medicine as a magical
or sacred art was prior to alchemy; for, as was natural,
before thinking of forming new substances, men em-
ployed already existing herbs, stones, drugs, perfumes,
and vapors. The medical art was indissolubly bound up
with astrology, but, judging from the natural inventive-
A L C
ICy
ness of the ancients, we should have expected beforehand
that chemical preparations would have played a more
important part among the instruments of priestly thau-
maturgy. -
Aſter this general introduction we may now proceed
to consider the subject in detail under the following
heads:–First, we will cast a rapid glance at certain
cosmogonies and philosophical systems, in order to bring
prominently before the reader those points which throw
light on chemical theories. Secondly, we will consider
alchemy at the moment when it ceased to be purely
religious and began an independent existence; that is to
say, during the 3d and 4th centuries A.D., and in that
city which was the battlefield on which the various philo-
Sophical and religious creeds of the East met.
COSMOGONIES AND PHILOSOPHIES.
In India, as is well known, the contempt in which
the caste of artizans was held was still farther increased
by the tendency of religion to consider birth and life,
and the actions and desires which are part and parcel of
man's life, as an unmixed evil. Consequently, outside
the workshop, practical chemistry can have made but
little progress. Nevertheless, among the priests of
India, as in later times in Europe, we find the ordeal
of fire and of serpents commonly practised. It follows
that the Brahmins must have possessed some chemical
secrets to enable them to kill or save those they thought
guilty or innocent. These secrets, too, must from time
to time have been divulged by indiscretion or perfidy,
and spread beyond the temple; for we read of accused
persons escaping unharmed from the ordeal, even when
their accuser was a Brahmin. But the Mussulman
traveller of the 9th century, who has preserved this
curious detail, allows that the trial was in his day be-
coming more elaborate and complicated, and that it was
next to impossible for an accused person to escape.
However this may be, it is certain that the meditative
genius which distinguishes the race had, even before
they conquered the yellow and black races, led these
first speculators to certain conceptions which have an
important bearing on the present subject. Some had
conceived ether as composed of distinct atoms, others
imagined an ether decomposing itself into atoms by the
free play of its own forces. These two theories, the
one dualistic, the other unitarian, strangely foreshadow
the discoveries of modern dynamics. We find the specu-
lators of another race indulging the singular fancy that
they could observe in atoms what we may call osculta-
tions of the play of forces. The Persians, who consid-
ered the first tree and the first bull as the two ancestors
of man, discovered in physics generally two antagonistic
principles, one male and one female, primordial fire and
primordial water, corresponding to the good and bad
principles of their religion. Over all creatures and all
things there were presiding genii, 7%ads or Feroners.
They had already formulated the parallelism between
Sep/, trož/, the empyrean, the priment/ſe wed/e/e, the firma-
ment, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Mercury, Moon, and
the parts of the body, brain, lungs, heart, &c. In this
correspondence between the heavenly bodies and the
human frame which the ancient Persians laid down, and
the Hindu belief in the peregrination of sinful souls
through the animal, vegetable, and even the mineral
world, till, by these pilgrimages, they at last won ab-
sorption into the Deity, or Moncti, we have in their
original form, the two fundamental beliefs of alchemy.
The Greeks, unrivalled as they were in poetry, art,
and ethics, made little way in occult philosophy. The
Greek intellect, precise and anthropomorphic, with no
leaning to transcendentalism, was a protest against the
boldness of oriental metaphysics. Thus they contented
themselves with inventing a strange gamut of deities
corresponding to different types of men. This gamut —
Jupiter, Saturn, Apollo, Mercury, Mars, and Venus—
was afterwards completed in the cabala by the addition
of the moon, typifying the phlegmatic character of
northern laces, and forms a connecting link between
astrology and alchemy, by establishing a double cor-
respondence between planets of the same name and
metals. The whole was systematised in the works of .
Paracelsus and Böhme, and called the theory of sigma-
tures. Whether the Greek philosophers taught that
the principle of all things was water, like Thales, or
air, like Anaximander, or air and water, as Xenophanes,
or the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, as the
school of Hippocrates, the tendency of Greek specula-
tion was to establish those profound distinctions which
resulted later in the theory of the four elements, the
four humors, &c., which the disciples of Aristotle held.
Hippocrates, for example, thought that if man was com-
posed of a single element, he would never be ill; but as
he is composed of many elements, complex remedies are
required. Thus Hippocrates may be called an anti-
alchemist; and though the theory of the four elements
reigned supreme throughout the middle ages, it easily
lent itself to the search for the philosopher’s stone and
the universal panacea, because the oriental idea of the
transmutation of elements, from the time when the
various systems of the East were syncretised at Alexan-
dria and received their final development in Arabia in the
writings of Geber Rhasis and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), was
a universal article of belief. But even in the palmiest
days of Greek anthropomorphism there was a gradual
infiltration of Asiatic ideas, partly through the mysteries
of Eleusis, partly through the doctrines of certain phil-
osophers, who were by nature susceptive of barbaric in-
fluences. For, besides Greece proper, theme was a
Second Greece in Asia Minor and a third in Italy, not to
mention the Pelasgic tribes who adhered tenaciously to
the primitive ideas of the race.
THE SACRED ART.
Paganism, at the time when it was engaged in its
last struggle with Christianity, had long ceased to be
exclusively Greek or Roman. It had assimilated Mith-
ratic, Chaldean, and Egyptian mysteries, and even allied
itself to a certain extent with the Helleno-Hebraism of
the Cabala. It was not likely, then, to reject what
purer times would have regarded as an utter profana-
tion. The narrow ground on which the battle was
fought, the intellectual affinities between such men as
St. Basil and the emperor Julian rendered the struggle
as desperate and sanguinary as any struggle can be
when the combatants are only rival creeds. The sacred
and divine art, the sacred science, was one of the mys-
teries which paganism derived from the dim religious.
light of the temple. But we may presume that the
sacred art of the Alexandrians was no longer the
same as that of the ancient Egyptians, that their
Hermes was not the Hermes of Egypt, that the pseudo-
Democritus is not the true Democritus, that Pythagoras,
as retouched by Iamblicus, is not the original Pythag-
oras. No epoch was so full of forgeries as the 3d and
4th centuries A. D.; and these forgeries were in one
sense fabricated in good faith. An age of electicism is.
as eager for original documents as a parºſenza is for a
coat of arms or a genealogical tree. These forgeries.
were no obstacle to human progress; but in an age
when the learning of Egypt was the fashion, it was nat-
ural that Persian, Jewish, and Platonic doctrines should
be-tricked out in an Egyptian dress. One of the mas-
ters of the sacred art, Alexander of Aphrodisias, in-
vented the term chyics (from to pour, to fuse or melt),
I68
A L C
to describe the operations of the laboratory. Hence
the word chemics, a word unknown in the 4th century,
and only popular some centuries later. The reason is,
that the true etymology of the word chemic is logical,
and had therefore no charms for the psychological spirit
of the age. Later on, when men began to reflect that
the ancient name for Egypt was Cham or Chemia, be-
cause, according to Plutarch, its soil was black like the
pupil of the eye, it flattered chemists to call chemistry
“ the art of the ancient Chemi.” Hence from a false
derivation the art received a fresh impulse.
The discovery of the principal manuscripts of the
sacred art we owe to the labor of M. Ferdinand
Hoefer.
But neither M. F. Hoefer's explanation of the appear-
ances which the first master of the sacred art mistook for
fact, nor the metaphysical theory of Nemesius, will ena-
ble us to understand how Zosimus the Theban, in the
very infancy of the art, succeeded in discovering in sul-
phuric acid a solvent of metals; in assigning to mercury
(which he called “holy water”) its proper function, a
function which succeeding generations of alchemists so
monstrously exaggerated; and finally in disengaging
from the red oxide of mercury oxygen gas, that Proteus
which so often eluded the grasp of the alchemists, till at
last it was held fast by the subtle analysis of Lavoisier.
For we must remember that solid metals were consid-
•ered as living bodies, and gases as souls which they
allowed to escape. Of all the ingenious inventions of
the Jewess Maria for regulating fusions and distillations,
the only one that has survived is the Balneum Maria.
The principle it depends on, viz., that the calcination of
violent heat is less powerful as a solvent or component
than the liquefaction produced by gentle heat, was after-
wards reasserted by the Arabian Geber, and advocated
by Francis Bacon. M. Hoefer imagines that Maria the
Jewess discovered hydrochloric acid, the formidable
rival of sulphuric acid. Succeeding writers on the his-
tory of chemistry have remarked that the bandages of
Egyptian mummies were not more numerous than the
mysteries of the sacred art, and the injunctions not to
divulge its secrets, “under pain of the peach tree,” or,
to translate into modern English the language of an an-
cient papyrus, under pain of being poisoned by prussic
acid. We should be wrong in thinking that all these
allegories had no meaning for the initiated, and that this
mystical tendency of the sacred art arrested its growth
rat starting. Rather the truth is, that these myths,
which at a later stage prevented the free development of
: alchemy, at first served to stimulate its nascent powers.
Modern critics have pronounced some traditional say-
‘ings of Hermes Trismegistus to be apocryphal, but they
have not given sufficient weight to the remarkable cir-
cumstance that it is precisely because these sayings are a
medley of the cabalistic, gnostic, and Greek ideas with
which Alexandria was then seething, that the seven
golden chapters; the Emerald Table, and the Pimander
obtained their authority — an authority they would
never have possessed had they been only a translation of
some obscure Egyptian treatise. No Egyptian priest
could have written a sentence like that we find so often
quoted as an axiom by subsequent alchemists:– “Natura
naturam.superat; deinde verö natura naturae congaudet;
tandem natura naturam continet.” Plato adds (not the
disciple of Socrates, but a pseudo-Plato in the famous
-collection called 7 urba Philosophorum) — “continens
:autem omnia terra est.” For, translated into modern
language, this means that there may indeed be in this
runiverse things which pass our intellectual ken; but that
all that exists, all that is produced by the strife and the
changes of the elements, all, in a word, that appears to
us supernatural, is really natural. That this is his
-
º we may gather from the singularly bold com-
ment which Plato himself adds, and which we may thus
translate—“Everything, even heaven, and hell, are of
this earth.” It is true that the alchemists failed to draw
any very definite conclusions from this fundamental
axiom. But if we consider it carefully, we shall see that
this earliest doctrine of the sacred art, which was now
rapidly passing into alchemy, by thus excluding, the
supernatural, was making a great advance in the direc-
tion of positive science. This early advance was, how-
ever, counterbalanced by an early error (which itself
arose from a globle ambition), viz., that art is as power-
ful as nature. The Emerald Table begins with a sen-
tence no less celebrated than that quoted above:–
“This is true, and far distant from a lie; whatsoever is
below is like that which is above, and that which is
above is like that which is below. By this are acquired
and perfected the miracles of the one thing.” To under-
stand the importance of this emphatic and categorical
exordium, we must forget the sharp distinction we now
draw between art, science, and literature; we must
think of that ſoolishness of which St. Paul speaks, by
which he sought to save those that believe, because of
the insufficiency of human reason. The seekers for the
philosopher's stone were in the same case. In the ab-
sence of clear facts and just notions, reason for them
was not sufficient. Thus it was that they and the
masters of the sacred art, and after them the Arabs,
and in the later times the alchemists, one and all listened
eagerly to the “foolishness” of the Triºmegistus's
doctrine, which in a modern form, would run thus: “We
go further than the Zohar — the sacred book of the
cabala—which says that as soon as man appeared, the
world above and the world beneath were consummated,
seeing that man is the crown of creation and unites all
forms. We go further than the Zohar, which says in
another place that the lower world was created after
the similitude of the upper world. We perfect the
doctrine of a microcosm and a macrocosm, and declare
that there is no such thing as high or low—as heaven or
earth, for the earth is a planet, and the planets are
earths; we affirm that the chemical processes of our
alembics are similar to those of the sidereal laboratories.
All is in all. Everywhere analogy infers the same laws.”
From analogy to identity was an easy step for the
theorists; and in the full light of the 19th century we
find Hegel a devoted admirer of the mystic Böhme fall-
ing into this pitfall. If the spectrum analysis had been
known, the Alexandrians, the Arabs, and the alchemists
would have been able to verify and limit the sweeping
generalisation by which they established a vast system of
correspondences between the three worlds, the physical
or material, the rational or intermediary, and the psychi-
cal or spiritual. Between the heavens and earth and
man's nature they were ever seeking to discover affinities,
and ignoring differences which would have been fatal to
their system. Thus, according to them, even heaven—
the abode of spirits—was partly physical; and even
in the mineral world there was a spiritual element —
viz., color, brightness, or, in their language, tincture:
Neither Linnaeus, Berzelius, nor Cuvier had yet classified
living beings and things. The distinction between the
animal, the vegetable, and the inorganic world, was
unknown, and indeed it was impossible that it should be
known. The alchemists sought for physical conditions
in the invisible and spiritual world, and for a spirit
even in stocks and stones. This explains the magic
which they found in nature, and which they tried
to imitate by their art. But to establish this harmony
between heaven, man, and nature, they required
some fixed standard or scale, for in their eclectic system.
they were bound to find room for Pythagoras. Where
A L C
I69
was this scale to be found P In the heavens; for there
must be the sphere of true music. Hence arose
chemical, medical, and physiognomical astrology. (See
ASTROLOGY.)
A/chemy in Arabia.-How the sacred art passed into
Moslem lands it is hard, from dearth of evidence, to say.
Modern criticism now does more justice to the part which
Arabia took in the accumulation of scientific facts, and
in the scientific theories which we find in the books of
Rhazès and Geber. It is certain that in their treaties
with the European Greeks of Constantinople the Arabs
always stipulated for the delivery of a fixed number of
manuscripts. Their enthusiasm for Aristotle is equally
notorious; but it would be unjust to imagine that, in
adopting the Aristotelian method, together with the as-
trology and alchemy of Persia, and of the Jews of Mes-
opotamia and Arabia, they were wholly devoid of orig-
inality. On the other hand, we must not understand
Arabia in the ethnological sense of the word, but as
signifying an agglomeration of various races united by a
common religion. Thus Djafar (who lived in the mid-
dle of the 8th century), better known to us as Geber,
was a Sabaean. Avicenna, born in 978, was a native of
Shiraz. The remarkable geographer and geologist
Kazwyny (geology was then a part of alchemy), derived
his name from his birthplace, Casbin, in Persia. Mo-
hammed-ben-Zakaria, so celebrated in mediaeval Europe
under the name of Rhazès, was also a Persian. In
Spain, the Jews of the famous school of Saadia and Juda
Halevy, exercised considerable influence over the acad-
emy of Cordova. Lastly, European historians have
systematically exaggerated the ignorance of the Arabs
before the time of Mahomet and their intolerance after
the establishment of Moslemism, either from the zeal
which prompted them to carry on a sort of literary crusade
in honor of Christianity, or because in the 18th century
they directed against Mahomet attacks which were in-
tended for Christianity itself.
Alchemy received from the Arabians many significant
titles. It was the science of the Æey, because it opened
all the mysteries of creation, physiology, and medicine;
it was the science of the letter M (masamz is the Arabic
for balance), because by means of the balance the gain
or loss of all bodies could be determined, even while
undergoing chemical combinations. Later on, as is well
known, it was by a rigorous and obstinate use of the
balance in the hands of Priestley, Cavendish, and Lavoi-
sier, that positive chemistry was founded. Lastly,
Rhazès gave to the science of the philosopher's stone a
name which plunges us again into the mythological ages
of chemistry. He called it the astrology of the lower
zvorld.
ALCHEMY OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
The care we have taken to note down at thé moment
of its birth each of the ideas which influenced alchemy,
allows us to sketch more rapidly the history of its decline
and fall. Albert Groot, commonly known as Albertus
Magnus (1193-1280), revived the theory of Geber ; and,
in spite of the tendencies of the time, entertained the
same doubts as his illustrious master on the possibility
of transmutation. He is the first to speak of the affinity
of bodies, a term he uses in reference to the action of
sulphur on metals. He gives the savans of the day the
sage advice not to take service with princes, who are
sure to treat as thieves those who do not succeed. And,
indirectly, he warns princes that philosopher’s gold is only
tinsel. Beginning with nitric acid, which he calls prime
water, and so on, through a regular series of secondary,
tertiary waters, &c., he proposed a method for dissolving
..all metals. Roger Bacon, while opposing magic, calls
oxygen aer cióus ignis, and regards the elixir as a sub-
stitute for time, that agent of which nature takes no ac:
count. Gold is perfect, because nature has consummated
her work. But Roger Bacon seems to have turned his
genius principally to physics and mechanism. St. Thomas
Aquinas, in his theological writings, forbids the sale of
alchemist’s gold, and in his special treatise on the subject
unmasks an imposture of the charlatans of the day,
who pretended to make silver by projecting a sublimate
of white arsenic on copper. Further, Aquinas, by
reducing the primitive elements of metals to two, revives
and corroborates the theory of Galen and Albertus Mag-
nus. About the same time we find a pope, John XXII.,
and a king, Alphonso X. of Leon and Castile, occupying
themselves with alchemy. But the pope in a well-known
bull denounced all those searchers for gold “who prom-
ised more than they could perform; ” another proof that
alchemy and the search for gold, though distinguished by
the true alchemist, were confounded by many adepts. It
is evident that the science, as far as the seeker for gold
was concerned, was approaching the times of king John
and Philip the Fair, who found in unscrupulous charla-
tans abettors in their debasement of the currency, and
that for disinterested alchemists those evil days were at
hand when, disgusted at attaining no practical result,
the most serious of them sought in the physiological
mysteries of generation, in Adam and Eve, the red man
and white woman, of the first chapters of Genesis, what
they failed to find in Rhazès, in Geber, and the Arabian
Aristotle. The science was still called chemy. It was as
a compliment to the Arabian masters, who were still
quoted side by side with Genesis, that they added to the
word the Arabic article al. The popular etymology of
the day was likewise Arabic, or, more correctly speaking,
Semitic; the Hebrew chom or the Arabic cham signified
heat. Hence their furnaces for heating, the alembics
for modifying heat, and the Bains-Marie for imitating
the temperature of warm blood; for they could only pro-
ceed by analogy. Nevertheless, the great men of the
day were the alchemists. The boldness of their actions,
the eccentricity of their genius, prove it.
Aaracelsus and his Influence.—Tempting as the
subject is, we must not linger either on the philosophical
doctrine or the medical system of this extraordinary man,
for fear of encroaching on the article MEDICINE or the
article PARAcELSUs. We only wish to show that he is
the pioneer of modern chemists, and the prophet of a
revolution in general science. Those who only know
Bacon in manuals of philosophy are never tired of re-
peating that the great English philosopher is the father
of experimental science. This is true, indeed, in the
sense that Bacon insisted with inexhaustible eloquence
on the necessity of experimental science, but it is false
if it means that Bacon inaugurated modern science by
personal experiments. It was this popular conception
of Bacon which Liebig attacked, and he thus found no
difficulty in drawing up a long and crushing indictment.
Bacon was the prophet of experimentation, and this title
is sufficient to secure his fame against the abuse of mod-
ern dogmatists, who think that science increases little by
little, with here a fact and there an idea, without a single
pause, a single relapse or revolution. ... Few take the
trouble to consider how far Bacon’s philosophy belongs
to the past; most are satisfied with cut and dried phrases
about the part he played in modern science. Just in the
same way, Paracelsus, the great innovator, who thought
himself even more enfranchised from the bondage of
Aristotle and Galen than he really was, is dispatched with
ready-made phrases, but, unlike Bacon, he gets nothing
but ridicule and abuse. True alchemy has but one aim and
object, to extract the quintessence of things, and to pre-
pare arcana, tinctures and elixirs, which may restore to
man the health and soundness he has lost. He beards
- i
17o
A L C
the “white-gloved ” disciples of Galen, and, in spite of
their juleps and draughts, asserts that alchemy is indis-
pensable, and that without it there is no such thing as
medical knowledge. He rejects the easy explanation of
the universe by means of an entity, stigmatizing it as
Aagantity, meaning thereby a necessary consequence of
paganism, which, as a theosophist, he holds in abhor-
rence. He rejects the favorite instrument of the school-
men, the syllogism. Nature, as he views it, is not a clear
and intelligible system of which the form declares the
essence; no, it is mysterious. There is a spirit at work
beneath the outside shell. What is written on this shell
no one can read but the initiated, who have learned to
separate the real and the apparent. “At the same time,
everything is not active. To separate the active portion
(the spirit) of this outside shell from the passive, is the
proper province of alchemy.”
It is curious to observe that soon after chemistry was
established as a science there was a regular deluge of
searchers for the philosopher’s stone. The limits of
this article prevent us from giving a full list of their
names. Suffice it to mention, among Frenchmen, De
Lisle, who died in the Bastile of the wounds his guar-
dians inflicted on him to extorts his secret; among En-
glishmen, Dr. Price, who committed suicide to escape
from a public trial of his pretended discovery. As to
the theoretical possibility of making gold, the great
French chemist Dumas considered that a solution might
be found in the doctrine of isomerism; and the great
English chemist Sir Humphrey Davy refused to pro-
nounce that the alchemist must be wrong.
ALCIATI, ANDREA, an eminent Italian jurist, born
at Alzano, near Milan, on the 12th January 1492, died
1550. He displayed great literary skill in his exposi-
tion of the laws, for which De Thou highly praises him.
He published many legal works, and some annotations
on Tacitus.
ALCIBIADES was born at Athens about 450 B.C.
Through his father, Cleinias, he traced his descent from
Eurysaces, the son of Ajax, and through his mother,
Deinomache, from Megacles, the head of the Alcmae-
onidae. He was thus related to Pericles, who, after the
death of Cleinias at the battle of Coronea (447 B.C.),
became his guardian. A youth early deprived of his
father’s control, possessed of great personal beauty, and
the heir to great wealth—a youth consequently univer-
Sally honored, courted, and caressed—was not in a
position to acquire a knowledge of the virtue of self-
restraint in any shape or form. Spoilt accordingly by
flatteries and blandishments, the boy showed himself
self-willed, capricious, and passionate, and indulged in
the wildest freaks and most insolent tyrannical behavior.
Nor did the instructions of his early manhood supply the
corrective which his boyhood lacked. The collection of
moral, political, and religious beliefs which the earlier
Greeks, from custom, convenience, or the promptings of
common sense, had accepted as a standard by which to
regulate their own conduct &nd judge that of others, had
been exposed by the sophists to the keenest scrutiny and
the widest scepticism. Negative criticism, accompanied
with showy novel paradoxes, are always attractive to a
young man of intellectual vigor; and thus Alcibiades
learnt from Protagoras, Prodicus, and others, to laugh
at the common, opinions about justice, temperance,
holiness, patriotism, &c. The long, patient, laborious
thought, the self-sacrificing and comparatively ascetic life
of his master Socrates, he was able to admire, but not
to imitate or practise. . On the contrary, his ostentatious
vanity, his amours, his debaucheries, and his impious
revels, became notorious throughout Athens. But great
as were Alcibiades's moral vices, his intellectual abilities
were still more conspicuous. He proved his courage at
the battle of Potidea (432 B.C.), where, wounded, he
was rescued by Socrates; at the battle of Delium (424.
B.C.), where he protected his former deliverer; and on
many subsequent occasions. Though he was not a very
fluent speaker, he always kept to the point. His energy
was immense, his ambition unbounded, but selfish, and
provided he could gratify this passion, he never scrupled
at the means or the price. He could read the characters
of others, and adapt himself to it with a versatility,
adroitness, and flexibility which if any even of his shifty
fellow-countrymen equalled they never surpassed. Nor
were his personal qualities his only recommendation to
popular favor. His ancestors and relatives had been for
generations the recognized leaders of the people; he had
many admirers and followers among the clubs of young
nobles; he had numerous dependents who partook of
his wealth; and he gratified the populace by the lavish
expenditure with which he performed his various litur-
gical duties. After the battle of AEgospotami, and the
establishment of the Spartan supremacy throughout
Greece, he crossed the Hellespont, and took refuge with
Pharnabazus in Phrygia. There an attack was made
upon him, but by whom or for what cause historians are
not agreed; his residence was set on fire, and on rush-
ing out on his cowardly assassins, dagger in hand, he
was killed by a shower of arrows, 404 B.C.
ALCINOUS, a Platonic philosopher of uncertain
date.
ALCINOUS, a mythical king of the Phaeacians, in
the island of Scheria, was son of Nausithous, and grand-
son of Neptune and Periboea.
ALCIPHRON, the most eminent of the Greek epis-
tolary writers, was probably a contemporary of Lucian.
His letters, of which I 16 have been published, are writ-
ten in the purest Attic dialect, and are considered models
of style.
ALCIRA, probably the Sætaðicula of the Romans,
a Spanish town, on an island in the river Xucar, 24
miles S.W. of Valencia, in the province of that name.
ALCMAN, sometimes also called ALCMAEON, one of
the most ancient, and, in the opinion of the Alexandrian
critics, the most distinguished of the lyric poets of Greece.
According to one account he was by birth a Lydian,
while others state that he was a native of Sparta, where,
at any rate, he lived from a very early age. The time at
which he flourished is uncertain, but it is generally
assumed that it embraced the period between the years
67O and 630 B.C..
ALCMENE, the daughter of Electryon, king of
Mycenae, and wife of Amphitryon.
ALCOCl3, John, doctor of laws, and bishop of Ely
in the reign of Henry VIII., was born at Beverley in
Yorkshire before 1440, and educated at Cambridge. He
was made dean of Westminster and master of the rolls
in 1462. In 1470 he was appointed ambassador to the
court of Castile, and 1471 was consecrated bishop of
Rochester. In 1477 he was translated to the see of
Worcester; and in 1486 to that of Ely. He was a
prelate of great learning and piety, and so highly es-
teemed by King Henry that he appointed him lord
president of Wales, and afterwards lord keeper of the
Great Seal. He died at Wisbeach, October 1, 1500,
and was buried in the chapel built by himself in Ely
cathedral. i.
ALCOHOL, a volatile organic body, constantly
formed during the fermentation of vegetable juices con-
taining sugar in solution. It is extracted from spiritu-
ous liquors of different kinds by successive distillations
or rectifications; the alcohol being more volatile than
water, gradually accumulates in the first portion of each
distillate. After a few operations the spirit obtained is
as strong as it can be made by this process, and further
t
A L C
17 I
repetition does not enable us to separate more water
from it. In commerce the strongest spirit is known as
spirit of wine, and contains about 90 per cent, of alcohol,
The remaining Io per cent. of water must be removed
by some chemical agent that will combine with water
and retain it at the boiling-point of the spirit, and be
without any specific action on the alcohol. The dehyd-
rating substances in general use are certain anhydrous
salts, such as carbonate of potash, acetate of potash, or
sulphate of copper. These rapidly absorb water at low
temperature, and part with it at a red heat; so that they
may be used over and over again. The most efficient
dehydrating agent is caustic lime or caustic baryta.
Lime is generally used in making the absolute alcohol
of commerce. For this purpose the caustic lime is
broken into small pieces about the size of a walnut, and
placed in a retort; spirits of wine is now poured into
the vessel, just sufficient to cover the lime, and the
whole is left to digest for a night. During this time the
lime gradually slakes from the absorption of water, and
the anhydrous alcohol is left, ready to distill off at the
temperature of the water-bath. Absolute alcohol is a
very mobile colorless liquid, having a high refractive
power, and possessing a feeble agreeable smell and an
acrid, burning taste, which, however, diminishes as it is
diluted with water. The caustic taste is in great part
due to the rapidity with which it takes water from any
living tissue with which it comes in contact, producing
coagulation if the fluids are albuminous. Alcohol has a
specific gravity of O-794 at a temperature of 60° Fahr.,
and boils at 1732 - I Fahr., barometer being at 30 inches.
It does not conduct electricity, and has never been ob-
tained in the solid state, although at very low tempera-
tures it becomes viscid. For this reason alcohol is
always used to fill thermometers for registering low
temperatures, as mercury freezes, and cannot be em-
ployed as an index of temperature below – 399 Fahr.
Its high co-efficient of expansion makes alcohol a very
sensitive fluid for thermometric purposes. Alcohol has
a great tendency to absorb water from the atmosphere,
and must be kept in thoroughly sound vessels. It
mixes with water in all proportions, and during the
dilution there is a considerable amount of heat involved.
When alcohol and water are mixed, a contraction of
volume occurs, which augments until IOO parts of alco-
hol are mixed with II6:23 parts of water; IO3-775 vol-
umes of alcohol and water mixed in that ratio contracting
to Ioo. Addition of water beyond the proportion given
above causes less and less contraction, and finally no
diminution of volume can be observed. As alcohol is
diluted with water its volatility and its power of dilata-
tion diminish, whereas the specific gravity increases,
continually approaching that of water. Next to water,
alcohol is the substance most generally employed as a
solvent. It dissolves many organic substances, and is
especially used in the arts for the manufacture of var-
nishes. In medicine it is invaluable as a solvent of the
active principle of many substances that are insoluble in
water, and would soon decompose in aqueous solution.
These alcoholic solutions are generally called tinctures.
Alcohol is an excellent antiseptic agent. As a pre-
servative of animal structures it is generally used in
the impure state—known in commerce, as methylated
spirit. This is spirits of wine mixed with Io per cent.
of commercial wood spirits, which does not interfere
with its preservative or solvent powers, although it ren-
ders it unfit for use as a beverage.
Alcohol has the following chemical composition: —
Carbon. . . . . . . . . . . ... .. 52-67 per cent.
Hydrogen . . . . . . . . . . . . . I2'90 6 &
Oxygen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34:43 & 6
IOO ‘OO 6 &
Alcohol, when acted on by other chemical substances,
produces a great variety of new compounds. With
acids a remarkable class of bodies are produced called.
ethers, of which ordinary ether is the type. The ma-
jority of them are very volatile fluids, that in many
cases have a very agreeable odor, and are not readily
soluble in water.
As the value of spirituous liquors depends mainly on
the quantity of alcohol they contain, it is essential to
find some simple and rapid means of ascertaining the
percentage amount of the substance present. For this.
purpose three methods may be employed, viz., specific
gravity determination, temperature of ebullition, or rate
of expansion. As wines contain many volatile ethers
that would pass over with the alcohol in the above.
process, and interfere with accurate results being ob-
tained, they are generally decomposed by heating with
an alkali before the distillation commences.
ALCOY, one of the most thriving manufacturing
cities of Spain, on the river Alcoy, in the province of
Alicante, 24 miles N. N.W. of the town of that name.
A very curious festival is held annually in April in honor
of St. George, the patron saint of the town. Popula-
tion, 27,OOO.
ALCUDIA, MANUEL DE GODOY, DUKE OF, “Prince
of the Peace,” Spanish statesman, was born of poor but.
noble parentage at Badajoz on the 12th May 1767 (died,
1851). In 1784 he came to Madrid to join the royal
body-guard, and by his handsome presence and agree-
able manners soon attracted notice. The queen re-
garded him with great favor, and the weak-minded
Charles IV. raised him rapidly from dignity to dignity,
until in 1792, on the disgrace of Aranda, he became prime
minister. One of the first steps he took on his accession
to power was to declare war against the French conven-
tion. Though success at first attended the Spanish
arms, the position of matters was reversed in a second
campaign, and the war was concluded by the treaty of
Basle, signed on the 22d July 1795, for negotiating which
Godoy received his title of Prince of the Peace and a
large landed estate. In 1796 he formed an offensive and
defensive alliance with the French republic, which
involved Spain in a war with England. On the 28th
March 1798 he found himself forced to resign his posi-
tion in the ministry, but he never lost the favor of the
king, who appointed him grand admiral in 1799. On
the death of his royal master he removed to Paris, where
he received a pension of 5000 francs from Louis
Philippe. He continued to reside in Paris, where he
died on the 4th October 1851. --
ALCUIN, in Latin A/binzus, surnamed Flaccats, an
eminent ecclesiastic and a reviver of learning in the 8th
century, was born in Yorkshire about 735 (died 804).
He was educated at York under the direction of Arch-
bishop Egbert, as we learn from his own letters, in
which he frequently calls that prelate his beloved master,
and the clergy of York the companions of his youthful
studies. He succeeded Egbert as director of the semi-
nary, and in later life modelled after it his famous
school at Tours. The emperor contracted so great an
esteem and friendship for #. that he earnestly urged
and at length induced him to take up his residence at
court and become his preceptor in the sciences. Alcuin
accordingly instructed Charlemagne and his family in
rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and divinity. “France,”
says one of our best writers of literary history, with
some degree of truth, “is indebted to Alcuin for all the
polite learning it boasted of in that and the following
ages. The universities of Paris, Tours, Fulden, Sois-
sons, and many others, owe to him their origin and
increase, those of which he was not the superior and
founder being at least enlightened by his doctrine and
172
A L C — A L D
-example, and enriched by the benefits he procured for
them from Charlemagne.” Alcuin, it is alleged, how-
ever, forbade the reading of the classical poets. In
790 he went to England in the capacity of ambassador,
and returned to France in 792, never again to visit his
inative land. -
ALCYONIUS, or ALCONIUS, PETRUs, a learned
Italian, born at Venice in 1487 (died 1527). Distin-
guished as a classical scholar, he was employed for
some time by Aldus Manutius as a corrector of the
JPress, and in 1522 was appointed professor of Greek at
JFlorence through the influence of Giulio de Medici.
ALDAN, a river of Siberia, in the government of
Yakutsk. . It has a total length of over 500 miles, for a
considerable part of which it is navigable.
ALDAN MOUNTAINS, the name usually applied
to a branch of the Stanovoi mountains, which strikes off
3rom the main chain in the direction of the Aldan river,
or to a part of this range.
ALDBOROUGH, a town of England, in the West
Riding of Yorkshire, 16 miles W. N.W. of York.
ALDEBURGH, or ALDROROUGH, a market-town
and watering-place in the county of Suffolk, 25 miles
E.N.E. of Ipswich.
ALDEGREVER, or ALDEGRAF, HEINRICH, a
German painter and engraver, born in 1502 at Pader-
born, from which he removed in early life to Soest.
Aldegrever died about the year 1562.
ALDER, a genus of plants (Alnus) belonging to the
order Betulaceae, the best known of which is the com-
mon alder (A. glutinosa). This tree thrives best in
moist soils, has a shrubby appearance. and grows, under
favorable circumstances, to a height of 40 or 50 feet.
ALDERMAN, a word derived from the Anglo-Saxon
ealdorman, compound of the comparative degree of the
adjective eald (old) and man. The term implies the
possession of an office of rank or dignity; and among
the Anglo-Saxons, earls, governors of provinces, and
other persons of distinction received this title. Thus
we read of the aldermannus totius Anglia, who seems
to have corresponded to the officer afterwards styled
capitalis justiciarius Angliae, or chief justice of
England; the aldermannus regis, probably an occasional
magistrate, answering to our justice of assize, or perhaps
an officer whose duty it was to prosecute for the crown;
and aldermanenus comitatus, a magistrate with a middle
rank between what was afterwards called the ear/ and
the sheriff, who sat at the trial of causes with the bishop,
and declared the common law, while the bishop proceeded
according to ecclesiastical law. Besides these we meet
with the titles of aldermannus civitatis, burgi, castelli,
Azertered; size wapen tachii, &c. In modern times alder-
men, are office-bearers in the municipal corporations of
England and Wales, and Ireland. In the United States
aldermen form as a rule a legislative rather than a judicial
body, although in some cities they hold courts and pos-
sess very considerable magisterial powers.
ALDERNEY, one of the Channel Islands, and the
most northerly of the four, lies 7 miles to the westward
of Cape la Hogue, and is separated from the French
coast by a narrow channel called the Race of Alderney.
The passage through this strait is rendered very dan-
gerous in stormy weather by its conflcting currents;
tout through it the scattered remnant of the French fleet
under Tourville succeeded in escaping after the defeat
of La Hogue in 1692. The harbor of Alderney is 20
miles distant from St. Peter Port, Guernsey, 45 miles
from St. Helen's, Jersey, and 60 miles from Portland
Bill, the nearest point of England. There is regular
steam communication with Guernsey. The length of
the island from N. E. to S.W. is 3% miles; its width
abput 1 mile; its greatest elevation is 280 feet; and the
area is about 4 square miles.
The greater part of Alderney is a level table-land,
more or less cultivated. The land continues flat to the
edge of the south-eastern and southern cliffs, which
present a magnificent succession of broken and perpen-
dicular walls of rock. Towards the north-west, north,
and east, the coast is less rocky, and is identified by
several bays of tame and naked aspect, of which those
of Crabby, Braye, and Longy are the most noticeable.
The population of Alderney has increased rapidly of
recent years, on account of the extensive public works.
In 1841 it was only Iogo, in 1871 it was 2738. The in-
habitants are Protestants, and Alderney forms part
of the diocese of Winchester. Though a French patois
lingers in the island, English is generally spoken and
universally understood. The climate is healthy, and
there is abundance of good water.
Alderney seems to have been known to the Romans
as A'iduna, and Roman as well as Celtic remains have
been discovered. It is subject to the British crown,
and is a dependency of Guernsey. For its history and
relation to English legislation, see the article on the
CHANNEL ISLANDS.
ALDERSHOTT CAMP, a standing garrison for a
large force, situated about 35 miles from London, on
the confines of Hampshire and Surrey. It was estab-
lished in May 1855, and was intended as a military
training school, especially for officers of the higher
grades. Its germ is to be found in the temporary
camp on Cobham Ridges, formed in 1853 by Lord
Hardinge, then commander-in-chief, the success of
which convinced him of the necessity of giving our
troops practical instruction in the field, and affording
our generals opportunities of manoeuvring large bodies
of the three arms. He therefore advised the purchase
of a tract of waste land whereon a permanent camp
might be established. His choice fell on Aldershott, a
spot also recommended by strategic reasons, being so
placed that a force holding it covered the capital.
ALDHELM, or ADELM, ST., Bishop of Sherborne
in the time of the Saxon heptarchy, was born about the
middle of the 7th century. He is said to have been
the son of Kenred, brother to Ina, king of the West
Saxons; but, in the opinion of William of Malmes-
bury, his ſather was no more than a distant relation to
the king. Having received the first part of his educa-
tion in the school of Meildulf, a learned Irish monk, he
travelled in France and Italy for his improvement.
On his return home he studied some time under Adrian,
abbot of St. Augustin's in Canterbury, the most
learned professor of the sciences who had ever been in
England. The ſame of his learning soon spread, not
only in England, but in foreign countries. He was a
musician as well as a poet, and madé his own songs the
medium of instruction and refinement to his barbarous
countrymen. After having governed the monastery of
Malmesbury, of which he was the founder, about thirty
years, he was made bishop of Sherborne, where he
died in May 709.
ALDINF EDITIONS. See MANUTIUS.
ALDINI, GIov ANNI, a distinguished physicist, born
at Bologna on the Ioth April 1762 (died 1834), was the
nephew of Galvani, and brother of the statesman Count
Antonio Aldini. Devoted from his youth to the study
of natural science, he was chosen in 1798 to succeed
his former teacher Canterzani in the chair of physics at
Bologna. He left by will a considerable sum to found
a school of natural science for artisans at Bologna.
ALDRED, EALDRED, or ALDRED, a prominent
ecclesiastic in the 11th century, was successively abbot
of Tavistock, bishop of Worcester, and archbishop of
A L D —
A L E I73.
York. He died ht York, Sept. 11, 1069, of grief, it is
said, because of the threatened attack on his city by the
combined forces of the English and Danes.
ALDRICH, Dr. HENRY, theologian and philosopher,
was born in 1647 at Westminster, and was educated at
the collegiate school there, under Dr. Busby. In 1662
he entered Christ Church College, Oxford, with which
he continued to be intimately connected during his
whole life. He took so conspicuous a part in the con-
troversy with the Roman Catholics during the reign of
James II., that at the Revolution the deanery of Christ
Church was conferred upon him, Massey, the popish
dean, having fled to the continent. In 1702 he was ap-
pointed rector of Wem in Shropshire, but continued to
reside at Oxford, where he died on the 14th Dec. I 710.
ALIDROVANDI, ULISSE, a celebrated naturalist,
born of noble parentage at Bologna on the IIth Sept.
1522 (died 1607). While a boy he was page in the fam-
ily of a rich bishop, and afterwards apprentice to a mer-
chant in Brescia. Commercial pursuits soon became
distasteful to him, and he turned his attention to law
and medicine, studying first in his native town and
afterwards at Padura. In 1550, having been accused of
heresy, he was compelled to proceed to Rome in order
to vindicate himself before the Inquisition, which gave
him a conditional acquittal. In Rome he published his
first work, a treatise on ancient statuary. Here he
made the acquaintance of the eminent naturalist Ron-
delet, from whom it seems not unlikely that he derived
the impulse towards what became from that time his
exclusive study. On his return to Bologna he devoted
himself specially to botany, under the teaching of Lucas
Ghino, then professor of that science at the university.
In 1553 he took his doctor's degree in medicine, and in
the following year he was appointed professor of philos-
ophy and also lecturer on botany at the university. In
1560 he was transferred to the chair of natural history,
which he continued to occupy until rendered infirm by
39762.
*ALDSTONE, or ALSTON MOOR, a market-town of
England, in the county of Cumberland, situated on an
eminence near the South Tyne, 1.9 miles E.S.E. from
Carlisle, with which it is connected by railway. Popu-
lation (1889) of parish, 7800; of town, 3500. . . . .
ALE, a fermented liquor obtained from an infusion of
malt, and differing from beer chiefly in having a less
proportion of hops. Before the introduction of hops
into England from Flanders, about 1524, ale was the
name exclusively applied to malt liquor, the term beer
being gradually introduced at a later period to describe
liquor brewed with an infusion of hops. Ale, the wine
of barley, is said to have originally been made in Egypt.
The natives alike of Spain, France, and Britain all use
an infusion of barley for their ordinary liquor, which
was called calia and certa in the first country, cerez'isia
in the second, curmi in the third —all literally importing
the strong water.
This ale was most commonly made of barley, but
Sometimes of wheat, oats, and millet. Ale was the
favorite liquor of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Before
their conversion to Christianity, they believed that drink-
ing large and frequent draughts of ale was one of the
chief felicities which those heroes enjoyed who were
admitted into the hall of Odin.
For details as to the process of manufacture, statistics,
&c., see BREWING.,
ALE-CONNER, an English officer appointed at the
courtleet of ancient manors for the assize of ale and ale-
measures. The gustatores cerz/isiae—called in different
localities by the different names, “ale-tasters,” “ale-
founders,” and “ale-conners” — were sworn to examine
beer and ale, to take care that they were good and whole-
some and were sold at proper prices. (For the means
employed to test the quality of ales, see ADULTERATION.).
ALEAN DRO, GIROLAMo (HIERONYMUS), cardinal,
commonly called the “Elder,” to distinguish him from
his grand-nephew of the same name, was born at Motta,
near Venice, on the 13th of February, 1480 (died 1542).
He studied at Venice, and, while still a youth, acquired
great reputation for learning. In 1508 he went to Paris,
on the invitation of Louis XII., as professor of belles.
lettres, and he held for a time the position of rector in the
university. In 1538 Paul III. conferred upon him the
cardinal's hat, when he took the title of St. Chrysogonus.
He died at Rome on the 31st January or 1st February
I542.
*ieMAN, LOUIs, Archbishop of Arles, and Cardi-
nal of St. Cecilia, was born at Bugey in 1390. He was,
one of the presidents of the Council of Basle in 1431,
and led the party that maintained the supremacy of
councils over popes in opposition to the claims of
Eugenius IV. In 1527 Aleman was canonised by Pope
Clement VII.
ALEMANNI, a large German tribe on the Upper
Rhine. They are first mentioned by Dion Cassius, who,
relates that the Emperor Carcalla gained, in 213 A.D., a
victory over them on the banks of the Maine, and thence
assumed the surname Alemannicus. The origin of this
tribe, and the country from which they came, are un-
known; but we have a distinct statement, which is
apparently confirmed by the very name of the people,
that they had flocked together from all parts, and were
a mixed race. They proved most formidable enemies to
the Romans as well as to the Gauls, their western neigh-
bors, who to this day apply the name Alemanni (Alle-
mands) to all the Germans indiscriminately, though the
Alemanni, properly so called, occupied only the country
between the Maine and the Danube. In these countries.
the Alemanni have maintained themselves ever since,
and the greater part of the modern Suabians and the
northern Swiss are descendants of that ancient race.
ALEMBIC, an apparatus for distillation, used chiefly
by the alchemists, and now almost entirely superseded
by the retort and worm-still.
ALEMTEJO (Spanish Alemtejo), a province of
Portugal, bounded on the N. by Beira, on the E. by
Spanish Estremadura and Andalusia, on the S. by
Algarve, and on the W. by the Atlantic and Portuguese
Fstremadura. It has an area of Io,225 square miles.
The chief towns are Evora, Portalegre, Elvas, Beja,
Estamoz, and Moura. There are no seaports of im-
portance in the province. Population in 1889, 5oo,000.
ALENCON, the chief town of the French depart-
ment of Orne, situated in a wide and fertile plain, on
the Sarthe, close to its confluence with the Briante.
The lace known as the “point d'Alençon " is the most
noted manufacture of the town, although of late years
its importance has somewhat diminished. Among other
industries are tanning, spinning, bleaching, linen manu-
facturing, and cider-making. The cutting of quartz
crystals, often called Alençon diamonds, is also carried
on. Population (1889), 22,000.
ALENIO, GIULIO, a missionary of the Jesuit order,
born at Brescia in 1582, died 1649. He became a mem-
ber of the order in 1600, and arrived at Macao as a
propagandist in 161O. He composed a number of works
in the Chinese language, of which he was thoroughly
master, the most important being a Ziſe of Christ and a
Cosmography.
ALEPPO, or HALEB, a city of Syria, capital of the
Turkish vilayet of the same name, near the N.W.
extremity of the great Syrian desert. It occupies the
site of the ancient Berara, and is a place of great antiquity.
After the destruction of Palmyra it speedily became the
I74
A L E
: great emporium of the trade between the Mediterranean
and the countries of the East. It was overwhelmed by
the flood of Saracen invasion in 638; and in 1260, and
again in 1401, it was plundered and laid waste by the
Tartars. It finally came into the possession of the
Turks in 1517. To the east of the modern city exten-
sive remains of its ancient grandeur have been dis-
covered.
Formerly Aleppo stood in the first rank among the
cities of Asia Minor as a place of trade; and it is still
the emporium of Northern Syria, and has extensive
commercial relations with Diarbekir and the upper parts
of Anatolia, and also with Mosul and Baghdad. Large
caravans resort to Aleppo from these and other eastern
places, and the imported foreign goods are brought by
caravans from the ports of Scanderoon or Alexandretta
and Latakia. The construction of a carriage-road be-
tween Aleppo and Alexandretta was commenced. Its
completion was very slow and long delayed. Trade
is conducted in Aleppo by more than Ioo mer-
cantile houses, several of them British; but no commer-
cial bank has as yet been established in the province.
The principal manufacture of the city consists of various
kinds of cloth, of silk, cotton, and wool, some flowered
and striped, others woven with gold and silver thread.
These cloths have long been famous throughout the
East, and the manufacture of them employs about 6400
looms. A large amount is invested in the manufacture
of carpets, cloaks, and girdles. There are, besides,
numerous soap, dyeing, and print works, and also rope-
walks. In addition to cloths, the exports include wheat,
sesame, wool, cotton, oil, scammony, galls, pistachio-
nuts, camels’ hair, &c.; while the imports chiefly consist
of European manufactured goods and colonial produce.
The air of Aleppo is dry and piercing, but not insalu-
brious. The city, however, as well as the environs, is
subject to a singular epidemic disorder called the boil of
Aleppo.
By the visitations of the plague, the earthquakes, the
cholera of 1832, and the oppression of the Egyptians
while Syria was subject to Mehemet Ali, the population
of Aleppo has been much reduced. In the earlier part
of the century the inhabitants numbered over 200,000;
but the population is now estimated at less than 100,000,
of whom I5,500 are Christians, 4000 Jews and the re-
mainder mostly Mahometans.
ALES, or ALESS (ALESIUs), ALEXANDER, a celebrated
divine of the school of Augsburg, was born at Edin-
burg on the 23d April 1500 (died 1565). His name was
originally Alane, and that by which he is more generally
known (derived from d'Alesivo) was assumed by him
when he went into exile. He studied at St. Andrews
in the newly founded college of St. Leonards, where he
graduated in 1515. Some time afterwards he was ap-
pointed a canon of the collegiate church, and in this
office he at first contended vigorously for the scholastic
theology as against the doctrines of the Reformers. His
views were entirely changed, however, on the occasion
of the execution of Patrick Hamilton in 1528. After
travelling in various countries of northern Europe, he
settled down at Wittenberg, where he made the acquaint-
ance of Melancthon, and signed the Augsburg confes-
sion. Meanwhile he was tried in Scotland for heresy,
and condemned without a hearing. In 1533 a decree of
the Scottish clergy, prohibiting the reading of the New
Testament by the laity, drew from Alesius an ably-
argued defence of the right of the people, in the form of
a letter to James V. A reply to this by John Cochlaeus,
also addressed to the Scottish king, occasioned a second
letter from Alesius, in which he not only restates and
amplifies his argument with great force and beauty of
Style, but enters at Some length into more general ques-
tions connected with the Reformation. In 1535, Henry
VIII. having broken with the Church of Rome, Alesius
was induced to remove to England, where he was very
cordially received by the king and his advisers, Cranmer
and Cromwell. In 1537 he attended a convocation of
the clergy, and at the request of Cromwell, the presi-
dent, conducted a controversy with Stokesley, bishop of
London, on the nature of the sacraments. In 1539
Alesius was compelled to flee for the second time to
Germany, in consequence of the enactment of the perse-
cuting statute known as the Six Articles. At Leipsic
Alesius remained until his death, which occurred on the
17th March 1565. He enjoyed the intimate friendship
of Melancthon, to whom he rendered valuable assistance
in many of his disputations with the Catholic doctors.
ALESSANDRI, ALESSANDRO (Alexander ab A/ex-
andro), a learned jurisconsult, born at Naples about the
year 1461 (died 1523). He studied at Naples and
Rome, and afterwards practised for a time as advocate
in both cities. At Naples he is said to have been royal
prothonotary in 1490.
ALESSANDRIA, a province of Italy, in the former
duchy of Piedmont, bounded on the N. by Novara, on
the E. by Pavia, on the S. by Genoa, and on the W. by
Turin; with an area of 1951 square miles.
ALESSANDRIA, a city of Italy, the capital of the above
province, is situated in a marshy district near the conflu-
ence of the Tanaro and the Bormida. It is a strongly
fortified place, its citadel, on the left bank of the Tanaro,
being one of the most important in Europe. The town
itself, which lies chiefly on the right bank of the river,
is the seat of a bishop, and contains a cathedral and
more than a dozen other churches, besides monasteries
and nunneries. The principal manufactures of Alessan-
dria are silk, linen, and woollen goods, stockings, and
hats. Large quantities of fruit and flowers are also
produced in the neighborhood. Near Alessandria is
Marengo, where Napoleon defeated the Austrians in
18oo.
ALESSI, GALEAZZO (1500–72), a distinguished archi-
tect, born at Perugia, was a pupil of Caporali and a
friend of Michael Angelo.
ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, so called from the Russian
word aleut, signifying a bold rock, is the name given
by the Russian discoverers to a chain of small islands
situated in the Northern Pacific Ocean and extending
in an eastern direction from the peninsula of Kamt-
chatka, in Asiatic Russia, to the promontory of Alaska,
in North America. This archipelago has been some-
sometimes divided into three groups; the islands near-
est Kamtchatka being properly called Aleutia, the cen-
tral group the Andreanov or Andrenovian, and those
nearest to the promontory the Fox Islands. The
population of the whole group is about 8000, the
natives being a kindred race to the inhabitants of
Kamtchatka. They are described as rather low in
stature, but plump and well-shaped, with short
necks, swarthy faces, black eyes, and long straight
black hair. They have nominally been converted
to Christianity by the missionaries of the Greek
Church, but are said to be unchaste in their
habits, and addicted to intermperance whenever they
have the opportunity. Until 1867 these islands be-
longed to Russia, but they were included in the transfer
to the United States of the whole Russian possessions
in America made in that year. They now form part of
the United States territory of Alaska. (See ALASKA.)
From the position of the Aleutian Islands, stretching
like a broken bridge from Asia to America, some eth-
nologists have supposed that by means of them Amer-
ica was first peopled.
ALEXANDER III., commonly called “The Great,”
A L E
I75
son of Philip II., king of Macedonia, and of Olympias,
daughter of the Molossian chief Neoptolemus, was born
at Pella, 356 B.C. His father was a man of ſearless cour-
age and the soundest judgment; his mother was a
woman of savage energy and fierce superstition. Alex-
ander inherited the qualities of both his parents, and
the result was the combination of a boundless ambition
with the most sober practical wisdom. The child grew
up with the consciousness that he was the heir of a
king whose power was rapidly growing; and the sto-
ries told of him attest at least the early awakening
of a mind formed in the mould of the heroes of myth-
ical Hellas. Nay, the blood of Achilles was flowing,
as he believed, in his veins; and the flattery of his Acar-
nanian tutor Lysimachus, who addressed him as the
son of Peleus, may have strengthened his love of the
immortal poems which told the story of that fiery war-
rior. By another tutor, the Molossian Leonidas, his
vehement impulses were checked by a wholesome disci-
pline. But the genius of Alexander, the greatest of
military conquerors, was moulded in a far greater de-
gree by that of Aristotle, the greatest conqueror in the
world of thought. At the age of thirteen he became
the pupil of a man who had examined the political con-
stitutions of a crowd of states, and who had brought
together a vast mass of facts and observations for the
systematic cultivation of physical science. During
these three years the boy awoke to the knowledge that
a wonderful world lay before him, of which he had
seen little, and threw himself eagerly, it is said, into
the task of gathering at any cost a collection for the
study of natural history. While his mind was thus
urged in one direction, he listened to stories which told
him of the great quarrel still to be fought out between
the East and the West, and learnt to look upon himself
as the champion of Hellas against the barbarian despot
of Susa.
The future conqueror was sixteen years of age when
he was left at home as regent while his father besieged
Byzantium and Perinthus. Two years later the alliance
of Thebis and Athens was wrecked on the fatal field of
Chaeronea, where Alexander, now eighteen years of age,
encountered and overcame the Sacred Band which had
been foremost in the victories of Leuctra and Mantinea
(see EPAMINONDAs); but the prospects of Alexander
became now for a time dark and uncertain. Philip had
divorced Olympias and married Cleopatra, the daugh-
ter of Attalus. This act roused the wrath not only of
Olympias, but of her son, who with her took refuge in
Epirus. Cleopatra became the mother of a son. Her
father, Attalus, rose higher in the king's favor, and not
a few of Alexander’s friends were banished. But the
feuds in his family were subjects of serious thought for
Philip, who sought to counteract their ill effects by a
marriage between his daughter and her uncle, the Epi-
rot king Alexander, the brother of Olympias. The
marriage feast was celebrated at AEgae. Clothed in a
white robe, and walking purposely apart from his
guards, Philip was approaching the theatre when he
was struck down by the dagger of Pausanias.
Alexander was now eager to carry out his great design
against Persia; but he could not do so with safety until
he had struck a wholesome terror of his power into the
mountain tribes which hemmed in his dominions. His
blows descended swiftly and surely on the Thracians of
Mount Haemus (the Balkan), on the Triballians, and
on some clans of Getae, whom he crossed the Danube to
attack. But these expeditions led him away from the
world of the Greeks. Silence led to rumors of his
defeat, and the rumors of defeat were followed by more
confident assertions of his death. At Thebes and at
Athens the tidings were received by some with eager
belief. The covenant made with Alexander was made
only with him personally. The Theban exiles at
Athens were anxious to repeat the attempt which half
a century earlier had been made against the Spartan
garrison of the Cadmea by Pelopidas. . With help in
arms and money from Demosthenes and other Athen-
ians, they entered Thebes, and summoned the Mace-
donian garrison to surrender. The answer was a blunt
refusal, and a double line of circumvallation was drawn
around the citadel, while envoys were sent to call forth
aid from every quarter; but these efforts could not
affect the issue. The belief in Alexander’s death was to
be dispelled, by no gradual reports of his escape from
the barbarians, but by his own sudden appearance
at the Boeotian Onchestus. He had just defeated
the Illyrians when he heard of the revolt, and he
determined to smite the rebels without turning aside to
take even a day’s rest at Pella. In little more than a
fortnight his army was encamped on the Southern side
of Thebes, thus cutting off all chances of aid from
Athens. It was his wish to avoid an assault, and he
contended himself with demanding the surrender of two
only of the anti-Macedonian leaders. The citizens gen-
erally were anxious to submit, but the exiles felt or
feared themselves to be too deeply committed; and the
answer took the form of a defiance, accompanied by a
demand for the surrender of Antipator and Philotas.
They had sealed their own doom. Personal bravery
was of no use against the discipline, the numbers, and
the engines of the enemy. The defenders were driven
back into the city; the invaders burst in with them; and
the slaughter which followed was by no means inflicted
by the Macedonians alone. The Plataens, Thespians,
and Orchomenians felt that they had old scores to settle.
To these and to the rest of his Greek allies Alexander
submitted the fate of the city. The sentence was
promptly pronounced. The measure which the The-
bans had dealt to Plataeae, and would have dealt to
Athens, should now be dealt out to themselves. The
whole town was razed to the ground, the house of the
º Pindar being alone spared from demolition, and
is descendants alone allowed to retain their freedom.
Alexander had gained his end. The spirit of the
Greeks was crushed; a great city was blotted out, and
the worship of its gods was ended with its ruin. With-
out turning aside to Athens, he went on to Corinth to
receive the adulations of the independent Greeks, and
to find, it is said, a less courtly speaker in the cynic
Diogenes. From Corinth he returned to Macedonia,
having left Greece for the last time.
Six months later he set off from Pella, crossed the
Hellespont at Sestus, to appease at Ilium by a costly
sacrifice the wrath of the luckless Priam ; and then
marched on, with not more perhaps than 30,000 infantry
and 4000 cavalry, and with a treasure-chest almost
empty, to destroy the monarchy of Cyrus. With him
went men who were to be linked with the memory of
of his first crimes and of his most astonishing triumphs
— Clitus, Hephaestion, Eumenes, Seleucus, Ptolemy,
the son of Lagos, and Parmenion, with his sons Phi-
lotas and Nicanor. The effects of Macedonian discipline
were to be seen at once on the banks of the Granicus, a
little stream flowing to the Propontis from the slopes of
Ida. Losing, it is said, only 60 of his cavalry and
3o of his infantry, he annihilated the Persian force, 2000
out of 20,000 foot soldiers being taken prisoners, and
nearly all the rest slain. The terror of his name did
his work, as he marched southwards. The citadel of
Sardis might with ease have been held against him; be-
fore he came within eight miles of the city, the governor
hastened to surrender it with all its treasure. At
Ephesus he found the city abandoned by its garrison.
*
176
A L E
Miletus he carried by storm. Before Halicarnassus he
encountered a more obstinate resistance from the Athen-
ian Ephialtes; but the generalship of the latter was of
, no avail. Alexander entered Halicarnassus, and the
Rhodian Memnon remained shut up in the citadel.
Leaving Ptolemy with IOOo men to blockade it, he spent
the winter in conquering Lycia, Pamphylia, and Pi-
sidia, ending his campaign at Gordium, on the river San-
garius. Here was P. the ancient waggon of
Gordius, the mythical Phrygian king. Whoever could
untie the knot, curiously twisted with fibres of the cornel
tree, which fastened its pole to the yoke, was, so the
story ran, to be lord of Asia. Alexander, as much at a
loss as others to unloose it, cut it with his sword; but
the prophecy was none the less held to be fulfilled. If
he was thus favored by sentiment, he was still more
favored by the infatuation which led Darius to
abandon the policy of defence by sea for offensive war-
fare by land. From all parts of his vast empire was
gathered a host, numbering, as some said, 600,000 men ;
and the despot was as much elated at the sight as
Xerxes, when he looked down upon his motley multi-
tudes at Doriscus. Like Xerxes he had one (Athenian
Charidemus) by his side to warn him that Asiatic myr-
iads were not to be trusted in an encounter with the
disciplined thousands of Alexander; but he lacked the
generosity which made Xerxes dismiss Demaratus with
a smile for his good-will. Darius seized the exile with
his own hand, and gave him over to the executioner.
“My avenger,” said Charidemus, “will soon teach you
that I have spoken the truth.” The Persian acted as
though he wished to bring about the speediest fulfil-
ment of the prediction. The Greek mercenaries were
withdrawn from the fleet to be added to the land forces ;
but although a hundred of these could have effectually
barred the passage of Alexander across the range of
Taurus, and the passes of the Amanian, Cilician, and
Assyrian gates, the invader was suffered to cross these
defiles without the loss of a man. Nay, so great was
the contempt of Darius for the few thousands of the
enemy, that he wished to give them a free path until
they reached the plain from which he would sweep
them away. But he could not wait patiently for them
in his position to the east of the Amanian range. Alexan-
der had been ill, and he had work to do in subjugating west-
ern Cilicia. When at length he set out on his march to the
southern Amanian pass, Darius, with his unwieldy
train crossed the northern pass, and entered Issus two
days after Alexander had left it. He had placed him-
self in a trap. In a space barely more than a mile and
a halfin width, hemmed in by the mountains on the one side
and the sea on the other, Darius, in his royal chariot,
in the midst of multitudes who had scarcely room to
move, awaited the attack of Alexander, who fell Sud-
denly on his right wing. The first onset was enough.
The Persians broke and fled. Darius, thinking himself
in danger, fled among the foremost. The Persian centre
behaved well; but it mattered little now what they
might do. Even the Greek mercenaries were pushed
back and scattered. Four thousand talents filled the
treasure-chest of the conquerer, and the wife, mother,
and son of Darius, appearing before him as prisoners,
were told that they should retain their royal titles, his
enterprise being directed, not against Darius personally,
but to the issue which was to determine whether he or
Alexander should be lord of Asia.
The true value of armed Asiatic hordes was now as
clear to all as the Sun at noonday. Parmenion advanced
to attack Damascus, but he needed not to strike a blow.
The governor allowed the treasure in his charge to fall
into his hands, and then surrendered the city. Alexan-
der himself marched southward to Phoenicia. At
Marathus, he replied to a letter in which Darius de-
manded the restoration of his family and reproached
him for his wanton aggression. His answer repeated
what he had already said to his wife, adding that, if he
wrote again, Darius must address him, not as his equal,
but as his lord. “I am now master of Asia,” he wrote,
“and if you will not own me as such, I shall treat you
as an evil-doer. If you wish to debate the point, do so
like a man in the battlefield. I shall take care to find
you wherever you may be.” The island city of Aradus
was surrendered on his approach. Sidon opened her
gates. From the Tyrians he received a submission
which demurred only to his entering their city. A siege
of seven months ended in its fall; and Alexander hanged
2,000 of the citizens, it is said, on the sea-shore. The
survivors, with the women and children, were sold as
slaves. Alexander’s face was turned towards Egypt.
Gaza dared to resist; but a siege of two months was fol-
lowed by a ruin as complete as that of Tyre. From
Gaza a march of seven days brought him to Pelusium.
The Persian governor opened its gates to receive him;
and the Egyptians expressed their delight at exchanging
a Persian for a Macedonian master. Marching in
triumph to Memphis, he offered solemn sacrifice to the
calf-god Apis; and then, with the true instinct of the
ruler and the statesman, he hastened to found for his
new kingdom a new capital, which, after more than two
millenniums, remains a highway for the commerce of
three continents.
Marching back through Phoenicia, he hastened to
Thapsacus, and then crossed the Euphrates. Thence
turning northward, he made a sweep which brought him
to the Tigris, below Nineveh (Mosul), and there, without
opposition, crossed a stream where the resistance of a
few hundreds might have destroyed his army. After a
few days’ march to the south-east, he received the news
that Darius, with all his host, was close at hand. Still
convinced that mere numbers must, with ample space,
decide the issue of any fight, and attributing his defeat
at Issos only to the cramped position of his troops, he
had gathered a vast horde, which some represent at more
than a million, on the broad plain stretching from
Gaugamela eastward to Arbela. His hopes were fur-
ther raised by changes made in the weapons of his
troops, and more especially in the array of his war-
chariots. For the Macedonians, it is enough to say that
they were led by a man whose consummate generalship.
had never shone more conspicuously than in the cautious
arrangements which preceded the battle of Arbela, or
rather of Guagamela. All went as he had anticipated.
As at Issus, Darius fled; and the bravery and even gal-
lantry of the Persians opposed to Parmenion were of no
avail when the main body had hurried away after the
king. So ended the last of the three great battles (if
such they may be termed) which sufficed to destroy the
Persian empire, or rather to make Alexander king of
Persia; and so ended the first act of the great drama of
his life.
For a month Alexander allowed his main army to
rest near Persepolis; for himself there could be no
repose. With his cavalry he overran, and, in spite of
the rigors of winter, subdued the whole region of Far-
sistan. Then returning to Persepolis, he set forth on
his march to Media, where the fugitive king had hoped
to be safe from his pursuit. Darius had left Agbatana
(Ecbatana) eight days before his pursuer could reach it.
In this ancient fastness of the Median and Persian sover-
eigns Alexander deposited his treasure, exceeding, we
are told, forty millions sterling in amount, under the
charge of a strong Macedonian garrison headed by Par-
menion. He then hastened on towards the Caspian
gates, and learnt, when he had passed them, that Darius
A L E
177.
had been dethroned, and was now the prisoner of the
Bactrian satrap Bessus. The tidings made Alexander
still more eager to seize him. His effort was so far
successful that Bessus felt escape to be hopeless unless
Darius could be made to leave his chariot and fly on
horseback. He refused to obey, and was left behind,
mortally wounded. Before Alexander could reach him,
he was dead.
The conqueror now regarded, or professed to regard,
himself as the legitimate heir and successor of Xerxes.
His course of conquests was still unbroken; but success-
ful forays against the Mardians on the northern slopes
of Mount Elburz, against the Arians of modern Herat,
and the Drangians of the present Seistan, were followed
by an exploit of another sort. The autumn and winter
were spent in overrunning parts of the modern Afghan-
istan and Cabul, in the formation of the Caucasian
Alexandria, and in the passage of the Hindu-Kush. He
was now in the satrapy of Bessus. The surrender of
Aornus and Bactria was followed by the passage of the
Oxus and by the betrayal of Bessus, who was sent naked
and in chains to the city which had been his capital.
The winter was spent in the Bactrian city of Zariaspa,
where Alexander, summoning Bessus before him, had
his ears and nose cut off, and then sent him to be killed
by his countrymen at Ecbatana.
The next river to be crossed was the Indus. The bridge
was constructed by Hephæstion and Perdiccas, proba-
bly near the present Attock. The surrender of Taxila
left Alexander an open path until he reached the Hy-
daspes (J/ie/um), where Porus was beaten only after a
severe struggle. The Indian prince was taken prisoner,
and treated with the courtesy which the family of Darius
had received after the battle of Issus. Here died Alex-
ander's horse Boukephalos (Bucephalus), and the loss
was commemorated by the founding of Bucephalia.
The passage of the Acesines ( Chenab), running with a
full and impetuous stream, was not accomplished with-
out much danger; that of the Hydraotes (A’azee)
presented less formidable difficulties, but he was en-
countered on the other side by Indians, who entrenched
themselves in their town of Sangala. Their resistance
ended, it is said, in the slaughter of 17,000 and the
capture of 70,000. About 40 miles further to the
south-east flowed the Hyphasis (Suſſeſ). Alexander
approached its bank, the limit of the Panjab, in the full
confidence that a few days more would bring him to
the mighty stream of the Ganges; but he had reached
the goal of his conquests. The order for crossing the
river called forth murmurs and protests at once from
his officers and his soldiers, who expressed plainly their
refusal to march they knew not whither. Alexander
in vain laid before his officers his schemes of further
conquest; and when he offered the sacrifice customary
before crossing a river, the signs were pronounced to
be unfavorable. The die was cast. Twelve huge altars
remained to show that Alexander had advanced thus far
on his conquest of the world; and, in the midst of
deluges of rain, the army set out on its westward jour-
ney. From the mouth of the Indus he ordered his
admiral Nearchus to take the fleet along the shores of
the ocean and the Persian Gulf to the mouth of the
Tigris. The army marched by land through the Gedro-
sian desert, suffering more from thirst and sickness than
they had suffered in all their battles and forced marches.
At length he reached Pasargadae, to find the tomb of
Cyrus broken open and plundered, and to avenge the
insult offered to the man whom he now regarded as the
founder of his own dynasty. Early in the following
year he entered Susa, and there, celebrating his mar-
riage with Statira, the daughter of Darius and of Pary-
satis the daughter of his predecessor Ochus, he offered
to pay the debts of those soldiers who would follow his
example by taking to themselves Persian wives—a
strange mode of inviting sober and steady men who
had no debts, but an effectual argument for the spend-
thrifts and ruffians of his army. His new levies of
Persian youths, armed and disciplined after the Mace-
donian fashion, had now made him independent of his
veteran soldiers; and his declared intention of sending
home the aged and wounded among them called forth
the angry remonstrances of their comrades, who bade
him complete his schemes of conquest with the aid of
father Ammon, , Alexander rushed into the throng,
seized some and had them executed, and then disbanded
the whole force. For two days he shut himself up in
his palace; on the third he marshalled his Persian
levies (AEpigomu, as he called them) into divisions bear-
ing the Macedonian military titles, under Persian
officers. The spirit of the veterans was broken by this
ignoring of their existence. They threw down their
arms at the palace gates, and begged forgiveness with
cries and tears. Alexander accepted their contrition,
and the restoration of harmony was celebrated by a
sumptuous sacrifice.
But for Alexander past victories were only a stimulus
to further exploits. Arabia still remained unsubdued,
and for this conquest a large addition was needed to his
fleet. Orders were sent to Phoenicia for the construction
of ships, which were to be taken to pieces and sent
overland to Thapsacus on the Euphrates, while others
were to be built at Babylon. His march to Babylon
steeped him still more in the intoxication of success.
As he advanced on his road he was met by ambassadors
not only from Illyrians and Thracians, from Sicily and
Sardinia, from Libya and Carthage, but from Lucanians
and Etruscans, and, as some said, from Rome itself.
The lord of all the earth could scarcely look for wider
acknowledgment or more devout submission ; but his
self-gratulation may have been damped by the warning
of the Chaldean priests that it would be safer for him
not to enter the gates of Babylon. For a while he hesi-
tated, but he had more to do than to heed their words.
The preparations for his Arabian campaign must be
hurried on ; all that might be needed must be done to
improve the navigation of the Euphrates, and a new
city must be built to rival, perhaps, the Alexandria
which he had founded by the banks of the Nile. More
than all, he had to celebrate the obsequies of Hephæs-
tion, whose body had been brought to Babylon from
Ecbatana. The feasting which everywhere accompanied
the funeral rites of the ancient world was exaggerated
by the Macedonians, as by other half rude or Savage
tribes, into prolonged revelry. Alexander spent , the
whole night drinking in the house of his friend Medius,
and the whole of the next day in sleeping off his drunk-
enness. Throughout the following night the same orgies
were repeated. When he next awoke he was unable to
rise. Fever had laid its grasp upon him, and each day
its hold became tighter, while he busied himself inces-
santly with giving orders about his army, his fleet, his
generals, until at length the powers of speech began to
fail. When asked to name his successor, he said
that he left his kingdom to the strongest. His signet-
ring he took from his finger and gave to Perdiccas.
Throughout the army, the tidings of his illness spread
consternation; old grudges were all forgotten ; his vete-
rans forced themselves into his presence, and with tears
bade farewell to their general, who showed by signs that
he still knew them. A few hours later Alexander died,
after a reign of less than thirteen years, and before he
had reached the age of thirty-three.
ALEXANDER OF APHROLISIAs, the most cele-
brated of Greek commentators on the writings of Aris-
I2 A
178
A L E
totle, and styled, by way of pre-eminence, the Expositor.
He was a native of Aphrodisias in Caria, and taught the
Peripatetic philosophy at Athens in the end of the 2d
and beginning of the 3d centuries of the Christian era.
Commentaries by Alexander on the following works of
Aristotle are still extant : — The Analytica Priora, I.;
the Zopica : the AYeteorologica; the De Sensu ; and
the A/etaphysica, I.-W., together with an abridgement
of what he wrote on the remaining books of the Meta-
physica. . His commentaries were greatly esteemed
among the Arabians, who translated many of them.
There are also several original writings by Alexander
still extant.
, ALEXANDER OF HALEs (ALExANDER HALENSIs),
surnamed /20ctor /rr/ragabilis and Fons Vitae, a cele-
brated English theologian of the 13th century. Born
in Gloucestershire, and trained in the monastery of
IIales, from which he takes his name, he was early
raised to an archdeaconry. In 1222, when at the
height of his fame, Alexander entered the order of
Minorite Friars and thenceforward lived in strict seclu-
sion. He died in 1245, and was buried in the convent
of the Cordeliers at Paris, where he spent the last
twenty-three years of his life.
ALEXANDER OF TRALLEs (ALEXANDER TRAL-
LIANUS), a medical writer, was a native of Tralles, a
city of Lydia, and lived probably about the middle of
the 6th century. He is the author of a work, divided
into twelve books, in which he treats of bodily distem-
pers. He was the first to open the jugular vein, and to
use cantharides as a blister for the gout.
ALEXANDER BAEAS (a surname that probably
means “lord ”), a man of low birth who professed to be
the son of Antiochus Epiphanes, and eventually became
king of Syria. The new king soon made himself hate-
ful to his subjects by his voluptuousness and debauch-
ery, and this encouraged Demetrius Nicator, the eldest
son of Demetrius Soter, to claim his father’s crown.
Alexander took the field against him, but was defeated
in a pitched battle, and fled to Abae in Arabia, where he
was murdered by the emir, with whom he had sought
refuge, I45 B.C.
ALEXANDER JANNAEUS, king of the Jews, suc-
ceeded his brother Aristobulus in IOA, B.C., and died in
9 B.C.
ALEXANDER SEVERUS, Roman Emperor. See
SEVERUS.
ALEXANDER was the name of eight Popes:–
ALEXANDER I., bishop of Rome, succeeded Evaristus
in IO8 or Io9 A.D., and, according to Eusebius, suffered
martyrdom under Hadrian in the year I 19.
ALEXANDER II., whose family name was Anselmo
Baggio, was born at Milan, and occupied the papal
chair from 1061 to Io'73. *.
ALEXANDER III. (A'olando A'azzuci of Siena), car-
dinal and chancellor of the Roman church, was elected
to the popedom in 1159, and reigned until I 181. His
career is of great historical importance on account of
the vigor and ultimate success with which he carried
out the ideas and policy of Hildebrand in opposition to
Frederick Barbarossa and Henry II. of England.
Three anti-popes (Victor IV., I 159; Pascal III., II64;
Calixtus III., I 168) were confirmed by the German
emperor in succession.
ALEXANDER IV., Count Ramaldo de Segni, cardinal-
bishop of Ostia, occupied the papal chair from Decem-
ber 1254 till his death in May 1261. He seems to have
been of a week character, and in the struggle against the
house of Hohenstaufen, which he inherited from his
predecessors, he did little to strengthen the position of
the papacy. The last years of his pontificate were
passed at Viterbo, where he was compelled to take
refuge on account of the violent struggles at Rome
between the factions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
ALEXANDER V. (Pietro Philargi), a native of
Candia, enjoyed the dignity of Pópe for only ten
months, from the 26th June 1409 to the 3d May 1410.
He died, as was generally believed, of poison adminis-
tered by Balthasar Cossa, who became his successor
under the title of John XXIII.
ALEXANDER VI. (A’odrigo Borgia), memorable as
the most characteristic incarnation of the secular spirit
of the papacy of the 15th century, was born at Xativa
in Valencia, Ist January, I431. His biographers all
but unanimously assert, his patronymic to have been
Lenzuoli (in its original Valencian form, Llançol), and
the name of Borgia (or more properly Borja) to have
been assumed on his adoption by his maternal uncle.
Francisco Escolano, however, a compatriot, positively
affirms (Crozzica, lib. vi. Cap. 33), that Llançol was his
mother's name, and that his father was Giofré Borja.
It is also disputed whether he originally followed the
legal or the military, profession; the former appears
more probable. In either case, his career was deter-
mined by his uncle's elevation to the papacy as Calixtus
III., 8th April 1455, and his own immediate summons
to Rome, where he was reserved in Žetto as cardinal in
the ensuing February, publicly promoted in September,
and by an unparalleled act of nepotism elevated to the
lucrative and dignified office of vice-chancellor in the
following July. He also succeeded his uncle as arch-
bishop of Valencia. An elder brother, Pedro Luis,
was made generalissimo of the papal forces by land and
sea. The animosity created by so invidious an exalta-
tion prepared Rodrigo's subsequent feud with the
Roman patriciate. For the moment he was all-power-
ful, and the letters of that dextrous courtier Æneas
Sylvius attest the importance attached to his good
word.
On the death of the jovial Paul (1471), Borgia is men-
tioned, along with Cardinals Orsino and Gonzaga, as one
of the three who chiefly contributed to place the tiara on
the brows of the then famous preacher and exemplary
ascetic Sixtus IV., who immediately (Aer ſuggire
Z” ingratifudine) bestowed on him the opulent abbey of
Subiaco, and raised him to the dignity of cardinal-bishop.
Innocent VIII., the successor of Sixtus, owed his election
to Borgia’s coalition with the late pope's nephew, and the
fortunes of the former remained unimpaired throughout
his tranquil pontificate. The long malady which termi-
nated it afforded scope for the intrigues of aspirants to
the succession ; and when the cardinals entered into
conclave (August 1492), already the rumor ran that a
Spaniard would be pope. The simoniacal charcter of
the election is indisputable. We need not believe that
the opulent and high-spirited Cardinal Ascanio Sforza
was tempted with four mule-loads of silver, but his
instant elevation to the vice-chancellorship speaks for
itself. Cardinal Orsino was bought with Borgia’s palace
in Rome; Cardinal Colonna with the abbey of Subiaco;
money gained the minor members of the Sacred College;
five cardinals alone are recorded as incorruptible. Bor-
gia’s uneasiness was betrayed by his hasty assumption of
the pontifical vestments, and premature announcement
of the election to the expectant crowd. He assumed the
name of Alexander VI. The allocution to the cardinals
breathed spirit and dignity: an admonitory discourse to
his son Caesar, which may be read in Gordon, is an in-
vention of the anonymous romancer. The pomp of his
coronation far surpassed preceding examples, and the
compliments of foreign ambassadors on the majesty of
his mien and the maturity of his wisdom were echoed by
a public accustomed to simony, relieved at their deliver-
ance from a period of anarchy, and sensible of their need
A L E
I79
of a firmer hand. This hope Alexander justified and
surpassed. Ere long he had divided Rome into judicial
districts, placed a magistrate at the head of each, and
himself established a weekly audience, at which, by the
admission of the malcontent Infessura, “he administered
justice after a marvellous sort.”
Alexander’s pontificate might have been less eventful
but for a circumstance beyond his control. The politi-
cal system of Italy was on the eve of dissolution. Ludo-
vico the Moor, anxious to confirm himself in his ill-
gotten duchy of Milan, was already tempting the French
monarch across the Alps by the bait of the kingdom of
Naples. As of old in Greece, so now dissensions and
political corruption were about to cast down the civili-
zation of Italy at the feet of the stranger. The passion
for family aggrandisement on this occasion impelled
Alexander to a patriotic course. His third son Giofré
had espoused the illegitimate daughter of the king of
Naples, and received as dower the principality of Squil-
lace. When, therefore, the French envoys demanded
the investiture of Naples, they met with a flat refusal.
This encouraged Alexander's enemies. Cardinal della
Rovere (Julius II.) withdrew from the papal court,
seized upon Ostia, and from thence addressed urgent
appeals to the French king to march upon Rome, con-
vene a council, and purge Christendom of the simoniacal
pope. On this side Alexander felt himself indeed vul-
nerable. Casting about for alliances, he dispatched an
'envoy to the Sultan; the ambassador was arrested as
he returned with a favorable reply; and the publication
of his instructions created a fresh scandal. Others still,
had Roman manners been less lax, might have arisen
from the marriage of the pope's acknowledged daughter
Lucretia to the Lord of Pesaro, under the auspices of
the whole Sacred College, and from the elevation of his
second son Caesar to the cardinalate at the age of eight-
een, unblushing perjury being employed to conceal his
illegitimate birth. Yet, at the same period, the suc-
•cessor of Peter appeared for the last time in history as
the undisputed bestower of kingdoms and the ultimate
tribunal of appeal for Christian nations. Spain and
Portugal resorted to him for the adjustment of their
claims to the New World; and by tracing a line upon a
map he disposed of three-fourths of the human race.
Never, according to mediaeval ideas, had a pope exerted
his prerogative with equal grandeur; but the mediaeval
conception of the papacy was passing away, and no one’s
faith in it was feebler than the pope's.
Charles VIII. passed the Alps in the autumn of 1494;
city after city fell before him, and by the end of the year
Rome was added to the number. Alexander had re-
tired into the castle of St. Angelo. His deposition was
universally expected, most of all by himself. But
Charles' minister, Briçonnet, had been gained by the
promise of a cardinal’s hat. On 16th January the re-
conciliation of king and pontiff was officially celebrated:
they rode together through the city; but distrust still
prevailed between them. With really surprising firm-
ness Alexander continued to refuse the investiture of
Naples, with which Charles may have thought himself
able to dispense. Nothing, indeed, could have been
more rapid than his conquest, except his loss of that
kingdom. By March the triumph of the French seemed
complete: on 6th July their retreating army cut its
way through the Italian hosts at Taro in Upper Italy;
on 7th July the King of Naples re-entered his capital.
Nothing remained of the French incursion except a fatal
contagion, and the more fatal revelation of the weak-
ness of Italy.
The retreat of the French left Alexander at liberty to
pursue what must have been the main object of any pope
of intelligence and spirit in this place—the extirpation of
the petty feudal vassals of the church, and the establish-
ment of the temporal independence of the papacy. This
was in truth but a phase of the great struggle of the
crown and the people against the aristocracy, universally
a characteristic of that age; but the pope's principal
motive was unquestionably the insatiable appetite of
family aggrandisement. The incurable vice, however, of
his policy was imposed upon him by the lack of men and
money to carry it into effect. To obtain the former, he
was compelled to incline alternately to France and Spain,
degrading the majesty of the Holy See, and forfeiting his
liberty of action as a member of the Italian body politic.
The finances had to be recruited by the sale of offices and
spiritual privileges of every kind. Such practices had
long been prevalent at Rome, but never had they attained
the enormity, the effrontery, or the method imparted
to them by Alexander.
His enterprise was at first unfortunate. After some
petty successes the papal forces were routed by the
Orsini, January 1497. Spanish aid was invoked ; the
Great Captain checked the Orsini and recovered Ostiá.
Alexander's spirits rose; on 7th June he alienated
Benevento in favor of his eldest son, the Duke of Gandia.
That day week the duke disappeared; his body, pierced
with wounds, was soon found in the Tiber. The public
voice attributed the murder to the pope's second son,
the Cardinal Caesar Borgia, but on no other grounds than
his capability of any atrocity, and the gain that accrued
to him by this. e
Caesar Borgia, meanwhile, was bent on improving the
opportunity which he had found or made. Three months
after Savonarola’s death he propounded to the assembled
cardinals his desire to renounce ecclesiastical orders for
his soul’s health, and was soon at liberty to contract a
royal alliance. After encountering a refusal from the
daughter of the King of Naples he repaired to France,
and there (May 1499) espoused a princess of the house
of Navarre, receiving the title of Duke of Valentinois
from the French king. Lucretia also benefited by her
family's enlarged views; her alliance with the lord of
Pesaro was dissolved on a pretext of nullity, and she
married the Duke of Bisceglia, a natural son of the
King of Naples. This had occurred a year previously,
when Alexander still attached weight to the Neapolitan
alliance; but the political horizon was now changed. In
October 1499 a French army crossed the Alps and con-
quered Lombardy, almost without resistance. . The
watchword was thus given for the papal campaign in the
Romagna. Caterina Sforza, regent of Imola and Forli,
received a summons to discharge certain arrears long
owing to her suzerain. Caesar Borgia followed with an
army on the heels of the messenger, and although the
intrépid princess defended herself stoutly by sword and
poison, she was compelled to succumb to the “Gonfa-
lonier of the Church.” France and Spain, meanwhile,
had concerted their secret arrangement for the disposses-
sion of the King of Naples, and Caesar Borgia prepared
to remove the only obstacle to his own participation in
it. In July 1500 the Duke of Bisceglia, Lucretia's
Neapolitan husband, was attacked by assassins in broad
day, and left desperately wounded. . The pope placed
guards over the prince; Lucretia and her sister-in-law
prepared his food to avoid poison; but none the less
* quum ex vulneribus sibi datis mori noluisset”—
Alphonso of Bisceglia was strangled by men in masks.
“All Rome,” writes the Venetian ambassador, “trem-
bles before the duke.” The worst times of the empire
seemed returned, even to the amusements of the amphi-
theatre, where Caesar, whose tastes were those of a
Spaniard, despatched six bulls successively, severing the
head of one from the shoulders at a stroke. The pope
looked on helplessly at the Frankenstein of his own crea-
*
18O
A L E
tion; “he loves and hugely fears nts son,” reports the
Venetian, who adds that Caesar had pursued his father’s
favorite secretary to his arms, and there butchered him,
the pope's robe being saturated with the gushing blood.
Alexander’s easy temper stood him in good stead.
“These devils cannot be cast out by holy water,”
Cardinal Juan Borgia had formerly reported of the tur-
bulent occupants of the Romagna. The experiment of
casting out Satan Beelzebub remained to be tried. In
April 1501 Caesar entered upon his second campaign, and
by perfidy or force quickly added Pesaro, Rimini, and
Faenza to his former possessions. Attentive to the max-
ims of Sagacious tyranny, he governed with substantial
justice. If his coffers had to be filled by oppression, the
odium would be cast on Some subordinate agent, whose
body, his mission fulfilled, would be found dismembered
in the market-place. France and Spain, meanwhile,
proceeded to the spoliation of the defenceless king of
Naples, and Caesar (July 1501) shared in the conquest
and the booty. In September Alexander himself under-
took a campaign against the Colonnas, and humbled those
haughty patricians by the capture of all their castles.
Lucretia, to the general scandal, represented him in his
absence. Worse scandals were in store, could we
implicitly credit the contemporary diarist’s account of
the scenes enacted in the apostolic palace after Alexan-
der's return, but the passage is probably interpolated.
At this period the papal court was engrossed with prep
aration’s for Lucretia’s marriage to Alphonso, son of the
Duke of Ferrara, which was celebrated by proxy in
December. The pope's daughter, cardinals and prelates
in her train, undertook a stately progress through Italy
to Ferrara, where she was received with extraordinary
splendor. Piombino was reduced at this time, and in
July Caesar treacherously rendered himself master of
Urbino. Immediately afterwards his power received a
severe shock from the defection of his principal condot-
tieri. Caesar temporised until, to the admiration of
Machiavelli, then Florentine envoy at his camp, his adver-
Saries were decoyed into his hands, seized, and executed
(31st December 1502). . The news gave the signal at
Rome for the arrest of the Orsini and the occupation of
their castles; thus was the humiliation of the Roman
aristocracy completed. Cardinal Orsino was committed
to Saint Angelo, where the services of the Papal master
of the ceremonies were soon required for his interment.
“But I,” remarks Burcardus, with quaint naiveté,
“turned the business over to my assistant, for I did not
want to know more than was good for me.” It must be
owned that in that age it would have been impossible to
bring a cardinal publicly to the block. This apology
does not apply to the charges of secret poisoning which
have mainly given the Borgias their sinister celebrity,
and which became fearfully rife in Alexander’s latter
years. They are unproved as yet, but are certainly
countenanced by the opulence of the supposed victims,
and the avidity with which the pope pounced upon their
effects, especially in the case of his rapacious datary,
Cardinal Ferrari.
By May 1503 Spain had dispossessed France of her
share of ill-gotten Naples. A general war seemed immi-
ment; Alexander and Caesar leaned to the side of Spain.
The Sacred College was already full of Spanish cardi-
nals, docile instruments of their countryman, and Alex-
ander might well deem that he had fettered the Church
to the fortune of his house. Men looked for the procla-
mation of Caesar as king of Romagna, and the division
of the temporal and spiritual power. The ancient
mutual relations of pope and emperor would have been
revived, but on the narrow area of Central Italy. But
this was not to be. On the morning of 12th August
“Pope Alexander felt ill;” so did Caesar Borgia. Every
one knows the story of the supper given to the ten car-
dinals in the villa, and the fatal exchange of the poisoned
flask. This picturesque tale is almost certainly a fiction.
An attempt to destroy ten cardinals at once is incon-
ceivable; it would be easier to believe Cardinal Castellesi's
assertion that he was to have been the victim, as his sick-
ness at the time is confirmed from an independent source.
But his character does not stand high, and the symptoms
of his disorder, as described by himself, differ totally from
Alexander's, which were those of an ordinary Roman
fever. The progress of the pope's malady may be
minutely traced in the diary of Burcardus and the de-
spatches of the Ferrarese envoy. He expired on the
evening of 18th August, duly provided with all the need-
ful sacraments of the Church.
ALEXANDER VII. (Fabio Chigi), was born at Siena.
on the 13th February 1599, and occupied the papal chair
from the 7th April 1655 to the 22d May 1667. Before
his elevation he had filled successively the offices of in-
quisitor at Malta, vice-legate at Ferrara, and nuncio to
Germany at the conference of Munster. The most note-
worthy events of his pontificate were the reception of
the ex-queen Christina of Sweden into the Catholic
Church, the promulgation of a bull against the Jansen-
ists, and a protracted dispute with Louis XIV. of France,
during which the papal see lost possession of Avignon
(1662). Alexander canonised Francis of Sales in 1665.
ALExANDER VIII. (Aietro Ottobozzi), born at Venice
in 1610, was raised to the pontificate in October 1689 in
succession to Innocent XI. He assisted his native state
in its wars with the Turks. He died in Feb. 1691.
ALEXANDER I., King of Scotland, son of Mal-
colm Canmore, succeeded his brother Edgar in I Io'7,
and died in 1124. He was better educated than any of
his predecessors, owing to the care of his mother, the
amiable Margaret of England. He died at Sterling,
and, being childless, was succeeded by his brother
David I.
ALEXANDER II., King of Scotland, was born at Had-
dington in 1198 (died 1249), and succeeded his father,
William the Lion, in 1214. Though still young, he
exhibited the same prudence and firmness which marked
his whole conduct in life. He was excommunicated in
1216 for associating with the English barons in their
opposition to King John; but his prudence enabled him.
to recover the good opinion of the pope, and placed him.
on the best footing with the English king, Henry III.,
John's successor. While engaged in quelling an insur-
rection in Argyleshire, he died of fever in the island of
Kerrera in 1249.
ALEXANDER III., King of Scotland, son of Alexander
II. by his second wife, Mary de Coucy, was born at Rox-
burgh on the 4th September 1241 (died 1286), and suc-
ceeded to the throne on the death of his father in 1249.
The fact that in this case the succession of a minor was
unopposed is noteworthy, as showing that the hereditary
principle had now established itself. By a provision of
the treaty of Newcastle Alexander had been betrothed
in infancy to the daughter of the king of England, and
it suited Henry’s policy to insist on an early fulfilment
of the contract. Notwithstanding the extreme youth of
the parties, the marriage was celebrated in York on the
25th December 1251. On this occasion Alexander is
said by Matthew Paris to have done homage for his
estates in England, and to have refused homage for his
kingdom of Scotland, on the ground that he had not
consulted on the matter with his proper advisers. The
internal condition of the country seems to have improved
greatly during the latter years of Alexander’s reign. A
wise and vigorous administration ensured peace and con-
sequent prosperity. The prospect of Scotland was per-
haps never brighter in all her early history than towards
& A L E
I8I
the close of his reign, but it was suddenly overcast.
On the 12th March 1286 the king was killed by a fall
from his horse while riding on the coast of Fife opposite
Edinburgh. A spot near Kinghorn, known as the King's
Wud End, is pointed out as the scene of the tragical
event.
ALEXANDER, PAULOVICH, Emperor of Russia —
born on 28th December 1777, died 1825 — was the son
of Paul, afterwards emperor, by Maria, daughter of
Prince Eugene of Würtemberg. His early education
was conducted under his excellent mother, and after-
wards was carefully directed by his grandmother, the
Empress Catherine II., who confided its general superin-
tendence of Frederick Caesar de La Harpe. On the
assassination of his father Paul in 1801, Alexander suc-
ceeded to the Russian throne. He had been married in
1793 to the Princess Louisa Maria of Baden but the
aunion proved an unhappy one, and had no issue.
The policy of the young emperor was indicated by his
concluding a peace with Britain, against which his father
had declared war. In 1805 he joined Austria and
Sweden in a coalition with Great Britain against the
pretensions of France.
For nearly five years Alexander appeared attached to
the alliance of France; but the privations of his sub-
jects by the interruption of the commerce with England,
and the intolerable load of Napoleon’s “Continental
System,” at length induced him to return to his old alli-
ance, and to declare war against France on March 19,
1812. On the 24th April he left St. Petersburg to join
his armies on the western frontier of Lithuania. Napo-
leon assembled the most numerous and magnificent army
that had ever been brought together in modern times,
augmented by the unwilling levies of Prussia and Austria,
and entered Russia on the 25th of June 1812. The first
£ncounter was at Borodino, where there was a well-con-
tested action, in which each army suffered the loss of
25,000 men. The burning of Moscow, and the subse-
quent retreat of Napoleon, during which his army was
all but annihilated, are among the best known events of
modern history.
After the deposition of Napoleon the allied sovereigns
visited England. By the treaty of Vienna, Alexander
was acknowledged king of Poland; but before the con-
gress of Vienna broke up, Napoleon had escaped from
Elba, and was enthusiastically received at Paris. The
two eastern emperors and the king of Prussia remained
together until the battle of Waterloo gave peace to
Europe. On the advance of the British and Prussians
to Paris, the three allied sovereigns again made their
entry into that capital, where they concluded, on Septem-
ber 26, the treaty which has been designated the Afoly
A//ia7ice.
Alexander was henceforward chiefly occupied in the
internal administration of his vast dominions, which cer-
tainly improved more during the twenty-five years of his
reign than under any of his predecessors from the time
of Peter I. The gradual abolition of the feudal
servitude of the peasantry, begun by the most
enlightened of his predecessors, was continued under
Alexander. Education, agriculture, manufactures, com-
merce, were also greatly extended ; while literature and
the fine arts were liberally encouraged. His disposition
has been represented by his subjects as mild and merciful;
yet his influence in the affairs of Europe was not exerted
in the cause of public liberty.
Early in the winter of 1825 he left St. Petersburg for
the last time on a tour of inspection of his southern
provinces. About the middle of November, he was
attacked by a violent intermittent fever, which proved
fatal at Taganrog on December 1, 1825.
ALEXANDER JAROSLAWITZ NEVSKI,
SAINT, Grand Duke of Vladimir, second son of the
Grand Duke Jaroslaw II., was born at Vladimir in
1219, and died 14th November 1263, . He became
prince of Novgorod on the resignation of his father in
1239, his elder brother having died. While Batu Khan
was sweeping with his Tartars over the south, the
Swedes, Danes, and Livonian knights took advantage
of this to oppress the north of Russia; Alexander
accordingly directed his arms against them, and gained a
brilliant victory with his small army on the 15th July
1240. At his death the people universally spoke of him
as their father and protector, and afterwards recordéd
his deeds in their songs, and honored him as a Saint.
Peter the Great, when founding St. Petersburg, erected
a magnificent monastery to the east of the city in honor
of the victory won there by his great predecessor, and
created in 1722 one of the eight Russian orders, that of
Alexander Nevski.
ALEXANIDER, ARCHIBALD, D.D., a Presbyterian
divine of America, was born of a family, originally
Scotch, in Rockbridge county, Virginia, on the 17th
April 1772, (died 1851.) Dr. Alexander wrote a con-
siderable number of works on theology, which have had
a large circulation. Among these may be mentioned
his Outlines of the Evidences of Christianity (1823),
which has passed through several editions, and been
translated into various languages ; and his Treatise one
the Canon of the Old and AVew Zestament (1826).
He was also a frequent contributor to the Biblical
A'epertory, edited by Professor Hodge.
ALEXANDER, Joseph ADDISON, D.D., third son
of the preceding, one of the most eminent biblical
scholars of America, was born in Philadelphia in 1809
(died 1860). Dr. Alexander wrote several valuable
works in his own department, the most important being
a 77-ans/ation of and Commentary on the Psalms, a
Critical Commentary on the Prophecies of Zsaiah, and
a treatise on primitive church government. He also
contributed numerous articles to the Aiblical Repertory
and the Princeton Review. At the time of his death
he was engaged along with Dr. Hodge in the prepara-
tion of a commentary on the New Testament.
ALEXANDER, SIR WILLIAM, earl of Stirling,
poet. From his (rare) engraved portrait, William was,
it appears, aged 57 in 1637; so that he must have been
born (at Menstrie House, where afterward was born Sir
Ralph Abercromby) in 1580. The grammar school of
neighboring Stirling probably furnished his early educa-
tion; of his later, it is simply known that he attended
the university of Glasgow. On leaving it he proceeded
on his travels with Archibald, seventh earl of Argyle.
It is supposed that it was during his sojourn on the
Continent he composed his series of sonnets, afterwards
published under the title of Aurora (1604). He was
tutor to the young earl. Upon his return he proceeded
to court, and won for himself speedily a name as a gen-
tleman of parts and learning. In 1626 he was appointed
Secretary of State for Scotland, and in 1630 created a
peer, as Lord Alexander of Tullibody, and Viscount
Stirling. In 1631 he was made an extraordinary judge
in the Court of Session. In 1633 he was advanced a
step in the peerage, being created Earl of Stirling and
Viscount Canada; and in 1639 Earl of Dovan. In 1637
he collected his poetical works, and issued them as
A'ecreations with the A/uses, “by William, Earle of
Sterline,” with his portrait engraved by Marshall. This
folio did not include either Aurora or the Psalms of
A ing. David (Oxford, 1631), although there seems little
doubt that he, rather than King James, was the main
author of the latter. It, however, first gave his second
sacred poem (incomplete) of 7onatham. He died in
London on 12th February, 1640. Lauded by Sir
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Robert Ayton and William Drummond of Hawthorndén,
the Earl of Sterling, nevertheless, soon fell out of men’s
memories. The recent careful and beautiful edition of
his Poetical Works (3 vols.) ought to revive his fame;
for while there is too often a wearying wordiness, the
student-reader is rewarded with “full many a gem of
purest ray Serene.” His Doomesday has some grand
things; his Aurora suggests comparison with Sidney’s
Astrophel and Ste//a. (Works as above; Laing's
Aaillie’s Zetters and journals, iii. 529; Drummond
AM.S.S., by Laing.)
ALEXAND RETTA. See SCANDEROON.
ALEXANDRIA, a city of Lower Egypt, and for a
long time its capital, was situated on the Mediterranean,
12 miles west of the Canopic mouth of the Nile, 31°
IF' N. lat., and 29° 52' E. long. The ancient city was
oblong in form, with a length from east to west of 3 to 4
a breadth from north to south of I, and, according to
Pliny, a circumference of 15 miles. Lake Mareotis
bathed its walls on the south, and the Mediterranean on
the north; on the west was the Necropolis, and on the
east the Hippodrome. The city was laid out in straight
parallel streets, one of which, about 200 feet wide, ran
westward from the Canopic gate to the Necropolis.
This street was decorated with magnificent houses, tem-
ples, and public buildings, and was intersected by an-
other of the same breadth and magnificence, running
from South to north. Ancient Alexandria was divided
into three regions: (I.) The Aegio Judæorum, or the
Jews’ quarter, forming the north-east portion of the
city. (2.) A'hacotis on the west, occupied chiefly by
Egyptians. . Its principal building was the Serapeum,
or temple of Serapis, containing an image of the god,
brought probably from Pontus. A large part of the
famous library of Alexandria was placed in the Sera-
peum. (3.) Brucheum, the Royal or Greek quarter,
forming the remaining and most magnificent portion of
the city. An artificial mole, called the Aeptastadium,
nearly a mile in length, stretched from the continent to
the isle of Pharos. Between this mole and the penin-
sula of Lochias was the greater harbor; on the other
side of the mole was the harbor called Æunostos, or
Safe Return. The two were connected with each other
by two breaks in the mole, crossed by two bridges,
which could be raised at pleasure. Within the harbor
Eunostos was an artificial basin called A iſolos, i.e., the
Chest, communicating with lake Lareotis by a canal,
from which a separate arm stretched eastward to the
Canopic mouth of the Nile. On the eastern point of the
island of Pharos was the famous lighthouse, said to have
been 400 feet high. It was begun by Ptolemy Soter,
and finished by his successor, Philadelphus. It cost 800
talents, which, if Alexandrian, is equivalent to 4248,-
OOO. In the time of Diodorus Siculus (50 B.C.) the
population of Alexandria was estimated at 300,000 free-
men, with probably at least as many slaves.
The city was founded by Alexander the Great 332
B.C.; but the island of Pharos was from an early period
a refuge of Greek and Phoenician sea-rovers, a fact com-
memorated in the name “Pirates' Bay,” given to a
deep indentation on the north side of the island; and on
the mainkand was the little town of Rhacotis, subse-
quently incorporated in the quarter of that name. The
architect employed by Alexander was the celebrated
Dinocrates, who had acquired a high reputation by re-
building the temple of Diana at Ephesus.
Alexandria seems from this time to have regained her
old prosperity, becoming an important granary of Rome,
which, doubtless, was one of the chief reasons that
induced Augustus to place it directly under the imperial
power. In 215 A.D. the emperor Caracalla visited the
city; and, in order to repay some insulting satires that
the inhabitants had made upon him, he commanded his
troops to put to death all youths capable of bearing
arms. This brutal order seems to have been carried out
even beyond the letter, for a general massacre was the
result. Notwithstanding this terrible disaster, Alexan-
dria Soon recovered its former splendor, and for a time
was esteemed the first city in the world after Rome.
As the power of the Caesars decreased, however, their
hold over Alexandria was weakened, and the city itself
suffered from internal commotions and insurrections,
which gradually destroyed its importance. In 616 it
was taken by Chosroes, king of Persia; and in 640 by
the Arabians, under Amru, after a siege that lasted
fourteen months, during which Heraclius, the emperor
of Constantinople, did not send a single ship to its
assistance. Notwithstanding the losses that the city
had sustained, Amru was able to write to his master,
the caliph Omar, that he had taken a city containing
“40OO palaces, 40OO baths, I2,OOO dealers in fresh oil,
12,000 gardeners, 40,000 Jews who pay tribute, 40O.
theatres or places of amusement.” The following
story, relating to the destruction of the library, is told
by Abulſaragius : — John the Grammarian, a famous
peripatetic philosopher, being in Alexandria at the time
of its capture, and in high favor with Amru, begged
that he would give him the royal library. Amru told
him that it was not in his power to grant such a request,
but promised to write to the caliph for his consent.
Omar, on hearing the request of his general, is said to
have replied that if those books contained the same
doctrine with the Koran, they could be of no use, since
the Koran contained all necessary truths; but if they
contained anything contrary to that book, they ought
to be destroyed; and therefore, whatever their contents.
were, he ordered them to be burnt. Pursuant to this.
order, they were distributed among the public baths, of
which there was a large number in the city, where for
six months, they served to supply the fires.
ALEXANDRIA, the modern city, stands partly on what
was the island of Pharos, now a peninsula, but mostly
on the isthmus by which it is connected with the main-
land. This was originally an artificial dyke connecting
the island with the land opposite; but, through the
constant accumulation of soil and ruins, it has attained
its present dimensions. The principal public and gov-
ernment buildings are on the peninsula. The ancient
city was situated on the mainland, adjacent to the mod-
ern town, and the extent of the ruins that still exist suf-
fieiently attests its greatness. The general appearance
of Alexandria is by no means striking; and from its
situation its environs are sandy, flat, and sterile. It
was formerly surrounded by strong turreted walls, with
extensive outworks, but in various parts the walls have
lately been destroyed to make way for improvements.
• In the Turkish quarter the streets are narrow, irreg-
ular, and filthy, and the houses mean and ill-built. The
Frank quarter, on the other hand, presents the appear-
ance of a European town, having handsome streets and
squares, and excellent shops. The streets have been
much improved lately by being nearly all paved.
Few of the remains of the ancient city are now visi-
ble. Most of those that were to be seen a few years
ago have since disappeared, but frequently in , making
excavations portions of ancient masonry, broken col-
umns, and fragments of statues are discovered. Among
the best known of the ancient relics are the two obe-
lisks commonly called “Cleopatra's Needles.” They
were originally brought from Heliopolis to Alexandria.
in the reign of Tiberius, and were set up in front of the:
temple of Caesar. They are of red granite, and cov-
ered with hieroglyphics. One was given to the English.
government, and now stands on the Thames embank-
A L E
183
ment, and the other, the larger, was given to the United
States, and now stands in Central Park, New York,
having been brought over by Lieut. Gorringe in
tow of a vessel donated for the purpose by the Khe-
dive. Near the obelisks were the ruins of an old round
tower, commonly called the “Roman Tower.” But
the most striking of the ancient monuments is the col-
umn Styled “Pompey’s Pillar.” -
Alexandria has been mainly indebted for its prosperity
to the advantages of its position for trade. It was this
that first attracted the attention of its far-seeing founder
to the site, and its subsequent history in no way belied
his penetration.
Alexandria has two ports, an eastern and a western.
The latter, called also the Old Port, is by far the larger
and better of the two. It extends from the town west-
ward to Marabout, nearly 6 miles, and is about a mile
and a-half in width. It has three principal entrances.
The first, or that nearest the city, has about 17 feet of
water, but is narrow and difficult of access, and only
used by small vessels and boats. The second or middle,
which is also the principal entrance, is about a quarter
of a mile wide, and has, where shallowest, 27 feet of
water. The eastern side of this entrance is marked by
buoys, and there are landmarks for guiding to the
channel. The third or western entrance has its west-
ern boundary about three-eighths of a mile from Mara-
bout Island, is about half a mile wide, and has from 25
to 27 feet of water where shallowest. Within the har-
bor ships may anchor close to the town in from 22 to
40 feet of water.
The harbor was formerly strongly fortified, but a few
years ago the forts were almost entirely destroyed by an
English bombardment. --
The population of Alexandria is of a very mixed char-
acter, consisting, besides the native Turks and Arabs,
of Armenians, Greeks, Syrians, Italians, French, English,
Germans, &c. At one time the ancient city is believed
to have contained 600,000 inhabitants. At present its
population is about 200,000.
ALEXANDRIA, a town of Scotland, in the parish
of Bonhill, Dumbartonshire, pleasantly situated on the
west bank of the river Leven, about 3 miles from Dum-
barton, with which it is connected by a branch railway.
Population (1871), 4650.
ALEXANDRIA, a city of Virginia, port of entry,
and capital oſ Alexandria county, is situated on the
Potomac river, seven miles south of Washington city.
It possesses an excellent harbor, and its railway connec-
tions include the Baltimore and Potomac, Virginia Mid-
land, and Richmond and Danville roads, by which the
city is brought into close communication with all parts
of the country. The city contains three banks, two
daily and three weekly papers, a court house and
county buildings, seventeen churches, graded schools,
two Catholic academies, a public library, hotels, stores,
etc., and many handsome private residences. Con-
siderable commerce, both foreign and domestic, cen-
ters here. Alexandria was the scene of the killing of
Col. Elmer Ellsworth by a hotel-keeper named Jackson,
in May, 1861. Population, 15,000. *
ALEXANDRIAN MS. (Codex Alexandrinus), the
name given to a Greek manuscript of the Old and New
Testaments now in the British Museum. The MS. was
presented in 1628 to King Charles I., through his am-
bassador at the Porte, by Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of
Constantinople. There seems no good reason to doubt
that Cyrillus had brought the document from Alexandria,
where he had held the office of patriarch, although Wet-
stein is of opinion, upon what seems inadequate evidence,
that he procured it from the monastery of Mount Athos,
where he had resided prior to his coming to Alexandria,
It was transferred in 1753 from the king's private library
to that of our national museum, where the volume con-
taining the text of the New Testament is now, or was
lately, open to public inspection under a glass case. The
entire MS. consists of four small folio volumes, three of
which contain the text of the Old and one that of the
New Testament. The portion, however, containing the
Old Testament is more complete than that which con-
tains the New, the lacunae in the former occurring chiefly
in the book of Psalms; while in the New Testament the
following portions are wanting—viz., the whole of
Matthew’s Gospel up to châp. xxv. 6, from John vi. 50
to viii. 52, and from 2 Cor. iv. 13 to xii. 6. Occasion-
ally, also, single letters, as well as the titles of certain
divisions, have been destroyed by the operations of the
bookbinder. The material of which the MS. is composed
is very thin vellum, the page being about 13 inches high
by Io broad, containing from 50 to 52 lines in each page,
each line consisting of about 20 letters. The number of
pages is 773, of which 640 are occupied with the text of
the Old Testament, and 133 with that of the New. The
characters are uncial, but larger than in the Vatican
MS. As regards the date of the MS. very opposite
opinions have been held. One critic placed it as low
down as the Ioth century, but this supposition has been
justly characterised by Tregelles as so opposed to all
that is known of palaeography as not to deserve a serious
refutation. From the circumstances that the MS. does
not exhibit any traces of stichometry—a mode of arrang-
ing the text in lines consisting of a larger or smaller num-
ber of words, at the end of which the reader was to pause,
which was applied to the Pauline epistles by Euthalius of
Alexandria in the year 458, and which soon came into
general use — it has been inferred that the MS. is not of
later date than the middle of the 5th century. Again,
the presence, in the text of the Gospels of the Ammonian
sections and Eusebian canons, and of the epistle of
Athanasius (who died in 373) to Marcellinus, which is
prefixed to the Psalms, shows that it could not be older
than the end of the 4th century. In addition to this ex-
termal testimony, palaeographic reasons, such as the gen-
eral style of the writing, and the formation of certain
letters, would seem to refer the MS. to about the middle
of the 5th century, and this date is now generally acqui-
esced in by scholars. There is an Arabic inscription,
indeed, written on the page which contains the list of
the various books of the Old and New Testament,
which states that the MS. was written by the hand of
the martyr Thecla, while a Latin inscription by Cyril
himself gives the tradition that the Thecla who wrote
the MS. was a noble Egyptian lady who lived shortly
after the Council of Nice.
ALEXAND RIAN SCHOOL, Under this title are
generally included certain strongly-marked tendencies in
literature and science which took their rise in the city of
Alexandria. That city, founded by Alexander the Great
about the time when Greece, in losing her national inde-
pendence, lost also her intellectual supremacy, was in
every way admirably adapted for becoming the new cen-
tre of the world’s activity and thought. Its situation
brought it into commercial relations with all the nations
lying around the Mediterranean, and at the same time
rendered it the one communicating link with the wealth
and civilisation of the East. The great natural advant-
ages it thus enjoyed were artificially increased to an
enormous extent by the care of the Sovereigns of Egypt.
Ptolemy Soter (reigned 306–285 B.C.), to whom, in the
general distribution of Alexander’s conquests, this king-
dom had fallen, began to draw around him from various
parts of Greece a circle of men eminent in literature and
philosophy. To these he gave every facility for the
prosecution of their learned researches. Under the in-
I 84
A L E
spiration of his friend Demetrius Phalereus, the Athen-
ian orator, this Ptolemy laid the foundations of the
great library, and originated the keen search for all writ-
ten works, which resulted in the formation of a collec-
tion such as the world has seldom seen. He also built,
for the convenience of his men of letters, the Museum,
in which, maintained by the royal bounty, they resided,
studied, and taught. This Museum or academy of Sci-
ence was in many respects not unlike a modern univer-
sity. The work thus begun by Ptolemy Soter was car-
ried on vigorously by his descendants, in particular by
his two immediate successors; Ptolemy Philadelphus and
Ptolemy Euergetes. Philadelphus (285–247 B.C.), whose
librarian was the celebrated Callimachus, bought up all
Aristotle's collection of books, and also introduced a
number of Jewish and Egyptian works. Among these
appears to have been a portion of the Septuagint.
Euergetes (247–222 B.C) largely increased the library by
seizing on the original editions of the dramatists laid up
in the Athenian archives, and by compelling all travel-
lers who arrived in Alexandria to leave a copy of any
work they possessed.
The intellectual movement so originated extended
over a long period of years. If we date its rise from
the 4th century B.C., at the time of the fall of Greece
and the foundation of the Graeco-Macedonian empire,
we must look for its final dissolution in the 7th century
of the Christian era, at the time of the fall of Alexan-
dria and the rise of the Mahometan power. But this
very long period falls into two divisions. The first, ex-
tending from about 306 B.C., to about 30 B.C., includes
the time from the foundation of the Ptolemais dynasty
to its final subjugation by the Romans; the second ex-
tends from 30 B.C., to 640 A.D. The characteristic
features of these divisions are very clearly marked, and
their difference affords an explanation of the variety and
vagueness of meaning attaching to the term Alexandrian
School. In the first of the two periods the intellectual
activity was of a purely literary and scientific nature.
It was an attempt to continue and develop, under new
conditions, the old Hellenic culture. This direction of
effort was particularly noticeable under the early Ptole-
mies, Alexandria being then almost the only home in the
world for pure literature. During the last century and
a half before the Christian era, the school, as it might
be called, began to break up and lose its individuality.
This was due partly to the state of government under
some of the later Ptolemies, partly to the formation of
new literary circles in Rhodes, Syria, &c., whose sup-
porters, though retaining the Alexandrian peculiarities,
could scarcely be included in the Alexandrian school.
The loss of active life, consequent on this gradual dis-
solution, was much increased when Alexandria fell un-
der Roman sway. Then the influence of the school
was extended over the whole known world, but men of
letters began to concentrate at Rome rather than at
Alexandria. In that city, however, there were new
forces in operation which produced a second grand
outburst of intellectual life. The new movement was
not in the old direction — had, indeed, nothing in com-
mon with it. With its character largely determined by
Jewish elements, and even more by contact with the
dogmas of Christianity, this second Alexandrian school
resulted in the speculative philosophy of the Neo-Pla-
tonists and the religious philosophy of the Gnostics and
early church fathers.
Alexandrian School of Literature.—The general
character of the literature of the school appears as the
necessary consequence of the state of affairs brought
about by the fall of Greek nationality and independence.
The great works of the Greek mind had formerly been
the products of a fresh life of nature, and perfect free-
dom of thought. All their hymns, epics and histories
were bound up as their individuality as a free people.
But the Macedonian conquest at Chaeronea brought
about a complete dissolution of this Greek life in all its
relations, private and political. The full, genial spirit
of Greek thought vanished when freedom was lost, with
which it was inseparably united. A substitute for this
originality was found at Alexandria in learned research,
extended and multifarious knowledge. Amply provided
with means for acquiring information, and under the
watchful care of a great monarch, the Alexandrians
readily took this new direction in literature. With all
the great objects removed which could excite a true
spirit of poetry, they devoted themselves to minute re-
searches in all sciences subordinate to literature proper.
They studied criticism, grammar, prosody and metre,
antiquities and mythology. The results of this study
constantly appear in their productions. Their works are
never national, never addressed to a people, but to a
circle of learned men. Moreover, the very fact of being
under the protection, and, as it were, in the pay of an
absolute monarch, was damaging to the character of
their literature. There was introduced into it a courtly
element, clear traces of which, with all its accompani-
ments, are found in the extant works of the school.
The forms of poetical composition chiefly cultivated
by the Alexandrians, were epic and lyric, or elegiac.
Great epics are wanting; but in their place, as might
almost have been expected, are found the historical and
the didactic or expository epics. The subjects of the
historical epics were generally, some of the well-known
myths, in the exposition of which the writer could ex-
hibit the full extent of his learning, and his perfect com-
mand of verse.
The most interesting fact connected with this Alexan-
drian poetry is the powerful influence it exercised on
Roman litérature. The literature, especially in the
Augustan age, is not to be thoroughly understood with-
out due appreciation of the character of the Alexandrian
School.
Alexandrian School of Philosophy.—Although it is not
possible to divide literatures with absolute rigidity by
centuries, and although the intellectual life of Alexan-
dria, particularly as applied to science, long survived
the Roman conquest, yet at that period the school,
which for some time had been gradually breaking up,
seems finally to have succumbed. The later produc-
tions in the field of pure literature bear the stamp of
Rome rather than of Alexandria. But in that city, for
some time past, there had been various forces secretly
working, and these coming in contact with great spirit-
ual changes occurring in the world around, produced a
second outburst of intellectual activity.
To the whole of this great movement the title Alexan-
drian philosophy must be given, although the term
is sometimes identified with Neo-Platonism. Of the
exact historical origin of it we have no certain notice.
Some thinkers are of opinion that even in the Septuagint
traces of rationalism can be discovered.
Of Alexandrian literature there are notices in histories
of Greek literature, as Müller and Donaldson, or Bern-
hardy; of Alexandrian philosophy, in general histories
of philosophy and of early Christianity. e
ALEXAN DRINE VERSE, a name given to the
leading measure in French poetry. . It is the heroic
French verse, used in epic narrative, in tragedy, and in
the higher comedy. There is some doubt as to the
origin of the name; but most probably it is derived from
a collection of romances, published early in the 13th
century, of which Alexander of Macedon was the hero,
and in which he was represented, somewhat like our
own Arthur, as the pride and crown of chivalry. Before
A L E — A L F
I85
the publication of this work most of the trouvère
romances appeared in octo-syllabic verse. The new
work, which was henceforth to set the fashion to French
literature, was written in lines of twelve syllables, but
with a freedom of pause which was afterwards greatly
curtailed. The new fashion, however, was not adopted
all at once. The metre fell into disuse until the reign
of Francis I., when it was revived by Jean Antoine de
I}oeuf, one of the seven poets known as the Pleiades.
It was not he, however, but Ronsard, who made the
verse popular, and gave it vogue in France. From his
time it became the recognised vehicle for all great
poetry, and the regulation of its pauses became more
and more strict.
ALEXIS, an ancient comic poet, born about 394 B.C.
at Thurii in Magna Graecia, the uncle and instructor of
Menander. Plutarch says that he lived to the age of
106 years, and according to Suidas he wrote 245 plays,
of which the titles of II3 are known.
ALEXIUS I., the nephew of Isaac Comnenus, and
the most distinguished member of the Comnenus family,
was born in 1048, and died II 18. In early life he sig-
nalized himself in the wars against the enemies of his
country; but the mean jealousies of the ministers of the
emperor Nicephorus (surnamed Botaniates) drove him
to take up arms against a sovereign whose cause he had
thrice gallantly defended against powerful insurgent
leaders; and he ascended the throne of Constantinople
in IO8I. -
ALFANI, DOMENICO, an Italian painter, born at
Perugia towards the close of the fifteenth century. The
precise date is uncertain, but he was a contemporary of
Raphael, with whom he studied in the school of
Terugina. The date of his death, according to some,
was I540, while others say he was alive in 1553.
AL-FARABI, ABU NASR MUHAMMAD IBN TARK-
HAN, one of the earliest Arabian philosophers, flourished
during the former half of the Ioth century. Philoso-
phy, among the Arabs, was originally an extension of
the related sciences of astronomy and medicine, and the
first philosophers were physicians. The more eminent of
them were court physicians, and to this they doubtless
owed their protection against the jealous suspicions of
the Mahometan sects. Al-Farabi is supposed (for the
detailed accounts of his life are legendary) to have con-
cerned himself more with theory than the practice of
medicine; but he is known to have been a physician at
the court of Seif-Eddaula, and died when it was at Da-
mascus in 950. Unlike some of his successors, notably
Avicenna, he was an ascetic, and his philosophy, which
has a slight Platonic infusion, bears traces of the con-
trast. He was unsympathetic, and the sketches and
aphorisms of his which have come down to us (many of
his treatises are still in MS.) only partially enable us to
reconstruct his philosophy. In his opusculum De Sci-
entiis he enumerates six orders of sciences:–(I.) Lan-
guage, by which he means little more than grammar.
(2.) Logic, which he names as an art, conceives gener-
ally as a science, and confounds in its details with the
corresponding art, with rhetoric and with criticism.
(3.) The mathematical sciences, embracing geometry,
arithmetic, optics, the science of the stars, music, and
the sciences of weights and of capacities (ingenia).
Arithmetic is abstract and concrete; geometry is active,
passive, and speculative; and the science of the stars in-
cludes astronomy, astrology, the science of climates, and
of dreams and auguries. (4.) The natural sciences, ten
in number. (5.) Civil science, including judicial sci-
ence and rhetoric. (6.) Divine science, or metaphysics.
(For information on Al-Farabi, see Munk, Melanges,
pp. 341–52; and Steinschneider, Memoires de l'Académie
de St. Petersbourg, vii. série, tom. xiii. Two of his
opuscula have been translated by Schmölders, Docu-
menta Philosophiae Arônum, and two are contained in
Alpharabii Opera Omnia, Paris, 1638.)
ALFIERI, Vittorio, chiefly celebrated as the
author who raised the Italian tragic drama from its
previous state of degradation, was born on the 17th
January 1749, in the town of Asti, in Piedmont. He
lost his father in early infancy; but he continued to re-
side with his mother, who married a second time, till
his tenth year, when he was placed at the academy of
Turin. After he had passed a twelvemonth at the aca-
demy, he went on a short visit to a relation who dwelt
at Coni; and during his stay there he made his first po-
etical attempt, in a sonnet chiefly borrowed from lines
in Ariosto and Metastasio, the only poets he had at that
time read. When thirteen years of age he was induced
to commence the study of civil and canonical law ; but
the attempt only served to disgust him with every species
of application, and to increase his relish for the perusal
of French romances. By the death of his uncle, who
had hitherto taken some charge of his education and
conduct, he was left, at the age of fourteen, to enjoy
without control his vast-paternal inheritance, augmented
by the recent accession of his uncle's fortune. He now
began to attend the riding school, where he acquired that
rage for horses and equestrian exercise which continued
to be one of his strongest passions till the close of his
£xistence.
After some time spent in alternate fits of extravagant
dissipation and ill-directed study, he was seized with a
desire of travelling; and having obtained permission
from the king, he departed in 1766, under the care of an
English preceptor. Restless and unquiet, he posted
with the utmost rapidity through the towns of Italy;
and his improvement was such as to be expected from
his mode of travelling and his previous habits. Hoping
to find in foreign countries some relief from the tedium
and enz, ui with which he was oppressed, and being anx-
lous to become acquainted with the French theatre, he
proceeded to Paris. During a journey to London, he
engaged in an intrigue with a married lady of high rank;
and having been detected, the publicity of an encounter
with the injured husband, and of a divorce which fol-
lowed, rendered it expedient and desirable for him to
quit England. He then visited Spain, and Portugal,
where he became acquainted with the Abbé Caluso, who
remained through life the most attached and estimable
friend he ever possessed. In 1772 Alfieri returned to
Turin, where he again became enamored of a lady, whom
he loved with his usual ardor, and who seems to have
been as undeserving of a sincere attachment as those he
had hitherto adored. In the course of a long attendance
on his mistress, during a malady with which she was af-
flicted, he one day wrote a dialogue or scene of a drama
which he left at her house. On a difference taking place
between them, the piece was returned to him, and being
retouched and extended to five acts, it was performed at
Turin in 1775, under the title of Cleopatra,
From this moment Alfieri was seized with an insatia-
ble thirst for theatrical fame, and the remainder of his
life was devoted to its attainment. His first two trage-
dies, Filippo and Polinice, were originally written in
French prose; and when he came to versify them in
Italian, he ſound that, from his Lombard origin, and
long intercourse with foreigners, he expressed himself
with feebleness and inaccuracy. Accordingly with the
view of improving his Italian style, he went to Tuscany,
and, during an alternate residence at Florence and Siena,
he completed his Filippo and Poliſtice, and conceived the
plan of various other dramas. While thus employed, he
became acquainted with the Countess of Albany, who
then resided with her husband at Florence. For her he
186
A L F
formed an attachment which, if less violent than his
former loves, appears to have been more permanent.
With this motive to remain at Florence, he could not
endure the chains by which his vast possessions bound
him to Piedmont. He therefore resigned his whole
property to his sister the Countess Cumiana, reserving
an annuity which scarcely amounted to a half of his orig-
inal revenues. At this period the Countess of Albany,
urged by the ill-treatment she received from her husband,
sought refuge in Rome, where she at length received per-
mission from the pope to live apart from her tormentor.
Alfieri followed the countess to that capital, where he
completed fourteen tragedies, four of which were now for
the first time printed at Siena. *
At length, however, it was thought proper that, by
leaving Rome, he should remove the aspersions which
had been thrown on the object of his affections. Dur-
ing the year 1783 he therefore travelled through differ-
ent states of Italy, and published six additional trage-
dies. The interests of his love and literary glory had
not diminished his rage for horses, which seems to have
been at least the third passion of his soul. He came to
England solely for the purpose 6f purchasing a number
of these animals, which he carried with him to Italy.
On his return he learned that the Countess of Albany
had gone to Colmar in Alsace, where he joined her, and
resided with her under the same roof during the rest of
his life. They chiefly passed their time between Alsace
and Paris, but at length took up their abode entirely in
that metropolis. While here, Alfieri made arrangements
with Didot for an edition of his tragedies; but was soon
after forced to quit Paris by the storms of the Revolu-
tion. He recrossed the Alps with the countess, and
finally settled at Florence. The last ten years of his
life, which he spent at that city, seems to have been the
happiest of his existence. The concluding years of his
life were laudably employed in the study of the Greek
literature, and in perfecting a series of comedies. His
assiduous labor on this subject, which he pursued with
his characteristic impetuosity, exhausted his strength,
and brought on a malady for which he would not adopt
the prescriptions of his physicians, but obstinately per-
sisted in employing remedies of his own. His disorder
rapidly increased, and at length terminated his life on
the 8th October 1803, in the fifty-fifth year of his age.
Whatever may be the merits or defects of Alfieri, he
may be considered as the founder of a new school in
Italian drama. His country hailed him as her sole
tragic poet; and his successors in the same path of
literature have regarded his bold, austere, and rapid
manner, as the genuine model of tragic composition.
Besides his tragedies, Alfieri published during his life
many sonnets, five odes on American independence,
and the poem of Etruria, founded on the assassination
of Alexander I., duke of Florence. Of his prose
works the most distinguished for animation and elo-
quence is the Panegyric on 7 rajan, composed in a
transport of indignation at the supposed feebleness of
Pliny’s elogium. The two books entitled Za Zirannide
and the Æssays on Ziterature and Government, are
remarkable for elegance and vigor of style, but are too
evidently imitations of the manner of Machiavel. His
Antigallican, which was written at the same time with
his Defence of Louis XVI., comprehends an historical
and satirical view of the French Revolution. The
posthumous works of Alfieri consists of satires, six
political comedies, and the Memoirs of his Ziſe—a
work which will always be read with interest, in spite
of the cold and languid gravity with which he delineates
the most interesting adventures and the strongest pas-
sions of his agitated life. See Mem. di. Vit. Alfieri;
Sismondi De la Lit. du Midi de l’Europe, Walker's
Memoir on Italian Tragedy; Giorn. de Pisa. tom-
lviii.; Life of Alfieri, by Centofanti (Florence, 1842);&
and Vita, Giornuli, Zettere di Alfieri, by Teza (Flor-
ence, 1861).
ALFORD, HENRY, D.D., Dean of Canterbury, one
of the most variously-accomplished churchmen of his
day—poet, preacher, painter, musician, biblical scholar,
critic, and philologist—was born at 25 Alfred Place,
Bedford Row, London, October 7th, 1810 (died 1871).
He came of a Somersetshire family, five generations of
which, in direct succession, contributed clergymen of
some distinction to the English Church. Being the
only son of a secluded scholar, the boy’s education was
from an unusually early period sedulously cared for;
his father being his first instructor, and at the outset
his constant companion. So exceptional was his pre-
cocity that at six he had already written a little MS.
volume (in round hand) entitled the Zºrazels of St. Paul.
Before he was eight he had penned a collection of Latin
odes in miniature. When he was scarcely nine he had
compiled, in the straggling characters of a school-boy, a
compendious History of the Jews; besides drawing out
a chronological scheme in which were tabulated the
events of the Old Testament. Prior to the completion
of his tenth year he actually produced a series of terse
sermons or laconically outlined homilies, the significant
title of which was Zooking unto Jesus. -
It was in the October of 1827 that the university life
of Alford commenced. At seventeen he went up to
Cambridge, having won his scholarship, , and had his
name entered at Trinity College. During the mid-
summer of his fourth year at Cambridge, in the June of
1831, he had obtained the second prize essay. As the
autumn deepened into winter he was nervously pre-
paring to go in for honors at the examinations. In the
possibility of his success he had not the slightest confi-
dence, yet on the 21st January 1832 he appears as
thirty-fourth wrangler; while on the 25th February his
name comes out eighth on the first-class list of the
classical tripos.
Resolved from childhood to tread the path of life in
the footsteps of his forefathers, Alford was ordained
deacon on the 26th October 1833, and at once began
active professional work as curate of Ampton. . So
modest was his own estimate of his intellectual capabili-
ties, that it was with unaffected surprise he found his
name second on the list of the six Fellows of Trinity
who were elected on the 1st of the following October.
On the 6th November he was admitted to priest's
orders, and four months afterwards, upon the 4th March
1835—scarcely a week before his marriage—entered
upon his parochial labors of eighteen years’ duration as
vicar of Wymeswold in Leicestershire. Twice during
the it ºf of his scholarly seclusion in that quiet
vicarage he was vainly tempted with the offer of a
colonial bishopric, first in 1841 as bishop of New Zea-
land, and again in 1844 as bishop of New Brunswick.
He contentedly drudged on for years together in com-
parative obscurity among his pupils and parishioners:
Whatever he put his hand to he carried out with a zeal
that at times ſooked almost like dogged determination.
Thrown from his horse in the February of 1847 when
going to deliver his first lecture, , although very
seriously shaken and disfigured, he nevertheless
punctually appeared before his audience with his face
and head covered with surgical bandages, and – reso-
lutely lectured. His reputation as a lecturer of excep-
tional power was within a few years from that time
thoroughly established. Several of his discourses,
notably one on Saul of Tarsus, with others on themes
as varied as astronomy, music, scenery, and Chris-
tianity, acquired in the end a certain amount of celebrity.
A L F
187.
For two years together, in 1841 and 1842, he held the
chair at Cambridge of Hulsean lecturer. As the result
of his labors in that capacity, two substantial volumes
aſterwards made their appearance. In 1838, he edited,
in six vols., the works of Donne, prefixing a luminous
preface, at once critical and biographical. Throughout
the year 1839 and part of 1840 he edited a monthly
magazine called Zearden’s Miscellamy. In 1841 he
published, with other new poems, his Abbot of Muche/.
1zaye. . . A collection of Aºsa/ms and Aymns appeared
from his hand in the spring of 1844. A couple of years
before that, in 1842, he had first entered upon his
duties at Somerset, House, where he acted for many
years as examiner in logic and moral and intellectual
philosophy in the university of London. So youthful
was his appearance at the date of his first receiving
this appointment, that on his entering the apartment
where he was awaited by the candidates, he was mis-
taken for one of themselves.
A series of ingenious lectures, delivered by him in his
capacity of philologist, on being compacted into a man-
ual of idiom and usage, entitled The Queen's Anglish,
attained a high degree of popularity. Nevertheless, in
spite of their wholly unpretentious and essentially humor-
ous character, these mere casual notes on spelling and
i. drew down upon their author one of the
sharpest criticisms he ever provoked, sarcastically entitled
7%e Z0aaze's Ang/is/. The Contemporary A'eziew was
inaugurated under his editorship ; and from January 1866
to August 1870 was conducted by him as a sort of neutral
ground for religious criticism. Under the title of The
Year of Prayer, Alford in 1866 published a book of
family devotion ; and in 1867, a collection of original
hymns called The Year of Praise, works of little pre-
tension, but by which his name was widely popularised.
His latest poetic effusion of any considerable length was
The Children of the Zord’s Prayer, which appeared in
1869 as the letterpress accompaniment to designs by F.
R. Pickersgill, R.A. The miscellaneous papers he had
contributed to periodicals were, the same year, collected
under the name of Essays and Addresses. He brought
out, in 1865, his Zetters from Abroad, eminently charac-
teristic records of travel, mainly descriptive of Italian
cities and scenery; and in 1870, a collection of spirited
pen and pencil sketches of The Riziera, the latter being
reproduced from his water-color drawings by the aid of
chromo-lithography.
ALFRED, or AELFRED, THE GREAT, the youngest
son of Æthelwulf, king of the West Saxons, was born at
Wantage in Berkshire in 849 A.D. At an early age he
was summoned to the assistance of his brother Æthelred
against the Danes. These formidable enemies, whose
object hitherto had been mere plunder, were now aiming
at a permanent settlement in the country, and after
ravaging and subduing Northumbria, East Anglia, and
the greater part of Mercia, they fell with their united
forces on Wessex itself. A series of encounters took
place, in which Alfred greatly distinguished himself,
especially at Ashdown, where the Danes were routed
with great slaughter, and left several of their most
famous leaders dead on the field of battle. AEthelred
dying in the midst of the struggle, Alfred was unani-
mously elected king (871), in the twenty-second year
of his age. About a month after his accession he
met the enemy at Wilton, where, after a long and
doubtful struggle, he was defeated. Both parties were
now becoming tired of the war. Immense loss had
been suffered on both sides, and although the Danes on
the whole had been victorious, their victories had
brought them no substantial results. A treaty of peace
was concluded, and the Danes withdrew to London.
On the cessation of hostilities, Alfred was enabled to
turn his attention to naval affairs. The sea was swarming
with pirates, and their descents on the coast kept the
country in a state of perpetual alarm. To cope with
them successfully Alfred resolved to meet them on their
own element, and a naval victory which he gained over-
seven Danish rovers in 875 is the first on record won by
Englishmen. In the following year the peace of 871 was
broken. An army of Danes from East Anglia, under
their king, Guthrum, sailing along the south coast,
landed in Wessex, seized upon Wareham, and afterwards.
upon Exeter, then the centre of a disaffected Celtic
population, and it was not till 877 that the country was
once more free from the invader.
The year 878 was the most eventful in the course of
Alfred's reign. At mid-winter, without any warning,
the Danes came pouring into Wessex from the north,
seized Chippenham, and making it the centre of their
operations, quickly overran the country. Many of the
inhabitants, in despair, fled into foreign lands, and
Alfred, totally unprepared to meet the storm, retired to
the marshes of Somerset. Never at any other period,
either before or after, were his fortunes so low, and the
national existence itself was at stake. Had Alfred, like
his kinsman Burhed of Mercia, left his people in their
hour of need, the heathen Dane in all probability would
have acted like the heathen Englishmen before him — a
new race would have possessed the land, and the names
of England and Englishmen would have disappeared from.
the page of history. Alfred’s misfortunes only roused
him to fresh exertions, and his military skill and valor
enabled him to carry his people in safety through this.
momentous crisis. Fortifying himself at Athelney about
Easter, he secretly matured his plans for meeting the
enemy, and seven weeks after, having collected his
forces at Brixton near Selwood, he rapidly advanced in
a north-easterly direction, and was close upon the Danes.
before they had any intelligence of his approach. A.
fierce conflict ensued at Ethandun, now Edington, in
which the Danes were entirely defeated; and about
fourteen days after this they were compelled to sue for
peace.
As soon as peace had been concluded Alfred turned
his attention to the internal affairs of his kingdom. He
vigorously set to work to put the country in a complete
state of defence. Old fortifications were repaired and
new ones raised in suitable localities. The fleet was,
brought into a state of greater efficiency, and it was
Alfred indeed that laid the foundation of England's
naval greatness. He cleared the land of the bands of
robbers that infested it, and took care that justice was
impartially administered to all his subjects, severely
punishing any wilful perversion of it on the part of the
judges. In his code of laws, which is a compilation
from those of his predecessors, he wisely abstained from.
introducing much of his own, giving as his reason that
he was afraid that it might not be accepted by posterity.
He greatly encouraged commerce, and took a lively
interest in geographical discovery.
Alfred's devotion to learning, and his exertions in the
cause of education are among the most remarkable feat-
ures of his reign. So deep was the popular ignorance
when Alfred ascended the throne that, according to his.
own testimony, hardly any one south of the Thames.
could understand the ritual of the church or translate a
Latin letter.
. In occupations such as these fifteen years of compara-
tive tranquillity, disturbed now and then by troubles with.
the Danes, passed away. A fresh swarm from abroad.
had landed in Kent in 885 and besieged Rochester, but
on the king's approach they raised the siege and returned
to their ships. The next eight years were years of uninter-
rupted peace; but the Danes, suffering a severe defeat at
H 88
A L G
the hands of Arnulf, king of the East Franks, sailed for
England in two divisions in 893. One of these divisions
was under the command of the terrible Hastings. Their
arrival was a signal to the Danes of Northumbria and
East Anglia, who rose in great numbers to aid their
kinsmen. Alfred, however, was better prepared to meet
the danger than he had formerly been. His towns were
so strong that the Danes seemed studiously to have
avoided them. A body of the enemy was routed by
Alfred at Farnham in Surrey. Another great host,
moving to the west in the lines of the Thames, was fol.
lowed by three of Alfred's aldermen to Buttington in
Montgomeryshire, and completely defeated. Those who
escaped made their way to Essex. Leaving their wives
and children there, and receiving considerable addition
to their numbers, they crossed the country once more
and established themselves within the fortifications of
the old Roman town of Chester, which was then unin-
habited. There they remained for the winter, when,
provisions failing them, they removed to Wales, and
with the harvest of plunder they gathered there they
retreated into Essex by way of the friendly districts of
Northumbria and East Anglia. So rapid had their
movements been that Alfred’s army was unable to keep
up with them. The same year (895), before winter set
in, the Danes sailed up the Thames into the Lea, and
selecting an advantageous position on the banks of the
latter stream, constructed a fortress about 20 miles
above London. As this proved a considerable annoy-
ance to the citizens, they attacked it the following sum-
mer, but were repulsed with great loss. During harvest
the king was obliged to encamp in the neighborhood of
the city to protect the reapers while gathering their
Crops. He aſterwards raised two forts on each side of
the Lea, and so effectually blocked up the passage of the
river that the enemy abandoned their vessels and pro-
ceeded to Bridgenorth on the Severn. In the summer of
897 the great Danish host broke up, and part of them
returned to the continent. The rest dispersed through
Northumbria and East Anglia, and for some time gave
Alfred no little trouble by their piratical excursions. By
means of vessels formed after a model of his own, of
Runusual length and speed, he succeeded at last in curbing
his Danish foes, but not till after a desperate encounter
with them on the south coast, in which the advantage
was not all on his side. The war was, as usual, accom-
panied by pestilence, and great numbers perished, many
being persons of the highest rank in the state. The rest
of Alfred's reign, about which we know almost nothing,
seems to have been passed in peace. He died in the
year 90 I, at the age of fifty-two, and was buried at
Winchester.
ALGAE, or HYDROPHYTA, a large order of cellular,
flowerless, cryptogamic plants, found in the sea (sea-
weeds), , in rivers, lakes, marshes, hot springs, and ||
moist places, all over the world. They consist of a
Brown, red, or green, flattened, cellular, leaf-like ex-
pansion, called a thal/us, sometimes stalked, which
bears the organs of reproduction. Some have root-like
processes by which they are attached to rocks. These
do not act like the nourishing roots of flowering plants;
they simply fix the plants and enable them to sway
about in the water. This is markedly the case with the
Laminarias, or large tangles of our coasts. The leafy
appendages of seaweeds are called fronds. They vary
in size, color, and consistence. Some of the red and
green delicate fronds form beautiful objects when care-
fully dried and laid out on drawing-paper. In order to
dry seaweeds they must be first washed carefully in
fresh water to separate saline matters, and then place
within drying-paper and subjected to pressure. Very
delicate seaweeds should be floated out in water, draw-
ing-paper being placed under them, and their fronds
being carefully arranged on the paper before they are
raised out of the water. They must then be dried par-
tially in the air, and afterwards under pressure between
sheets of drying-paper.
Seaweeds are composed entirely of cells, which in
some instances become elongated so as to have the ap-
pearance of tubes. Some Algae are uni-cellular, that
is, are composed of a single cell, as occurs in some Des-
midieæ, as Closterium. At other times they are com-
posed of numerous cells, which are kept together by a
gelatinous matter, but separating easily from each other
so as to have an independent existence. This is ob-
served in the red snow plant (Protococcus or Palmella
vivalis). The cells of seaweeds are sometimes joined
together so as to form a linear series, and to give them
a thread-like appearance; and in such a case, when the
divisions between the cells are marked, the whole ap-
pears like a beaded necklace of cells. When the cells
are united both lengthwise and laterally they then form
an expanded flat frond. In some instances the frond is
gelatinous.
ALGARDI, ALESSANDRO, one of the most celebrated
sculptors of Italy, was born at Bologna in 1602, and died
in 1654. While he was attending the school of the
Caracci his preference for the plastic art became evident,
and he placed himself under the instruction of the sculp-
tor Conventi.
ALGAROTTI, FRANCESCO, COUNT, was born at
Venice on the 11th December 1712. He went abroad
in his youth, and in 1733 visited Paris, where he issued
his Newtonian Philosophy for the Ladies, in the work
entitled Z'he Plura/ity of Worlds. He was much hon-
ored by Frederick the Great, who, when crowned at
Königsberg in 1740, created him a couft of Prussia.
ALGARVE, the inost southerly province of Portugal,
is bounded on the E. by the Spanish province of Seville,
from which it is separated by the river Guadiana; on the
N. by Alemtejo; and on the W. and S. by the Atlantic
Ocean. Its length from east to west is 85 miles, the
average width is 22 miles, and the area, according to
the most recent measurement, 1865 square miles. In
1868 the population was 177,342, giving the small pro-
portion of 95 to the square mile.
The name of Algarve is derived from the Arabic, and
signifies a land lying to the west. The province was
taken from the Moors in 1253 by Alphonso III., king of
Portugal, who then assumed the additional title of king
of Algarve. It is sometimes designated the district of
Faro, and is subdivided into fifteen communes and sixty-
two parishes. The chief town is Faro, and among the
other towns are Castro Marino, Tavira, Portimao,
Lagos, and Sagres, all on the coast or on the estuaries
of the rivers, and Silves, on the river Portimao, the
ancient Moorish capital of Algarve.
ALGAU, or ALLGAU, the name now given to a com-
paratively small district forming the south-western
corner of Bavaria, and belonging to the province of
Swabia and Neuburg, but formerly applied to a much
larger territory, which extended as far as the Danube on
the north, the Inn on the south, and the Lech on the
West.
AL-GAZALI, ABU HAMED MUHAMMAD, usually
described as an Arabian philosopher, was really a
Moslem theologian who met the heretical philosophers
on their own ground. . He was born in IoS8, and
belonged to the sect of the Ascharites, or extreme right
of the Motecallemin, who (and not the philosophers),
were the real Arabian school-men. At thirty-three he
became the head of a theological college at Baghdad,
where his professor's chair was surrounded by eager
crowds, including all the imams of the country. It was
f
A L G
I89
a time of keen speculation, when philosophic scepticism
was encouraged in high places; and the premature con-
victions of Al-Gazali gave way under a violent reaction
against the orthodox creed. Driven by mental inquie-
tude, he escaped from Baghdad on the plea of making a
pilgrimage to Mecca, but went to Syria, and (after visit-
ing, though a Mahometan, the Holy Sepulchre at Jeru-
salem) settled at Damascus, where he spent ten years
in seclusion and meditation. Recalled by his private
affairs as he was on his way to Egypt, he returned to
Baghdad, reluctantly resumed teaching (which he con-
tinued for fifteen years), then retired to Tous, his native
town, and devoted his remaining years to the contem-
plative life of the Sufis, who had been his earliest
instructors. He died in I I I I.
ALG EBRA. Algebra is that branch of the mathe-
matical sciences which has for its object the carrying on
of operations either in an order different from that
which exists in arithmetic, or of a nature not contem-
plated in fixing the boundaries of that science. The
circumstance that algebra has its origin in arithmetic,
however widely it may in the end differ from that science,
led Sir Isaac Newton to designate it “Universal Arith-
metic,” a designation which, vague as it is, indicates its
character better than any other by which it has been
attempted to express its functions—better certainly, to
ordinary minds, than the designation which has been
applied to it by Sir William Rowan Hamilton, one of
the greatest mathematicians the world has seen since the
days of Newton—“the Science of Pure Time;” or
even than the title by which lye Morgan would para-
phrase Hamilton’s words—“the Calculus of Succes-
sion.”
To express in a few words what it is which effects the
transition from the science of arithmetic into a new field
is not easy. It will serve, probably, to convey some
notion of the position of the boundary line, when it is
stated that the operations of arithmetic are all capable
of direct interpretation per se, whilst those of algebra
are in many cases interpretable only by comparison with
the assumptions on which they are based. For example,
multiplication of fractions—which the older writers on
arithmetic, Lucas de Burgo in Italy, and Robert
Recorde in England, clearly perceived to be a new
application of the term multiplication, scarcely at first
sight reconcilable with its original definition as the
exponent of equal additions,—multiplication of fractions
becomes interpretable by the introduction of the idea of
multiplication into the definition of the fraction itself.
On the other hand, the independent use of the sign
minus, on which Diophantus, in the 4th century, laid
the foundation of the science of algebra in the West, by
placing in the forefront of his treatise, as one of his
earliest definitions, the rule of the sign minus, “that
minus multiplied by mizzus produced plus ”— this inde-
pendent use of the sign has no originating operation of
the same character as itself, and might, if assumed in
all its generality as existing side by side with the laws of
arithmetic, more especially with the commutative law,
have led to erroneous conclusions. As it is, the unlim-
ited applicability of this definition, in connection with
all the laws of arithmetic standing in their integrity,
pushes the dominion of algebra into a field on which the
oldest of the Greek arithmeticians, Euclid, in his unbend-
ing march, could never have advanced a step without
doing violence to his convictions.
In asserting that the independent existence of the
sign minus, side by side with the laws of arithmetic,
might have led to anomalous results, had not the opera-
tions been subject to some limitation, we are introducing
no imaginary hypothesis, but are referring to a fact actu-
ally existing. The most recent advance beyond the
f
r
boundaries of algebra, as it existed fifty years ago, is
that beautiful extension to which Sir W. R. Hamilton
has given the designation of Quaternions, the very
foundation of which requires the removal of one of the
ancient axioms of arithmetic, “that operations may be
performed in any order.”
|HISTORY.
At what period and in what country algebra was in-
vented P is a question that has been much discussed.
Who were the earliest writers on the subject? What
was the progress of its improvement? And lastly, by
what means and at what period was the science dif-
fused over Europe? It was a common opinion in the
17th century that the ancient Greek mathematicians
must have possessed an analysis of the nature of modern
algebra, by which they discovered the theorems and
solutions of the problems which we so much admire in
their writings; but that they carefully concealed their
instruments of investigation, and gave only the results,
with synthetic demonstrations.
This opinion is, however, now exploded. A more in-
timate acquaintance with the writings of the ancient geo-
meters has shown that they had an analysis, but that it
was purely geometrical, and essentially different from
our algebra.
Although there is no reason to suppose that the great
geometers of antiquity derived any aid in their discoveries
from the algebraic analysis, yet we find that at a consid-
erably later period it was known to a certain extent
among the Greeks.
About the middle of the 4th century of the Christian
era, a period when the mathematical sciences were on the
decline, and their cultivators, instead of producing origi-
mal works of genius, contented themselves with com-
mentaries on the works of their more illustrious prede-
cessors, there was a valuable edition made to the fabric
of ancient learning. º
This was the treatise of Diophantus on arithmetic,
consisting originally of thirteen books, of which only the
first six, and an incomplete book on polygonal numbers,
supposed to be the thirteenth, have descended to our
times.
This precious fragment does not exhibit anything like
a complete treatise on algebra. It lays, however, an ex-
cellent foundation of the science, and the author, after
applying his method to the Solution of simple and quad-
ratic equations, such as to “find two numbers of which
the sum and the sum or difference of the squares are
given,” proceeds to a peculiar class of arithmetical ques-
tions, which belong to what is now called the indeter-
minate analysis.
Diophantus may have been the inventor of the Greek
algebra, but it is more likely that its principles were not
unknown before his time; and that, taking the Science in
the state in which he found it as the basis of his labors,
he enriched it with new applications. The elegant solu-
tions of Diophantus show that he possessed great address.
in the particular branch of which he treated, and that he
was able to resolve determinate equations of the second
degree. Probably this was the greatest extent to which
the science had been carried among the Greeks. Indeed,
in no country did it pass this limit, until it had been
transplanted into Italy on the revival of learning.
The celebrated Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, com-
posed a commentary on the work of Diophantus. . This,
however, is now lost, as well as a similar treatise, on
the Comics of Apollonius, by this illustrious and ill-fated
lady, who, as is commonly known, fell a sacrifice to the
fury of a fanatical mob about the beginning of the 5th
century.
About the middle of the 16th century, the work of
190
A L G
Diophantus above referred to, written in the Greek lan-
guage, was discovered at Rome in the Vatican library,
having probably been brought there from Greece when
the Turks possessed themselves of Constantinople. A
Latin translation, without the original text, was given
to the world by Xylander in 1575; and a more complete
translation, by Bachet de Mezeriac (one of the earliest
members of the French Academy), accompanied by a
commentary, appeared in 1621. Bachet was eminently
skilful in the indeterminate analysis, and therefore well
qualified for the work he had undertaken; but the text
of Diophantus was so much injured, that he was fre-
quently obliged to guess the meaning of the author, or
supply the deficiency. At a later period, the celebrated
French mathematician, Fermat, supplemented the com-
mentary of Bachet by notes of his own on the writings
of the Greek algebraist. These are extremely valuable,
on account of Fermat’s profound knowledge of this par-
ticular branch of analysis. This edition, the best wº
“exists, appeared in 1670.
Although the revival of the writings of Diophantus
was an important event in the history of mathematics,
yet it was not from them that algebra became first known
in Europe. This important invention, as well as the
numeral characters and decimal arithmetic, was received
from the Arabians. That ingenious people fully appre-
ciated the value of the sciences; for at a period when
all Europe was enveloped in the darkness of ignorance,
they preserved from extinction the lamp of knowledge.
They carefully collected the writings of the Greek
mathematicians; they translated them into their lan-
guage, and illustrated them with commentaries. It was
through the medium of the Arabic tongue that the ele-
ments of Euclid were first introduced into Europe; and
a part of the writings of Apollonius are only known at
the present day by a translation from the Arabic, the
Greek original being lost.
The Arabians ascribe the invention of their algebra
to one of their mathematicians, Mahommed-ben-Musa,
or Moses, called also Mahommed of Buziana, who
flourished about the middle of the 9th century, in the
reign of the Caliph Almamoun. ; :
It is certain that this person composed a treatise on
this subject, because an Italian translation was known
at one time to have existed in Europe, although it is
anow lost. Fortunately, however, a copy of the Arabic
original is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford,
bearing a date of transcription corresponding to the
year 1342. The title-page identifies its author with the
ancient Arabian. A marginal noté concurs in this
testimony, and further declares the work to be the first
treatise composed on algebra among the faithful; and
the preface, besides indicating the author, intimates that
he was encouraged by Almamoun, commander of the
faithful, to compile a compendious treatise of calcula-
tion by algebra.
The circumstances of this treatise professing to be
only a compilation, and, moreover, the first Arabian
work of the kind, has led to an opinion that it was col-
lected from books in some other language. As the
author was intimately acquainted with the astronomy
and computations of the Hindoos, he may have derived
his knowledge of algebra from the same quarter. The
Hindoos, as we shall presently see, had a Science of
Algebra, and knew how to solve indeterminate problems.
Hence we may conclude, with some probability, that
the Arabian algebra was originally derived from India.
The algebraic analysis, having been once introduced
among the Arabians, was cultivated by their own
writers. One of these, Mahommed Abulwaſa, who
flourished in the last forty years of the Ioth century,
composed commentaries on the writers who had pre-
ceded him. He also translated the writings of Diophan-
tuS.
It is remarkable, that although the mathematical
sciences were received with avidity, and sedulously
cultivated during a long period by the Arabians, yet in
their hands they received hardly any improvement. It
might have been expected that an acqaintance with the
writings of Diophantus would have produced some
change in their algebra. This, however, did not happen:
their algebra continued nearly in the same state, from
their earliest writer on the subject, to one of their latest,
Behaudin, who lived between the years 953 and Io91.
Writers on the history of algebra were long under a
mistake as to the time and manner of its introduction
into Europe. It has now, however, been ascertained
that the science was brought into Italy by Leonardo, a
merchant of Pisa. This ingenious man resided in his
youth in Barbary, and there learned the Indian method
of counting by the nine numeral characters. Commer-
cial affairs led him to travel into Egypt, Syria, Greece,
and Sicily, where we may suppose he made himself
acquainted with everything known respecting numbers.
The Indian mode of computation appeared to him to be
by far the best. He accordingly studied it carefully;
and, with this knowledge, and some additions of his
own, and also taking some things from Euclid's Geom-
etry, he composed a treatise on arithmetic. . At that
period algebra was regarded only as a part of arithmetic.
It was indeed the sublime doctrine of that science; and
under this view the two branches were handled in
Leonardo's treatise, which was originally written in
1202, and again brought forward under a revised form
in 1228. When it is considered that this work was
composed two centuries before the invention of printing,
and that the subject was not such as generally to interest
mankind, we need not wonder that it was but little
known; hence it has always remained in manuscript, as
well as some other works by the same author. Indeed
it is not known to exist from an early period until the
middle of the last century, when it was discovered in
the Magliabecchian library at Florence.
The extent of Leonardo's knowledge was pretty much
the same as that of the preceding Arabian writers. He
could resolve equations of the first and second degrees,
and he was particularly skilful in the Diophantine analy-
sis. He was well acquainted with geometry, and he
employed its doctrines in demonstrating his algebraic
rules. Like the Arabian writers, his reasoning was
expressed in words at length; a mode highly unfavor-
able to the progress of the art. The use of symbols,
and the method of combining them so as to convey to
the mind at a single glance a long process of reasoning,
was a much later invention.
Considerable attention was given to the cultivation of
algebra between the time of Leonardo and the invention
of printing. It was publicly taught by professors.
Treatises were composed on the subject; and two works
of the oriental algebraists were translated from the
Arabian language into Italian. One was entitled the
Rule of Algebra, and the other was the oldest of all
the Arabian treatises, that of Mahommed-ben-Musa of
Corasan.
The earliest printed book on algebra was composed
by Lucas Paciolus, or Lucas de Burgo, a minorite friar.
It was first printed in 1494, and again in 1523. The
title is Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni,
et A'roportionalita. wº
This is a very complete treatise on arithmetic, alge-
bra, and geometry, for the time in which it appeared.
The author followed close on to the steps of Leonardo;
and, indeed, it is from this work that one of his lost
treatises has been restored.
A L G
I9 I
Lucas de Burgo's work is interesting, inasmuch as
it shows the state of algebra in Europe about the
year 1500; probably the state of the science was nearly
the same in Arabia and Africa, from which it had
been received.
The power of algebra as an instrument of research
is in a very great degree derived from its notation, by
which all the quantities under consideration are kept
Constantly in view ; but in respect of convenience and
brevity of expression, the algebraic analysis in the days of
Lucas de Bürgo was very imperfect; the only symbols
employed were a few abbreviations of the words or
names which occurred in the processes of calculation, a
kind of short-hand, which formed a very imperfect
substitute for that compactness of expression which
has been attained by the modern notation.
The application of algebra was also at this period
very limited; it was confined almost entirely to the
resolution of certain questions of no great interest about
numbers. No idea was then entertained of that exten-
sive application which it has received in modern times.
The knowledge which the early algebraists had of
their science was also circumscribed; it extended only
to the resolution of equations of the first and second
degrees; and they divided the last into cases, each of
which was resolved by its own particular rule. The
important analytical fact, comprehended in a single
formula, which may be obtained from the solution of
one of its own cases, merely by a change of the sign,
was not flien known; indeed, it was long before this
principle was fully comprehended. Dr. Halley ex-
presses surprise, that a formula in optics which he had
found, should by a mere change of the signs give the
focus of both converging and diverging rays, whether
reflected or refracted by convex or concave specula or
lenses; and Molyneux speaks of the universality of
Halley's formula as something that resembled magic.
The rules of algebra may be investigated by its own
principles, without any aid from geometry; and although
in some cases the two sciences may serve to illustrate
each other, there is not now the least necessity in the
more elementary parts to call in the aid of the latter in
-expounding the former. It was otherwise in former
times. Lucas de Burgo found it to be convenient, after
the example of Leonardo, to employ geometrical con-
structions to prove the truth of his rules for resolving
-quadratic equations, the nature of which he did not com-
pletely comprehend ; and he was induced by the imper-
fect nature of his notation to express his rules in Latin
verses, which will not now be read with the kind of sat-
isfaction we receive from the perusal of the well-known
poem, “the Loves of the Triangles.”
As Italy was the first European country where algebra
became known, it was there that it received its earliest
improvements. The science had been nearly stationary
from the days of Leonardo to the time of Paciolus, a
period of three centuries; but the invention of printing
soon excited a spirit of improvement in all the mathe-
matical sciences. Hitherto an imperfect theory of
quadratic equations was the limit to which it had been
carried. At last this boundary was passed, and about
the year 1505 a particular case of equations of the third
degree was resolved by Scipio Ferreus, a professor of
mathematics in Bonomia. This was an important step,
because it showed that the difficulty of resolving equa-
tions of the higher orders, at least in the case of the third
degree, was not insurmountable, and a new field was
opened for discovery. It was then the practice among
the cultivators of algebra, when they advanced a step, to
conceal it carefully from their contemporaries, and to
challenge them to resolve arithmetical questions, so
framed as to require for their solution a knowledge of
their own new-found rules. In this spirit did Ferreus
make a secret of his discovery: he communicated it,
however, to a favorite scholar, a Venetian named Florido.
About the year 1535 this person, having taken up his
residence at Venice, challenged Tartalea of Brescia, a
man of great ingenuity, to a trial of skill in the resolu-
tion of problems by algebra. Florido framed his ques-
tions so as to require for their solution a knowledge of
the rule which he had learned from his preceptor Fer-
reus ; but Tartalea had, five years before this time, ad-
vanced further than Ferreus, and was more than a match
for Florido. He therefore accepted the challenge, and
a day was appointed when each was to propose to the
Other thirty questions. Before the time came, Tartalea
had resumed the study of cubic equations, and had dis-
covered the solution of two cases in addition to two
which he knew before. Florido's questions were such as
could be resolved by the single rule of Ferreus while, on
the contrary, those of Tartalea could only be resolved
by one or other of three rules, which he himself had
found, but which could not be resolved by the remaining
rule, which was also that known to Florido. The issue
of the contest is easily anticipated ; Tartalea resolved all
his adversary's questions in two hours, without receiving
one answer from him in return.
The celebrated Cardan was a contemporary of Tarta-
lea. This remarkable person was a professor of math-
ematics at Milan, and a physician. He had studied
algebra with great assiduity, and had nearly finished the
printing of a book on arithmetic, algebra and geometry;
but being desirous of enriching his work with the dis-
coveries of Tartalea, which at that period must have
been the object of considerable attention among literary
men in Italy, he endeavored to draw from him a dis-
closure of his rules. Tartalea resisted for a time Car-
dan’s entreaties. At last, overcome by his importunity,
and his offer to swear on the holy Evangelists, and by the
honor of a gentleman, never to publish them, and on his
promising on the faith of a Christian to commit them to
cypher, so that even after his death they would not be
intelligºble to any one, he ventured with much hesitation
to reveal to him his practical rules, which were expressed by
some very bad Italian verses, themselves in no small degree
enigmatical. He reserved, however, the demonstrations.
Cardan was not long in discovering the reason of the
rules, and he even greatly improved them, so as to make
them in a manner his own. From the imperfect essays
of Tartalea he deduced an ingenious and systematic
method of resolving all cubic equations whatsoever; but
with a remarkable disregard for the principles of honor,
and the oath he had taken, he published in 1545 Tarta-
lea’s discoveries, combined with his own, as a supplement
to a treatise on arithmetic and algebra, which he had
published six years before. This work is remarkable
for being the second printed book on algebra known to
have existed.
In the following year Tartaleavalso published a work
on algebra, which he dedicated to Henry VIII., king of
England.
It is to be regretted that in many instances the authors
of important discoveries have been overlooked, while
the honors due to them have been transferred to others
having only secondary pretensions. The formulae for
the resolution of cubic equations are now called Cardan’s
rules, notwithstanding the prior claim of Tartalea. It
must be confessed, however, that he evinced considerable
selfishness in concealing his discovery; and although
Cardan cannot be absolved from the charge of bad faith,
yet it must be recollected that by his improvements in
what Tartalea communicated to him, he made the dis-
covery in some measure his own ; and he had moreover
I92
A L G
the high merit of being the first to publish this import-
ant improvement in algebra to the world.
The next step in the progress of algebra was the dis-
covery of a method of resolving equations of the fourth
order. An Italian algebraist had proposed a question
which could not be resolved by the newly invented rules,
because it produced a biquadratic equation. Some sup-
posed that it could not be resolved at all; but Cardan
was of a different opinion. He had a pupil named
Lewis Ferrari, a young man of great genius, and an
ardent student in the algebraic analysis: to him Cardan
committed the solution of this difficult question, and he
was not disappointed. Ferrari not only resolved the
question, but he also found a general method of resolv-
ing equations of the fourth degree, by making them
depend on the solution of equations of the third de-
ree.
g This was another great improvement; and although
the precise nature of an equation was not then fully un-
derstood, nor was it indeed until half a century later, yet,
in the general resolution of equations, a point of prog-
ress was then reached which the utmost efforts of modern
analysis have never been able to pass.
There was another Italian mathematician of that
period who did something for the improvement of alge-
bra. This was Bombelli. He published a valuable
work on the subject in 1572, in which he brought into
one view what had been done by his predecessors. He
explained the nature of the irreducible case of cubic
equations, which had greatly perplexed Cardan, who
could not resolve it by his rule; he showed that the rule
would apply sometimes to particular examples, and that
all equations of this case admitted of a real solution;
and he made the important remark, that the algebraic
problem to be resolved in this case corresponds to the
ancient problem of the trisection of an angle.
There were two German mathematicians contempo-
rary with Cardan and Tartalea, viz., Stifelius and
Scheubelius. Their writings appeared about the mid-
dle of the 16th century, before they knew what had
been done by the Italians. Their improvements were
chiefly in the notation. Stifelius, in particular, intro-
duced for the first time the characters which indicate
addition and subtraction, and the symbol for the square
rCOt.
The first treatise on algebra in the English language
was written by Robert Recorde, teacher of mathematics
and practitioner in physic at Cambridge. At this period
it was common for physicians to unite with the healing
art the studies of mathematics, astrology, alchemy, and
chemistry. This custom was derived from the Moors,
who were equally celebrated for their skill in medicine
and calculation. In Spain, where algebra was early
known, the title of physician and algebraist were nearly
synonymous. Accordingly, in the romance of Don
Quixote, when the bachelor Samson Carasco was
grievously wounded in his rencounter with the knight, an
algebrista was called in to heal his bruises.
Recorde published a treatise on arithmetic, which
was dedicated to Edward VI.; and another on algebra,
with the title, The Whetstone of Wit, &c. Here, for
the first time, the modern sign for equality was intro-
duced.
By such gradual steps did algebra advance in im-
provement from its first introduction by Leonardo, each
succeeding writer making some change for the better;
but with the exception of Tartalea, Cardan, and Fer-
rari, hardly any one rose to the rank of an inventor.
At length came Vieta, to whom this branch of mathe-
matical learning, as well as others, is highly indebted.
His improvements in algebra were very considerable;
and some of his inventions, although not then fully de-
veloped, have yet been the germs of later discoveries.
He was the first that employed general characters to
represent known as well as unknown quantities. Simple
as this step may appear, it has yet led to important con-
sequences. He must also be regarded as the first that
applied algebra to the improvement of geometry. The
older algebraists had indeed resolved geometrical prob-
lems, but each solution was particular; whereas Vieta,
by introducing general symbols, produced general form-
ulae, which were applicable to all problems of the same
kind, without the trouble of going over the same proc-
ess of analysis for each.
This happy application of algebra to geometry pro-
duced great improvements; it led Vieta to the doctrine
of angular sections, one of the most important of his
discoveries, which is now expanded into the arithmetic
of sines or analytical trigonometry. He also improved
the theory of algebraic equations, and he was the first
that gave a general method of resolving them by ap-
proximation. As he lived between the years 1540 and
1603, his writings belong to the latter half of the 16th
century. He printed them at his own expense, and
liberally bestowed them on men of science.
The Flemish mathematician Albert Girard was one
of the improvers of algebra. He extended the theory
of equations somewhat further than Vieta, but he did
not completely unfold their composition; he was the
first that showed the use of the negative sign in the
resolution of geometrical problems, and the first to
speak of imaginary quantities. He also inferred by
induction that every equation has precisely as many
roots as there are units in the number that expresses its
degree. His algebra appeared in 1629.
The next great improver of algebra was Thomas
Harriot, an Englishman. As an inventor he has been
the boast of this country. The French mathematicians
have accused the British of giving discoveries to him
which were really due to Vieta. It is probable that
some of these may be justly claimed for both, because
each may have made the discovery for himself, without
knowing what had been done by the other. Harriot’s
principal discovery, and indeed the most important
ever made in algebra, was, that every equation may be
regarded as formed by the product of as many simple
equations as their are units in the number expressing
its order. This important doctrine, now familiar to
every student of algebra, developed itself slowly. It
was quite within the reach of Vieta, who unfolded it in
part, but left its complete discovery to Harriot.
We have seen the very inartificial form in which
algebra first appeared in Europe. The improvements
of almost 400 years had not given its notation that
compactness and elegance of which it is susceptible.
Harriot made several changes in the notation, and
added some new signs: he thus gave to algebra greater
symmetry of form. Indeed, as it came from his hands,
it differed but little from its state at the present time.
Oughtreed, another early English algebraist, was a
contemporary with Harriot, but survived long after him.
He wrote a treatise on the subject, which was long
taught in the universities.
In tracing the history of algebra, we have seen, that
in the form under which it was received from the Arabs,
it was hardly distinguishable as a peculiar mode of
reasoning, because of the want of a suitable, notation;
and that, poor in its resources, its applicability was
limited to the resolution of a small number of unin-
teresting numeral questions. We have followed it
through different stages of improvement, and we are
now arrived at a period when it was to acquire addi-
tional power as an instrument of analysis, and to admit
of new and more extended applications. Vieta saw
A L G.
I93
the great advantage that might be derived from the
application of algebra to geometry. The essay he
made in his theory of angular sections, and the rich
mine of discovery thus opened, proved the importance
of his labors. He did not fully explore it, but it has
seldom happened that one man began and completed a
discovery. He had, however, an able and illustrious
successor in Descartes, who, employing in the study of
algebra that high power of intellect with which he was
endowed, not only improved it as an abstract science,
but, more especially by its application to geometry,
laid the foundation of the great discoveries which have
since so much engaged mathematicians, and have
made the last two centuries ever memorable in the
history of the progress of the human mind.
Descartes' grand improvement was the application of
algebra to the doctrine of curve lines. As in geography
we refer every place on the earth's surface to the equator,
and to a determinate meridian, so he referred every point
of a curve to some line given by position. For example,
in a circle, every point in the circumference might be
referred to the diameter. The perpendicular from any
point in the curve, and the distance of that perpendicular
from the centre or from the extremity of a diameter,
were lines which, although varying with every change of
position in the point from which the perpendicular was
drawn, yet had a determinate relation to each other,
which was the same for all points in the curve depending
on its nature, and which, therefore, served as a character-
istic to distinguish it from all other curves.
The relations of lines drawn in this way could be
readily expressed in algebraic symbols; and the expression
of this relation in general terms constituted what is called
the equation of the curve.
This might serve as its definition ; and from the
equation by the processes of algebra, all the properties
of the curve could be investigated.
Descartes' Geometry (or, as it might have been named,
the application of algebra to geometry) appeared first in
1637. This was six years after the application of
Harriot’s discoveries, which was a posthumous work.
Descartes availed himself of some of Harriot’s views,
particularly the manner of generating an equation, without
acknowledgment : and on this account Dr. Wallis, in his
algebra, has reflected with considerable severity on the
French algebraist. This spirit has engendered a corres-
ponding eagerness in the French mathematicians to
defend him. Montucla, in his history of the mathematics,
has evinced a strong national prejudice in his favor ; and,
as usually happens, in order to exalt him, he hardly does
justice to Harriot, the idol of his adversaries.
The new views which the labors of Vieta, Harriot,
and Descartes opened in geometry and algebra were
seized with avidity by the powerful minds of men eager
in the pursuit of real knowledge. Accordingly, we find
in the 17th century a whole host of writers on algebra,
or algebra combined with geometry.
Our limits will not allow us to enter minutely into
the claims which each has on the gratitude of posterity.
Indeed, in pure algebra the new inventions were not so
conspicuous as the discoveries made by its applications
to geometry, and the new theories which were sug-
gested by their union. The curious speculation of
Kepler concerning the solids formed by the revolutions
of curvilinear figures, the Geometry of Indivisibles by
Cavalerius, the Arithmetic of Infinites of Wallis, and,
above all, the Method of Fluxions of Newton, and the
Differential and Integral Calculus of Leibnitz, are fruits
of the happy union. All these were agitated inces-
santly by their inventors and contemporaries; by such
men as Barrow, James Gregory, Wren, Cotes, Taylor,
Halley, De Moivre, Maclaurin, Stirling, and others, in
a'
this country; and abroad by Roberval, Fermat, Huy-
ghens, the two Bernoulis, Pascal, and many others.
The first half of the 18th century produced little in
the way of addition either to pure algebra or to its ap-
plications. Men were employed rather in elaborating
and working out what Newton, Leibnitz, and Descartes
had originated, than in exercising themselves in inde-
pendent investigations. There are, indeed, to be found
some names of eminence associated with the science of
algebra, such as Maclaurin, but their eminence will be
found to depend on their connection with the extension
of the science, rather than with the science itself. It
was reserved for Lagrange, in the latter part of the
century, to give a new impulse to extension in pure al-
gebra, in a direction which has led to most important
results. Not only did he, in his 77aité de la Resolution
des Zyuations AVumériques, lay the foundation on which .
Budan, Fourier, Sturm, and others, have built a goodly
fabric after the pattern of the Unizersal Arithmetic of
Newton, but in his 7%éorie des fonctions analytiques,
and Calcul des fonctions, he endeavored, and with a
large amount of success, to reduce the higher analysis
(the Fluxions of Newton), to the domain of pure alge-
bra. Nor must the labors of a fellow-workman, Euler,
be forgotten. In his voluminous and somewhat pon-
derous writings will be found a perfect storehouse of
investigations on every branch of algebrical and me-
chanical science. Especially pertinent to our present
subject in his demonstration of the Binominal Theorem
in the Aſozi Commentarii, vol. xix., which is probably
the original of the development that Lagrange makes
the basis of his analysis ( Ca/cu/ des ſonctions, legon se-
conde), and which for simplicity and generality leaves
nothing to be desired.
This brings the history down to the close of the last
century. We have been as copious as our limits would
permit on the early history, because it presents the in-
teresting spectacle of the progress of a science from an
almost imperceptible beginning, until it has attained a
magnitude too great to be fully grasped by the human
mind.
It will be seen from what precedes, that we have not
limited “algebra '' to the pure science, but nave re-
tained the name when it has encroached on the territo-
ries of geometry, trigonometry, and the higher analy-
sis. To continue to trace its course through all these
branches during the present century, when it has ex-
tended into new directions within its own borders,
would far exceed the limits of an introductory sketch
like the present. We must, therefore, necessarily limit
ourselves to what has been done in the Theory of
Equations (which may be termed algebra proper), and
in Determinants.
Theory of Æquations.—That every numerical equa-
tion has a root — that is some quantity in a numerical
form, real or imaginary, which when substituted for
the unknown quantity in the equation, shall render the
equation a numerical identity — appears to have been
taken for granted by all writers down to the time of
Lagrange. It is by no means self-evident, nor is it
easy to afford evidence for it which shall be at the same
time convincing and free from limitations. The dem-
onstrations of Lagrange, Gauss, and Ivory, have for
simplicity and completeness given way to that of Cauchy,
published first in the Journal de l'Aécole Polytechnique,
and subsequently, in his Cours d’Analyse Algébrique.
The demonstration of Cauchy (which had previously
been given by Argand, though in an imperfect form,
in Gergonne's Annales des Mathématigues, vol. v.)
consists in showing that the quantity which it is wished
to prove capable of being reduced to zero, can be ex-
hibited as the product of two factors, one of which is
I3 A
I94
: A L G
incapable of assuming a minimum value, or in other
words, that a less value than one assigned can always
be found, and therefore that it is capable of acquiring
the value zero. This argument, if not absolutely free
from objection, is less objectionable than any of the .
others. The reader may consult papers by Airy and
De Morgan, in the tenth volume of the Transactions of
the Cambridge Philosophical Society.
Admitting, then, that every equation has a root, it
becomes a question to what extent are we in possession
of an analysis by which the root can be ascertained. If
the question be put absolutely, we fear the answer must
be, that in this matter we are in the same position that
we have held for the last three centuries. Cubic and
biquadratic equations can be solved, whatever they may
be; but equations of higher orders, in which there
exists no relation amongst the several coefficients, and
no known or assumed connection between the different
roots, have baffled all attempts at their solution. Much
skill and ingenuity have been displayed by writers of
more or less eminence in the attempt to elaborate a method
of solution applicable to equations of the fifth degree,
but they have failed; whether it be that, like the ancient
problems of the quadrature of the circle, and the dupli-
cation of the cube, an absolute solution is an impossi-
bility, or whether it is reserved for future mathema-
ticians to start in the research in some new path, and
reach the goal by avoiding the old tracks which appear
to have been thoroughly traversed in vain.
It is scarcely necessary to refer to such writers as
Hoene de Wronski, who, in 1811, announced a general
method of solving all equations, giving formulae without
demonstration. In 1817, the Academy of Sciences of
Lisbon proposed as the subject of a prize, the demon-
stration of Wronski’s formulae. The prize was in the
following year awarded to M. Torriani for the refutation
of them.
The reader will find in the fifth volume of the Reports
of the British Association; an elaborate report by Sir
W. R. Hamilton on a Method of Decomposition, pro-
posed by Mr. G. B. Jerrard in his Mathematical Ae-
searches, published at Bristol in a work of great beauty
and originality, but which Hamilton is compelled to
conclude fails to effect the desired object. In fact, the
method which is valid when the proposed equation is
itself of a sufficiently elevated degree, fails to reduce the
solution of the equation of the fifth degree to that of the
fourth.
But although the absolute solution of equations of
higher orders than the fourth remains amongst the
things uneffected, and rather to be hoped for than ex-
pected, a very great deal has been done towards pre-
paring the way for approximate, if not for absolute
solutions.
In the first place, equations of the higher orders,
when they assume certain forms, have been shown to
be capable of solution. An equation of this kind, to all
appearance of a very general and comprehensive form,
had been solved by de Moivre in the Philosophical
Zºransactions for 1737. Binomial equations had ad-
vanced under the skilful hands of Gauss, who, in his
IXisgusitiones Arithmeticae, which appeared in 1801,
added largely to what had been done by Vandermonde
in the classification and solution of such equations; and
subsequently, Abel, a mathematician of Norwegian birth,
who died too early for science, completed and extended
what Gauss had left imperfect. The collected writings
of Abel published at Christiania in 1839, contain original
and valuable contributions to this and many other
'branches of mathematics.
But it is not in the solution of equations of certain
forms that the greatest advance has been made during
the present century. The basis of all methods of solu-
tion must evidently be found in the previous separation
of the roots, and the efforts of the mathematicians have
been directed to the discovery of methods of effecting
this. The object is not so much to classify the roots
into positive and negative, real and imaginary, as to de-
termine the situation and number of the real roots of the
equation. The first writer on the subject whose meth-
ods appeared in print is Budan, whose treatise, entitled
AVouvelle méthode pour la résolution des équations mu-
mériques, appeared in 1807. But there is evidence that
Fourier had delivered lectures on the subject prior to
the publication of Budan's work, and consequently,
without detriment to the claims of Budan, we may admit
that the most valuable and original contribution to the
science is to be found in Fourier’s posthumous work,
published by Navier in 1831, entitled Analyse des équa-
tions détermindes. The theorem which Fourier gave
for the discovery of the position, within narrow limits,
of a root of an equation, is one of two theorems, each of
which is known by mathematicians as “Fourier’s
Theorem.” The other is a theorem of integration, and
occurs in the author’s magnificent work Théorie, de la
Chaleur. During the interval between the publication
of Budan's work and that of Fourier, there appeared a
paper in the Philosophical Zºransactions of the Aoyal
Society for 1819, by W. G. Horner, upon a new method
of solving arithmetical equations. From its being some-
what obscurely expressed, the great originality of the
memoir did not at once appear. Gradually, however,
Mr. Horner’s method came to be appreciated, and it
now ranks as one of the best processes, approaching, in
some points, to Fourier's. In the Mémoires des savans
€trangers for 1835, appears a memoir, which, if it does
not absolutely supersede all that had been previously
done in assigning the positions of the real roots of equa-
tions, yet in simplicity, completeness, and universality
of application, surpasses them all. The author, M.
Sturm, of French extraction, but born at Geneva, has
in his memoir linked his name to a theorem which is
likely to retain its place amongst the permanent exten-
sions of the domain of analysis as long as the study of
algebra shall last. It was presented to the Academy in
1829.
Peterminants.-The solution of simultaneous equa-
tions of the first degree may be presented under the
form of a set of fractions; the numerators and denom-
‘inators of which are symmetric products of the coeffi,
cients of the unknown quantities in the equations.
These products were originally known as resultants, a
name applied to them by Laplace, and retained as late
as 1841 by Cauchy in his Frercises d'analyse et de
physique mathématique, vol. ii. p. 161, but now re-
placed by the title determinants, a name first applied to
certain forms of them by Gauss. In his Cours d’analyse
a/gébrique, Cauchy terms them alternate functions. . The
germ of the theory of determinants is to be ſound in the
writings of Leibnitz, who, indeed, was far-seeing enough
to anticipate for it some of the power which, about a
century after his time, it began to attain. More than
half that period had indeed elapsed before any trace of
its existence can be found in the writings of the mathe-
maticians who succeeded Leibnitz. The revival of the
method is due to Cramer, who, in a note to his Analyse
des ſignes courbes algébriques, published at Geneva in
1750, gave the rule which establishes the sign of a
product as plus or minus, according as the number of
displacements from the typical form has been even or
odd. Cramer was followed in the - last century by
Bézout, Laplace, Lagrange, and Vandermonde. In 1801
appeared the Disguisitiones, Arithmeticae of Gauss, of
which a French translation by M. Poullet-Delisle was
A L G
I95
given in 1807. Notwithstanding the somewhat obscure
form in which this work was presented, its originality
gave a new impetus to investigations on this and kindred
subjects. To Gauss is due the establishment of the
important theorem, that the product of two determinants
looth of the second and third orders is a determinant.
Binet, Cauchy, and others followed, and applied the
results to geometrical problems. In 1826, Jacobi com-
menced a series of papers on the subject in Crelle’s
Journal. In these papers, which extended over a space
of nearly twenty years, the subject was recast and made
available"for ordinary readers; and at the same time it
was enriched by new and important theorems, through
which the name of Jacobi is indissolubly associated
with this branch of science. Following the steps of
Jacobi, a number of mathematicians of no mean power
have entered the field. Pre-eminent above all others
are two British names, those of Sylvester and Cayley.
By their originality, by their fecundity, by their grasp
of all the resources of analysis, these two powerful
mathematicians have enriched the 77 ansactions of the
Aoyal Society, Crelle's Journa/, the Cambridge and
AP215/izz A/athemzadica/ Journal, and the Quarterly Jour-
zza! of Mathematics, with papers on this and on kindred
branches of science of such value as to have placed their
authors at the head of living mathematicians. The
reader will find the subject admirably treated in Baltzer’s
Theorie und Anzwenduzzg der Z)-terminenten ; and more
ºriefly in Salmon’s Higher Algebra. Elementary treat-
ises have also been published by Spottiswoode in 1851,
by Brioschi in 1854, by Todhunter in his Theory of
Ayleations in 1861, and by Dodgson in 1867.
The attention of the learned has, during the present
century, been called to a branch of the history of alge-
bra, in no small degree interesting; we mean the culti-
vation of the science to a considerable extent, and at a
remote period, in India.
We are indebted, we believe, to Mr. Reuben Burrow
for some of the earliest notices which reached Europe
on this very curious subject. His eagerness to illus-
trate the history of the mathematical science led him to
collect oriental manuscripts, some of which, in the Pér-
sian language, with partial translations, were be-
queathed to his friend Mr. Dalby of the Royal Military
College, who communicated them to such as took an
interest in the subject, about the year 1800.
In the year 1813, Mr. Edward Strachey published in
this country a translation from the Persian of the Bija
Ganita (or Vija Gazzita), a Hindoo treatise on algebra;
and in 1816 Dr. John Taylor published at Bombay a
translation of Zelawati (or Zilavati), from the Sanscrit
original. This last is a treatise on arithmetic and geom-
etry, and both are the production of an oriental algebra-
ist, Bhascara Acharya. Lastly, in 1817, there came out
a work entitled AZgebra, Arithmetic, and Mensuration,
from the Sanscrit of Brahmiegupta and B/ascara, trans-
lated by Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Esq. This con-
tains four different treatises, originally written in San-
scrit verse, viz., the Piya Ganita and Zi/azat; of Bhas-
cara Acharya, and the Ganitad'Aaya and Czet/acad"Ayaya
of Brahmegupta. The first two form the preliminary
portion of Bhascara's Course of Astronomy, entitled
..Sidº"/anta Siromazzi, and the last two are the twelfth
and eighteenth chapters of a similar course of astron-
omy, entitled Brahma-sidd”hanta.
The time when Bhascara wrote is fixed with great
precision, by his own testimony and other circum-
stances, to a date that answers to about the year II 50 of
the Christian era. The works of Brahmegupta are ex-
tremely rare, and the age in which he lived is less cer-
itain. Mr. Davis, an oriental scholar, who first gave
(the public a correct view of the astronomical computa-
tions of the Hindoos, is of opinion that he lived in the
7th century; and Dr. William Hunter, another diligent
inquirer into Indian science, assigns the year 628 of the
Christian era as about the time he flourished. From
various arguments, Mr. Colebrooke concludes that the
age of Brahmegupta was antecedent to the earliest
dawn of the culture of the sciences among the Arabians,
so that the Hindoos must have possessed algebra before
it was known to that nation.
Brahmegupta's treatise is not, however, the earliest
work known to have been written on this subject.
Ganessa, a distinguished astronomer and mathemati-
cian, and the most eminent scholiast of Bhascara, quotes
a passage from a much older writer, Arya-Bhatta, speci-
fying algebra under the designation of Vigi, and mak-
ing separate mention of Cuttaca, a problem subservient
to the resolution of indeterminate problems of the first
degree. He is understood by another of Bhascara's
commentators to be at the head of the older writers.
They appear to have been able to resolve quadratic
equations by the process of completing the square;
and hence Mr. Colebrooke presumes that the treatise of
Arya-Bhatta then extant extended to quadratic equations
in the determinate analysis, and to indeterminate equa-
tions of the first degree, and probably to those of the
second.
The exact period when Arya-Bahatta lived cannot
be determined with certainty; but Mr. Colebrooke
thinks it probable that this earliest of known Hindoo
algebraists wrote as far back as the fifth century of the
Christian era, and perhaps earlier. He lived therefore
nearly as early as the Grecian algebraist Diophantus,
who is reckoned to have flourished in the time of the
emperor Julian, or about A. D. 36O.
Mr. Colebrooke has instituted a comparison between
the Indian algebraist and Diophantus, and found rea-
son to conclude that in the whole science the latter is
very far behind the former. He says the points in
which the Hindoo algebra appears particularly distin-
guished from the Greek are, besides a better and
more convenient algorithm, Ist, the management of
equations of more than one unknown quantity; 2d,
the resolution of equations of a higher order, in which,
if they achieved little, they had at least the merit of the
attempt, and anticipated a modern discovery in the reso-
lution of biquadratics; 3d, general methods for the reso-
lution of indeterminate problems of the first and second
degrees, in which they went far indeed beyond Dio-
phantus, and anticipated discoveries of modern alge-
braists; and 4th, the application of algebra to astro-
nomical investigations and geometrical demonstration,
in which also they hit upon some matters which have
been re-invented in modern times.
When we consider that algebra made little or no pro-
gress among the Arabians, a most ingenious people, and
particularly devoted to the study of the sciences, and that
centuries elapsed from its first introduction into Europe
until it reached any considerable degree of perfection, we
may reasonably conjecture that it may have existed in
one shape or other in India long before the time of Arya-
Bhatta; indced, from its close connection with their doc-
trines of astronomy, it may be supposed to have descended
from a very remote period along with that science.
Professor Playfair, adopting the opinion of Bailly, the
eloquent author of the Astronomie Zudienne, with great
ingenuity attempted to prove, in a Memoir on the
Astronomy of the Brahmins, that the observations on
which the Indian astronomy is founded were of great
antiquity, indeed more than 30OO years before the Chris-
tian era. The very remote origin of the Indian astronomy
had been strongly questioned by many in this country,
and also on the Continent; particularly by Laplace, and
196
A L G
by Delambre in his Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne,
tome i. p. 40O, &c., and again in Histoire de l’Astrono-
mie du Moyen Age, Discours Préliminaire, p. 18, &c.,
where he speaks slightly of their algebra; and in this
country, Professor Leslie, in his Philosophy of Arith-
metic, pp. 225 and 226, calls the Zi/azat; “a very poor
performance, containing merely a few scanty precepts
couched in obscure memorial verses.” We are disposed
to agree with Professor Playfair as to the antiquity of
this Hindoo algebra. That it should have remained in
a state of infancy for so many centuries is accounted for
by the latter author in the following passage:– “In India
everything [as well as algebra] seems equally insurmount-
able, and truth and error are equally assured of perma-
nence in the stations they have once occupied. The
politics, the laws, the religion, the science, and the man-
ners, seem all nearly the same as at the remotest period
to which history extends. Is it because the power which
brought about a certain degree of civilization, and ad-
vanced science to a certain height, has either ceased to
act, or has met with such resistance as it is barely able
to overcome? or is it because the discoveries which the
Hindoos are in possession of are an inheritance from
some more inventive and more ancient people, of whom
no memorial remains but some of their attainments in
science?”
Writers on Algebra.
Diophantus, “Arithmeticorum Libri sex,” about
g tº € gº º º e º ºs e º e º ºs e e s is tº e º tº e º 'º e º 'º º ºs 360
(First edition of his writings, 1775; the best, 1670.)
Leonardo Bonacci (his works described in Cassali). I2O2
Lucas Paciolus, or De Burgo, “Summa de Arith-
metica, &c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . e º e º 'º e º a . . . . . 1494
Rudolff, “Algebra ". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1522
Stifelius, “Arithmetica Integra,” &c. . . . . . . . . . . . I544
Cardan, “Ars Magna quam volgo Cossam vocant ’’ I 545
Ferreus tº e º e º e º 'º e s is tº sº is is sº e º 'º e º ºs e º is I545
Ferrari (first resolved biquadratic equations). . . . . . 1545
Tartalea, “Quesiti ed Inventioni diverse”. . . . . . . . 1546
Scheubelius, “Algebra Compendiosa ". . . . . . . . . . . 1551
Recorde, “Whetstone of Wit " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I557
Peletarius, “De Occulta parte Numerorum ”...... 1558
Buteo, “De Logistica”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I559
Ramus, “Arithmeticae Libri duo et totidem Alge-
brae ". . . . . . © e º is e e º e º e º ºs e e s e º is ºn tº e
Pedro Nugnez or Nonnius, “Libro de Algebra,”
&
tº º ſº tº e º e º e º º
C . . . . . . . . . . tº tº e g º & © e º e tº gº tº º tº dº e g º sº º tº ſº e º 'º º e º sº a 1567
Jossalin, “De Occulta parte Mathematicorum ”... 1576
Bombelli . . . . . . . . . . . tº e º ºs º ºs º ºs º e º e s tº º te º 'º º 'º e º G & © tº I579
Clavius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . I58O
Bernard Solignac, * Arith. Libri i et Algebrae
Vieta, “Opera Mathematica,” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16oo
Folinus, “Algebra, sive Liber de Rebus Occultis "1619
Van Ceulen . . . . . . . . . . & e g º ºs e º e º e º e º 'º e º is . . . . . . . 1619
Bachet, “Diophantus cum Commentariis " . . . . . . . 1621
Albert Girard, “Invention Nouvelle en Algèbre *. 1629
Ghetaldus, “De Resolutione et Compositione Math-
ematica ". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1630
Harriot, “Artis Analyticae Praxis.” ............. 1631
Oughtreed, “Clavis Mathematica”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1631
Herigonius, “Cursus Mathematicus” . . . . . . . . . . . . 1634
Cavalerius, “Geometrica Indivisibilibus Continuo-
rum, &c.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... ... 1635
Descartes, “Geometria " . . . . . gº e g º e s is a sº s e º 'º e º e s a 1637
Franciscus à Schooten, Florimond de Beaune, Eras-
mus Bertholinus, Joh. Hudde, F. Rabuel, James
Bernoulli, John de Witt, &c. — “Commentators
on Descartes.”
Roberval, “De Recognitione Aequationum,” &c.. 1640
--- * -- a
De Billy, “Nova Geometricae Clavis Algebra”... 1643
Renaldinus, “Opus Algebraicum ”............. . 1644
Pascal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1654
Wallis, “Arithmetica Infinitorum,” 1655; “Alge-
bra " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ tº ge. a tº e º 'º e º $ tº ... I685
Slusius, “Mesolabum ”......................... 1659
Rhonius, “Algebra” (translated into English) . . . . I659
Kinckhausen, used as a textbook by Sir I. Newton 1661
Clairaut, “Elémens d'Algèbre ". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1746
Maclaurin, “Algebra”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I747
Fontaine, “L’Art de Résoudre less Equations. ... 1747
Donna Maria Gaetana Agnesi, “Instituzioni Ānaii.
tichi" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1748
Boscovich, in “Elementa Universae Matheseos "... 1754.
Segner, “Berlin Mem ". . . . . . . . . .
Castillon, “Arithmetica Universalis Newtoni cum
Commentario " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I761
| Emerson, “Algebra, &c.”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1763
Landen, “Residual Analysis,” &c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I764–
Lagrange, “Traité de la Résolution des Equations
Numériques, Recueil des Mém. de l’Acad. de
Berlin " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 767
Do, republished with Notes, Paris............... 1797
Euler, “Algebra ". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I77O.
Waring, “Meditationes Algebraicae,” &c
... I77O, 1776.
Soladini, “Compendio d’Analisi” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 775
Paoli, “Elementi d’Algebra’”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I794–
Ruffini, “Teoria delle Equazione Algeb.” . . . . . . . . I799.
Sir Isaac Newton, “The Binomical Theorem ". . . .
Frenicle, Various papers in “Mem. of French
Pell (translated and improved Rhonius' Algebra). . 1668
James Gregory, “Exercitationes Geometricae" ... 1668
Mercator, “Logarithmotechnia " . . . . . . . & º º is a tº sº tº º I668.
Barrow, in “Lectiones Geometricae''............ 1669.
Kersey, “Elements of Algebra ". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1673
Prescot, “ Nouveaux Elémens de Mathématiques”. 1675
Leibnitz, in “Leipsic Acts,” &c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1677
Fermat, in “Varia Opera Mathematica " . . . . . . . . 1679.
Bulliald, “Opus Novum ad Arithmeticam infinito-
* & © tº ſº º ºr ... ... I682
. . . . 1683
Baker, “Geometrical Key,” &c. . . . . . . . . * * * * g º e º ºs 1684
Dr.'Halley, in “Philosophical Transactions” 1687
and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1694.
Rolle, “Une Méthode pour la Résolution des Equa-
tions Indéterminees ". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1690.
Raphson, “Analysis Aequationum Universalis”... 1690.
Dechales, “Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus "... 1690.
Le Lagny, various pieces on Equations . . . . . . . . ... 1692
Alexander, “Synopsis Algebraica” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1693
Ward, “Compendium of Algebra,” 1695; “Young
Mathematician’s Guide ". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17O6.
De Moivre, various Memoirs in “Phil. Trans.”1697-1730.
Sault, “New Treatise of Algebra " . . . . . . . . . . . . . I698
Christopher, “De Constructione Aequationum ”...
Ozanam, “Nouveaux Elémens d'Algèbre”........ 1702.
Harris, “Lexicon Technicum ”.................. 1704.
Guisnée, “Application de l'Algèbre à la Géomét-
rie” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tº ºs e º 'º & . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1705
Jones, “Synopsis Palmarioum Matheseos "....... 1706.
Newton, “Arithmetica Universalis ". . . . . . . . . . . . . I 7O7
L'Hôpital, “Traité Analytique des Sections Con-
iques "... . . . . . . . tº e º 'º e º is º is tº e º º tº e º 'º e e s e & . . . . . I7O7
Reyneau, “Analyse Démontrée ". . . . . . . . . . . ... . . I708.
Brooke Taylor, “Methodus Incrementorum ”..... 171
Stirling, “Lineae Tertii Ordinis,” 1717; “Methodus
Differentialis ". . . . . . . . . . . . . tº e º sº e º 'º 4 tº º e s s e º is e I73O.
Nicole, On Cubic Equations, in “Mém. Acad. des
Sciences”. . . . . . . . . . . . . • - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . . . . . I7 I7
S’Gravesande, “Algebra ".................. . . . . I 727
Wolfius, “Algebra : Cursus Mathematicus”......1732.
A L G
I 97
Firby, “Arithmetic and Algebra ".............. 1735
James Gregory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1736
Simpson, “Algebra,” and various works..... 1740–1742
Saunderson, “Algebra,” 2 vols. 4to. . . . . . . . . . . . . . I74O
La Caille, “Algebra in Leçons de Mathématiques” 1741
Le Gua, On the Roots of Equations, in “Mém.
Acad. des Sciences”. . . . . • * a s e e s e º e s e s a e e º e a e I74 I
Budan, “ Nouvelle Méthode pour la Résolution des
Equations Numériques " . . . . . . . . . tº dº º º º e . . . . . . 1807
Gompertz “Principles and Application of Imagin-
ary Quantities”. ................. ... 1817 and 1818
Biot, “Gergonne's Annales,” vol. vi.............
Horner, “Philos. Trans.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1819
Dandelin, “Mém. de l'Acad. Roy. de Bruxelles "... 1826
Swinburne and Tylecote, “on the Binomial Theo-
rem ". . . . . . . . . * s e e s a - e º e º e º & • * e e s e s s e > * . 1827
Warren, “on the Geometric Representation of the
Square Roots of Negative Quantities”. . . . . . . . I828
Abel, “Mémoire sur les Equations Algébriques”
Christiania................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1829
and in “Crelle,” vol. i. 4. . . . . . . • * * * * * * * * * * * *
Flourier, “Analyse de Equations Déterminées”
(posthumous), with preface by Naviar. . . . . . . . . . 1831
Malfatti, “Mem. della Soc. Ital.,” vol. xi........
T)avis Gilbert, “Philos. Trans.”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1831
$turm, “Mém. présentes par les Savans Etrangers”.1835
Lockhart, “Resolution of Equations "... . . . . . . . . 1837
Zºo &/ºe preceding /ist of writers, which contains almost
a/Z of aze early date, the following are to be added:—
Arbogast, “Calcul des Dérivations.”
The Bernoullis, Begnalt, Bertrand, Bezout (“Cours des
Mathématiques”), Bossuet, Burja, Brunacci, Babbage,
Bridges, Bland, Budan, Bonnycastle, Bourdon, Bar-
low (on the “Theory of Numbers),” Baltzer (on
“Determinants).”
Cousin, Cauchy, Coignet, Carnot, Cayley, Cockle.
Degraave, Ditton, Dodgson (on “Determinants”).
Frisius, Francoeur, Frend.
Gauss, “Disquisitiones Arithmeticae,” 1801.
Hemischius, Hales, Hirsch, Hutton, Holdred, Horner,
Hargreaves.
Kuhnius, Kramp, Kaestner.
Laloubre, Lorgna, Le Blonde, Lee, Lacroix, Ludlam,
Hººre (on the “Theory of Numbers”), L'Huillier,
eroy. .
3Mescher, Melebranche, Manfredi, Maseres, Murphy.
Nicholson, Nieuwentijdt (“Analysis Infinitorum ”).
Polleti, Poignard (on “Magic Squares "), Playfair.
Towning, Reimer.
Suremain-Missery (on “Impossible Quantities”), Schon-
erus, Salignut, Sturm, Serret, Salmon, Sylvester.
Trail, Tedenat, Thacker.
Vilent, Vandermonde.
VWarren, Wells, Wilson, Wood, Woodhouse.
Young.
“Elementary Treatises” of Byrce, Colenso, De Morgan,
Hind, Kelland, Peacock, Todhunter.
Writers on the History of Algebra.
Wallis, in his “Algebra”; Maseres, “Scriptores Logar-
ithmici, 1791, Montucla, in “Histoire des Mathé-
matiques; ” Bossuet, “Historei des Mathématiques; ”
Cossali, “Origine, Trasporto in Italia, e Primi
Progressi in Essa dell’ Algebra,” 2 vols. printed in
1797; Hutton, in his “Dictionary,” and more dif-
fusely in his “Tracts,” vol. ii.; “Libra Histoire des
Sciences Mathématiques en Italie,” Paris 1838,
Terqueh, “Bulletin de Bibliographie.”
Peacock “Report of British Association,” 1833.
For the titles of works on Algebra, consult Murhard,
* Bibliotheca Mathematica; ” and for Memoirs on Alge-
bra, in Academical Collections, see Reuss, “Reperto-
rium Commentationum,” tom. vii.; Smith (on the
“Theory of Numbers ”), Brit. Assoc. 1859–60, 1862–63.
NOTATION AND FIRST PRINCIPLES.
1. In arithmetic there are ten characters, which be-
ing variously combined, according to certain rules, serve
to denote all numerical magnitudes whatever. But this
method of expressing quantities (a phrase used to desig-
nate something more than mere numbers), is found to
be inadequate, taken by itself, to the more difficult cases
of mathematical investigation; and it is therefore nec-
essary, in many inquiries concerning the relations of
magnitude, to have recourse to that more general mode
of notation, and more extensive system of operations,
which constitute the science of algebra.
In algebra quantities of every kind may be denoted by
any characters whatever, but those commonly used are
the letters of the alphabet; and as in the simplest mathe-
matical problems there are certain magnitudes given in
Order to maintain other magnitudes which are unknown,
the first letters of the alphabet, a, b, c, &c., are used
to denote known quantities, while those to be found
are represented by v, x, y, &c., the last letters of the
alphabet.
2. The sign + (?/us) denotes, in arithmetic, that the
quantity before which it is placed is to be added to some
other quantity. Thus, a + & denotes the sum of a and b;
3+5 denotes the sum of 3 and 5, or 8.
The sign — (minus) signifies that the quantity before
which it is placed is to be substracted. Thus, a -6 de-
notes the excess of a above &; 6–2 is the excess of 6
above 2, or 4. -
Quantities which have the sign + prefixed to them are
called positive, and such as have the sign — are called
zzegative.
When no sign is prefixed to a quantity, + is always
understood, or the quantity is to be considered as posi-
tive.
Quantities which have the same sign, either + or —,
are said to have like signs. Thus, + a and + & have like
signs, but +a and – c have unlike signs.
. A quantity which consists of one term is said to
be simple; but if it consist of several terms, connected
by the signs + or —, it is then said to be compound.
Thus, +a and – c are simple quantities; and & F c, and
a + 6 — d, are compound quantities.
4. To denote the product arising from the multiplica-
tion of quantities, they are either joined together, as if
intended to form a word, or else they are connected to-
gether, with the sign X or . interposed between every
two of them. Thus, ab, or a X b, or a . , denotes the
product of a and b; also aſc, or a X & X 6, or a - 6 - c,
denotes the product of a, b, and c. If some of the
quantities to be multiplied be compound, each of these
has a line drawn over it called a vinculum, and the sign
X is interposed, as before. Thus, a X c + d X e – f
denotes that a is to be considered as one quartity, the
sum of c and d as a second, and the difference between
e and f as a third; and that these three quantities are
to be multiplied into one another. Instead of placing
a line over such compound quantities as enter a pro-
duct, we may enclose each of them between two paren-
thesis, so that the last product may be otherwise ex-
pressed thus, aſ c + d)(e–f), or thus, a × (c 4 d)
× (e–ſ). º e
A number prefixed to a letter is called a numerical
coefficient, and denotes how often that quantity is to be
taken. Thus 3a signifies that a is to be taken three
times. When no number is prefixed, the coefficient is
understood to be unity.
5. The quotient arising from the division of one
198
,-
A L G
quantity by another is often expressed by placing the
dividered above a line, and the divisor below it. Thus,
I 2
— denotes the quotient arising from the division of 12
à
by 3, or 4; – denotes the quotient arising from the
(Z
division of 6 by a.
6. The equality of two quantities is expressed by put-
ting the sign = between them. Thus, a + b = c – d.
denotes that the sum of a and b is equal to the excess
of c above d.
7. Simple quantities, or the terms of compound quan-
titles, are said to be like, which consist of the same
letter or letters taken together in the same way. Thus,
+ aſ and — 5ab are like quantities, but + ab and + abb
are unlike. -
There are some other characters, such as > for greater
zhan, < for less thazz, ‘. . for therefore, which will be
explained when we have occasion to use them; and in
what follows we shall suppose that the operations and
Mºon of common arithmetic are sufficiently under-
StCOCl.
8. As the science extends itself beyond its original
boundaries, it begins gradually to appear that the limits
imposed by these definitions have been transgressed, so
that almost insensibly the symbols have acquired for
themselves significations much more comprehensive than
those originally attached to them. Thus, were + a to
signify gain of £a, — a would signify a loss of the same
sum; were + a to signify motion forwards through a
feet, — a would signify motion backwards through the
same space. The extended definitions of + and – may
now be such as the following: + and — are collective
symbols of operations the reverse of each other. From
similar considerations to those by which the signification
of + and — has been extended, we extend that of X
and -i- to something like the following : X and -- are
cumulative symbols of operations the inverse of each
other. We may now exhibit the most general definition
of the four symbols in the following form: + and — are
symbols of operations prefixed to algebraical symbols of
quantity, and are such that + a - a = + o or — o,
where + o means simply or very nearly increased by o;
— O, diminished by O. X and + are symbols of opera-
tions prefixed to algebraical symbols of quantity, and
are such that X a + a = X 1 or + 1, where X I means
simply or very nearly multiplied by 1 ; -i- I, dizzided by 1.
9. The laws by which the symbols are combined are
the same as arithmetic. It is desirable, however, to ex-
hibit them. They are three,_
LAw I. Quantities affected by the signs + and — are
in no way influenced by the quantities to which they are
united by these signs.
LAw II. Z'he Distributize Zaw.—Additions and sub-
tractions may be performed in any order.
LAw III. The Commutative Zaw.— Multiplications
and divisfons may be performed in any order. º
We may remark flat these laws are assumed for
algebra, so that the science is limited by their applica-
bility. Algebra has been extended into the science of
quaternions by freeing it from part of the limitation
imposed by the third of these laws. In this new science
aô is not the same thing as ba.
ALGECIRAS, or ALGEZIRAS, a seaport of Spain, in
the province of Cadiz, 6 miles W. of Gibraltar, on the
opposite side of the bay. . The town is picturesquely
situated, and its name, which signifies in Arabic the
asſand, is derived from a small islet which forms one
side of the harbor. It is supplied with water by means
of a beautiful acqueduct. It has a dilapidated fortress,
and also a military hospital.
ALGER OF LIEGE, known also as ALGER of CLUGNY
and ALGERUS MAGISTER, a learned French priest who
lived in the first half of the 12th century. .
ALGERIA, or ALGIERs (French, Z'Algérie), the
largest and most important of the French colonial pos-
sessions, is a country of Northern Africa, bounded on the
N. by the Mediterranean, W. by the state of Marocco,
S. by the desert of the Sahara, and E. by Tunis. The
boundaries, however, are in many parts not accurately
determined. It extends for about 550 miles along the
coast, and stretches inland from 320 to 380 miles; lying
between 2° 10'. W. and 8° 50' E. long., and 320 and
37° N., lat. The area is estimated at about 150,500.
English square miles.
The country is generally mountainous, being trav-
ersed by lofty ranges of the Atlas system, which run
nearly parallel to the coast, and rise in some places to
the height of upwards of 7000 feet. These are com-
monly divided into two leading chains, which are
distinguished as the Great and Little Atlas. The
former, which is the more southern and bordering on
the Sahara, contains some of the highest points in the
country. The Little Atlas or Maritime Atlas, as it is
sometimes called, lies between the sea and the Great
Atlas, and is composed of numerous diversified ranges
generally of no great elevation. A number of smaller
chains lie between these principal ones, and also be-
tween the latter and the sea, forming so many ascending
steps or degrees. These principal ranges are connected
by numerous transverse ones, thus forming extensive
table-lands and elevated valleys, with no connection
between them but the intervening heights. Occasion-
ally the principal ranges are broken by deep defiles and
narrow valleys.
The rivers are numerous, but the majority of them
have short courses.
Algeria abounds in extensive lakes and marshes. It is
divided by a line running nearly east and west into two
distinct zones, called by the natives the Tell and Sahara.
From its position, Algeria might be supposed to enjoy
a warm climate ; but the temperature varies consider-
ably in different parts, according to the elevation and
configuration of the country. In the northern districts
the climate very much resembles that of the south of
Spain, while in the Sahara the heat is often excessive.
In the more elevated regions the winter is frequently
very severe ; but along the coast the temperature is
mild, very rarely sinking to the freezing-point even in
winter, when heavy rains are of frequent occurrence.
Besides the Europeans there are eight distinct races
of inhabitants in Algeria—(1) The Kabyles or Berbers,
the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants of the
country, constitute a large portion of the entire popula-
tion. (2.) The Arabs are a very numerous class, and
inhabit principally the southern parts of the country.
(3.) The Moors, a mixed race, inhabit the towns and
villages chiefly on or near the sea-coast. (4.) The Jews
are also to be found in the towns, and are engaged in
mercantile pursuits. (5.) The Turks, though long the
dominant race, were never very numerous, and since the
French conquest they have nearly disappeared. (6.)
Kolougis are the descendants of Turks by native women,
and constitute a considerable proportion of the inhabi-
tants of Algiers and other towns. (7.) The Negroes
were originally brought from the interior and sold as
slaves, but slavery now no longer exists. (8.) The
Mozabites are an African race, to be found inhabiting
the coast towns, and chiefly engaged in manual labor.
When under the dominion of the Turks, this coun-
try was governed by a dey, and divided into four
provinces — Algiers and Titterie in the centre, Tlem-
cen in the west, and Constantine in the east. The last
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A L G
I99
three were governed by beys under the dey. At pres-
ent it is divided into three provinces — Algiers in the
centre, Oran in the west, and Constantine in the east.
In early times this country was inhabited by two
nations, the Massyli and Massaesyli. During the strug-
gle between Hannibal and the Romans, Syphax, the
prince of the Massaesyli, espoused the cause of the
former, and Masinissa, the prince of the Massyli, that
of the latter. On the defeat of the Carthaginians the ter-
ritories of Syphax were annexed to those of Masinissa,
who received the title of King of Numidia. During the
Roman civil war, Juba, king of Numidia, sided with
Pompey, and being defeated by Caesar, his kingdom be-
came a Roman province. Under the Romans the
country enjoyed a great degree of prosperity. Agri-
culture was encouraged, commerce extended, roads
were formed, and towns sprang up. Christianity, too,
was early introduced and flourished. This state of
things, however, received a severe check when the Ro-
mans were driven out of Africa by the vandals about
the middle of the 5th century. These in turn were ex-
pelled by Belisarius, Justinian's general, in 533.
About the middle of the 7th century the Saracens made
themselves master of the country, which came after-
wards to be divided into a number of petty states un-
der independent chiefs, and the people sank into a state
of barbarism. About the middle of the 11th century
Abdallah-ben-Yazim, a learned Arab, formed a numer-
ous sect of religionists, known as Morabites, who over-
ran the country, subdued many of the petty chiefs, and
laid the foundation of the dynasty of the Almoravides.
In 1505, Ferdinand, king of Spain, sent a powerful
fleet and army against the country, under the Count of
Navarre, who soon made himself master of Oran, Bu-
gia, and other towns, and finally, in 1509, took the
town of Algiers. The Spanish rule, however, was very
distasteful to the Algerines; and on hearing of the
death of Ferdinand, in 1516, one of the native princes
sent an embassy to Aruch Barbarossa, the famous Turk-
ish pirate, requesting his aid against the invaders.
This was readily granted; and no sooner had he estab-
lished himself in the country than he murdered the
prince and caused himself to be proclaimed king in his
room. He introduced that system of piracy for which Al-
geria was afterwards noted down to 1830. By force and
treachery he extended his dominion over other parts of
the country, till at length the Spaniards marched a large
army against him from Oran, and being joined by many
of the natives, defeated him in various engagements,
took him prisoner, and beheaded him. His brother
Hayradin was then chosen sultan ; and he feeling him-
self unable to cope with the Spaniards, sought the as-
sistance of Turkey, and put himself under the pro-
tection of the Grand Seignior. Aid was readily granted,
and he himself was appointed pasha or viceroy of Al-
giers. Having thus got rid of his enemies, the Span-
iards, he turned his attention to the extension of his
piratical enterprises; and in order to do this with the
greater security, he fortified the port of Algiers and
built a strong mole for the protection of his ships. He
is said to have employed 30,000 Christian slaves for
three years in the construction of the mole. The Al-
gerine pirates soon became dreaded, not only by the
Arabs and Moors, but also by the maritime Christian
powers, particularly the Spaniards. At length Pope
Paul III. induced Charles V. to undertake an expedi-
tion to suppress these depredations, and issued a bull
offering remission of sins and the crown of martyrdom
to all who either fell in battle or were made slaves.
The emperor set sail with 120 ships and 20 galleys,
having on board 30,000 chosen men. They landed in
safety, and were proceeding to attack the town of Al-
giers when a fearful storm arose, and in one night
(28th Oct. 1511) destroyed 86 ships and 15, galleys
with all their crews and military stores, so that the
army on shore was deprived of the means of subsist-
ence. This was then fallen upon by the Algerines,
when many were killed and a great number taken pris-
oners, Charles himself and the remains of his army
escaping with difficulty.
Algiers continued to be governed by viceroys or pashas
appointed by the Porte till the beginning of the 17th
century, when the janissaries solicited and obtained the
right to choose their own dey or governor from among
themselves. In 1609, the Moors being expelled from
Spain, flocked in great numbers to Algiers, and, as many
of them were very able sailors, they contributed to raise
the power of the Algerine fleet. In 1616 it consisted of
forty sail of ships, of between 200 and 400 tons, their
flagship having 500 tons. . The Algerine pirates now be-
came so formidable to the European powers, that in
1617 the French sent against them a fleet of fifty sail,
under Beaulieu, who defeated their fleet and took two of
their vessels. In 162o the English sent out a Squadron
under the command of Sir Robert Mansel on the same
errand, but it returned without effecting anything.
Their depredations becoming still more frequent and
troublesome, the Venetians equipped a fleet of twenty-
eight sail, under the command of Admiral Capello, with
orders to burn, sink, or take all the Bal bary corsairs he
should meet. In an engagement which speedily took
place he signally defeated them, and took and destroyed
sixteen of their galleys. They soon, however, regained
their former strength ; and at length Louis XIV., pro-
voked by the outrages committed by them on the coasts
of Provence and Languedoc, ordered in 1681, a consider-
able fleet to be fitted out against them, under the com-
mand of Vice-admiral Duquesne. He attacked them
near the island of Scios, and destroyed fourteen of their
ships. This, however, had little effect upon them, and
the following year he bombarded the town of Algiers and
nearly reduced it to ashes. The Algerines, by way of
reprisal, sent a number of galleys to the coast of
Provence, where they committed great ravages. In May
1683, Duquesne with his fleet again cast anchor before
Algiers, and proceeded to bombard the town. The dey
and the people sued for peace; but Mezomorto, the
Algerine admiral, who was to have been delivered up as
one of the hostages, violently opposed coming to terms,
stirred up the soldiery against the dey, and caused him to
be murdered, and was himself chosen as his successor.
The bombardment was renewed, and Mezomorto, re-
duced to extremities, caused all the French in the city to
be cruelly murdered, and the French consul to be tied to
the mouth of a mortar and shot off in the direction of
the bombarding fleet. Duquesne was so exasperated by
this piece of cruelty that he did not leave Algiers till he
had utterly destroyed the fortifications, shipping, almost
all the lower, and about two-thirds of the upper part of
the town. The Algerines. now thoroughly humbled,
sent an embassy to France to sue for peace, which was
readily granted them. In 1686 the English concluded a
treaty with the Algerines on favorable terms, and this
was several times subsequently renewed ; but it was not
till the taking of Gibraltar and Port Mahon that England
had sufficient check upon them to enforce the observance
of treaties. From that time England was treated with
greater deference than any other European power. In
17 Io the Turkish pasha was expelled and his office united
to that of dey. The dey thus became the supreme ruler
in the country.
Matters continued very much in the same state, and
the history of Algiers presents little calling for special
notice down to the expedition of Lord Exmouth. The
2OO
A L G
principal States of Europe had their attention taken up
with weightier matters; but on the establishment of
the peace of 1815 the English sent a squadron of ships,
under Lord Exmouth, to Algiers, to demand the libera-
tion of all slaves then in bondage there, and the entire
discontinuance of piratical depredations. Afraid to
refuse, the Algerines returned a conciliatory answer,
and released a number of their slaves; but no sooner
had the ships left than they redoubled their activity and
perpetrated every sort of cruelty against the Christians.
Among the other acts of cruelty, they attacked and
massacred a number of Neapolitan fishermen who were
engaged in the pearl-fishery at Bona. The news of
this excited great indignation in England, and Lord
Exmouth was again despatched with five ships of the
line and eight Smaller vessels, and at Gibraltar he was
joined by a Dutch fleet of six frigates, under Admiral
Capellen. They anchored in front of Algiers on the
26th August 1816. Certain terms, which were ex-
tremely moderate, were proposed to the dey; but these
not meeting with acceptance, a fierce bombardment was
at Once commenced. At first the assailants were sub-
jected to a heavy fire from the enemy’s batteries; but
after a time these were one by one silenced, and ship
after ship caught fire, till the destruction of the
Algerine naval force was complete. Next day the
terms proposed to the dey were accepted; Christian
slaves to the number of 12 II were set at liberty, and a
promise was given that piracy and Christian slavery
should cease for ever. The Algerines, however, did
not long adhere to the terms of the treaty. They lost
no time in putting their city in a more formidable state
of defence than before, and this done, they considered
themselves in a condition to set the great powers of
Europe at defiance. *
Various injuries had from time to time been inflicted
on the French shipping, but that which more directly
led to a declaration of war was an insult offered to the
French consul by the dey. A debt had been con-
tracted by the French government to two Jewish mer-
chants of Algiers at the time of the expedition to Egypt,
and the dey having a direct interest in the matter, had
made repeated applications for payment, but without
success. Annoyed at this and at what he considered
insulting language on the part of the consul, he struck
the latter on the face in public. In consequence of this,
a French squadron was sent to Algiers which took the
consul on board, and for three years maintained an
ineffective blockade. At length war on a great scale
was resolved on, and a fleet was equipped at Toulon in
May 1830 under the command of Admiral Duperré. It
had also on board a land force, under the command of
General Bourmont, consisting of 37,000 infantry, 4000
cavalry, and a proportionate number of artillery. The
troops began to land on the 14th June upon the western
side of the peninsula of Sidi Ferruch, in the bay of
Torre Chica. They did not meet with much opposition
till the 19th, when a general attack was made upon them
by a force of 40,000 to 50,000 men. These, after a
fierce conflict, were completely routed. They renewed
their attack on the 24th and 25th, but were on both
occasions repulsed. The French then advanced upon
Algiers, and on the 29th the trenches were opened.
On the morning of the 4th of July the bombardment
commenced, and before night a treaty was concluded
for the entire surrender of Algiers. The next day the
French took possession of the town; and 12 ships of
war, I5OO brass cannon, and over £2,000,000 sterling
came into their hands as conquerors. The Turkish
troops were permitted to go wherever they pleased,
provided they left Algiers, and most of them were con-
veyed to Asia Minor. They dey himself, with his
private property and a large body of attendants, retired
to Naples.
In February 1831 General Berthezene was appointed
commander-in-chief, and undertook several expeditions
into the interior to chastise the hostile tribes, but met
with little success. In October Bona was surrounded
and taken by the Kabyles. There was now no safety
but in the town of Algiers; agriculture was conse-
quently neglected, and it was necessary to send to
France for supplies of provisions and for fresh troops.
In November 1831 General Savary, Duc de Rovigo,
was sent out with an additional force of 16,000 men.
The new governor sought to accomplish his ends by
the grossest acts of cruelty and treachery. One of his
exploits was the massacre of a whole Arab tribe, in-
cluding old men, women, and children, during night,
on account of a robbery committed by some of them.
He also treacherously murdered two Arab chiefs whom
he had enticed into his power by a written assurance of
safety. These proceedings exasperated the natives still
further against the French, and those tribes that had
hitherto remained quiet took up arms against them.
About this time Abd-el-Kader first appears upon the
field. His father, a Marabout, had collected a few fol-
lowers, and attacked and taken possession of the town
of Oran. On this they wished to elect him as their
chief, but he declined the honor on account of his great
age; and recommended his son who, he said, was en-
dowed with all the qualities necessary to success. He
collected an army of IO,OOO horsemen, and, accompanied
by his father, marched to attack Oran, which had been
taken possession of by the French. They arrived before
the town about the middle of May 1832, but after con-
tinuing their attack for three days with great bravery
they were repulsed with considerable loss. Abd-el-
Kader was still extending his influence more and more
widely among the Arab tribes; and the French at last
considered it to be to their interest to offer him terms
of peace. A treaty was accordingly concluded with him
by General Desmichels, governor of Oran, in February
I834, in which he acknowledged the supremacy of
France, and was recognised by them as emir of the
province of Mascara. One of the conditions of the
treaty was that the emir was to have a monopoly of the
trade with the French in corn. This part of the treaty
was regarded with great dissatisfaction at home, and
the general was removed from his post. In July Gen-
eral Drouet d'Erlon was sent out as governor-general
of the colony. An intendant or head of the civil depart-
ment was also appointed, as well as a commissary of
justice at the head of the judicature. Tribunals of jus-
tice were also established, by which both French and
natives were allowed to enjoy their respective laws.
From the tranquil state of the country at this time the
new governor was enabled to devote his attention to its
improvement. The French, however, soon became jeal-
ous of the power of the emir, and on the pretence that
he had been encroaching on their territory, General
Trezel, who had succeeded Desmichels in the governor-
ship of Oran, was sent against him with a considerable
force. The armies met at the river Makta, and the
French were routed with great slaughter on the 28th of
June 1835. On the news of this defeat Marshal Clausel
was sent to Algiers to succeed Count d'Erlon. . In order
effectually to humble the emir, he set out for his capital,
Mascara, accompanied by the Duke of Orleans, at the
head of 11,000 men. On reaching the town the French
found it deserted, and, having set it on fire, they
returned without having effected anything of conse-
quence.
General Bugeaud, who had succeeded Marshal Clausel,
attacked the Arabs under Abd-el-Kader on the Sikak
A L G
2OI
river, 6th July 1836, and gained a complete victory over
them. An expedition against the bey of Constantine
was next resolved upon, and Marshal Clausel, at the
Thead of 8000 men, set out from Bona for this purpose in
November 1836. They encountered on their march a
severe storm of hail and snow, followed by a sharp frost,
so that many of them died; and when they arrived be-
fore the walls of the town they were unable to under-
take the siege, and effected their retreat with difficulty.
The French were now anxious to conclude a peace with
Abd-el-Kader, and with this view General Bugeaud
arranged a meeting with him on the banks of the Tafna,
and a treaty was signed, 30th May 1837. They were
then free to turn their strength against the bey of Con-
stantine, and an army of 20,000 men set out from Bona
with this object under the command of General Damré-
mont early in October. The town was, after a very
gallant defence, taken by storm on the 12th of that
month by General Valée, General Damrémont having
been killed by a cannon ball the previous day. On the
capture of the city the neighboring tribes hastened to
make their submission to the conquerers, and a strong
garrison being left to defend the town, the army re-
turned to Bona. Disputes with the emir as to the
boundaries of his territory were frequent, and at length
war was again declared between the parties. The imme-
diate cause of war on this occasion was the marching of
an armed force of French troops through the emir’s ter-
ritory. This the latter looked upon as an infringement
of the treaty, and consequently declared war. In Octo-
ber 1839, he suddenly fell upon the French troops in the
plain of Metidja, and routed them with great slaughter,
destroying them and laying waste the European settle-
ments. He surprised and cut to pieces bodies of troops
on their march; outposts and encampments were taken
by sudden assault; and at length the possessions of the
French were reduced to the fortified places which they
occupied. On the news of these events reaching France,
reinforcements to the amount of 20,000 men were sent
out. The fort of Masagran, near Mostaganem, with a
garrison of only 123 men, gallantly withstood a fierce
attack by 12,OOO to 15,000 Arabs, which lasted for three
days. Marshal Valée was now recalled, and General
Bugeaud appointed to succeed him. The latter arrived
at Algiers on the 22d of February 1841, and adopted a
new system, which was completely successful. He
made use of movable columns radiating from Algiers,
Oran, and Constantine, and having from 80,000 to IOO,-
OOO troops at his disposal, the result soon told against
the emir. Many of the Arab tribes were thus intimi-
dated or brought under subjection, hard pressed garri-
sons were relieved and victualled, and town after town
taken. Tekedemt, the principal stronghold of Abd-el-
Kader, was destroyed, and the citadel blown up; Mas-
cara was taken; and Saida, the only remaining fortress
in the possession of the emir, was entirely demolished.
In January 1842 the town of Tlemcen was taken, and
ten days afterwards the fort of Tafna, which was demol-
ished. The terrified Arabs submitted on all sides, and
now almost the entire country was subdued. The emir
Thimself, driven to extremities, was compelled to take
refuge in Marocco. Here he succeeded in raising a
considerable force, and returned to Algeria. He made
up for the want of troops by the rapidity of his move-
ments, and would suddenly make an attack on one place
when he was supposed to be in quite an opposite quar-
ter. In November 1842 the Duke of Aumale arrived
in Algiers to take part in the operations against the
emir; and in the spring of the following year he sud-
denly fell upon the camp of Abd-el-Kader while the
great body of his troops were absent, and took several
thousand prisoners and a large booty, the emir himself
&
making his escape with difficulty. Not long afterwards
the latter again took refuge in Marocco, and so excited
the fanatical passions of the people of that country that
their ruler was forced into a war with France. The
army which was sent into Algeria was attacked and de-
feated by Bugeaud at the river Isly, 14th August 1844.
In June 1845 a tribe of Arabs, who were being pursued
by a body of French troops under. General Pelissier,
took refuge in a cave. As they refused to surrender, the
general ordered a fire to be kindled at the mouth of the
cave, and the whole of those within, men, women, and
children, to the number of 500, were suffocated. The
emir at length was brought to such straits that he agreed
to deliver himself up to the French on being allowed to
retire to Alexandria or St. Jean d’Acre. Notwithstand-
ing this promise, which was given by General Lamori-
cière, and ratified by the governor-general, he was taken
to France, where he arrived on the 29th of January
1848; and was imprisoned first in the castle of Pau, and
afterwards in that of Amboise, near Blois. In October
1852 Louis Napoleon, then president of the French Re-
public, gave him his liberty on condition that he should
not return to Algeria, but reside at Brousso in Asia
Minor. Here he remained till 1855 when, in conse-
quence of the destruction of that town by an earthquake,
he obtained permission to remove to Constantinople,
and afterwards to Damascus. At the latter place he
rendered valuable aid to the Christians by protecting
them during the masacre by the Turks in Syria in 1860.
On the revolution in France of 1848, General
Cavaignac was appointed governor-general of the
colony; and the National Assembly, wishing to estab:
lish a closer connection between the country and
France, offered to incorporate it with the republic.
In 1858 the administration of the colony was confided
to a special minister, the first nominated being Prince
Napoleon; but he only held office for a short time; and
soon after, the special ministry was abolished. In Octo-
ber 1859 certain Arab tribes rose in rebellion, but were
speedily subdued. In 1860 Marshal Pelissier was made
governor-general, with a vice-governor, a director-gen-
eral of civil affairs, and a council of thirty members.
Marshal Pelissier died in May, and Marshal M’Mahon
was appointed to succeed him. . A fresh insurrection
of the Arabs broke out in October, but after several
defeats they were brought to subjection. In May 1865
the Emperor Napoleon visited Algeria, and was every-
where received with the greatest demonstrations of joy.
After his return to France he wrote a letter to Marshal
M’Mahon respecting the future government of the
colony. He particularly pointed out the necessity of
seeking to gain the good-will of the natives by permit-
ting them to enjoy their territories unmolested, and to
maintain their own customs, and that they should be
held as equal with the colonists before the law. He
further directed him to seek to stimulate the industry of
the colonists, and to strive to develop the resources of
the country. In October a fresh insurrection broke out
in the province of Oran. It commenced with an attack
upon a friendly tribe, but was at length put down by a
body of troops under the command of Colonel de Colomb.
It again broke out in March 1866, and Colonel de
Colomb was a second time sent out against the insur-
gents. He encountered them on the 16th, and, after a
fierce engagement, put them to flight, with great loss.
In the beginning of 1867 a new expedition was organ-
ized against the refractory Arabs in the south, and these
being effectually put down, a period of comparative
peace followed.
In January 1868 a fresh revolt broke out among the
Arabs, instigated by Si-Hamed, who had led in more
than one of the previous revolts. They assailed and
2O2
A L G— A L H
plundered some of the friendly tribes, and being pur-
sued and attacked by a body of French troops, a fierce
engagement took place, in which Si-Hamed was killed
and his followers put to flight. Peace was enjoyed for
the rest of that year; but towards the end of January
1869 several large bands of insurgent Arabs in the
extreme south marched northward, took by surprise
Tagguin, and being joined by others, in a short time
they numbered 3000 horse. A body of French troops
was sent out against them from Laghouat, under the
command of Colonel Sonis, and after two and a half
hours’ hard fighting the insurgents were put to flight
with great slaughter. In 1871 a widespread insurrec-
tion of Arab and Kabyle tribes broke out, stimulated
no doubt by a knowledge of the weakened condition of
France at home. It commenced with El-Mokrani, the
hereditary bach-agha of the Medjana, attacking and
burning the village of Brody-Bon-Arreredy, destroying
isolated houses and posts throughout the district sub-
ject to his influence, the colonists who did not succeed
in reaching a place of safety being massacred. All his
attacks against the fortified places, however, failed;
and as soon as the French were able to assume the
offensive he was beaten in every engagement, and sub-
sequently killed in action. When this rebellion ap-
peared almost overcome, the whole of Kabylia rose in
arms at the command of the sheikh El-Haddad, one of
the most powerful chiefs in Kabylia, and head of an
jºf religious confraternity. The Kabyles, for
the first time in history, descended from their mountain
fastnesses, and attempted to invade the plains of the
Metidja. The most horrible massacres were perpe-
trated, and all the principal ports on the coast were
strictly blockaded on the landward side. It was not
until after the fall of the commune in Paris that troops
could be spared in sufficient numbers to suppress the
insurrection. But this was at length effected, and a
war , contribution of £1,200,000 imposed upon the
rebels, whose lands were also sequestrated, but the
owners were permitted to resume possession on com-
paratively easy terms. The greater part of the sum
recovered was distributed among the colonists who had
suffered during the insurrection, and a considerable
portion of it has been allotted for public works. The
sequestration has also opened up much valuable terri-
tory for European colonisation. Since the insurrection
many new colonists have arrived here, and among
them many from Alsace and Lorraine. A law passed
by the French Chamber, 15th September 1871, author-
ises, on certain conditions, the gratuitous concession
of 247,000 acres of land to such natives of Alsace and
Lorraine as might desire to preserve their French
nationality. A more favorable era, it is believed, has
now dawned for the colony. Down to 1871 it had con-
tinued under military rule, and this, it was thought,
had had not a little to do with the frequent insurrections
that had broken out in the country.
ALGHERO, a seaport of Italy, in the province of
Sassari, Sardinia, situated on the west coast of the
island, 14 miles S.W. of Sassari. It was founded by
the Genoese, and was afterwards taken by the Catalon-
ians, whose language is still spoken.
ALGIERS (Fr. A/ger, Arab. Al-Jezair, i.e., The
Islands), a city and seaport of Northern Africa, and
capital of Algeria, is situated on the west side of a bay
of the same name in the Mediterranean. It is built, in
the form of an amphitheatre, on the northern slope of a
steep hill rising abruptly from the coast. It ascends
the side of the hill in the form of an irregular triangle,
the apex of which is occupied by the Casbah, an ancient
fortress of the deys, which is about 500 feet above the
level of the sea. Algiers has of late come to be noted
as a winter residence for invalids. The French have
spent large sums of money in the improvement of the
port of Algiers. It has an area of 220 acres, and it is
calculated that when a rock near the centre, called Āoche
Sans Mom, is removed, it will be capable of accomoda-
ting 40 vessels of war and 300 trading vessels. It has
two docks, capable of containing the largest vessels.
The lighthouse has a revolving light visible at the dis-
tance of 15 miles. Population (1866), 52,614. (For the
trade and climate of Algiers, see ALGERIA.)
ALGOA BAY, an inlet in Cape Colony, on the S.E.
coast of Africa, 425 miles east from the Cape of Good
Hope. Algoa Bay lies between capes Recife and
Padrone, on the former of which there is a lighthouse.
It receives the rivers Sunday and Baasher.
ALHAMA, a city of Spain, in the province of Gra-
nada, 24 miles S.W. of Granada. Alhama was a most
important fortress while the Moors ruled in Granada,
and its capture by the Marquis of Cadiz in 1482 was the
most decisive step in the reduction of their power.
Remains of the Moorish castle and walls are still to be
seen, as well as an aqueduct of Roman or Moorish.
origin.
ALHAMA, a town in Spain, in the province of Mur-
cia, 13 miles S.W. of the town of that name.
ALHAMBRA, the ancient fortress and residence of
the Moorish monarchs of Granada, on the north. The
name, signifying in Arabic “the red,” is derived from
the color of the sun-dried tapia, or bricks made of fine
gravel and clay, of which the outer walls are built.
This famous Moorish palace was erected at various
dates, chiefly between 1248 and 1354, under the reigns
of Ibn-al-Ahmar and his successors. The splendid #. --
orations, and in particular the exquisite painting of
the interior, are subscribed to Yusuf I., who died in
1354. Immediately after the expulsion of the Moors in
1492, their conquerors began, by innumerable acts of
vandalism, to spoil the marvellous beauty of the Al-
hambra. The open work was filled up with whitewash,
the painting and gilding effaced, the furniture soiled,
torn, or removed. Charles V. rebuilt portions in the
modern style of the period, and destroyed the greater
part of the Winter Palace to make room for a modern
structure which has never been completed. Philip V.
Italianised the rooms, and completed the degradation by
running up partitions which blocked up whole apart-
ments, gems of taste and patient ingenuity. In subse-
quent centuries the carelessness of the Spanish authori-
ties permitted this pearl of Moorish art to be still fur-
ther defaced; and in 1812 some of the towers were
blown up by the French under Sebastiani, while the
whole buildings narrowly escaped the same fate. In
1821 the ancient pile was shattered by an earthquake.
Directions were given in 1862, by Isabella, then queen
of Spain, for the restoration of the Alhambra to its
original condition. The work has been carried on with
considerable skill, but the sums devoted to it have been
too small for its satisfactory accomplishment.
In the hey-day of Moorish prosperity the palace must
have been the most delicious of royal residences.
Odoriferous gardens, in which the orange and the myr-
tle bloomed, alternated with sparkling fountains and
soft couches, inviting to a luxurious repose. Every:
thing contributed to render the whole the most splendid
abode of Oriental magnificence, to which only the fan-
tastic creations of the Arabian Mights can be fitly com-
pared.
The present entrance is by a small insignificant door,
from which a corridor conducts to the AEatio de la:
Aerkäh, the Court of the Blessing. This court is I4O.
feet long by 74 broad; and in the centre there is a large
pond set in the marble pavement, full of gold-fish, from
A L H — A L I
2O3,
which some have called this the Court of the Pond.
It is also known as the Court of the Myrtles, from
the myrtles which grow along its sides. There are gal-
!eries on the north and south sides; that on the south
27 feet high, and supported by a marble colonnade.
Underneath it, to the right, was the principal entrance,
and over it are three elegant windows with arches and
miniature pillars. The columns supporting the galleries
are light in structure, and arches, slender and bending
gracefully like palms, spring from the capitals and meet
overhead. From this court the walls of the Zorre de
Comazes are seen rising over the roof to the north, and
its tower and colonnades are reflected in the crystal
mirror of the pond. - -
The Hall of Ambassadors (Sala de Ambajadores) is
the largest in the Alhambra, and occupies all the Tower
of Comares. It is a square room, the sides being 37
feet in length, while the centre of the dome is 75 feet
high. This was the grand reception-room, and the
throne of the sultan was placed opposite the entrance.
Another of the more celebrated courts of the palace is
the Palio de los Leones, the Court of the Lions. This
is an oblong court, I 16 feet in length by 66 in breadth,
surrounded by a low gallery supported on 124 white
marble columns. A pavilion projects into the court at
each extremity, with filigree walls and light-domed roof,
elaborately ornamented. The square is paved with
colored tiles, and the colonnade with white marble;
while the walls are covered 5 feet up from the ground
with blue and yellow tiles, with a border above and
below enamelled blue and gold.
The Hall of the Abencerrages derives its name from
a legend according to which Boabdil, the last king of
Granada, having invited the chiefs of that illustrious line
to a banquet, massacred them here.
Among the other wonders of the Alhambra are the
Hall of Justice; the mosque; the Miradorde Zindaraja,
or boudoir of the sultana; the Patia de la Reja, the
Tocador de la Reina, or queen’s boudoir; and the Sala
de los Banos, in all which are to be seen the same deli-
cate and beautiful architecture, the same costly and ele-
gant decorations. There must also be noticed the cele-
brated vase of the Alhambra, a splendid specimen of
Moorish ceramic art, dating from 1320, and belonging
to the first period of Moorish porcelain. It is 4 feet 3
inches high; the ground is white, and the enamelling
is in blue, white, and gold. A new hall, called the Hall
of the Shields or Escutcheons, has recently been dis-
covered; and the palace contains, besides the more
important halls already mentioned, ranges of bed-rooms
and summer-rooms, a whispering gallery and labyrinth,
and vaulted sepulchres.
The towers of the fortress have also much of the
ornamented character of the palace.
One of the most striking features of the Alhambra is
the appliance of poetical conceits and passages from the
Koran to enhance and form part of the ornamentation.
“There is no God but Allah,” “There is no conqueror
but God,” “Glory be given to our Lord,” and other
similar inscriptions are everywhere to be observed.
ALHAZEN (full name, ABU ALI AL-HASAN IBN
ALHASAN), a mathematician of the II th century, was
born at Bassora, and died at Cairo, in Io98. He is to
be distinguished from another Alhazen who translated
Ptolemy's A/magest in the Ioth century. Alhazen hav-
ing boasted that he could construct a machine for regu-
lating the inundations of the Nile, was summoned to
Egypt by the caliph Hakem; but, aware of the impracti-
cability of his scheme, and fearing the caliph's anger,
he ſeigned madness until Hakem's death in IO2 I. As a
writer, Alhazen is remarkable for prolixity and scholastic
subtilty. Only two of his works have been printed.
ALI, the fourth in order of the caliphs or successors.
of Mahomet, was born at Mecca, about the year 600.
A. D. His father, Abu Taleb, was an uncle of the
prophet, and Ali himself was adopted by Mahomet and
educated under his care. While he was still a mere
boy he distinguished himself by being the first to declare
his adhesion to the cause of Mahomet, who in return
made him his vicegerent, and some years after gave him
his daughter Fatima in marriage. Ali proved himself
to be a brave and faithful soldier; and when Mahomet
died without male issue, he seemed to have the best
claims to become the recognized head of Islamism.
Almost the first act of his reign was the suppression of
a rebellion under Telha and Zobeir, who were instigated
by Ayesha, the widow of Mahomet, a bitter enemy of
Ali, and hitherto one of the chief hindrances to his
advancement to the caliphate. The rebel army was
defeated at Kharibah, near Bassorah, the two generals be-
ing killed, and Ayesha taken prisoner. Ali's next care
was to get rid of the opposition of Moawyah, who had es-
tablished himself in Syria at the head of a numerous army.
Ali was not destined to see the result of his plans. Three
of the fanatic sect of the Karigites made an agreement
to assassinate Ali, Moawyah, and Amru as the authors.
of disastrous feuds among the faithful. The only victim
of this plot was Ali, who died at Kufa in 661, of the
wound inflicted by a poisoned weapon. The question
of Ali's right to succeed to the caliphate is an article of
faith which divided the Mahometan world into two great
sects, the Sunnis and the Shiahs, the former denying:
and the latter affirming his right. The Turks, conse-
quently, who are usually Sunnis, hold his memory in
abhorrence; whereas the Persians, who are generally
Shiahs, venerate him as second only to the prophet, and
celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom.
ALI BEY (1728–73), an adventurer, said to have
been a native of the Caucasus, and to have been sold.
about the age of twelve or fourteen for a slave in Cairo.
The two Jews who became his masters presented him
to Ibrahim, then one of the most influential men in the
kingdom. In the family of Ibrahim he received the
rudiments of a literary education, and was also in-
structed in the military art. He gradually gained the
affection of his patron to such a degree that he gave:
him his freedom, permitted him to marry, and pro-
moted him to the rank of governor of a district. After-
wards he was elected to the elevated station of one of
the governors of provinces. Emboldened by success,
he rescued himself from the power of the Porte, coined
money in his own name, and assumed the rank of sul-
tan of Egypt. e
ALI PASHA, surnamed Arslan or “The Lion,”
was born at Tepelini, a village of Albania, on the Vo-
yutza, at the foot of the Klissoura Mountains, in 1741.
He belonged to the Toske tribe, and his ancestors had
for some years held the title of Bey of Tepelini, this.
dignity having become hereditary in his family. His
grandfather fell in 1716 at the siege of Corfu, which was.
then held by the Venetians. When the French took
Venice in 1797, Ali, by pretending admiration for the
principles of the revolution, induced Napoleon to send
him engineers, by whose aid he fortified Joannina ; but
failing to obtain from him, as he had hoped, the Vene-
tian ports on the seaboard of Epirus, he took occasion,
after the defeat of Napoleon in Egypt, to lay siege to
Prevesa, which was surrendered by the French troops.
Ali had now a difficult part to play, but he succeeded so.
well with his master the sultan, that he was confirmed
in the possession of the whole of Albania, northwards.
from Epirus to Montenegro, over which he had asserted
his authority, partly by intrigue and partly by force of
arms. He also held the high position of governor of
2O4.
A L I
Rum-ili for a brief period (1799), during which he
amassed a large sum of money by his extortions. The
cruel massacre of the inhabitants of Gardiki, for an
alleged insult to his mother and sister about forty
years previously, was perpetrated about this time. He
contrived to make his peace with the French in spite of
the capture of Prevesa, and in 1807 once more entered
into alliance with" them, with the view of obtaining
Parga, which he had attempted to capture, but without
success, in 1800. Napoleon, however, neglected to se-
cure Parga for him at the peace of Tilsit, and the for-
tress remained in the hands of the French until it was
taken in 1814 by the English, who gave it up in 1817,
ostensibly to the sultan, but in reality to Ali. Ali was
now in the height of his power; he was almost supreme
over Albania, Epirus, part of Thessaly, and the west-
ern part of Northern Greece; while one of his sons
Held the pashalik of the Morea. So powerful was he
+hat, though he was nearly eighty years of age, the
Porte feared and hated him, and desired his death, but
could find no pretext for taking measures against him
until 182O, when Ali procured the assassination of an
officer who had left him and taken service under the
sultan at Constantinople. For this daring act the sul-
tan proscribed Ali, and ordered all the European pashas
to march against him. He resisted every effort to cap-
ture him, but was at last induced by Kourschid Pasha
to surrender in January 1822 on promise of pardon from
the sultan. On 5th February, on pretence of handing
Him the necessary document, Kourschid Pasha procured
an interview with him, and then produced the firman
authorising his execution. The brave old despot de-
fended himself with his usual resolution and courage,
but was overpowered by numbers, and his head was
struck from his body and sent to Constantinople.
ALIAS, signifying at another time, is used in judicial
proceedings to connect the several names of a person
who attempts to conceal his true name, or to pass under
a feigned one; as Smith alias Jones, James alias John.
A LIBI, in Zazo, denotes the absence of the accused
from the place where he is charged with having com-
mitted a crime; or his being elsewhere, as the word
imports, at the time specified.
ALICANTE, a province of Spain, bounded on the.
N. by Valencia, on the W. by Albacete and Murcia, on
the S. by Murcia, and on the S.E. and E. by the Medi-
terranean Sea. It was formed in 1834 of districts taken
from the ancient provinces of Valencia and Murcia, the
former contributing by far the larger portion. Its
length is about 73 miles, its breadth 68 miles, and the
area 2090 square miles. The surface of the province is
“extremely diversified. In the north and west there are
extensive mountain ranges of calcareous formation,
intersected by deep ravines; while farther south the
land is more level, and there are many fertile valleys.
On the Mediterranean coast, salt marshes, exhaling an
insalubrious miasma, alternate with rich plains and
Tyleasant and productive huertas or gardens, such as
those of Alicante and Denia. The people are of a lively
and irascible temperament, and offences against the
person are frequent. Population (1870), estimated at
44O,OOO.
ALICANTE, the capital of the above province, and,
after Cadiz and Barcelona, the most considerable sea-
port of Spain. It is situated at the head of the bay of
Alicante, in the Mediterranean Sea. The city is built
•on the bay in the form of a half-moon, and is overlooked
by a rock 400 feet high, surmounted by a castle, which
has been suffered to fall into decay. There is good
anchoring-ground in the bay, but only the smaller ves-
'sels can come up to the mole or pier. Alicante was
besieged by the Moors in 1331, and again by the French
in 1709, when the English commandant and his staff
were killed by the explosion of a mine. Population,
I,500.
ALICATA, or LICATA, a seaport of Italy, in the
province of Girgenti, Sicily, situated on the south coast,
at the mouth of the Salso, the largest river in the island.
It is supposed to occupy the site of the ancient Phine-
fias, built by Phintias, tyrant of Agrigentum, in 280 B.
C., after the destruction of Gela.
ALICUDI, one of the Lipari Islands.
ISLANDS.
ALIEN, obviously derived from the Latin alienzas, is
the technical term applied by British constitutional law
to any one who does not enjoy the privileges of a Brit-
ish subject. The jealousy which has generally existed
against communicating the privileges of citizenship to
foreigners has its foundation in mistaken views of polit-
ical economy. It arose from the impression that the
produce of the energy and enterprise of any community
is a limited quantity, of which one man's share will be
the less the more competitors there are; superseding
the just view that the wealth of a state depends on the
number and energy of the producers. Thus the skilled
workmen who would increase its riches have often been
jealously kept out of a country. But, on the other
hand, special temptations, including the gift of citizen-
ship, have often been offered to skilled foreigners by
states desiring to acquire them as citizens. Britain has
occasionally received industrious and valuable citizens,
driven forth by the folly or tyranny of other powers, as
in the memorable instance of the revocation of the
edict of Nantes, which sent the Spitalfields colony and
many other Frenchmen to this country.
Many of the special disabilities to which aliens were
subject under the Navigation Act and other laws con-
nected with our old restrictive commercial policy, have
been removed or neutralized by the free trade measure
of later years; but it is still impossible for an alien to
be the owner of a British ship. In other respects the
tendency has been to communicate some of the rights
of citizenship to aliens, and to widen the definition of
subjects.
In the United States an alien desiring to be natural-
ised must declare on oath his intention to become a
citizen of the United States; two years afterwards
must declare on oath his intention to support the con-
stitution of the United States; and renounce allegiance
to every foreign power, including that of which he was
before a subject; must prove residence in the United
States for five years, and in the state where his applica-
tion is made for one year, as a good citizen ; and must
renounce any title of nobility. In France an alien
desiring naturalisation must obtain permission to
establish his domicile in France; three years after (in
special cases one year) he is entitled to apply for
naturalisation, which involves the renunciation of any
existing allegiance. (See further, ALLEGIANCE; LAW
of NATIONS.)
ALſGARH, a district of British India, in the Meerut
division, and under the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant
Governor of the North-West Provinces. It contains
an area of 1954 square miles, of which upwards of
two-thirds, or 884,060 acres, are under cultivation.
Population in 1865 returned at 925,538 souls, and by
the census of 1872 ascertained to be 1,073, IOS. Aligarh
is bounded on the N. by the Bulandshahr district and
a portion of Budáon; on the E. by . Etah district; on
the S. by Mathurá district; and on the W. by Gurgãon
and Mathurá districts. Af
ALícARH Fort, in the district of the same name.
ALIMENT, in the Law of Scotland, is the sum
paid or allowance given in respect of the reciprocal
See LIPARI
A L I — A L L
2O5.
obligation of parents and children, husband and wife,
grandparents and grandchildren, to contribute to each
other’s maintenance.
ALIMONY is, in AEnglish Law, the allowance for
maintenance to which a wife is entitled out of her
husband's estate on a decree, obtained at the wife’s
instance, for judicial separation or for the dissolution
of the marriage.
ALISON, REv. ARCHIBALD, an author of great
reputation in his own day, was born on the 13th
November 1757 at Edinburgh, of which his father was
for a time lord provost. His last years were spent at
Colinton, near Edinburgh, where he died on, the 17th
May 1839.
ALISON, SIR ARCHIBALD, Bart., the celebrated
historian, younger son of the preceding, was born at
Kenley, Shropshire, on the 29th December 1792. He
studied at the university of Edinburgh, distinguished
himself especially in the classes of Greek and mathe-
matics. In 1814 he passed at the Scotch bar, but he
did not at once enter on the regular practice of his pro-
fession. The close of the war had opened up the Con-
tinent, and Alison, sharing with many of his countrymen
the desire to witness the scene of the stirring events of
the previous twenty years, set out in the autumn of 1814
for a lengthened tour in France. It was during this
period, as he tells us in a characteristic passage of the
work itself, that he “conceived the first idea” of writing
his History, and “inhaled that ardent spirit, that deep
enthusiasm,” which enabled him to accomplish his self-
imposed task. A more immediate result of the tour
was his first literary work of any importance, Zºrave/s
in France during the Years 1814–15, which appeared
in the latter year. The history of the period from the
commencement of the French revolution till the restora-
tion of the Bourbons in 1815 was completed in ten vol-
umes in 1842, and met with a success almost unexam-
pled in works of its class. Within a few years it ran
through ten editions, and was translated into most of the
languages of Europe, as well as into Arabic and Hindu-
stani. At the time of the author’s death it was stated
that IO8,000 volumes of the library edition and 439,000
volumes of the popular edition had been sold. A popu-
larity so widespread must almost of necessity have had
some basis of real merit on which to rest, and the good
qualities of Mr. Alison’s work lay upon the surface. It
brought together, though not always in a well-arranged
form, an immense amount of information that had be-
fore been practically inaccessible to the general public.
It made an attempt at least to show the organic con-
nection in the policy and progress of the different
nations of Europe; and its descriptions of what may be
called external history—of battles, sieges, and state
pageants—were always spirited and interesting. On
the other hand, the faults of the work were so numerous
and glaring as to prevent it from ever taking rank as a
classic. The general style was prolix, involved, and
vicious; inaccurate statements and fallacious arguments
were to be found in almost every page; and the con-
stant repetition of trite moral reflections and egotistical
references seriously detracted from its dignity. A more
grave defect resulted from the author’s strong political
partisanship, which entirely unfitted him for dealing
with the problems of history in a philosophical spirit.
In the position of unbending Toryism which he occu-
pied, it was impossible for him to give any explanation
of so complex a fact as the French revolution that
would be satisfactory to reflective minds. Accordingly,
his treatment of what may be called the inner history of
those forces hidden in the French revolution which have
made modern Europe what it is, was meager and incom-
plete in the last degree.
A continuation of the History, embracing the period
from 1815 to 1852, which was completed in four volumes
in 1856, did not meet with the same success as the ear-
lier work. Sir Archibald died at Possil House, Glas-
gow, on the 23d May 1867.
ALIZARIN, the principal coloring matter of madder,
may be obtained by subliming on paper an alcoholic
extract of madder, or by exhausting the root with water,
precipitating with sulphuric acid, dissolving the moist
precipitate in a solution of chloride of alumina, and
separating the impure alizarin by the addition of hydro-
chloric acid. The impure alizarin is dissolved in alcohol,
and separated as a lake on treating with hydrate of
alumina, which is now boiled with carbonate of soda to
separate another coloring matter called purpurin, and is
finally treated with hydrochloric acid, which dissolves
the alumina and leaves the pure substance.
ALKALI, a term originally applied to the ashes of
plants, now employed in inorganic chemistry as a gen-
eric name given to the group of compounds that have
the property of neutralising acids. The use of the term
is, however, generally confined to such members of the
roup as are soluble in water.
ALKALOIDS, the name of a group of organic bodies.
that possess alkaline properties. They are characterised
by the property of combining with acids to form salts,
and many have the power of giving an alkaline reaction,
with vegetable colors. See CHEMISTRY.
ALKANET (A/Aazama finctoria, or Anchusa tinc-
toria), a plant of the Order Boraginaceae, indigenous to
the south of France and the shores of the Levant.
AL-KINDI, ABU YOSUF, &c., styled by pre-emi-
mence “The Philosopher of the Arabs,” flourished dur-
ing the first half of the IOth century, and died at some
unknown date posterior to 961. His literary activity
was encyclopaedic, and spread itself over all the sciences.
The titles of his works number nearly 200 in the cata-
logue of Casiri, and amount to 265 in that of Flügel;
but the latter appears in some cases to have enumerated
the same works under two divisions, and it is doubtful
whether the philosopher has not been confounded with
another writer of the same name. -
ALKMAAR, a town of the Netherlands, in the
province of North Holland, situated on the Helder
canal and on the railway between Haarlem and the
Helder, about 20 miles N.N. W. from Amsterdam.
Population, I2,OOO.
ALKMAAR, HEINRIK voN, the German translator
of the celebrated satirical poem Aleineke de Vos, flour-
ished in the latter half of the 15th century.
ALL-SAINTS DAY, ALL-HALLOWS, or HALLOW-
MAS, a festival, first instituted about 6 IO A.D., on the
Ist of May, in memory of the martyrs, and celebrated.
since 844 on the 1st of November, as a general com-
memoration of all the saints. See BELTANE.
ALLAH, Arabic name for the one true God which
is employed in the Koran, and has been adopted into
the language of all Mahometan nations. See MA-
HOMETANISM.
ALLAHABAD, a division, district, and city of
British India, under the jurisdiction of the lieutenant-
governor of the North-Western Provinces. Total popu-
lation (1872), 5,466, II6.
ALLAHABAD DISTRICT. In shape the district is.
that of an irregular oblong; and it is difficult accurately
to describe its boundaries, as at one extremity it
wanders into Oudh, while on the south the villages of
the state of Rewah and those of this district are hope-
lessly intermingled. Roughly speaking, however, the
boundaries may be described as follows: — On the
north by the district of Jaunpur and by the Ganges;
on the west by the districts of Fathipur and Bándá; on.
2O6
A L L
the south by the independent state of Rewah; and on
the east by the districts of Mirzápur and Jaunpur.
The settlement of the district is at present undergoing
revision; and as the measurements are still incomplete,
it is impossible to state the exact area. For practical
purposes, it may be estimated at 2802 square miles, or
I,793,906 acres, of which I,065,990 acres are cultivated,
and 727,916 acres are uncultivated; of this latter, however,
there are about 250,000 acres capable of being brought
1nder tillage, although not actually cultivated. The cen-
sus of 1889 returned the population of the district at 1,394,-
245 Souls, of whom 1,21 1,778 are Hindus, 181,574 Mus-
selmans, and 893 Christians.
ALLAHABAD CITY, the capital of the North-Western
Provinces, is also the administrative headquarters of
the Allahābād division and of the district of the same
name. It is situated at the confluence of the Ganges
and Jamná rivers.
ALLAMAND, JEAN NICOLAs SEBASTIAN, natural
Philosopher, born at Lausanne in 1713, was educated
for the church, and held for a short time a clerical ap-
pointment at Leyden. Here he enjoyed the patronage
and friendship of the celebrated S'Gravesende, who
made him his literary executor. In 1747 he was ap-
pointed professor of philosophy and natural history at
Franeker, and two years later he was transferred to a
similar chair at Leyden, which he occupied until his
death in 1787. Allamand's chief service to science
consisted in translating and editing the scientific works
of others, but he also made some original discoveries
of importance, especially in connection with electricity.
ALLAN, DAVID, a Scottish historical painter of con-
siderable celebrity, was born at Alloa on the 13th Feb-
. 1744. He died at Edinburgh on the 6th August
I796.
ALLAN, SIR WILLIAM, R.A., and president of the
Royal Scottish Academy, was born at Edinburgh in
1782, and died February 22, 1850.
ALLEGHANY, ALLEGHENY, or ALLEGANY MOUNT-
AINS, is the name often given to the Appalachian
Mountains in the United States. See APPALACHIAN
MOUNTAINS.
ALLEGHANY, a river of the United States, which
rises in the north of Pennsylvania, and after flowing
about 300 miles, first in a northerly, but for the greater
part of its course in a westerly direction, during which
it passes for a short distance into the state of New
York, unites with the Monongahela at Pittsburg to form
the Ohio.
ALLEGHENY CITY, one of the most progressive
and prosperous cities in Pennsylvania, is beautifully sit-
uated on the right bank of the Allegheny river, at its
junction with the Ohio. It is admirably, located for
business or residence purposes, handsomely laid out,
well built, and in all respects presents an appearance
both substantial and attractive. Lines of steamers
afford regular and desirable means of communication
with all points on the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi
rivers, and its railway facilities are available in all direc-
tions. The city contains eight banks; public and prl-
wate schools, including two theological seminaries; be-
tween fifty and sixty churches, convents, asylums,
retreats, etc., besides a very large number of stores of
^very description, with public buildings and private
residences—models of construction and architectural ex-
cellence—hotels, parks, and places of public resort. The
*ines of manufacture carried on are extensive and
varied, and their output supplies a demand in all Sec-
tions of the United States. These industries embrace
foundries and machine shops, locomotive and boiler
works, cotton, woolen, saw and grist mills, tanneries,
breweries, salt plants, hardware specialties, ſurniture,
vehicles of every description, boots and shoes, etc.,
and other ventures of value and importance. The man-
ufactures of the city, it may be added, are constantly
increasing in number, and the inducements offered for
the establishment of new enterprises cannot be overes-
timated. Street railways and electric lights are also
employed. The population in 1890 was 104,967.
ALLEGIANCE, either derived from the French alle-
geance or taken from the same Latin source, has been
used to express that duty which a person possessing the
privileges of a citizen owes to the state to which he be-
longs; for a state to decide what persons are bound to
it by allegiance may be easy, but for a man to know
where his allegiance lies when two or more states claim
him—and hence for jurists to decide what is the reason-
able extent to which any state ought to make such a
claim — is often involved h difficulty. The English
doctrine, which was also adopted in the United States,
asserted that allegiance was indelible; but this doctrine
has been modified by the naturalization system.
ALLEGORY, a figurative representation conveying
a meaning other than and in addition to the literal. It
is generally treated as a figure of rhetoric, but the me-
dium of representation is not necessarily language. An
allegory may be addressed to the eye, and is often em-
bodied in painting, sculpture, or some form of mimetic
art. The etymological meaning of the word is wider
than that which it bears in actual use. An allegory is
distinguished from a metaphor by being longer sus-
tained and more fully carried out in its details, and
from an analogy by the fact that the one appeals to the
imagination and the other to the reason.
ALLEGRI, ANTONIO. , See CORREGGIO.
ALLEGRI, GREGORIO, musical composer, probably
of the Correggio family, was born at Rome about 1580.
He studied music under Nanini, the intimate friend of
Palestrina. Being intended for the church, he obtained
a benefice in the cathedral of Fermo. Here he com-
posed a large number of motets and sacred pieces,
which, being brought under the notice of Pope Urban
VIII., obtained for him an appointment in the choir of
the Sistine chapel at Rome. He held this from Dec.
1629 till his death on the 18th Feb. 1652.
ALLEINE, JOSEPH, Nonconformist divine, the
author of An Alarm to the Oncozzz!erted—a book which
remains as potential as when first modestly sent forth,
scarcely second to Richard Baxter's Call to the Uncon-
zerted—was otherwise noticeable. His eldest brother
Edward had been a clergyman, but in 1645 he died, in
his twenty-seventh year; and Joseph entreated his
father that he might be educated to succeed his
brother in the work of the ministry. He was sent to
Poulshot, then under a fellow of Oxford (William
Spinage). On 6th July 1653 he took the degree of B.
D., and thereupon became a tutor of his college. He
became also chaplain of Corpus Christi, preferring this to
a fellowship. In 1654 he had offers of high preſerment
in the state, which he declined. The succeeding year
(1655) brought him another offer, which he did not de-
cline. His public life—in preaching after the intense,
awakening, wistful type; in catechising with all dili-
gence and fidelity; in visitation among the poor and
mean and sad; in letter-writing, tender and sympa-
thethic; in devotional intercession through long conse-
crated hours of day and night—was a model of pastoral
devotion. The year 1662 found senior and junior pas-
tors like-minded, and both were of the Two Thousand.
Alleine, when the Ejection blow fell, with John Wesley
(grandfather of the celebrated John Wesley) for fellow-
laborer, also ejected, carried on a kind of itineracy
wherever opportunity was found for preaching the gos-
pel. For this he was cast into prison, indicted at ses-
•
A LL
2O7
sions, and suffered as hundreds of England’s noblest
men have suffered. IIis Zetters from A^rison were an
earlier Cardup/lonia. He was released on 26th May
1664; and in spite of the Conventicle Act (Five Mile Act)
he returned to his beloved work as a preacher of the
gospel. He found himself again in prison, and again
and again a sufferer. He died November 17, 1668; and
the mourners, remembering their beloved minister’s
words while yet with them, “If I should die fifty miles
away, let me be buried at Taunton,” found a grave for
him in St. Mary's chancel.
ALLEINE, RICHARD, M.A., author of Vinza'icia
Aºietaſis, was educated at St. Albans Hall, Oxford,
where Anthony à Wood states he was entered com-
moner in 1627, aged sixteen; and where, having taken
the degree of B.A., he transferred himself to New Inn.
IIe died IDecember 22, 1681.
ALLEN, BOG OF, the name given to a congeries of
morasses in Kildare and King’s County, Ireland.
ALLEN, JOHN (1770–1843), was born near Edin-
burgh, and educated at the university of that city,
where he took the degree of M.D. in 1791. With
youthful enthusiasm, Allen joined the Scottish move-
ment of that period for parliamentary reform.
ALLEN, or ALLEYN, THOMAS (1542–1632), a
famous English mathematician, was born at Uttoxeter
in Staffordshire, 21st December 1542. He was ad-
mitted scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1561;
and in 1567 took his dcgree of master of arts. In 1580
he quitted his college and fellowship, and retired to
Gloucester Hall, where he studied very closely, and
became famous for his knowledge of antiquity, philoso-
phy, and mathematics.
ALLENTOWN, formerly called NorthAMPTON,
the county seat of Lehigh county, Penn., is handsomely
situated on the Lehigh river fifty-nine miles from Phila-
'delphia and about ninety miles ſrom New York city.
The Lehigh Valley, Philadelphia and Reading, Central
of New Jersey and Perkiomen railroads furnish trans-
portation accommodations, and the city has grown rap-
idly in population, and as a manufacturing and trade
center. It contains three banks, two daily and seven
weekly papers, besides one semi-monthly and three
monthly periodicals, two high schools, intermediate,
grammar and primary Schools—being also the loca-
tion of Muhlenburg College and the Allentown Fe-
male College—twenty-two churches, several well man-
aged hotels, an opera house, public halls, and a large
number of stores. The manufactures of the city are
conspicuously extensive. They embrace silk, hosiery,
brushes, wall-paper, furniture, paints and oils, tube
and coil, engines and machinery, hardware, brass
goods, lumber (rough and planed), and other standard
articles of commerce. Electricity and gas are employed
for illuminating purposes, and street railways are op-
erated. Population, 25,000.
ALLESTRY, or ALLESTREE, RICHARD, D.D., was
born at Uppington, in Shropshire, in 1619, and edu-
cated in the grammar school of Coventry. He died in
January, 1681.
ALLEYN, EDWARD, eminent as a stage-player in
the reign of Elizabeth and James I., but better re-
membered in after-times as the founder of Dulwich
College, was born in London, in the parish of St.
Botolph, Bishopsgate, on the 1st of September, 1566.
A tenacious memory, a polished elocution, a stateliness
of figure and countenance, and a genial temperament,
were among the natural and acquired accomplishments
that he brought to bear on his chosen pursuit. He
gained distinction in his calling while yet quite a young
man, and by common consent was eventually rated as
the foremost actor of his time. Several prominent
dramatists and other writers of the period have left
forcible testimony to his rare excellence in the histrionic
art. He died in November, 1626.
ALLIANCE, a thriving town of Stark county,
Ohio, is situated on the Mahoning river, at the junction
of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago, Cleveland
and Pittsburgh, Alliance and Nºles, and the Lake Erie,
Alliance and Southern railroads, fifty-five miles from
Cleveland. The city contains two banks, two weekly
and one semi-weekly papers, twelve churches, high and
intermediate schools, six hotels, an opera house, theater,
and many stores; also manufactories of engines, boilers,
Steam hammers, agricultural implements, stone and
hollow ware, white lead, lumber, etc. It is also the
location of Mount Union College, and is an important
railroad center, the receiving and distributing point for
a'rich agricultural country, and is growing rapidly. The
population in 1890 was 7,598.
ALLIER, a department in the center of France, con-
taining an area of 2,821 square miles. Population in
1889, 390,812.
ALLIER, the ancient Elazer, a river of France, which
rises in the department of Lozère, among the Marge-
ride mountains, a few miles east of the town of Mende,
and, after traversing Haute Loire, Puys de Dôme, and
Allier, forms the boundary between Cher and Nièvre,
until it falls into the Loire four miles west of Nevers.
ALLIGATOR (probably derived from the Spanish el
Magarto, the lizard), an animal so closely allied to the
CRoCop ILE (7.7/.), that some naturalists have classed
them together as forming one genus.
AiLifeRATION. As Milton defined rhyme to be
“the jingling sound of like endings,” so alliteration is
the jingle of like beginnings. All language has a tend-
ency to jingle in both ways, even in prose. Thus in
prose we speak of “near and dear,” “high and dry,”
“health and wealth.” But the initial form of jingle is
much more common — “safe and sound,” “thick and
thin,” “weal or woe,” “fair or ſoul, “spick and span,“
“fish, flesh, or fowl,” “kit and kin.” The poets of
nearly all times and tongues have not been slow to seize
upon the emphasis which could thus be produced.
ALLIX, PIERRE, a distinguished divine of the French
Reformed Church, was born at Alençon in 1641. He
was pastor first at St. Agobile in Champagne, and then
at Charenton, near Paris. He died in London in
March 1717.
ALLOA, a seaport town of Scotland, in the county
of Clackmannan, situated on the north side of the Firth
of Forth, 25 miles from Edinburgh, and 6 below Stirling,
with which it is connected by rail. Pop. 11,362.
ALLODIUM or ALODIUM denotes lands which are
the absolute property of their owner, and not subject to
any Service or acknowledgment to a superior. It is thus
the opposite of fe-odum or fief.
ALLORI, ALESSANDRO, a painter of the Florentine
School, was born at Florence in 1535, and died in 1607.
THe was very successful as a portrait painter.
ALLORI, CHRISTOFANO, son of the preceding, was
born in Florence on the 17th October 1577, and died in
I621. He received his first lessons in painting from his
father, but becoming dissatisfied with the hard anatomical
drawing and cold coloring of the latter, he entered the
studio of Pagani, who was one of the leaders of that later
Florentine School which endeavored to unite the rich
coloring of the Venetians with the correct drawing of
Michael Angelo's disciples. Allori became one of the
foremost of this school.
ALLOTROPY, a name applied to a property, whereby
certain substances, chemically simple, assume different
formsand conditions without undergoingchemicalchange.
ALLOXAN, a product of the action of oxidising
2O8
A L L — A L M
agents on uric acid to strong nitric acid of specific grav-
ity I-4, kept cool, and stirring constantly. It produces
a great number of derivatives, for which see URic AcID.
ALLOY, the name given to a combination obtained
by fusing metals with each other. Few metals are em-
ployed in the pure state, with the exception of iron,
copper, lead, tin, zinc, platinum, aluminium; metals are
more frequently used in the forms of alloys for techni-
cal purposes. Every industrial application necessitates
special qualities that may not occur in any isolated
metal, but which may be produced by the proper mixt-
ure of two or more of these substances.
Alloys are equally interesting from a purely scientific
point of view. They are not only mixtures of metals
having certain particular qualities, but in reality are
true chemical compounds, generally dissolved in an ex-
cess of one of the constituent metals. In the appear-
ances which accompany the union of the metals, and in
the properties of the resulting products, we observe
that which characterises the manifestation of affinity,
that is, an evolution of heat and light, resulting in the
formation of substances having a definite composition,
distinct crystalline form, and a variety of properties dif-
ferent from those of the constituents.
Recently hydrogen, which, although a gaseous sub-
stance, has chemical properties resembling those of the
true metals, has been combined with palladium, sodium,
and potassium, producing compounds similar in prop-
erties to the recognised alloys.
PROPERTIES OF ALLOYS. Density.— If the density
of any alloy is calculated from that of the components —
assuming that there is no condensation of volume—the
resulting number is sometimes greater than, equal to,
or less than, the experimental result. Thus the alloys
of gold and silver are less dense than the theoretical
mean density; whereas brass and the alloys of lead and
antimony vary in the opposite direction. The former
are therefore produced through an expansion, the latter
through a condensation of their constituents.
PREPARATION OF ALLOYS.—The metals are generally
fused together under a layer of charcoal to prevent oxi-
dation, thoroughly mixed by agitating, and the mass left
to cool slowly. This process can only be employed
when the constituent metals are all non-volatile at the
temperature required for combination. If the mixture
contains volatile metals, like sodium, potassium, mag-
nesium, or zinc, they are added after the more refractory
metal is fused.
ALLSTON, WASHINGTON, an eminent American
historical painter and poet, was born 5th November 1779,
at Waccamaw, in South Carolina, where his father was
a planter. He early displayed a taste for the art to
which he afterwards devoted himself. He graduated at
Harvard in 1800, and for a short time pursued his
artistic studies at Charleston with Malbone and Charles
Fraser. He then removed to London, and entered the
Royal Academy as a student of Benjamin West, with
whom he formed a lifelong friendship. In 1804 he
repaired to Paris, and from that city, aſter a few months’
residence, to Rome, where he spent the greater part of the
next four years studying Italian art and Italian scenery.
During this period he became intimate with Coleridge
and Thorwaldsen. From 1809 to 1811 he resided in his
native country, and from this latter date to 1817 he
painted in England. After visiting Paris for a second
time, he returned to the United States, and practised
his profession at Boston (1818–30), and afterwards at
Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he died on the 9th
July 1843. His first great painting, “The Dead Man
Revived,” executed shortly after his second visit to
England, gained a prize of 200 guineas from the British
Institution; in England he also prepared his “St. Peter
Liberated by the Angel,” “Uriel in the Sun,” “Jacob's
Dream,” and “Elijah in the Wilderness.” To the
period of his residence in America belong “The Prophet
Jeremiah,”“Saul and the Witch of Endor,” “Miriam,”
“Beatrice,” “Rosalie,” “Spalatro's Vision of the Bloody
Hand,” and the vast but unfinished “Belshazzar’s Feast,”
at which he was working at the time of his death. As
a writer, Allston shows great facility of expression and
imaginative power.
ALLUVIUM, soil or land made up of the sediment
deposited by running water. Rivers act on the rocks
in their course both mechanically and chemically, and
are in consequence always more or less loaded with
detritus, which in its turn again aids the water in
abrading other rocks. A great proportion of the matter
with which the rivers are thus charged is carried out to
Sea. But in the level tracts, where the motion of the
river is slow, it frequently overflows its banks, and
leaves a sediment of earth, mud, gravel, &c., when it
returns to its ordinary channel. •
ALMA, a river of Russia, in the S.W. of the Crimea,
which falls into the sea about 16 miles N. of Sebasto-
ol.
p ALMADEN, or ALMADEN DEL AZOQUE (in Arabic,
the “Mine of Quicksilver”), a town of Spain, in the
province of Ciudad Real, lies in the Sierra Morena, 55
miles S.W. of the town of Ciudad Real. It is the
Sisapon of the Romans, and is famous for its quicksil-
yer mines, which have been wrought extensively both
in ancient and in modern times.
ALMAGEST, compounded of the Arabic al, the
name applied by the Arabians to their translation which
contains a large collection of problems in geometry and
astronomy. The translation was made about the year
827 A.D. by order of the caliph Al-Mamun.
ALMAGRO, a town of Spain, in the province of
Ciudad Real, I2 miles E.S.E. of the town of that
In all le.
ALMAGRO, DIEGO DE, a Spanish commander, the
companion and rival of Pizarro, was born at Aldea del
Rey in 1475. He was executed by order of his former
associate Pizarro in 1538.
ALMALI, a prosperous town of Asiatic Turkey, sit-
uated on the river Myra, 25 miles from its mouth, and
50 miles W.S.W. of Adalia. The town is much fre-
quented by merchants from Smyrna and other places,
who purchase the produce of the district and send it to
the coast for shipment. Population, 8000.
AL-MAMUN (also written AL-MAMOUN, AL-MA-
MON, and simply MAMUN), one of the most renowned
of the Abbasside dynasty of caliphs, was born in 786
A. D. He was the son of Harun-al-Raschid, whose
caliphate is the golden age of Mahometan history.
Harun, dying in 808, left the supremacy to his son, Al-
Amin, Al-Mamun being at the time governor of Kho-
rassan, and favorable to the succession of his brother.
Irritated, however, by the treatment he received at the
hands of Amin, and supported by a portion of the
army, Mamun speedily betook himself to arms. The
result was a five years’ struggle between the two
brothers, ending in the death, of Amin, 4th October
813, and the proclamation of Al-Mamun as caliph at
Baghdad. In 833, after quelling Egypt, at least nomi-
nally, Mamun marched into Cilicia to prosecute the
war with the Greeks; but with this expedition the career
of one of the most famous of the caliphs was to termi-
nate. He died near Tarsus, leaving his crown to a
younger brother, Motassem. The death of Al-Mamun
ended an important epoch in the history of science and
letters, and the period of Arabian prosperity which his
father’s reign had begun. The influence of these two
sovereigns is sometimes exaggerated; but there can
A L M
2O9
be no doubt we owe much to their exertions at a time
when Europe was sunk in barbarism. Mamun was the
author of Znquiries into the Aoran, of a tract on the
Signs of Prophecy, and of one on the Ahetoric of the
Ariests and Panegyrists of the Caliphs.
ALMANAC, a book or table, published from year
to year, containing a calender of the days, weeks, and
months of the year, a register of ecclesiastical festivals
and Saints’ days, and a record of various astronomical
phenomena, particularly the rising and setting of the
Sun, the changes and phases of the moon, eclipses of
the Sun and moon, the times of high water at particular
ports, &c. In addition to these contents, which may
be regarded as essential to the almanac, it generally
presents additional information, which is more or less
extensive and varied according to the many different
special objects contemplated in works of this kind.
The derivation of the word is doubtful. The first syl-
lable is the Arabic definite article; the rest of the word
has been variously derived from the Greek ſum v, a
month; the Anglo-Saxon mona, the moon; and (which
appears the most probable derivation) the Arabic mana/,
to reckon.
The CALENDAR will be treated in a separate article
(which see).
The attention given to astronomy by Eastern nations,
and the practice that prevailed among them of divina-
tion by means of the stars, must have led to the early
construction of such tables as are comprised in our
almanacs. Our information respecting, these are ex-
tremely scanty; but we are not left in the same igno-
rance with regard to the practice of the ancient Ro-
mans. The peculiar arrangement of their calendar is
well-known, and their fasti sacri or kalendares were
very similar to modern almanacs. Originally knowl-
edge of the calendar was confined to the class of pon-
tifices or priests, whom the people had to consult not
only about the dates of the festivals, but also regarding
the proper times of instituting various legal proceed-
ings. But about 300 B.C. one Cn. Flavius, the secre-
tary of Appius Claudius, possessed himself of the se-
cret, either by the stealthy use of documents in the
possession of his master, or, according to Pliny, by re-
peatedly consulting the pontifices and jurists, and col-
lating the particulars of the information he obtained
from them. It is neither more nor less than publishing
an almanac when, as Livy relates, he exhibited the fast?
on white tablets round the forum. From this time tab-
lets containing the calendar, the festivals, astronomical
phenomena, and sometimes historical notices, seem to
have been common. The Pasſi of Ovid is a poetical
relation of incidents and traditions connected with the
calendar. The researches of antiquaries have brought
to light numerous fasti or calendaria cut on marble and
other kinds of stone. Representations of several of
these will be found in Gruter's Znscriptiones. One
figured there, the Farmese rustic calendar, is a cubical
block of stone, on each of the four vertical faces of
which three columns are engraved, detailing for each
different month the number of days, the date of the
momes, the length of the day and night, the Sun’s place
in the zodiac (which is also indicated by a representa-
tion of the sign at the top of the column), the tutelary
deity of the month, the rural operations of the season,
and the chief festivals.
Almanacs of a ruder kind, known as clogg almanacs,
were in use in some parts of England as late as the end
of the 17th century.
The earliest almanac regarding which Lalande (whose
Bibliographie Astronomique, Paris, 1803, is the best
authority on publications of this kind) could obtain any
definite information belongs to the 12th century. Manu-
script almanacs of considerable antiquity are preserved
in the British Museum and in the libraries of Oxford
and Cambridge. Of these the most remarkable are a
calendar ascribed to Roger Bacon (1292), and those of
Peter de Dacia (about 1300), Walter de Elvendene
(1327), John Somers (1380), &c. It is to be remem-
bered that early calendars (such as the Kalendarium:
Zincolniense of Bishop Robert Grosseteste) frequently
bear the names, not of their compilers, but of the
writers of the treatises on ecclesiastical computation on
which the calendars are based. In 1812 there was
printed at Hackney what purported to be a transcription
of the greater part of an almanac for 1386. This, if it
exists, must be one of the earliest, perhaps the earliest,
in the English language that has been preserved. The
earliest English calendar in the British Museum is one
for the year 1431. The first printed almanac known is
one for the year 1457; the first of importance is that of
Joannes de Monte-Regio, better known as Regiomon-
tanus, which appears to have been printed at Nurem-
berg in I472. In this work the almanacs for the different
months embrace three Metonic cycles, or the 57 years
from 1475 to 1531 inclusive.
The variety of extraneous matter included in alma-
nacs, corresponding to the very numerous other objects
to which the almanac proper is often only secondary,
can be merely alluded to here. A number of publica-
tions, issued in Germany from the middle of the 18th
to the middle of the 19th century, under such titles as
A/usema!mazeach, or A /manach des Muses, contain
some of the best works of some of the most celebrated
German poets. The A /manach de Gotha, which has
existed since 1764, and is published at present both in
French and German, gives a particular account of all
the royal and princely families of Europe, and ample
details, compressed into little space, concerning the
administration and the statistics of the different states
of the world. As works of general statistical reference,
the two national almanacs, Oliver and Boyd's AWew
Adinburgh Almanac (from 1837) and Thoma’s Zrish.
A /manac (from 1843) are of very great value.
The AWautical Almanac is a publication the object of
which is to supply information that is indispensable to
the navigator and the astronomer. It gives with the
utmost precision the positions of the principal heavenly
bodies at short intervals of time, and other important
details of celestial phenomena. The moon’s exact posi-
tion is registered for every hour, and also the angular
distances at noon and midnight daily of the moon from
the sun and several fixed stars. By means of the data.
thus supplied, in connection with observations of the
heavenly bodies, time, latitude, and longitude can be
determined. The A'autical Almanac has been pub-
lished regularly since the issue in 1766 of the Almanac.
for 1767. It was originated by Dr. Maskelyne, the
astrºnomer-royal, who conducted it for many years.
In America the best statistical almanacs afe published
yearly by the leading daily newspapers, in which a vast.
amount of information is compiled, while the fore-
casts of weather and all meteorological phenomena are:
made in the reports of the United States signal service,
whose stations are distributed all over the country.
ALMANSA, a town of Spain, in the province of Al-
bacete, 35 miles E.S.E. of the town of that name, on.
the Madrid and Alicante railway.
ALME, or ALMAI (from dilim, wise, learned), the
name of a distinct class of singing girls in Egypt.
ALMEIDA, a strongly-fortified town of Portugal, in
the province of Beira, situated between the Coa and the
Duas Casas, a branch of the Agueda, 95 miles N.E. of
Coimbra, and 25 miles from the Spanish fortress of
Ciudad Rodrigo.
I4 A -
2 I C)
A L M
ALMEIDA, DON FRANCISCO DE, the first viceroy of
Portuguese India, was born at Lisbon about the middle
of the 15th century. He was the seventh son of the sec-
•ond Count of Abrantes, and thus belonged to one of the
Imost distinguished families of Portugal. In his youth
The took part under Ferdinand of Åragon in the wars
against the Moors (I485–92). In March 1505, having
received from Emmanuel I. the appointment of viceroy
of the newly-conquered territory of India, he set sail
from Lisbon in command of a large and powerful fleet,
and arrived in July at Quiloa, which yielded to him
almost without a struggle. A much more vigorous
resistance was offered by the Moors of Mombaza, but
the town was taken and destroyed, and its large treas-
‘ures went to strengthen the resources of Almeida. At
<other places on his way, such as the island of Angediva,
near Goa, and Cananore, he built forts, and adopted
Tmeasures to secure the Portuguese supremacy. On his
arrival in India he took up his residence at Cochin,
where a Portuguese fort had been built by Albuquerque
in 1503. The most important events of Almeida's brief
but vigorous administration were the conclusion of a
commercial treaty with Malacca, and the discoveries
Imade by his son Lorenzo, who acted as his lieutenant.
The latter was probably the first Portuguese who vis-
ited Ceylon, where he established a settlement, and is
also celebrated as the discoverer of Madagascar and the
Maldive islands. In 1508 he was killed at Dabul in a
naval engagement with the Moors.
ALMERIA, a modern province of Spain, compre-
hending the eastern portion of the ancient kingdom of
‘Granada. It is bounded on the N. by Jaen and Murcia,
on the E. and S. by Murcia and the Mediterranean, and
on the W. by Granada; with an area of about 3300
square miles. The province is traversed by mountain
ridges, some of them of considerable elevation, with corre-
sponding valleys and plains of great fertility. The princi-
pal sierras are those of Maria, Almahilla, Cabrera, Alma-
grera, Gata, and Gador, and in the W. Some offshoots
of the Sierra Nevada. The inhabitants are principally
engaged in mining and agriculture. Many of the pro-
prietors farm their own land, the number of landed
properties being 44,858, while the tenants are only
7356. Of the area of the province, 376,698 acres are
arable and pasture land; 13,538 acres vineyards; 5360
acres Olive plantations; 30,797 acres cultivated mount-
ain and wood lands; and 1,686,738 acres uncultivated.
There are 438,357 head of live stock. All kinds of
grain are raised in abundance. The common fruits are
glentiful, as well as oranges, lemons, and vines. Much
excellent silk is produced in the western districts; cotton
is raised to some extent along the coast, and the sugar-
cane is also cultivated. Cattle are extensively bred;
those of the valley of the Almeria are especially remark-
able for their size and beauty. The province is one of
the richest in minerals of all Spain, the mountains yield-
ing silver, mercury, lead, antimony, copper, and iron.
ALMERIA, the capital of the above province, lies on
the Gulf of Almería, on the Mediterranean, 72 miles E.
S.E. of Granada. From the strength of the port it was
deemed by the Moorish kings of Granada one of the
most valuable of their fortresses and their best commer-
cial harbor.
ALMOHADES (A/moahedum, Unitarian), a Ma-
hometan dynasty that flourished in Africa and in Spain
during the 12th and 13th centuries. Mohammed-Ibn-
Abdallah, the founder of the Almoahedun sect, was the
son of a lamplighter in the great mosque at Sous-el-
Aksa. He studied at Cordova, and afterwards visited
Cairo and Baghdad, where he became the disciple of
;the famous philosopher Algazali. In order to establish
This power with his countrymen, he connected himself
with Abd-el-Mumen, a young Mussulman of great abil-
ities, whom he sent forth as his apostle to progagate the
new doctrine (II 16–17); while in his own person he
affected an unusual degree of piety and mortification,
appearing in tattered garments, and interdicting the use
of wine and music and every gratification of the senses.
His fame spread rapidly among the mountain tribes of
Mahgreb, and the ignorant multitude adopted his opin-
ions with eager zeal. His followers saluted him as the
Al-Mehidi on the 28th November 1121. Entering the
city of Marocco, this new prophet foretold the downfall
of the existing dynasty, and mocked the authority of
the reigning prince Ali-Ibn-Yussef. Ali, lulled in se-
curity, despised his predictions as the mere ravings of a
fanatic; and it was not without some difficulty that he
was at length prevailed on to banish him from the city.
Mohammed retired to the mountains, and fortified the
town of Tinmal, which he defended against every as-
sault of his enemies (II23). His retreat became the
rendezvous of a numerous sect, who assumed the title
of Almoahedi, or Almohades, and asserted that they
alone of all the Mussulmans maintained the religion of
Islam in its original purity. . Yet notwithstanding the
great success of the Almohades, the vast empire of the
Almoravides was not at once subdued; and Mohammed,
after an ineffectual attempt to reduce the city of Maroc-
co, died in the year, I 130, having failed to accomplish
the object of his ambition, the possession of a throne.
See ALMORAVIDES.
ALMON, JOHN, a political pamphleteer and pub-
lisher of considerable note, was born at Liverpool
about 1738. He came to London in 1758, and at once
commenced a career which, if not important in itself,
had a very important influence on the political history
of the country. The opposition, hampered and harassed
by the government to an extent that threatened the
total suppression of independent opinion, were in great
need of a channel of communication with the public,
and they found what they wanted in Almon. He had
become personally known to the leaders through
various publications of his own which had a great
though transient popularity; the more important of
these being Zhe Conduct of a late Moble Commander
[Lord George Sackville] Axamined (1759); a Review
of the A’eign of George Z.Z., published on the death of
that monarch; a Review of Mr. Pitt’s Administration?
(1761); and a collection of letters on political subjects.
The review of Pitt's administration passed through
four editions, and secured for its author the friendship
of Lord Temple, to whom it was dedicated. Being
thus in the counsels of the party, he was persuaded in
1763 to open a bookseller's shop in Piccadilly, chiefly
for the publication and sale of political pamphlets. As
he generally received with every pamphlet a sum suffi-
cient to secure him against all contingencies, it cannot
be said that he acted entirely from disinterested or
patriotic motives. At the same time, he deserves the
credit of intrepidity; and it cannot be denied that,
whether he knew the full value of the principle for
which he was contending or not, he did very much to
secure the freedom of the press. The government of
course were not unobservant of Almon’s proceedings,
and, as has often been the case, strengthened his in-
fluence by the very measures they took to repress it.
In 1774 Almon commenced the publication of his
Aarliamentary A'egister, and he also issued an abstract
of the debates from 1742, when Chandler's Reports
ceased, to 1774. About the same time, having earned
a competency, he retired to Boxmoor in Hertfordshire,
though he still continued to write on political subjects.
He afterwards became proprietor of the General Adver-
tiser, in the management of which he lost his fortune,
A LM — A LO
2 II
and was declared insolvent. He died on the I2th
December 1805. A complete list of Almon’s works,
most of which appeared anonymously, is given in
Watt’s Bibliotheca Aritannica. Though their literary
merit is not great, they are of very considerable value
to the student of the political history of the period.
ALMOND. This is the fruit of Amygdalus com-
2/11/mis, a plant belonging to the natural order Rosaceae,
sub-order Amygdaleae or Drupiferae. The tree appears
to be a native of Asia, Barbary, and Marocco; but it
has been extensively distributed over the warm temper-
ate region of the Old World. It is a tree of moderate
size; the leaves are oblong-lanceolate, and serrated at
the edges; and the flowers which appear early in the
spring, are of a pink color. The fruit is a drupe, hav-
ing a downy outer coat, called the epicarp, covering a
tough portion called the mesocarp, which encloses the
reticulated hard stony shell or endocarp. The seed is
the kernel which is contained within these coverings.
The shell-almonds of trade consist of the endocarps
enclosing the seeds. The tree grows in Syria and
Palestine; and is referred to in the Bible under the
name of Shaked, meaning “hasten.” The tree seldom
exceeds 12 to 16 feet in height.” There are two varie-
ties of the plant, the one producing, sweet, the other
bitter almonds. The kernel of the former contains a
fixed oil of emulsin; while that of the latter has in ad-
dition a nitrogenous subtance called amygdalin, which,
by combination with emuslin, produces a volatile oil
and prussic acid.
ALMONDBURY, an extensive parish and township
i. Yorkshire in England, lying to the S.E. of Hudders-
€1C1.
ALMONER, in its primitive sense, denotes an officer
in religious houses, to whom belonged the management
and distribution of the alms of the house.
LORD ALMONER, or LORD HIGH ALMONER of ENG-
LAND, is an ecclesiastical officer, generally a bishop,
who has a right to the forfeiture of all deodands and
the goods of a ſelo de se, which he is to distribute among
the poor. See MAUNDAY THURSDAY.
ALMORA, the principal town in the British district
of Kumáon, within the lieutenant-governorship of
the North-Western Provinces. The town is built on
the crest of a ridge of the Himálayas, running east and
west, and 5337 feet above sea-level. It consists chiefly
of a single street, about 50 feet wide and three-quarters
of a mile long, closed by a gate at each end. A few de-
tached houses, inhabited by Europeans, are scattered
along the face of the mountain below the town.
ALMORAVIDES, a family of Mahometan princes who
reigned in Africa and in Spain between IO73 and I 147
A. D. This appellation was derived from the sect of
A/. Morabethun (Dedicated to the service of God),
which arose about the middle of the IIth century,
among a poor ignorant tribe of Berbers inhabiting the
mountains of Atlas, on the shores of the Atlantic
Ocean. Few kings have received so noble a heritage
as that to which Ali succeeded. The first years of his
reign were prosperous, though disturbed by the Al-
mohades, who were preparing the way for the destruc-
tion of the Almoravides. Ali was at last obliged to re-
call from Spain his son Tashfyn, who was using his
utmost endeavors to oppose the victorious career of
Alphonso of Aragon, surnamed the Fighter. But the
valor of Tashfyn was of little avail against the rising
power of the Aſmohades; disaster followed disaster;
and when, in I 143, he succeeded to the throne, but a
moiety of the kingdom remained. Driven from Tleme-
cen, he sought refuge in Oran; but Abd-el-Mumen ap-
peared before its walls, and by threats so intimidated
the inhabitants that Tashfyn was compelled to attempt
escape on horseback, with his favorite wife behind him;
but being closely pursued, he urged his horse over a
precipice, and with his wife was dashed to pieces.
With Tashfyn expired the domination of the Almora-
vides; for although they still remained in possession
of the city of Marocco, their power was completely
broken. -
ALMQVIST, KARL JonAS LUDwig, one of the most
extraordinary figures that the history of literature can
produce, was born at Stockholm in 1793. He began
life under highly favorable auspices; but becoming
tired of a university career, he threw up the position he
held in the capital to lead a colony of friends to the
wilds of Wermland. This ideal Scandinavian life soon
proved a failure; Almqvist found the pen easier to wield
than the plough, and in 1829 we find him once more
settled in Stockholm. Now began his literary life; and
after bringing out several educational works, he made
himself suddenly famous by the publication of his great
novel, Zhe Book of the Zhorn-Åose. The career so
begun developed with extraordinary rapidity; few
writers have equalled Almqvist in productiveness and
versatility; lyrical, epic, and dramatic poems; ro-
mances; lectures; philosophical, aesthetical, moral,
political, and educational treatises; works of religious
edification, studies in lexicography and history, in
mathematics and philology, form the most prominent
of his countless contributions to modern Swedish litera-
ture.
ALMUG or ALGUM TREE. The Hebrew words
A/muggim or Algummim are translated Almug or Al-
gum trees in our version of the Bible. The wood of
the tree was very precious, and was brought from
Ophir (probably some part of India), along with gold
and precious stones, by Hiram, and was used in the
formation of pillars for the temple at Jerusalem, and
for the king’s house; also for the inlaying of stairs, as
well as for harps and psalteries.
ALMUNECAR, a small seaport town of Spain, in
the province of Granada, about 33 miles south of the
town of that name.
ALNWICK, the county town of Northumberland, is
situated on the south bank of the river Alne, 3IO miles
N. of London, 34 N. of Newcastle, and 29 S. of Ber-
wick. There are remains of the old wall which sur-
rounded the town, and one of the four gates still exists;
but most of the houses are comparatively modern, and
are laid out in well-paved, spacious streets.
ALOE. Aloes is a medicinal substance used as a
purgative, and produced from various species of aloe,
such as A. spicata, vulgaris, socotrina, indica and pur-
purascens, all belonging to the natural order Liliaceae.
Its active principle is a loin, and, while very useful
as a purgative, it also contains emmenagogue prop-
ertleS.
The plant called American aloe belongs to a different
order, viz., Amaryllidaceae. The plant is called Agave
Americana. The juice of the plant, taken immediately
before flowering, is used in America for the manufact-
ure of an intoxicating beverage. In Ecuador the
spongy substance of the flower stem is used instead of
tinder, and in the schools the green leaves serve as
paper.
ALOIDAE, or ALOIADAE, the designation of Otus and
Ephialtes, sons of Poseidon by Iphimedea, wife of
Aloeus. They are celebrated for their extraordinary
stature, being 27 cubits in height and 9 in breadth when
only nine years old.
ALOMPRA, ALOUNG P’Hou RA, founder of the
reigning dynasty in Burmah, was born in 17 II at
Monchaboo, a small village 50 miles north-west of Ava.
Of humble origin, he had risen to be chief of his na-
.*
2 I2
A L O— A L P
tive village when the invasion of Birmah by the king of
Pegu in 1752 gave him the opportunity of attaining to
the highest distinction. The whole country had tamely
submitted to the invader, and the leading chiefs had
taken the oaths of allegiance. Alompra, however, with
a more independent spirit, not only contrived to regain
possession of his village, but was able to defeat a
body of Peguan troops that had been sent to punish
him. Upon this the Birmese, to the number of a thou-
sand, rallied to his standard, and marched with him
upon Ava, which was recovered from the invaders be-
fore the close of 1753. For several years he prose-
cuted the war with uniform success. In 1757 he had
established his position as one of the most powerful
monarchs of the IEast by the invasion and conquest of
Pegu. Against the Siamese, who were also suspected
of having abetted the Peguan rebels, he proceeded more
openly and severely. Entering their territory, he was
just about to invest the capital when he was seized with
an illness which proved fatal on the 15th May 1760.
Alompra is certainly one of the most remarkable figures
in modern Oriental history.
ALOST, or AALST, a town of Belgium, on the east-
ern frontier of the province of East Flanders, about
midway between Ghent and Brussels. The French
under Turenne took it in 1667, but were obliged to
abandon it after the battle of Ramillies in 1706. Popu-
lation, 25,OOO.
ALPACA is a name applied generally to several allied
South American wool-bearing animals, but more prop-
erly restricted to one of the species. It is further used
to distinguish the wool obtained from these animals,
and the woven textures manufactured from the wool are
also known as alpacas. The alpacas or llamas are na-
tives of the lofty table-lands and mountain-range of the
Andes in Peru and Chili, and in that region of the
globe they long occupied the position held in the Old
World by their congeners of larger size, the camels. A
great deal of doubt and confusion has existed as to the
number of species into which the llamas can be divided—
a very common occurrence in dealing with domesticated
or semi-domesticated creatures. Most authorities now,
however, agree in regarding them as separable into four
species, following the classification of Von Tschudi, who
has given much careful consideration to the subject.
The species, according to that naturalist, are the llama
(Azuchenia Zamza), the huanaco or guanaco (A. huanaco),
the alpaca or paco (A. paco), and the vicugna (A.
vicunna.) The two first-named species are, or rather
were, more valued as beasts of burden, and for their flesh,
than as sources of wool, being able to bear from 120 to
150 lb. burden over long distances daily. The guanaco
attains a size not much less than the red deer; and is
the largest and most widely spread of all the species,
being found from the equator southward to Patagonia.
The llama is next in size, but its habitat is limited to
the loftier mountains of North Peru. Although both
species yield a serviceable quality of wool, which is used
by the Peruvians and found in commerce, it is chiefly
to the alpaca we owe the supply of wool imported into
this country under that name. In its native condition
the alpaca ranges between 10° and 20° S. lat., from the
centre of Peru into Bolivia, not coming lower down in
vertical distribution than between 8000 and 9000 feet
above the sea-level. The wool, which varies in length
from 2 to 6 inches, is of a very lustrous and fine quality,
and is mostly white, black, or gray, shades of brown or
fawn being rarer.
There is evidence of these animals having been held
domesticated and used for their wool in their native
regions from remote antiquity. Remains of clothing
made from alpaca wools have been found in the graves
&
of the Incas; and when, in the early part of the 16th
century, Europeans first visited Peru, these animals
formed the chief wealth of the natives, being the car-
riers of their commerce as well as the main source of
their food and clothing.
ALP ARSLAN or AXAN, MoHAMMED BEN DAOUD,
the second sultan of the dynasty of Seljuk, in Persia,
and great-grandson of Seljuk, the founder of the
dynasty. He was born in the year IO29 A.D., 421 of
the Hegira. He assumed the name of Mohammed
when he embraced the Mussulman faith; and on
account of his military prowess he obtained the sur-
name of Alp Ars/azz, which signifies “a valiant lion.”
He was killed December 15, 1072, while attempting the
conquest of Turkestan.
ALPENA, the county seat of Alpena county, Mich.,
is situated on the north side of Thunder Bay, an
inlet of Lake Huron, at the mouth of Thunder Bay
river, and is the northern terminus of the Detroit,
Bay City and Alpena railroad. The city is distant 245
miles from Detroit, and 140 from Bay City, with both
of which points it is connected by rail and steamer,
and is extensively engaged in the manufacture of
lumber, which is largely shipped to the East and
Europe. Its fishing interests are also large. The
city contains two banks, eight churches, three weekly
papers, a graded school system, large number of stores,
foundries, and machine shops, fiber works, electric
light works, saw, planing, and shingle mills, and other
enterprises of a commercial and manufacturing char-
acter. The city is lighted by gas and electricity, and is
well equipped in its various departments. The center
of an agricultural and lumber region, Alpena offers va-
rious attractions for investment. Population, II,228.
ALPES, the name of three departments in the south.
east of France — Basses Alpes, AZautes Alpes, and
Alpes Maritimes. *
BAsses ALPEs is bounded on the N. by the depart-
ment of Hautes Alpes; on the E. by the kingdom of
Italy and the department of Alpes Maritimes; on the
S. by the departments of Var and Bouches du Rhône;
and on the W. by those of Vaucluse and Drôme.
HAUTES ALPEs is bounded on the N. by the depart-
ments of Isère and Savoir; on the E. by the kingdom
of Italy; on the S. by the department of Alpes Basses;
and on the W. by that of Drôme. It extends nearly 80
miles from N.E. to S.W., and contains an area of 2158
square miles. Population, 118,898.
ALPES MARITIMES, bounded on the N. by Basses
Alpes and the kingdom of Italy, which also forms its
boundary on the E.; on the S. by the Mediterranean
Sea; and on the W. by Var and Basses Alpes. It ex-
tends at the widest points 55 miles from N. to S., and
50 from E. to W., and contains an area of 1517 square
miles. Nice is the capital; and among the other towns
are Mentone, Villafranche, Grasse, Antibes, Cannes,
and Puget Théniers. The Marseilles, Nice, and Venti-
mille railway, skirting the coast, connects Cannes,
Antibes, Nice, and Mentone, and joins an Italian line
which affords direct railway communication with Genoa.
The department of Alpes Maritimes was formed in
1860 from the territory of Nice, which had been ceded
to France, together with Mentone and Roccabruna,
purchased from the Prince of Monaco, and the arron-
dissement of Grasse, transferred from War. It had a
population of 130,937 in 1889. -
ALPHA and OMEGA, the first and last letters of
the Greek alphabet, frequently employed to symbolise
the idea of completeness or infinity.
ALPHABET. By an alphabet we mean a list of
symbols which represent conventionally to the eye the
sounds which are heard in the speech of a nation. An
* A L P
2 I 3
alphabet will therefore be perfect if the number of its
symbols exactly corresponds to the number of simple
sounds which are commonly distinguishable in the
spoken language. But this perfection has probably
never yet been reached; all known alphabets have
failed, either by defect, i.e., from not representing all
the simple sounds; or by redundancy, in having more
than one symbol for the same sound. They must also
necessarily become imperfect by lapse of time. No
nation, keeps the sound of its language unaltered
through many centuries; sounds change as well as
grammatical forms, though they may endure longer, so
that the symbols no longer retain their proper values;
often, too, several different sounds come to be denoted
by the same symbol; and in strictness the alphabet
should be changed to correspond to all these changes.
But little inconvenience is practically caused by the tacit
acceptance of the old symbol to express the new sound;
indeed the change in language is so gradual that the
variation in the values of the symbols is imperceptible.
The term alphabet has come to us from the Latin
a/A/labetum, which, however, occurs in no prose writer
before Tertullian. It could not have been used, for
metrical reasons, by Juvenal, when he wrote, “Hoc
discunt omnes ante alpha et beta puellae "— their A B c.
But there is no reason why it should not have existed
earlier; the word was borrowed from the Greek, as
seems clear from the compound ava, which is as old as
the comedian Philyllius, and he was alive in 392 B.C.
It does not seem likely that this compound adjective
would have been coined if the noun itself had not
already existed in the same sense which it now bears.
The symbols of our alphabet are nearly those of the
Latin ; these in their turn were borrowed from a
Greek alphabet; and there seems no reasonable ground
for doubting the common tradition that the Greeks de-
rived their characters from a Phoenician source. All
these borrowings will be fully described hereafter. At
this point absolute certainty ends. We cannot prove
to demonstration the origin of our alphabet; but posi-
tive facts and analogical arguments may be adduced
which enable us to attain a very high degree of proba-
bility. It is now commonly believed that the characters
were originally hieroglyphics, and in that ultimate
form were devised in Egypt. There, for convenience of
writing, they took a simpler form (called hieratic). In
this shape they were borrowed by the Phoenicians; and
thus, in their long course down to us, they passed
gradually from being the written expression of an idea
into the written expression each of a single sound. It
is true that the proof is not clear throughout; some-
times the links are feeble, and here we have to employ
the analogy of other languages, in which the particular
step which we want to prove has undoubtedly been
made under similar circumstances. Still, it may with
some truth be said that we can only prove the possi-
bility of such a process, while any given alphabet may
have had a perfectly independent origin; the Phoenican
alphabet may have been developed in Phoenicia itself,
and never been hieroglyphic at all. But this is very
diſficult to conceive. The a priori argument for the de-
rivation of phonetic from hieroglyphic characters is
strong. Hieroglyphics have unquestionably been the
first attempt of many nations in a rude state to record
their thoughts in a permanent and universally intelligi-
ble form. . It is also certain that these hieroglyphics
have undergone progressive degradations of shape, so
that their visible connection with the thing signified was
often lost; they became in many cases the expression
of those combinations of sounds by which the things
were denoted in the spoken language, though they still
generally retained their orignal value as well. Here, at
all events, a certain connection between hieroglyphics
and sounds establishes itself; and a priori it is more
probable that all alphabets should have derived the
single sounds of which they consist from hieroglyphics,
through the medium of their derived phonetic values,
than that any alphabet should have been produced in-
dependentiy of hieroglyphics (which are admitted to
have existed), by some arbitrary process of formation
for which absolutely no testimony can be adduced. As
we have said above, such a process is not impossible,
and may be true for any particular alphabet; but the
opposite theory has the most internal probability and
all the evidence of which the case admits. Against this
it seems insufficient to urge (as has been done) that
there exist upon earth savages who have never de-
veloped any alphabetic writing out of their rude attempts
— a ſact which may be readily granted; or that civilised
men often return to the simple methods employed by
uncivilized nations, such as cutting notches on sticks or
tying knots in strings — such return being apparently
adduced to prove that two totally different methods of
expression can co-exist without there being any tend-
ency to pass from one to the other; nay, it is added
that in Egypt the hieroglyphic and the common (or
demotic) character did certainly exist side by side; and
if the latter were borrowed from the former, it would
have superseded it, which it did not do. Now, in an-
swer to this, reasons will appear shortly why the hiero-
glyphic characters lingered so persistently, even when
the later phonetic character was in common use — nay,
in the very same inscription or document with the
hieroglyphic. Still, the argument would have some
weight if it were not grounded on the false assumption
that the demotic alphabet was a purely phonetic one,
totally unconnected with its more aged rival. But
modern research has proved incontestably that the
demotic characters can be traced back to their original
hieroglyphic shape through the medium of the hieratic;
in fact, that the cumbrous hieroglyphics were suc-
cessively put into more abbreviated shapes, for con-
venience of writing, as their use increased.
Excluding, then, attempts of Savages such as have
been mentioned above, which were neither durable nor
intelligible enough to make them of service, except for
the smallest number of men during the most limited
time — excluding these as not deserving the name, we
derive all real writing from hieroglyphics, such hiero-
glyphics being either purely pictorial, the expression of
visible objects in the external world; or symbolic, when
some external object is conventionally chosen to repre-
sent some action or some abstract idea. These two
methods were probably nearly contemporaneous in their
origin, because the necessity of writing at all supposes
a considerable advance in civilisation, and therefore a
considerable development of ideas. To this system
as a whole the convenient term ideography is now gen-
erally applied. From this men have passed to phonetic
writing, first, apparently, in the form of syllabism, in
which each syllable of a word is regarded an independ-
ent whole and represented by a single sign; then from
this to alphabetism, in which the syllable is no longer
denoted by an indivisble symbol, but is resolved into
vowel and consonant, each with its own accepted sign.
It seems probable that all known alphabets (with one
or two possible exceptions) may be traced back to four
or five parents. These have differered much in fruitful-
mess, but all were originally hieroglyphic. These five
systems of writing are the Egyptian, the cuneiform, the
Chinese, the Mexican or Aztec, and the curiously cum-
brous character of Yucatan and Central America: these
last may be seen interspersed with figurative paintings
in a facsimile given by M. de Rosny at p. 20 of his very
2I4.
A L P
useful little summary, Zes Ecritures Figuratives Les
AXifferent Peuples Anciens et Modernes. Of these, the
first three alone can be said to have had any great exten-
sion; and the first, if the Phoenician, and by consequence
the European alphabets, were derived from it, far exceeds
in importance all the rest together. These systems
were perfectly independent, and developed themselves,
each in the same course, but in its own manner, and
each in the , main to a different degree. At certain
points in their history all but one became crystallised,
and remained to show us the steps by which the pro-
gress to phonetism can be made. We do not propose
to describe here fully any of these systems of hiero-
glyphics. We are only concerned to point out their
relative degrees of development, their deficiencies, and
the consequent motives which must have impelled men
by degrees to the production of a genuine alphabet.
There are obvious deficiencies even in the most
highly developed hieroglyphics. In the first place, they
must have been excessively burdensome to the memory.
They speedily lost their original form, which was in
most cases too cumbrous to be retained when writing
became frequent; their pictorial value was therefore
lost, and the new form could not generally have been
intelligible to a learner, who was thus obliged to acquire
by memory an enormous number of symbols, compared
with which even the Sanskrit alphabet may be regarded
as easy. Secondly, it is impossible by hieroglyphics to
express grammatical relations; the order, indeed, in
which the symbols are placed may denote the distinc-
tion between subject and object; plurality may be ex-
pressed by the repetition of a symbol; some even of
the relations in space, denote in more advanced lan-
guages by cases, may be pictorially rendered; but all
these helps do not go far to remedy this obvious want.
Experience, however, shows how much inconvenience
a nation will undergo rather than make any radical
change in its phonetic system. We have only to look
at our own alphabet, with its numerous and universally
confessed deficiencies and redundancies, and then
remember the fruitless attempts which have been made
to work a reform in it, to be convinced that no people
will of its own accord strike out a thoroughly new sys-
tem of writing. Such revolutions can only be produced
by the meeting of two different civilisations, and the
reception by the one of the arts and ideas of the other.
But such a meeting may, and more commonly does,
only stimulate the inferior race to same partial develop-
ment. For the new ideas new names are required;
these may be metaphorically represented out of the old
vocabulary, as when the Romans called the unknown
elephant the Lucanian ox, and of course wrote it so.
But suppose the inferior people to be one which has not
yet advanced beyond hieroglyphic writing; their simp-
lest and most obvious plan will be to take the strange
name, and express it by those symbols out of their old
stock which denote the nearest sounds to that of the
name required. Such symbols then cease to represent
ideas only, as they used to do; they are conscientiously
employed to represent mere sounds, and thus arise the
first beginnings of phonetism. wº
Many circumstances combine to render it difficult for
a nation to reach of itself pure phonetism in writing.
There is strong disinclination to change, of which we
have before spoken. It is always easier to put up with
difficulties to which we have been accustomed all our
life than to make any radical change, especially when
that change causes at once serious difficulties at every
moment. It was easier for the Egyptians to retain the
odd mixture of ideographic, syllabic, and alphabetic
writing, and occasionally to add some new key for un-
locking the difficulties to the formidable list which was
possible did actually take place.
already in use. The ingehuity of these grammatical
devices almost surpasses belief. We can only refer the
curious to the hieroglyphic grammar in the fifth volume
of Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in Universal History. In
the second place, a good deal must be allowed to the
restraining influence of religion. It is well known that
most of the ancient nations ascribed a divine origin to
their systems of writing. It might well seem to them
to be too wonderful a thing for the result of human
ingenuity. Thus in one of the Assyrian lists of the dif-
ferent values of syllables, published, as has been already
mentioned, by royal authority, Sardanapalus V. states
that the god Nebo has revealed to the kings, his ances-
tors, the cuneiform writing, which he thus endeavors to
simplify for the better understanding of his people
(Oppert, ii. 53). The Sanskrit character, which is now
known to be due to a Phoenician source, was called
Z)evanāgarī, “belonging to the city of the gods,” un-
less, as Prof. M. Müller suggests (Sanskrit Grammar,
p. 1), we are to understand by the gods here only the
Brahmans; but whatever the name may mean, their
belief in its divine origin is certain enough. And M.
Lenormant points out (i. 80) that the native Egyptian
term for writing meant “writing heavenly words.”
Now it is clear that no nation among which this belief
lingered in any degree would be likely to alter funda-
mentally the spirit of their system of writing. , Lastly,
it is possible, though not very probable, that the
obscurities of the existing system may have recom-
mended it to the priests. These reasons may suffice to
show that it was not in Egypt that we should expect to
find the development of a purely phonetic system. But
just as the Japanese took the Chinese characters, and
gave them a development which they have never had in
the land of their creation —just as the people of Susiana
took the cuneiform writing and made it purely phonetic,
without any remnant of ideography—so the work of
extracting order out of the chaos of Egyptian writing
was reserved for the Phoenicians.
The Phoenicians were peculiarly fitted to perform this
inestimable part in the history of human development.
An active and enterprising nation, they were early
brought into commercial relations with Egypt, and must
of necessity have learnt something of their system of
writing; they could see its advantages and its perfectly
remediable faults; the advantage of one definite sym-
bol for one sound, and the disadvantage of a dozen; the
desirability that this symbol should signify that sound
only, and the undesirability of its denoting a horse or a
man as well. And the religious scruples which may
have affected the Egyptians need have no weight for
strangers. If the characters were divine for the priests
of Isis, they were a convenient instrument to supply
every-day wants for the sailors of Tyre.
These considerations do not, however, amount to a
proof that the Phoenician alphabet was derived from
Egypt. It is of course possible that it disengaged itself
by degrees out of an earlier hieroglyphic system at
home. But of such a system no vestiges remain ; and
the correspondence between the Phoenician characters
and those of the earlier Egyptian hieratic is sufficiently
striking to warrant us in regarding it as at least pro-
visionally true that what was natural and perfectly
The general testi-
mony of the early Greek and Roman writers, that the
alphabet was invented in Phoenicia, must then be
limited to the sense in which Tacitus says that the
Phoenicians had this credit— tanguam repererinet, quae
acceperant.
It cannot be known with certainty whether the
Phoenicians took, together with the Egyptian symbols,
the phonetic values which they had in Egypt, or
Y.
A L P
2 I 5
whether they totally disregarded those values, and sim-
ply assigned to the symbols the value of their own
sounds at will. The first view, however, seems clearly
the more probable. The Phoenicians could only be:
come acquainted with the Egyptian symbol and sound
together; the one would naturally suggest the other;
and we should expect that they would first take the
symbols belonging to those sounds which exactly cor-
responded in Egyptian and Phoenician, then the sym-
bols of other Egyptian sounds which did not exactly
correspond to their own, but which seemed in each
case the most analogous to them; but that there would
never be any violent rupture between the symbol and
its old sound. Yet it seems quite certain that there is
no connection between the names which the letters bore
in Phoenicia and the original object of which the
Egyptian character is the debased representation. Thus
the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet (correspond-
ing to the Hebrew adelph) was named from its fancied
resemblance to an ox’s head, the second (Hebrew
beth) to a horse, and so on. But the symbol which
strangely seemed to the Phoenicians like an ox is only
the form, rapidly drawn of an eagle; beth, in like man-
ner, is the quickly-drawn figure of a crane. It would
seem, then, that the Phoenicians borrowed Sound and
symbol, but no name. They cared nothing for the his-
tory of the symbols; and when they found it conven-
ient to have a name for each symbol they chose some
object whose name began with the letter in question ;
and we should have said that it was totally impossible
that any similarity in form between the letter and the
object whose name it borrowed could have helped to
give currency to the momenclature, did we not see evi-
dence of similar and apparently equally impossible fan-
cies in the names of the constellations, let the origin of
those names be what it may.
Such, very briefly traced, seems to have been the
origin of the Phoenician alphabet, the parent of almost
every alphabet, properly so-called, existing on the
earth.
Greek writing in the earliest times was from right to
left, following the example of Phoenicia: several speci-
mens of this still exist. The more convenient practice
of writing from left to right soon became universal.
It was preceded, however, by an intermediate method,
in which the direction of the lines was alternately right
to left and left to right, so that it was not necessary to
carry the eye back, as with us, from the end of one line
to the beginning of the next.
It is quite certain that the Teutonic tribes of North-
western Europe possessed characters of some sort before
they received the Greek or Latin alphabets. These
characters are generally called runes, and have been the
subject of some sound scholarship and much baseless
speculation. They may be divided into three main
classes—the Anglo-Saxon, the German, and the Scan-
dinavian ; each of these contain a number of lists of
characters, which, however, do not differ from each
other more than the Greek alphabets; and there is so
much likeness in the whole family that we may infer a
common origin ſor all. The term rune is recognized as
the name of a German letter by Venantius Fortunates
at the beginning of the seventh century, in the lines —
Barbara fraxineis pingatur rhuna tabellis;
Quodque papyrus agit, virgula plana valet.
i.e., these characters were cut on Smoothed ash-boughs.
The meaning of the word riºn in AngloSaxon is a
“secret;” and the verb ryman, which is derived from
the same, means “to whisper”—the same verb which
appears in the now disused phrase, to “round in
the ear.” Rūzza denoted a magician; the word is con-
Ez
tained in the German alruna, the well-known designa-
tion of those prophetesses whom the German tribes
venerated, which appears corrupted by Tacitus (Germ.
c. viii.) into a urinza. There is sufficient evidence to
show that the knowledge of these runes was confined to
a small class; that they were used as magical characters,
and also as means of augury. It was for this reason
undoubtedly that they were generally proscribed on the
introduction of Christianity; and the reception of the
Latin characters by the Anglo-Saxons was regarded as
important as their reception of the Christian doctrines.
It is impossible to believe that the barbarous inhab-
itants of the German forests should have worked out for
themselves a genuine alphabet before they came into
intercourse with the civilised nations of the south.
When we remember the long process through which a
pure alphabet was reached by the highly-developed
nations which dwelt on the eastern shores of the Medi-
terranean, it is utterly incredible that such success.
should have been achieved, as it were, per sa/tum,
under so much unfavorable circumstances in the West.
It may be asserted with some confidence that if the runes.
were genuine alphabets (which there seems no reason to
deny), they must have been derived from the Phoeni-
cians in process of commerce. There is quite sufficient.
similarity in several of the characters to make this view
antecedently probable, but any historical proof would
be extremely difficult, if not impossible. It is true that
even where the characters resemble the Phoenician the
names of the letters differ altogether; but this, as we
have before seen in the case of the Phoenicians them-
selves, is nowise unnatural when an alphabet is bor-
rowed; the form is important, the name signifies little,
and new names are attached according to the fancy of
the borrowers. It is highly probable, both from the
meaning of the word rune itself and from the evidence
of foreign writers, that these symbols were not used by
their owners for any of the ordinary ends of an alphabet
(except, perhaps, for inscriptions) until the Teutonic
nations came into contact with Greek and Roman civil-
isation; by the mass of the people they were probably
looked on simply as charms, the unknown symbols of an
occult science. Nay, it might be held that even to the
initiated they had merely a sort of hieroglyphic value,
and were developed into phonetic significance only by
the contact of the Greek and Roman alphabets. For
this view, indeed, there is no evidence, and it is not in
itself probable. But we should be driven to it if we
were to suppose that the runes were the creation of the
Teutonic intellect.
These ancient characters occur plentifully on memorial
Stones, rings, coins, &c., in Scandinavia. In England
they have been found principally in Northumbria,
Mercia, and East Anglia. It has been suggested (by Mr.
Haigh) that this may be due to the milder principles of
the Irish monks, who restored Christianity to the north
of England after its fall with Edwin in 633, and did not
pursue that system of eradicating every trace of paganism
which had been originally commanded by Gregory.
Runic writing was even employed in the service of
Christianity. Mr. Kemble (Archaeologia, vol. xxviii. p.
349) interpreted with great ingenuity the mutilated in-
scription on the famous cross discovered at Ruthwell, and
showed that it refers to the Crucifixion. But the Anglo-
Saxon alphabet was soon — early in the 7th century—
conformed on the Latin type, those letters of the older
form-alone being retained which were required to denote
sounds that had no counterparts in Latin; these were p
(wén), and g (thorn), the latter of which expresses the
surd breathing in “thin : ” in order to express the cor-
responding sonant (heard in “that,” and confusedly de-
noted by the same compound thy a stroke was drawn
2 I6
A. L. P
across the simple d (6), and the new letter was called
edh. The symbol & is sometimes found instead of y.
Curious admixtures of runes with Latin characters oc-
casionally occur even to late times. Thus, in the Codex
Axoniensis (p. 400, ed. Thorpe), an enigma occurs in
verse, and the parts apparently of the subject to be
guessed are written in runes; the odd effect is increased
by these runes being written in the regular way— (some-
times they were written 60 v0 rooq móóv) — from
right to left, contrary to the general run of the words.
Kemble, in the Archaeologia, has given an interesting
translation of an Anglo-Saxon poem, each stanza of
which begins with the name of a runic letter; thus the
first stanza begins with Fesh, “money,” the name of f,
the first runicietter, and goes on to say—
“Money is a consolation
To every man:
Yet shall every man
Liberally distribute it;
If he will that, before God,
Honor shall fall to his lot.”
The second stanza is dedicated to the bull, Ur (u), the
third to thorn (th), &c. This poem accordingly gives
the order öf the alphabet, which agrees in the main with
that of all other runic alphabets. Yet the poem is not
old, for the name of s (Sigel, “the sun”) is treated by
the writer as though it had been Segel “a sail”— clearly
a mistake of a later time, when the true name had passed
out of use. It may be added that the names of this
alphabet are sometimes strangely abstract; thus we find
“gift,” “hope,” “need,” “war,” which differ much from
the very concrete objects which the Phoenicians chose to
denote their letters. In consequence of all these old
alphabets beginning with the letters f, u, th, o, r, c, in
the same order, the alphabets are called by some anti-
quarians “futhorcs,” just as we commonly speak of the
ordinary alphabet as the A, B, C.
The doctrines of Christianity were first presented to
a Teutonic people in a written form by Ulfilas, who,
though not the first successful missionary to the Goths,
has thereby established his claim to be regarded as the
apostle of his race; and while the main body of the
Goths, spurning the weak control of Rome, poured
westward in their fierce career of victory towards Italy
and Spain, a remnant was left in Maesia, to whom Ulfilas
gave the gospel in their own tongue. This was at the
end of the 4th century of our era. He employed an
alphabet of twenty-four or twenty-five letters, some of
which are unmistakably Greek in form; others are com-
mon (or nearly so) to the Greek and the runic alphabets,
and may therefore have been derived ſrom either; but
if they were runic, they at least received a more rounded
form, it being no longer necessary to retain those angles
which (as we saw above in describing the cuneiform
characters) were most convenient in days when writing
meant cutting on stone or wood. But some of the let-
ters seem to be beyond doubt runic; most clearly so are
J, r, 24, 9, and the symbol for the compound sound Äw;
and the reason for all these (except r) appears to be the
lack of a proper equivalent in Greek. The letter
which Ulfilas adopted tâ denote the surd breath this not
runic, so that the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon alphabets
here differ: it is apparently the Greek q). It would
seem, therefore, that this letter still denoted an aspirate
(?’h) in Greek, and not a breath, otherwise it would
surely have been taken for f: here, on the contrary, it
seems to have been selected at random from a list of
symbols which denoted no corresponding sounds in
Gothic. On the same lack of principle G was taken to
denote hºw. X was the exponent of the breath ch, as
heard in German words; here the difference between the
true aspirate and the breath is not great.
a symbol which is very like omega.
Another alphabet which has had an important influ-
ence on Europe, and which may be destined to yet wider
extension as the alphabet (in a modified form) of the
great and progressive Russian empire, is the Cyrillic.
This was the work of Cyril, a monk of Constantinople,
who, together with Methodius preached the gospel
among the Sclavonic tribes of Bulgaria and Moravia, in
the 9th century, long after the Teutons had come under
the influence of Christianity. Cyril held the services
of the church, among his new converts in the vulgar
tongue, into which he also translated certain books of
Scriptures. The alphabet which he employed for this
purpose is more thoroughly Greek than that of Ulfilas;
but since the Greek alphabet was not nearly sufficient to
express all the Sclavonic sounds — especially the
numerous sibilants — he added further signs, the history
of which is not clear. This alphabet has been largely
adopted by the eastern branches of the Sclavonic race,
including the Russians, Bulgarians, and the Illyrian
division of the Sclaves. The old Bulgarian (commonly
called the Ecclesiastical Sclavonic) is the language into
which Cyril translated the Scriptures; in philology it
holds the same rank as the Gothic has among the Teu-
tonic languages: it is the parent, however, only of one
of the least important dialects, the modern Bulgarian.
The Illyrian family is divided into the Servians on the
one hand, and the Croats and Slovenian peoples on the
other. These parties are separated by difference of
religion; the Servians belong mainly to the Greek
Church, while the others are exclusively Roman Catho-
lic; and the members of the Greek Church naturally
cling to the Cyrillic characters, while the Catholics have
adopted the Latin alphabet. It is not easy to predict
which characters will ultimately predominate. The
Latin letters are insufficient to express the Sclavonic
sounds; but this deficiency can be eked out by diacritical
signs, and the greatest literary activity is shown by the
Latimising party. Lastly, the Cyrillic alphabet has been
adopted by the Wallachians, through the influence of
their Sclavonic neighbors, though it is little adapted to
express their essentially Latin speech, derived from the
colonists whom Trajan settled in the new Roman
province of Dacia. Most of the needless symbols have
been dropped in the newest form of Wallachian alpha-
bet.
Cyril's original alphabet consisted of forty-eight sym-
bols, but some of these are slightly different representa-
tions of the same sound; others are tachygraphies for
combinations of sounds as s/ht, ts, &c. The names were
not Greek, with the exception of three — Asi, psi, and
thita — which were relegated to the end as unnecessary,
but they retained their original Greek place as numerical
signs. On examination of the alphabet in its published
form, it will be seem that B occupies the third place,
while a modified B stands second: the reason is, that B
had come to denote the z sound in Greek, and therefore
carried this value into the Sclavonic. The modified
letter denotes the old & sound. The 7th letter which is
not Greek, had the sound of English soft j, a little
softer than the French 7 in jamais. The 8th and 9th
symbols are the Greek s and 2: they are supposed to
have had the same sound, that of the soft English 2.
(not dz)—perhaps one of them may have originally
denoted dz, a sound which easily passes into dy; dj had
a special symbol both in the Servian and Wallachian,
though it had none in the Cyrillic, probably because
the sound had not then been produced; if it had, we
may conclude, from the exactness which the Cyrillic
alphabet everywhere shows, that it would not have been
Long o formed
left without a mark. The 8th letter has been expelled
--
A L P
217
from the Russian alphabet as superfluous: the Russians
have no dº sound. The Ioth and 11th letters were
sounded alike as ā; the Ioth is the Greek Ata, which
had therefore become undistinguishable from Iota in
Cyril's day, as it is in modern Greek. The 12th letter,
A pure and simple, denoted the semi-vowel y. The 22d
was £, followed by a parastic y. The 23d and 24th are
only different ways of writing the same combination one;
the Greeks having changed the ze sound into il, Cyril
was obliged to write out for u, as the Greeks themselves
did. The Russian has one symbol (y) to denote this
sound: it is probably a tachygraphy of the 24th. The
25th and 26th denoted respectively the breathings f and
German ch. We may recall here the different treatment
of q2 by Ulfilas; it seems a fair inference that the
sound of q had changed from an aspirate to a breath-
ing between the times of Ulfilas and Cyril. The 27th
and 28th are the Greek Omega in the simple and in a
modified form: they denoted the sounds heard in note
and 7zot respectively; these have been dropped in all the
flººd alphabets, in which the 17th letter does work for
Oth.
ALPHEUS, the chief river of Peloponnesus, now
called Ruſſia or Æoupih. Its sources are in the mountains
of Arcadia, to the east of Megalopolis. Being fed by a
great number of small streams, it becomes navigable,
and traversing Elis, empties itself into the Ionian sea.
ALPHONSO, ALFONSO, ALONZO, AFFONSO, or IL-
DEFONSO. This name, so famous in the annals of the
Spanish peninsula, has been borne by no fewer than
twenty-two of its sovereigns – viz., by ten of the Astu-
rias and Leon, one of Castile when separate from Leon,
five of Aragon, and six of Portugal.
Ist, Asturias and Zeon2.- ALPHONSO I., surnamed
“The Catholic,” King of the Asturias, the son of Pedro,
duke of Biscay, was born in the year 693. On the
death of Favila, the son of Pelayo, Alphonso, who had
married Ormisinda, the daughter of the latter, was pro-
claimed king of Asturias. Alphonso died at Cangas in
737, and was succeeded by his son Freula I.
ALPHONSo II., surnamed “The Chaste,” King of the
Asturias, the son of Freula I., was but a child when his
father was assassinated in 768, and consequently his
claims to the throne were passed over in favor of Aurelio,
who was probably a cousin of Fruela. Alphonso was
invested with regal authority by Silo, the successor of
Aurelio; on whose death, in 783, he became sole ruler.
He was afterwards dethroned by his uncle Mauregato,
and was compelled to retire into Biscay.
ALPHONSo III., surnamed “The Great,” King of the
Asturias, was born in the year 848, and succeeded his
father Ordoño I. in 866. In the following year, Fruela,
count of Galacia, disputed Alphonso’s right of succes-
sion, and forced him to retire to Alava; but Fruela's
tyranny so exasperated the people that he was assassi-
nated before he had been a year in power, and they
gladly recalled Alphonso to the throne. He died
towards the end of the same year (901). He was the
last monarch who bore the title King of Asturias, his
successors being called kings of Leon, from the new
capital of the kingdom.
ALPHONSO IV., “The Monk,” King of Leon, suc-
ceeded Fruela II., his uncle in 924. On the death of
his wife, about six years afterwards, he resigned his
crown to his brother Ramiro, and retired into a cloister;
but soon growing weary of monastic life, he made an
attempt to resume the sceptre. He was, however,
taken prisoner at Leon, and confined in the monastery
of St. Julien, where he died, probably about two and a
half years after. *
ALPHONSO V. succeeded his father Bermudo II. in
999, being then about five years of age. Gonzalez,
count of Galacia, and his wife, were, by appointment of
Bermudo II., guardians of the young king; and on
arriving at manhood he married their daughter Elvira.
The regency is remarkable for the defeat and death of
the famous Moor Almansur in IOO2— a success that led
ultimately to the conquest of Cordova by the Christians.
ALPHONso VI. of Leon, and eventually I. of Castile,
surnamed “The Valiant,” was born in the year 1030.
His father, Fernando the Great, who in his own right
was king of Castile only, but succeeded to the throne of
Leon in right of his wife, died in 1065, leaving his king-
dom divided among his children. Sancho, the eldest
son, received as his portion, Castile; to Alphonso was
given the kingdom of Leon, the territory of Campos,
part of Asturias, and some towns in Galicia; and Garcia
the youngest brother, received a part of Galicia and of
Portugal; while the towns of Toro and Zamora were
left to Urraca and Elvira, Fernando's two daughters.
Peace was not long maintained between the three broth-
ers. In Io98 Sancho made war upon Alphonso, and
defeated him in a bloody battle at Piantica, on the Pisu-
erga. In Ioſ I, hostilities, which seem to have been
suspended, again commenced, and Alphonso having
recruited his army, defeated Sancho at a place called
Valpellage, on the banks of the Carrion; but the latter,
being reinforced, it is said by the famous Roderigo Diaz
de Bivar, commonly called “The Cid,” made an attack
during the night, and almost exterminated the Leonnese
army, Alphonso himself being taken prisoner. He was
compelled to abdicate his throne, and was imprisoned in
the monastery of Sahagun, probably with the intention
of making him become a monk; but escaping from this
place of confinement, he sought refuge with Almamun,
the Moorish king of Toledo, who received him with
great hospitality. In I IOS the Almoravides made
another serious attempt to destroy the power of
Alphonso. A bloody battle was fought at Uclés, in
which the Leonnese army was completely defeated, and
Sancho, Alphonso’s only son, who commanded in place
of his father, slain. Alphonso died at Toledo in IIo9,
and was succeeded by his daughter Urraca, whose hus-
band, Alphonso I. of Aragon, is by some historians
enumerated among the kings of Leon as Alphonso VII.
ALPHONSO VII. the same as ALPHONSo I. of Aragon
(7.2/.)
ALPHONso VIII. of Leon (or VII., according to
those who do not consider Alphonso of Aragon as prop-
erly a king of Leon) and II. (or III.) of Castile, often
called Alphonso Raymond and “The Emperor,” was born
in the year 1 Ioë. He was the son of Urraca, daughter of
Alphonso VI., and Raymond of Burgundy, her first
husband. In I I I2 he was proclaimed king of Galicia,
by whom it does not clearly appear; in 1122 he was
associated with his mother in the government of Leon
and Castile; and on her death in I 126 he became sole
monarch. He died in 1157 at Tremada, on his return
from an indecisive battle with Cid Yussef at Jaen ; and
was succeeded by his elder son, Sancho, in the throne of
Castile, and by his younger, Fernando, in that of Leon.
In 1156 he instituted the order of St. Julien, afterwards
so celebrated under the name ALCANTARA (7.7).)
ALPHONso IX. (VIII.), King of Leon only, suc-
ceeded his father Fernando in 1188. In 1190 he sought
to strengthen his position by marrying his cousin Teresa of
Portugal. In 1217, Fernando, the eldest son of Alphonso
and Berengaria, became king of Castile. Alphonso,
thinking that his own claims had been unjustly passed
over, declared war upon his son ; but finding that the
people preferred Fernando, he relinquished his claims.
The remainder of Alphonso's reign was chiefly spent in
campaigns against the Moors. Along with his son, he
captured Merida, Badajoz, and other cities; and in 1230
2 I 8
A L P
gained a brilliant victory over Mahommed Ibn Hud at
Merida. He died in the same year, and was succeeded
by his son Fernando, who thus finally united the king-
doms of Leon and Castile.
ALPHONSO X., surnamed El Sabio, or “The Wise,”
King of Leon and Castile, was born in 1221, and suc-
ceeded his father Fernando III. in 1252. He ascended
the throne with the entire approbation of his subjects,
and with every prospect of a happy reign : but, through
the ill-directed aims of his ambition, few sovereigns have
been more unfortunate. Alphonso died on 4th April
1284. He was a learned prince, and a great encourager
of learning, brave and energetic, but at the same time
restless and ambitious. He has been charged with
impiety, chiefly on account of a well-known saying of
his, that “ had he been present at the creation, he could
have given some useful hints for the better ordering of
the universe.” To him science is indebted ſor a set of
astronomical observations known as the Alphonisine
Zab/es, which were drawn up under his auspices by the
best astronomers of the age; and in the palace of Sego-
via a room is still shown as the observatory of Alphonso.
He was also distinguished as a poet and as a legislator.
In the Escurial is preserved a curious manuscript con-
taining some hymns of his composition; and he was the
principal compiler of a code of laws which is still extant
under the name of Zas Siete Partidos.
ALPHONSO XI., “The Avenger,” was an infant when
he succeeded his father, Ferdinand IV., in 1312. Dur-
ing his long minority the kingdom was cruelly distracted
by intestine warfare. Assuming the reins of government
in 1324, he strove to repress the turbulent spirit of the
nobility, and to put down that system of brigandage to
which it had given rise, acquiring by his inflexible sever-
ity the title of “The Avenger.” He died of the plague
on the 26th of March 1350, aged 40.
2d, Castile. — ALPHONSO III. (according to other
enumerations, VIII. or IX.), surnamed “The Noble,”
is the only king of Castile of the name who was not also
king of Leon. He was born in 1155, and succeeded his
father, Sancho III., in 1158. Alphonso died at Garci
Muños in 1214, and was succeeded by his son, Enrique
I. Alphonso was a patron of literature, and in 1208
founded a university at Palencia, the first in Christian
Spain. This university was afterward transferred to
Salamanca.
3d, Aragon. — ALPHONSO I., surnamed El Batalla-
dor, “The Fighter,” King of Navarre and Aragon, was
the second son of Don Sancho Ramirez, and succeeded
his brother, Pedro I., in I 104. By his marriage in IIo9,
with Urraca, daughter and heiress of Alphonso IV., of
Leon and Castile, he became her associate in the govern-
ment of these kingdoms, and in the same year assumed
the title of “Emperor of all Spain.” Misunderstandings
. Soon arose between Alphonso and his wife, and he se-
parated from her shortly after their marriage, an act
which was confirmed by the council of Palencia in I 114.
Alphonso, however, refused to give up his claims to the
kingdoms of Leon and Castile, and maintained a constant
struggle with Urraca till her death, in 1126. Alphonso
crossed the Pyrenees, and captured the cities of Bor-
deaux in 1130, and Payonne in 1131. On his return to
Spain, he took Mequinenza from the Moors in 1133, and
invested Fraga in 1134, where, during a sally from the
town, he received a wound from which he died a few
days after.
ALPHONSO II. was born in 1152, and in 1163 succeed-
ed his father, Raymondo V., as count of Barcelona,
his mother, Petronilla, daughter of Ramiro II., king
# Aragon, at the same time resigning that kingdom to
III.
ALPHONSO III., the son of Pedro III., was born in
1265, and in 1285, on the death of his father, being
absent in Majorca on an expedition against his uncle
Jayme, assumed the title of king without taking the
oaths of adherence to the articles to which his prede-
cessors had subscribed. He died in 1291.
ALPHONSO IV., son of Jayme II., was born in
º and ascended the throne in 1327. He died in
I330.
ALPHONSO V. of Aragon, I. of Sicily and Sardinia,
and latterly I. of Naples, was born in 1385, and succeeded
his father, Fernando the Just, as king of Aragon and of
Sicily and Sardinia, in 1416. In 1420 Joanna I. of
Naples offered to make Alphonso her successor if he
would assist her against Louis of Anjou. This he did, but,
owing to misunderstandings, the queen revoked her adop-
tion of Alphonso in 1423, making Louis of Anjou her heir.
Recalled to Spain immediately after by an attack made
by the Castilians upon his hereditary kingdom, he left
his brother Pedro as his lieutenant at Naples, which he
had taken by storm the year before. On his way to
Spain he captured, but generously refrained from pillag-
ing, Marseilles, a city belonging to his rival the duke of
Anjou. He laid siege to Naples, and after an obstinate
resistance captured it in 1442. The States-General were
then convoked, and solemnly proclaimed Alphonso
king; his election being sanctioned by Pope Eugenius
IV., who had previously promised that honor to René.
Alphonso now fixed his residence at Naples, and devoted
himself chiefly to the improvement of his kingdom;
although he was also frequently involved in the late wars
and disputes of the Italian princes. He died at Naples,
on the 27th June 1458; and was succeeded in his king-
doms of Aragon and of Sicily and Sardinia by his brother
John, and in that of Naples by his natural son Ferdinand.
4th, Portugal. —ALPHONSO I., AEmriguez, son of
Henry of Burgundy, count of Portugal, and Teresa of
Castile, was born at Guimaraensin Io94. He succeeded
his father in 11 12, and was placed under the tutelage of
his mother. When he came of age he was obliged to
wrest from her by force that power which her vices and
incapacity had rendered disastrous to the state. Being
proclaimed sole ruler of Portugal in 1128, he defeated
his mother's troops near Guimaraens, making her at
the same time his prisoner. He also vanquished
Alphonso Raymond of Castile, his mother's ally and
thus freed Portugal from dependence on the crown
of Leon. He died in 1185. Alphonso was a man
of gigantic stature, being 7 feet high according to
some authors. He has long been regarded as a saint by
the Portuguese, who reverence him both on account of
his personal character and as the founder of their king-
dom.
ALPHONso II., “The Fat,” was born in 1185, and
succeeded his father, Sancho I., in 12 II. He was
engaged in war with the Moors, and gained a victory
over them at Alcazar do Sal in 1217.
ALPHONSo III., son of Alphonso II., was born in
12 Io, and succeeded his brother, Sancho II., in I248.
Alphonso died in 1279.
ALPHONSO IV. was born in 1290, and in 1325 suc-
ceeded his father, Dionis, whose death he had hastened
by his intrigues and rebellions. Alphonso died almost
immediately after, on the 12th May 1357.
ALPHONso V., Africano, was born in 1432, and suc-
ceeded his father Edward in 1438. During his minority
he was placed under the regency, first of his mother, and
latterly of his uncle, Don Pedro. In 1448 he assumed
the reins of government, and at the same time married
his cousin Isabella, daughter of Don Pedro. In the fol-
lowing year, being led by what he afterwards discovered
to be false representations, he declared Don Pedro a
rebel, and defeated his army in a battle at Alfarrobeira,
A L P
2 IQ
in which his uncle was slain. In 1458, and with more
numerous forces in 1471, he invaded the territories of
the Moors in Africa, and by his successes there acquired
his surname of “The African.” He died in 1481.
ALPHONSO VI., the second king of the house of Bra-
ganza, was born in 1643, and succeeded his father in
1656. Alphonso died at Cintra in 1675. -
ALPHONSUS A SANCTA MARIA, or ALPHONSo DE
CARTAGENA, a celebrated Spanish historian, was born
at Carthagena in 1396, and died on the 12th July 1456.
ALPINI, PROSPERO (in Latin Prosper Alpinus), a
celebrated physician and botanist, was born at Maros-
tica, in the republic of Venice, on the 23d November
1553. In the course of his studies he had paid particular
attention to botanical science; but the sphere of his prac-
tice was too limited to afford him much opportunity of
prosecuting his favorite study. He wished particularly
to extend his knowledge of exotic plants, by observing
their economy and habits in their native soil. To gratify
this laudable curiosity an opportunity presented itself
when George Emo or Hemi, the consul for the Venetian
republic in Egypt, appointed Alpini his physician. His
treatise De Medicina Ægyption we contains the first
account of the coffee-plant that was published in Europe.
He died of slow fever on the 6th February 1617, in the
sixty-fourth year of his age, and was succeeded as botan-
ical professor by one of his sons. The genus Alpinia,
belonging to the order Zingiberaceae, is named after him.
Alpini wrote the following works in Latin: — I. De
Al/edicizza Zºgypſioz-uwe, Zibri iz., Venice, I59 I, 4to;
2. De Plaze? is Ægypti Ziber, Venice, I592, 4to; 3. De
Aa/Famo ZXia/ogza, Venice, I 592, 4to; 4. Ze Praesagi-
enda Vita et Morte Agrolantium, Libri zii., Venice,
1601, 4to; 5. AJe Medicina Met/lodica, Libri rāši.,
Padua, 1611, folio; 6. De Mºhapontico Disputatio, Padua,
1612, 4to. Of all these works various editions have
appeared; and besides these, two posthumous treatises
were published by his son — I. Ze Plantis Axoticis,
Alibri ii., Venice, 1627, 4to; 2. Historiae AWaturalis
A gypſi, Zibri iz., Lugd. Bat. 1635, 4to. Several other
works of Alpini remain in mauuscript.
ALPS. Taking a general view of the earth's surface,
the continent of Europe appears to be no more than a
great peninsula extending westward from the much
vaster continent of Asia. Its shores are deeply indented
by two inland seas connected by narrow straits with the
Atlantic Ocean, and these in their turn are divided into
gulfs that penetrate still more deeply into the land, and
form a number of secondary peninsulas. The Mediter-
ranean Sea, by its branches – the Gulf of Genoa, the
Adriatic and the AEgean Sea — forms the Iberian, the
Italian and the Greek peninsulas; and the Baltic Sea,
extending northward into the Gulf of Bothnia, forms
on one side the great Scandinavian peninsula, and on
the other that of Denmark. Save the last, all these
peninsulas of Europe are essentially mountain regions,
traversed by lofty chains that occupy a large portion of
their surface. But in height and importance these are
much surpassed by a great mountain zone stretching
from the southeast of France to the frontiers of Hun-
gary, and between Italy and the plains of Southern Ger-
many, which is collectively known as the Alps, and
which must be considered as the most important feature
in the physical geography of our continent.
The received opinion is, that the name Alps is derived
from a Celtic root — alſº or all — signifying height.
This has been connected by some writers with the Latin
alò, albus, white, referring to the color of the peaks.
Alp in South Germany — alpa in old High German —
is exclusively applied to mountain pastures. For the
present the derivation must remain somewhat uncertain.
To define the precise limits of the Alps, is a some-
what arbitrary operation. To the W. they extend
through a large portion of the French departments of
the Savoie, Haute-Savoie, Hautes AJpes, and Basses.
Alpes, being divided from the mountain district of the
Cevennes by the broad and deep valley through which
the Rhone flows from Lyons to the Mediterranean.
The Jura range, usually regarded as distinct from the
Alps, is nevertheless closely connected on one side with
the outer ranges of the Alps of western Savoy, and on
the other with those of northern Switzerland. On the
N. side the Alps are definitely bounded by the lake
of Constance, the plain of Bavaria, and the low country
extending from Salzburg to the neighborhood of Vienna.
By these they are completely separated from the
mountainous districts of central Germany, which extend
through western Bohemia and Saxony in one direction
to the Hartz mountains, and in the other to the Sudeten,
or Riesengebirge, or Silesia. Hence it happens that
the drainage of the northern slopes of the Alps flows
either to the North Sea through the Rhine, or is diverted
through the Danube to the Black Sea, and no portion
of it reaches the Baltic. The eastern limit of the Alps.
is not easily defined with accuracy. The region of high
hills, chiefly formed of tertiary strata, that extends from
the left bank of the Mur into Hungary is continued by
the north side of Lake Balaton to the Danube near
Buda ; and some geographers see in the hilly district that
stretches thence to the northern Carpathians a connec-
tion between that range and the Alps. For practical
purposes it seems that the line of depression, partly
formed by the valley of the Mur, through which the rail-
way is carried from Vienna to Laybach, may be con-
sidered as the eastern boundary of the Alpine chain. On
the southern side the difficulty of fixing the precise limits
of the Alpine chain is still more apparent. For a dis-
tance of some 350 miles, from the neighborhood of
Turin to that of Gorizia, the boundary is sufficiently ob-
vious. The mountains subside into the continuous plain
which includes the greater part of Piedmont, Lombardy,
and Venetia ; and their drainage is all borne eastward
to the Adriatic. But on the west side of Piedmont the
Alpine chain dividing Italy from France extends nearly
due southward till it approaches to the Mediterranean
in the neighborhood of Nice. About 40 miles north oſ
this city, that which, from its superior height and its
geological structure, we call the main chain, is bent
round from west to east in a curve, slightly convex
towards the south, till it becomes parallel to the Medi-
terranean shore, and is merged in the chain of the
Apennines. For reasons hereafter mentioned it would
appear that the limits of the Alps in this direction may
best be fixed at the Col d’Altare, west of Savona, though
the boundary commonly adopted is that of the Col di
Tenda, lying considerably farther to the west. At the
Southeastern extremity of the Alpine chain the difficulty
of fixing its limits arises rather from the vague use of
geographical terms by ancient and modern writers than
from the physical structure of the region. Taking no.
account of the arbitrary proceedings of geographers who
have included in the Alps the mountains dividing Bosnia
from Croatia and Dalmatia, and regarding only the
natural features of the country, it seems clear that the
South-eastern extremity of the Alps must be looked for
in the group of lofty peaks between the head waters of
the Isonzo and those of the Save, whose highest summit
is the Terglou ; and if we are not to include all the
mountain ranges of European Turkey and Greece within
the same designation, the plateau of the Karst must
be held to form the boundary between these and the
Alps.
Starting from the pass of Altare or Cadibona, west of
Savona, the main chains extends first south-west, then.
22O
A L P
nearly due west, to the Col di Tenda, but nowhere rising
beyond the zone of coniferous trees. Beyond that limit
the range is more lofty, and includes four peaks exceed-
ing Io,000 feet in height, till the line dividing the waters
flowing to the Adriatic, through the Po, from the short
streams that flow into the Gulf of Genoa, reaches the
Mont Enchastraye. Beyond that point, although the
line of watershed is very sinuous, its general direction
for a distance of about 75 miles is nearly due north. On
the east side the waters run to the Po; on the west they
flow through the Durance to join the Rhone near Avig-
non. The most considerable peaks in the range imme-
diately north of the Mont Enchastraye are the Grand Rio-
burent and the Aiguille de Chambeyron; but these are
much surpassed by the Monte Viso, which is the highest
peak in the range dividing Piedmont from Dauphiné.
On the north side of Monte Viso the main chain diminishes
much in average height, and presents no prominent peaks
until we reach the Mont Tabor. That summit forms the
apex of a salient angle which the main chain here pre-
sents on the side of France. For a distance of about 28
miles this extends eastward to the prominent peak of the
Roche Melon, which may be considered as a re-entering
angle in the great rampart by which Italy is guarded from
her northern neighbors. Here the main chain resumes
its northerly direction, and attains a greater average
height than it has previously exhibited. Several of the
prominent peaks in the range connecting the Roche
Melon with Mont Blanc exceed 11,000 English feet in
height, though they are much surpassed by the highest
group of the Graian Alps, lying on the side of Piedmont,
and that of the Tarentaise Alps in Savoy; while there is
in this part of the main range but one considerable de-
pression, which is that crossed by the road of the Little
St. Bernard. In the range crowned by the summit of
Mont Blanc the Alpine chain attains its highest eleva-
tion. From thence to the Pass of St. Gotthard its gen-
eral direction varies between east and north-east. To
the east of Mont Blanc a comparatively low tract allows
of several comparatively easy passes between Switzerland
and Piedmont, one of which has long been famous as the
Pass of the Great St. Bernard ; but from that to the
Simplon Pass, a distance of 52 miles in a straight line, or
about 75 miles if measured along the watershed, the main
chain preserves a greater average height than in any
other part. Several peaks lying in the dividing ridge,
such as the Grand Combin, Matterhorn, Lyskamm, and
Monte Rosa, exceed 14,000 feet in height; and these are
rivalled by at least six summits on the north side of the
same ridge, which at two points only sinks below the
level of Io, Ooo ſeet. Simplon Pass corresponds to what
may be called a dislocation of the main chain. From
thence to the St. Gotthard the dividing ridge runs nearly
due north-east, and does not present any dominant sum-
mit excepting Monte Leone. On the east and South-east
side of the St. Gotthard Pass, as far as that of the
Maloya, the line of watershed between the affluents of
the Rhine and that of the Po is determined by what may
be called accidental conditions. The chief mountain
ridges, which culminate in the Cima Camadra, Piz Val-
rhein, and Tambohorn, instead of being arranged along
the parting of the waters, lie in a transverse direction,
and thence the natural ſrontier of Italy is here more
broken and irregular than elsewhere; and it is only on the
south side of the Maloya Pass that the main chain assumes
a tolerably continuous direction from west-south-west to
east-north-east, as between Piz Güz and the Bernina Pass
it rises into the lofty group whose dominant peaks are
Piz Tremoggia, Piz Bernina, and Piz Cambrena. East-
ward of the Bernina Pass the same direction is preserved,
and in the range including the Corno di Campo, Monte
Zembrasca, and Monte Foscagno the level scarcely sinks
below 9000 feet; but beyond the last-named summit,
in the space lying between the Lower Engadine, the
head waters of the Adige, and those of the Adda, the
semblance of a continuous ridge forming the watershed
between the Inn and the Adriatic altogether disappears.
If we adhere to the usage of designating as the main
chain the ridges which part the waters flowing in differ-
ent directions, it must be owned that the disposition of
the chief mountain masses has no connection with the
direction of that chain. Lying between the great mass
of the Orteles Alps to the south and the considerable
group of the Silvretta Alps on the north side of the Inn,
the greater part of the mass in question is drained
by streams that flow into the latter river; but the arrange-
ment of the valleys seems to be largely due to erosive
action. Few Summits in this part of the main chain ex-
ceed Io,000 feet, the highest being Piz Scesvenna on the
east side of Val Scarla.
The break in the continuity of the Alpine chain
marked by the deep valley through which the main
branch of the Adige descends, first southward and then
eastward from its source to Meran and Botzen, is one of
the most remarkable features in the orography of the
Alps. The little lake which is regarded as the chief
Source of the river lies within less than five miles of the
Inn, where that river enters the Tyrol, and no apparent
barrier divides the lake from the Inn valley. Eastward
of this limit the Alpine chain exhibits a degree of order
in its general arrangement which it is impossible to trace
in its western and central portions. For a distance of
Some 250 miles a broad zone of crystalline rocks extends
from west to east, flanked on the north and south sides
by parallel zones of sedimentary rocks, chiefly belonging
to the older secondary formations. Two great valley
systems on the opposite sides of the central zone closely
coincide with those geological boundaries, and mark out
in the physical aspect of this region the limits between
the central and secondary zones. In the former are
situated all the highest peaks of the eastern Alps. For
a distance of about 140 miles, from the Schafkogel,
south-east of Nauders, to the Markkahrspitz, the aver-
age level of the main chain is nearly as high as in any
equally long section of the central or western Alps.
There is one very considerable depression which is
marked by the Brenner Pass, but elsewhere in that long
barrier there are but three points where the range is
passable by beasts of burden. Between the two main
sources of the Adige, at the Reschen Scheideck and the
Brenner Pass, the considerable groups of the Oetzthal
and Stubay Alps attain a great average elevation, though
two points only—the Wildspitz and the Weisskugel—
surpass the level of 12,000 feet. The drainage of these
groups is mostly carried to the Inn, and the line of
watershed, about 53 miles in length, is much less direct
than in the more easterly portion of the chain. This
extends nearly due east for about 90 miles from the
Brenner Pass, nowhere falling below the level of 8ooo
ſeet, and in two prominent peaks—the Gross Venediger
and the Gross Glockner — rising considerably above the
limit of 12,000 feet. At a point somewhat north of the
Markkahrspitz the central chain divides into two parallel
ranges, between which lies the upper valley of the Mur.
This river flows for a distance of fully 80 miles nearly
due east, till at Bruck-an-der-Mur it turns southward to
approach the Drave, and ultimately joins that stream.
Various reasons combine to induce geographers to regard
the more northern of the two ranges above mentioned,
which divides the Enns and other minortributaries of the
Danube from those of the Drave, as constituting the
eastern extremity of the main chain of the Alps. This
extends a little north of due east for more than I Io
miles, with a comparatively low mean elevation, from
A L P 22 I
\
the Arlscharte to the Semmering Pass, which we regard
as the eastern limit of the main chain of the Alps.
Measured along the watershed, as above defined, but
without taking into account the minor sinuosities, which
would considerably increase the total, the length of the
main chain is about 790 English miles.
For ages before there existed any correct knowledge
of the configuration of the Alpine chain, the needs of
war and commerce had urged the people dwelling on the
opposite sides of the great barrier to seek out the easiest
and most direct routes for traversing it. Hence the chief
passes of the Alps have been known and frequented from
a period antecedent to authentic history, while, until a
quite modern period, little attention was given to the
parts of the chain which did not lie in or near the lines
of traffic. It is highly probable that many other passes,
affording the easiest means of communication between
adjacent valleys, have been known and used by the native
population from a very remote period, but only those
which served for international purposes of war or peace
became known at a distance, and are alluded to by
ancient writers. A pass is a depression between two
adjacent mountains, and the track is usually carried over
the lowest part of that depression; but nevertheless
nearly all the passes of the Alps involve a long ascent to
reach the summit, and a long descent upon the opposite
slopes. Hence the Romans, who were the first semi-
civilized people to make extensive use of the Alpine
passes, applied to each of them the term Mozas. The
Same names, more or less modified in the middle ages,
have been preserved in the dialects of Latin origin that
prevail throughout the western half of the Alpine chain,
and the modern name for the chief passes are still Mont
Genévre, Mont Cenis, Mont Iséran, Petit Mont St.
Bernard, Grand Mont St. Bernard, Monte Moro, and
Monte San Gottardo. In more recent times, since
geographers have attempted to fix the names and
positions of the chief summits of the Alps, they have
been continually misled by the supposition that a name
of high antiquity designating a mountain must belong to
some prominent peak. The errors arising from that
source have not yet disappeared from geographical works
of high repute, but in point of fact each of the names
above enumerated belongs solely to the pass, and there
is no neighboring peak entitled to the same designation.
The more important passes of the Alps are enumerated
in the following description of the chief groups of the
Alps; but it may be here remarked that the direction of
the main routes for traffic is not exclusively determined
by the position of the lowest and easiest passes over the
main chain. The configuration of the mountains is such
that a traveller proceeding from Italy to France,
Switzerland, or Germany, after crossing a comparatively
easy pass over the main chain, may find it necessary to
traverse a second and loftier pass over a lateral chain, or
else follow a circuitous route that may double the length of
his journey. Thus a traveller going from Turin to Lyons,
who should take what appears to be the direct course
over the pass of Mont Genévre, the easiest in the whole
range of the western Alps, will find, on descending to
Briançon, that he must cross the much higher and more
difficult pass of the Col de Lautaret, or else descend
along the Durance till it emerges into the lower country
near Gap, and thus more than double the length of his
journey. Including the Semmering Pass, there are now
not less than 60 Alpine passes that are traversed by
carriage roads; and besides three lines of railway now
open for traffic, several others are in course of con-
struction. tº
Actual observation of the Alpine region through the
greater part of its extent, or even the careful study of
accurate models, must convince any one who seeks to
divide it into groups that it is not possible to do this by
adhering rigidly to any single test or rule. In a general
way, it is natural and desirable to include under the
same name mountain masses that are not divided by a
broad and deep opening; but it is sometimes more con-
venient to include in one group disjointed masses that
have some natural connection with each other, rather
than multiply groups to an inconvenient extent. In
some cases the geological structure may supply a rational
ground for preferring one arrangement to another, when
the choice would otherwise be arbitrary; and in a few
cases it may be well to yield something to ancient usage,
based upon political or ethnological grounds. Accurate
knowledge of the Alps is so recent that few attempts
have been made to establish a general division of the
entire region, and it cannot be said that any one arrange-
ment has obtained such general recognition as not to be
open to future modification; but there is a pretty gen-
eral agreement as to the main features of that here pro-
posed, to which a few general remarks must be premised.
Whatever may have been the original cause of those
disturbances of the earth’s crust to which great mount-
ain chains owe their existence, it is generally, though
not universally, true that the higher masses (formed of
rocks geologically more ancient) are found towards the
central part, and that these are flanked by lower ranges,
composed of more recent rocks, which surround the
central groups very much as an outer line of entrench-
ment may be seen to surround a fort. In most cases it
is not possible to descend continuously in a nearly
direct line from the crest of a great mountain chain to
the plains on either side, for there are usually interme-
diate valleys, running more or less parallel to the cen-
tral range, which separate this from outer secondary
ranges. These, in their turn, are often accompanied by
external ranges, intermediate between them and the
plains, and related to them as they are to the central
ranges. The type of arrangement here described is
more or less traceable throughout the greater part of
the Alps, but is most distinctly exhibited in the eastern
portion lying between the Adige and the frontier of
Hungary. We have a central range, composed mainly
of crystalline rock; a northern range, formed of second-
ary rocks, separated from the first by the great valleys
of the Inn, the Salza, and the Enns; a southern range,
somewhat similar to the last in geological structure,
divided from the central one by the Rienz, or east
branch of the Adige, and the Drave. Flanking the
whole, as an external entrenchment on the north side,
are the outer ranges of the Bavarian Alps, of the Salz-
kammergut, and of Upper Austria, to which corre-
spond on the south side the Monti Lessini, near Verona,
the mountains of Recoaro, those of the Sette Comuni,
and the considerable masses crowned by the summits of
the Grappa, the Col Vicentino, the Monte Cavallo, the
Monte Matajur, and Monte Nanos. Where, as in the
cases above mentioned, the secondary ranges of the
Alps rise to a greater altitude, and are completely sepa-
rated from the neighboring portions of the central chain,
it is impossible not to distinguish them as distinct
groups; but the outermost ranges, which rarely rise
above the forest zone, and are in all cases regarded as
appendages of the adjoining groups. The outer ranges
are called in German Voralapen, and in Italian Preaſpi,
and it is to be desired that equivalents should be intro-
duced in other European languages.
It is well known that as we rise from the sea-level into
the upper regions of the atmosphere the temperature
decreases. The effect of mountain chains on prevailing
winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region
into an upper zone, where it expands in volume at the
cost of a proportionate loss of heat, often accompanied
222
A L P
by the precipitation of moisture in the form of snow or
rain. The position of the Alps about the centre of the
European continent has profoundly modified the climate
of all the surrounding regions. The accumulation of
vast masses of Snow, which have gradually been con-
verted into permanent glaciers, maintains a gradation of
very different climates within the narrow space that inter-
venes between the foot of the mountains and their upper
ridges; it cools the breezes that are wafted to the plains
on either side, but its most important function is to reg-
ulate the water supply of that large region which is
traversed by the streams of the Alps. Nearly all the
moisture that is precipitated during six or seven months
is stored up in the form of snow, and gradually diffused
in the course of the succeeding summer; and even
in the hottest and driest seasons the reserves accumu-
lated during a long preceding period of years in the form
of glaciers are available to maintain the regular flow of
the greater streams. Nor is this all ; the lakes that fill
several of the main valleys on the southern side of the
Alps are somewhat above the level of the plains of Lom-
bardy and Venetia, and afford an inexhaustible supply,
which, from a remote period, has been used for that sys-
tem of irrigation to which they owe their proverbial
fertility. Six regions or zones, which are best distin-
guished by their characteristic vegetation, are found in
the Alps. It has been a common error to suppose that
these are indicated by absolute height above the sea-level.
Local conditions of exposure to the sun, protection from
cold winds, or the reverse, are of primary importance in
determining the climate and the corresponding vegeta-
tion.
I. Olive Region. — The great plain of Upper Italy
has a winter climate colder than that of the British
Islands. The olive and the characteristic shrubs of the
northern coasts of the Mediterranean do not thrive in
the open air, but the former valuable tree ripens its fruit
in sheltered places at the ſoot of the mountains, and
penetrates along the deeper valleys and the shores of the
Italian lakes. The evergreen oak is wild on the rocks
about the lake of Garda ; and lemons are cultivated on
a large scale, with partial protection in winter.
2. Vine A’egion.— The vine is far more tolerant of
cold than the olive, but to produce tolerable wine it
demands, at the season of ripening, a degree of heat not
much less than that needed by the more delicate tree.
These, conditions are satisfied in the deeper valleys of the
Alps, even in the interior of the chain, and up to a con-
siderable height on slopes exposed to the sun. The pro-
tection afforded by winter snow enables the plant to
resist severe and prolonged frosts, such as would be fatal
in more exposed situations.
3. Mountaize Aegion, or Regione of ZXeciduous
ZTrees.— Many writers take the growth of corn as the
characteristic of this region; but so many varieties of
all the common species are in cultivation, and these
have such different climatal requirements, that they do
not afford a satisfactory criterion. A more natural
limit is afforded by the presence of the chief deciduous
trees— oak, beech, ash, and sycamore. These do not
reach exactly to the same elevation, nor are they often
found growing together; but their upper limit corre-
sponds accurately enough to change from a temperate
to a colder climate that is further proved by a change in
the wild herbaceous vegetation. This limit usually lies
about 40OO feet above the sea on the north side of the
Alps, but on the southern slopes it often rises to 5000
feet, sometimes even to 55oo feet. It must not be sup-
posed that this region is always marked by the presence
of the characteristic trees. The interference of man
has in many districts almost extirpated them, and,
excepting the beech forests of the Austrian Alps, a con-
siderable wood of deciduous trees is scarcely anywhere
to be found. In many districts where such woods once
existed, their place has been occupied by the pine and
Scotch fir, which suffer less from the ravages of goats,
the worst enemies of tree vegetation.
4. Subalpine A’egion, or Region of Coniferous
7%rees. – This is the region which mainly determines
the manner of life of the population of the Alps. On
a rough estimate, we may reckon that, of the space
lying between the summits of the Alps and the low
country on either side, one-quarter is available for culti-
vation, of which about one-half may be vineyards and
corn-fields, and the remainder produces forage and grass.
About another quarter is utterly barren, consisting of
snow-fields, glaciers, bare rock, lakes, and the beds of
streams; and there remains about one-half, which is
divided between forest and pasture, and it is the produce
of this which mainly supports the relatively large popu-
lation. For nearly half the year the flocks and herds
are fed on the upper pastures; but the true limit of the
wealth of a district is the number of animals that can
be supported during the long winter, and while one part
of the population is engaged in tending the beasts, and
in making cheese and butter, the remainder is busy cut-
ting hay and storing up winter food. The larger villages
are mostly in the mountain region, but in many parts of
the Alps the villages stand in the subalpine region at
heights varying from 4000 to 5500 feet above the Sea,
more rarely extending to about 6000 feet. The most
characteristic feature of this region is the prevalence of
coniferous trees, which, where they have not been arti-
ficially reduced, form vast forests that cover a large part
of the surface. These play a most important part in the
natural economy of the country. They protect the
valleys from destructive avalanches, and, retaining the
superficial soil by their roots, they mitigate the destruct-
ive effects of heavy rains. In valleys where they have
been rashly cut away, and the waters pour down the
slopes unchecked, every tiny rivulet becomes a raging
torrent, that cuts away and carries off the grassy slopes
and devastates the floor of the valley, covering the soil
with gravel and debris. In the pine forests of the Alps
the prevailing species are the common spruce and the
silver fir; on siliceous soil the larch flourishes, and sur-
passes every other European species in height. The
Scotch fir is chiefly found at a lower level, and rarely
forms forests. The Siberian fir is found scattered at
intervals throughout the Alps, but is not common. The
mughus, creeping pine, or Krumm/holz of the Germans,
is common in the Eastern Alps, and sometimes forms on
the higher mountains a distinct zone above the level of
its congeners. In the Northern Alps the pine forests
rarely surpass the limit of 6000 feet above the sea, but
on the south side they commonly attain to 7000 feet; and
the larch, Siberian fir, and mughus often extend above
that elevation.
Alpine Region. —Throughout the German Alps
the word alſº is used specifically for the upper pastures,
where cattle are fed in summer, but this region is held to
include the whole space between the uppermost limit of
trees and the first appearance of permanent masses of
snow. It is here that the characteristic vegetation of
the Alps is developed in its full beauty and variety.
Shrubs are not wanting. Three species of rhododen-
dron vie with each other in the brilliancy of their masses
of red or pink flowers; the common juniper rises higher
still, along with three species of bilberry; and several
dwarf willows attain nearly to the utmost limit of vege-
tation. The upper limit of this region coincides with
the so-called limit of perpetual Snow, which demands
further explanation.
6. Glacial Region.— On the higher parts of lofty
A L P
223
mountains more snow falls in each year than is melted
on the spot. A portion of this is carried away by the
wind before it is consolidated, a larger portion accumu-
lates in hollows and depressions of the surface, and is
gradually converted into glacier-ice, which descends by
a slow Secular motion into the deeper valleys, where it
goes to Swell perennial streams. As on a mountain the
Snow does not lie in beds of uniform thickness, and
Some parts are more exposed to the sun and warm
winds than others, we commonly find beds of snow
alternating with exposed slopes covered with brilliant
vegetation ; and to the observer near at hand there is no
appearance in the least corresponding to the term Zimzit
of Żerºetztal szzozy. But the case is otherwise when a
high mountain chain is viewed from a distance. Similar
conditions are repeated at many different points, so that
the level at which large snow-beds show themselves
along its flanks is approximately horizontal. But this
holds good only so far as the conditions are similar. On
the opposite side of the same chain the exposure to the
sun or to the warm winds may cause a wide difference in
the level of permanent snow; but in some cases the in-
creased fall of snow on the side exposed to moist winds
may more than compensate the increased influence of the
Sun’s rays. Still, even with these reservations, the
so-called line of perpetual snow is not fixed. The
occurrence of favorable meteorological conditions during
Several successive seasons may and does increase the
extent of the snow-fields, and lower the limit of seem-
ingly permanent snow; while an opposite state of things
may cause the limit to rise higher on the flanks of the
mountains. From these remarks it may be inferred
that all attempts to fix accurately the level of perpetual
Snow in the Alps are fallacious, and can at the best
approach only to local accuracy for a particular district.
In some parts of the Alps the limit may be set at about
8OOO feet above the sea, while in others it cannot be
placed much below 9500 feet. As very little snow can
rest on rocks that lie in an angle exceeding 60°, and
this is soon removed by the wind, some steep masses of
rock remain bare even near the summits of the highest
peaks, but as almost every spot offering the least hold
for vegetation is covered with snow, few flowering plants
are seen above Io, Ooo feet.
At the earliest period at which records are preserved
the Alps appear to have been mainly inhabited by Celtic
tribes, some of which, before they were subjugated by
the Romans, had made considerable progress in the
knowledge of the useful arts. The Rhaetians and Van-
delicians especially, in whom a primitive Turanian stock
seems to have been amalgamated with a dominant Celtic
race, readily assimilated the civilisation of Rome; and
the language of the conqueror, modified by peculiarities
of pronunciation and the retention of some native terms,
still survives in Eastern Switzerland, and in a few iso-
lated valleys of Tyrol. Throughout by far the larger
part of the Alps, however, the flood of Teutonic inva-
sion either exterminated or drove into exile the previous
population. Alemanni and other kindred tribes settled
in the main valleys of the Eastern Alps, and finally
became masters of the greater part of Switzerland, leav-
ing to the original Celtic population the Western Alps
and both slopes of the great Pennine chain. At a later
period the invasion of Slavonic hordes threatened to sub-
stitute a new nationality throughout the same region,
but after prolonged contests these tribes were restricted
to its southeastern portion, being nearly confined to the
upper valleys of the Drave and the Save, with their trib-
utaries. The Italian valleys of the Alps, from the Val
d’Ossola to the Tagliamento, inhabited by people of
mixed race, have, with a few exceptions, preserved the
language of Italy, much varied in the local dialects;
while the western districts, in which the Celtic element
remained predominant, have for the most part clung to
the French tongue. The estimates formed of the pres-
ent population of the Alps are uncertain, because they
usually include towns and populous districts lying with-
out the mountain region. It is usually reckoned that
there are about 1,500,000 of Celto-Gallic stock in the
Trench and Savoy Alps, western Switzerland, and some
valleys of Piedmont; about 4,000,000 of Teutonic ori-
gin in the Swiss and German Alps; about 1,000,000 of
Slavonic stock, chiefly Slovenes; and about 1,000,000 of
Italians in the valleys of Northern Italy, the Swiss can-
tons of Tessin and Grisons, and in the Italian Tyrol,
making an aggregate of 7,500,000. To these should be
added about 70,000 people speaking some dialect of the
Rhaeto-Roman or Romansch. All these numbers except-
ing the last are excessive, if we would restrict the esti-
mate within the proper limit of the Alps.
Although no conspicuous species of quadruped or bird
is known to be exclusively confined to the Alps, they
have afforded an asylum to many animals that have be-
come rare or extinct elsewhere. The greaturus, the elk,
and the wild swine have disappeared since the Roman
period, and the beaver in more recent times; but the
brown bear, the lynx, the wild cat, and the wolf still sur-
vive. Among Ruminants, the red deer, fallow deer, and
roebuck, chiefly found in the lower forest region, are
common to other mountain districts. More character-
istic of the Alps is the chamois, which is found elsewhere
only in the Carpathians, Pyrenees, and the mountains of
European Turkey, and is the sole representative of the
antelopes in this part of the world. Much rarer is the
ibex or bouquetin, which still lives in the higher Alpine
region of the Graian Alps, and possibly also in some re-
cesses of the Pennine chain. Unlike the chamois, which
descends at night to find sustenance as low as the verge
of the pine forests, this fine animal remains, at least in
the summer, in the upper region, on the verge of the
snow-fields, or on the rocks that rise amidst the glaciers.
The massive horns of the male are often a yard or more
in length. Closely allied species are found in the
Pyrenees and other mountain ranges of the Iberian pen-
insula, and in the Caucasus, but the true ibex seems to be
now confined to this small corner of the Alps.
The Birds of the Alps are proportionately very numer-
ous. Many southern species find a home in the warmer
Italian valleys, and there meet northern forms that
descend during the winter and spring, but return to the
upper zone in the warm season. Of the more con-
spicuous species of the high Alps, the lămmergeyer
(G.4%aëtos barðatus) — once common, but now become
very rare — is pre-eminent. It is also found in Algeria,
in Syria, and in Northern Asia, but is one of those
animals that is threatened with extinction by the progress
of civilisation.
The great lakes of the Alps are very rich in Fish, not
only as regards the number of individuals, but in species
also. Thus in Chiemsee, at the northern foot of the
Bavarian Alps, thirty-three species have been found; in
the lake of Constance twenty-six species, and twenty-
four in the lake of Lucerne. The most esteemed are
those of the trout and salmon tribe, whose specific differ-
ences have not yet been fully investigated by the ichthy-
ologists. First in rank is the Saibling (Sa/mo sa/ze/-,
Zimits), which flourishes in lakes between 2000 and 4000
feet above the sea, and occasionally extends to those of
the Alpine region between 6000 and 7000 feet.
In describing the several regions which are found in
ascending from the low country to the snow-clad sum-
mits of the Alps; and whose existence is due to climatal
differences, it was necessary to refer to the characteristic
vegetation of each zone, inasmuch as this affords the
224.
A L P — A L S
chief apparent distinction which climatal conditions
impress on the earth's surface. The most cursory obser-
vation suffices to show that within each of the zones
thus broadly sketched out there exist marked differences
in the vegetable population, so that a comparison of the
local floras in two spots possessing a similar climate as
regards temperature may exhibit but few points of
agreement along with many marked contrasts. This
partly depends on external conditions, of which the
most important are differences in the amount and dis-
tribution of moisture in the air and the soil, and differ-
ences in the composition and state of aggregation of the
soil itself. But a more important element in determin-
ing the flora of any particular district depends upon the
causes which have operated throughout the whole period
since it has become dry land to facilitate migration for
certain species, and to impede it for others. The sub-
ject of distribution of Alpine plants, so far as regards
the eastern half of the chain, has been very well dis-
cussed in an essay by Dr. A. Kerner in the 1st vol. of
the 2d edit. of Schaubach’s Deutsche Alpen, although
some of the conclusions of the writer may not bear care-
ful criticism. He divides the natural floras of the Alps
into four — named respectively Artic, Baltic, Pontic
and Mediterranean, the term Baltic referring to the
region that includes Germany, Southern Scandinavia,
and North-Western Russia; while Pontic comprehends
the region north and west of the Euxine — the northern
provinces of Turkey and the whole space between the
Carpathians and the Crimea.
The phenomena of glaciers have been chiefly studied
in the Alps, but they are not especially characteristic of
the mountains of Central Europe. The investigation
of their origin and structure, and the laws of their
motion, fall within the province of the physical philoso-
pher, and are discussed everywhere. See GLACIERs.
The geological structure of the Alps is a subject that
has occupied the labors of many eminent men of science,
especially during the last thirty years, yet it may be
safely asserted that it will continue to offer new prob-
lems to the researches of at least another generation.
There is scarcely a single difficult question regarding the
nature and mode of deposition of the strata that make
up the earth’s crust, the mode of elevation of mountain
chains, the causes of the formation of valleys and lake
basins, the action of meteoric forces, of rivers and ice-
streams, that must not be decided before we can give
a rational account of the structure of the Alps. Along
with these, and scarcely less important, is the study of
the various agencies involved in the phenomena of meta-
morphism, and that of the part played by volcanic
action in some parts of the chain. The study of the
organic remains embedded in the rocks is not so con-
stantly the duty of the geologist in the Alps as it is in
most other mountain districts; but of late years this
has been actively pursued, and has tended to clear up
many difficulties, while much room is left for further
investigation.
ALPUJARRAS, or ALPUxARAs, a mountainous dis-
trict in the south of Spain, in the province of Andalusia,
lying between the Sierra Nevada and the Sierras Lugar
and Contraviesa, and consisting principally of valleys,
which descend at right angles from the crest of the
Sierra Nevada. These valleys are among the most beau-
tiful and fertile in Spain.
ALR EDUS, ALURED, or ALUREDUs, of Beverley,
one of the earliest English historians, was born at Bever.
ley, in Yorkshire. He wrote in the reign of Henry I.,
but little is known with certainty of his life. It is gener.
ally believed that he was educated at Cambridge, and
afterward became one of the canons and treasurer of the
church of St. John's at Beverley. A manuscript en-
titled Ziberates Acclesia S. johannis de Bezerla, in the
Cottonian library, is also ascribed to him, but on doubt-
ful authority. It is a collection of records relative to
the church of Beverley, translated from the Saxon.
ALRESFORD (NEw), a market town in Hampshire,
so named from a ford on the river Arle, a tributary of
the Itchin, on which it is situated. It is 58 miles distant
from London, and 7 from Winchester.
ALSACE (Germ. Z/sass), a former province of France,
divided after the Revolution into the departments of
Haut Rhin and Bas Rhin, and incorporated since the
war of 1870 with the German empire. It is bounded
on the north by the Rhine palatimate, on the east by the
Rhine, on the south by Switzerland, and on the west by
the Vosges Mountains; and it comprises an area of 3344
English square miles. The district possesses many
natural attractions, and is one of the most fertile in
central Europe. There are several ranges of hills, but
no point within the province attains a great elevation.
The only river of importance is the Ill, which falls into
the Rhine after a course of more than IOO miles, and is
navigable below Colmar. The hills are generally richly
wooded, chiefly with fir, beech, and oak. The agricul-
tural products are corn, flax, tobacco, grapes, and various
other fruits. The country has a great wealth of min-
erals, silver having been found, and copper, lead, iron,
coal, and rock-salt being wrought with profit. There
are considerable manufactures, chiefly of cotton and
linen. The chief towns are Mühlhausen and Colmar in
the upper district, and Strasburg in the lower. The
province is traversed from east to west by the railway
from Strasburg to Nancy, and the main line north and
south runs between Basle and Strasburg.
Alsace suffered a good deal in the war of 1870–71.
The earlier battles of the campaign were fought there;
Strasburg and other of its fortified towns were besieged
and taken ; and its people were compelled to submit to
very severe exactions. The civil and military govern-
ment of the province, as well as that of Lorraine, was
assumed by the Germans as soon as they obtained pos-
session of those parts of France, which was very shortly
after the commencement of the war. The people, not-
withstanding their German origin, showed a very strong
feeling against the invaders, and in no part of France
was the enemy resisted with greater stubbornness. It
was evident from an early period of the war, however,
that Prussia was resolved to reannex Alsace to German
territory. When the preliminaries of peace came to be
discussed at Versailles in February 1871, the cession of
Alsace, together with what is called German Lorraine,
was one of the earliest conditions laid down by Count
Bismarck and accepted by M. Thiers. This sacrifice of
territory was afterwards ratified by the National Assem-
bly at Bordeaux, though not without a protest from the
representatives of the departments about to be given up;
and thus Alsace once more became German. The Ger-
man system of compulsory education of every child
above the age of six was introduced directly after the
annexation. The population in 1871 amounted to up-
wards of 1,060,000.
ALSEN, an island in the Baltic, situated off the coast
of Schleswig, in the Little Belt. It formerly belonged
to Denmark, but, as a result of the Danish war of 1864,
was incorporated with Germany. Population, 22,500.
ALSOP, VINCENT, a celebrated. Nonconformist
divine, was educated in St. John’s College, Cambridge.
He received deacon’s orders from a bishop, whereupon
he settled as assistant-master in the free School of Oak-
ham, Rutland. He was recovered from indifferent asso-
ciates here by a very worthy minister, the Rev. Benja-
min King. A book against Sherlock, called Autisozzo
(after Socinus), written in the vein of Andrew Marvell's
A L S — A LT
225
Rehearsal Zºransprosed, procured him much celebrity as
a wit. Besides fame, Antisozzo procured for its author
an invitation to succeed the venerable Mr. Cawton in
Westminster. The other books he published showed a
fecundity of wit, a playful strength of reasoning, and a
provoking indomitableness of raillery. Even with Dr.
Goodman and Dr. Stillingfleet for antagonists, he more
than held his own. His Mischief of Impositions in
answer to the latter’s Mischief of Separation, and
Melius Inquirendum in answer to the former's Com-
Aassionate Inquiry, remain historical landmarks in the
º º Nonconſormity. He died May 8, 1703.
A. B. G.
ALSTED,JoHANN HEINRICH, a German Protestant
divine, and one of the most voluminous writers of the
17th century, was born in 1588. He was some time
professor of philosophy and divinity at Herborn, in the
county of Nassau, and afterwards at Weissenburg in
Transylvania, where he continued till his death in 1638.
His Encyclopædia, the most considerable of the earlier
of that class, was long held in very high estimation.
His Z'hesaurus Chronologiae has gone through several
editions. He published in 1627 a treatise, De Mille
Annis, in which he asserted that the reign of the Saints
on earth was to begin in 1694.
ALSTON, CHARLEs, M.D., a botanical and medical
writer, was born in the west of Scotland in the year
I683. He was a man of great ability, and an assiduous
student of science. His most valuable work is his Zec-
tures on Materia Medica, 2 vols., 1770.
ALSTROEMER, JonAs, a Swedish industrial re-
former, was born at Alingsaes, in West Gothland, on
the 7th Jan. I685. He died June 2, 1761, leaving sev-
eral works on practical industrial subjects. A statue
was erected to his honor in the exchange at Stockholm.
One of his Sons, Clas (i.e., Claude), was a naturalist of
considerable eminence. -
ALT, or ALUTA, a tributary of the Danube, which,
rising in the eastern Carpathian mountains, flows through
Transylvania and Wallachia, entering the latter by the
pass of Rothenthurm, and joins the Danube opposite
Nicopoli, after a course of more than 300 miles.
ALTAI MOUNTAINS, a group of mountains in
central Asia, separating the table-lands of Mongolia
from Siberia. The range is rich in mineral productions,
particularly silver, copper, and iron. See ASIA, and
GEOGRAPHY, PHYSICAL.
ALTAMURA, a cathedral town in the south of
Italy, province of Terra di Bari, 28 miles S.W. of
Bari. *
ALTAR, in Classical Antiquity, was a solid base
or pedestal on which supplication was made and sacri-
fice offered to the gods and deified heroes. According
to this difference in the service for which they were
employed, altars fell into two classes, of which the one,
smaller and lower so that the suppliant could kneel upon
it, stood inside temples, in front of the sacred image;
while the other, destined for burnt sacrifice, was placed
in the open air, and, if connected with a temple, in
front of the entrance. Possibly altars of the former
class were substitutes for, and rendered the same service
in historical times as, in an early age, the base of the
sacred image within a temple. In this case the altar of
Apollo and Delphi, on which Neoptolemus is frequently
represented on the Greek vases as taking refuge from
Orestes, might be regarded as the pedestal of an invis-
ible image of the god, and as fulfilling the same function
as did the base of the actual image of Minerva in Troy,
towards which Casandra fled from Ajax. The other
class of altars, called ſºgouoi by the Greeks and altaria
by the Romans, appear to have originated in such
temporary constructions as heaps of earth, turf, or
stone, made as occasion offered for kindling a fire for
sacrifice. The next step was to allow the bones and
ashes of the victims sacrificed to accumulate, and upon
this to kindle new fires. Altars so raised were viewed
with particular sanctity, the most remarkable recorded
instances of them being the altars of Juno at Samus
and at Olympia, of Apollo at Thebes, and of Jupiter at
Olympia. The last-mentioned stood on a platform
measuring 125 feet in circumference, and led up to by
steps, the altar itself being 22 feet high. Women were
excluded from the platform. The altar of Apollo at
Delos was made of the horns of deer believed to have
been slain by Diana ; while at Miletus was an altar
composed of the blood of victims sacrificed. The altar
used at the festival in honor of Daedalus on Mount
Cithaeron was of wood, and was consumed along with
the sacrifice. Others, of bronze, are mentioned ; but
while these were exceptional, the usual material of an
altar was marble, and its form, both among the Greeks
and Romans, either square or round; polygonal altars,
of which examples still exist, being exceptions. When
sculptured decorations were added they frequently took
the form of imitations of the actual festoons with
which it was usual to ornament altars, or of symbols,
such as crania and horns of oxen, referring to the
victims sacrificed. As a rule, the altars which existed
apart from temples bore the name of the person by
whom they were dedicated, and the names of the deities
in whose service they were.
Egyptian altars were monoliths, in the form of a
truncated come about four feet in height. Some are
extant, made of granite, others of green basalt; in
almost every case they bear hieroglyphical inscriptions.
In the temple of Jupiter at Babylon there was an altar
of massive gold. Assyrian, Egyptian, and Persian altars
were either Square or oblong.
The most ancient altars of which any record has been
preserved are those mentioned in the Bible. As sacrifice
implies an altar, there must have been altars for those of
Cain and Abel ; but the first which is mentioned is that
which Noah after the flood “builded unto Jehovah.”
The three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are
repeatedly said to have built an altar in the different
parts of the land of Canaan in which they sojourned ;
and though it is not stated expressly, yet it may be
inferred from there having evidently been a place where
Abraham was accustomed to “stand before Jehovah,”
that, once built, it remained during the whole period of
the encampment at the particular place, and was fre-
quently used for the purpose of sacrificing.
But the most remarkable altar mentioned in the book
of Genesis is that which Abraham built for the Sacrifice
of his son Isaac, from which we glean several particulars
relative to the patriarchal worship. The altar was evi-
dently something distinct from the wood by whose fire
the sacrifice was to be burnt, for Abraham “built an
altar and laid the wood in order,” which he had brought
with him from Beersheba, as if he could not count upon
finding it at the place. The victim also was bound,
laid upon the wood, and there slain. This was contrary
to the practice under the Levitical dispensation, when
the fire on the top of the altar was kept continually
burning, and the animal was killed before being carried
up to it; but it is probably alluded to in a verse of the
Psalms, which has given much trouble to commentators,
who have tried to reconcile it with the precepts of the
Mosaic law — “Bind the Sacrifice with cords unto the
horns of the altar,”
The first altar that is mentioned as having been built
after the directions were given, was the one for the sol-
emn covenanting sacrifice between God and the Israel-
ites. There it is mentioned that Moses “builded an altar
I5 A
226
A. L T
under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the
twelve tribes of Israel.” Its being under the hill may
have been a significant protest against the prevalent
heathen error of localising the Deity in the sky, and the
twelve pillars or rough blocks of stone appear to have
been a principal part of the materials used in construct-
ing it.
*. first of these altars was that for 5urnt offerings.
For the tabernacle this was hollow, made of boards of
shittim-wood, covered with brass. It was three cubits
or about five feet high, and five cubits or eight feet
square. It had a horn at each corner, and was carried
about by means of staves. The corresponding altar in
the temple was of greatly larger dimensions, ten cubits
or about 18 feet high, and in the first temple 20 cubits
square, and in the second 24 cubits. The tradition of
the Jews is, that it was 32 cubits (about 50 feet) square
at the base, contracting to 24 at the top, by several
ledges round it at different heights. It must therefore
have been an immense structure, and though called “an
altar of brass,” was probably built of stones, and merely
covered with plates of that metal.
One of the most difficult questions about the Levitical
altars is their having horns; for these do not seem to have
been used in that ritual, yet they are specially ordered
to be made, not only in the altar of burnt-offerings, but
also in that of incense; and on certain solemn occasions
they were sprinkled with blood, as if they were not mere
appendages or ornaments of the altar, but had a special
significance of their own. From the way they are
spoken of the book of Exodus, we see that they must
then have been well known, and it might almost be
thought that they were retained from the older ritual,
according to which they were used to bind the victim
that was slain upon the altar.
The second altar belonging to the Jewism worship
was the altar of incense, the golden altar. It was placed
in the holy place, between the table of shew-bread and
the golden candlestick. This altar, in the tabernacle,
was made of shittim-wood overlaid with gold plates, I
cubit in length and breadth, and 2 cubits in height.
It had horns of the same materials; and round the flat
surface was a border of wrought gold, underneath
which were the rings to receive “the staves, made of
shuttim-wood overlaid with gold, to bear it withal.”
The single exception to the exclusive use of the golden
altar for incense was on the great day of atonement, when
the high priest went into the holy of holies, carrying a
fire-pan containing lighted charcoal from the great altar,
and having set it down, threw incense upon it, and left
it for some time before the ark while he went and came
back once and again to sprinkle it with the blood of the
sacrifices. This fire-pan is accordingly called a golden
censer by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix.
4); but even this is no precedent for the Swinging cen-
sers which have been used for so many centuries in the
Latin churches. Incense, indeed, was put on the loaves
of shew-bread; but it does not appear that it was
burned upon that table, which is nowhere called an
altar. º
Among the early Christians, alike in the East and
West, that on which the bread and wine were put in
the celebration of the Eucharist appears to have been
regarded as an altar, and accordingly sacrificial words
were used in connection with it, such as “offering,”
“unbloody sacrifice.”
From the privacy with which the early believers had
to meet, their altars at first would naturally be simple
and unobtrusive. We have seen that the Levitical
altars were four-square, but Christian altars seem to
have been always longer than they were broad, and to
have been placed “athwart’’ the length of the basilica,
or church, so as to present one of the broad sides and
both the sacred vessels to the eyes of the great body of
worshippers.
There does not seem to have been any rule as to the
material of which altars might be made. At first they
appear to have been mostly of wood, as being easily
procured and fashioned. But when the persecutions
ceased, and the Christians began to erect churches for
worship, there seems to have sprung up some diversity
of usage, each province following its own traditional
custom, which perhaps was affected in some degree by
the nature of the building-stone found there, and the
use commonly made of it. It seems that in Egypt and
the region afterwards called Barbary the altars were of
wood; and there is a tradition that this was also the
case originally at Rome. On the other hand, in the
latter half of the 4th century, they were made of stone
in Asia Minor. Early in the 6th century a council,
held at Epaone in Burgundy, ordered that only altars
made of stone should be consecrated with the chrism,
which shows that wooden altars also were still made in
that province. In England the change from wood to
stone seems to have taken place ahout the time of the
Norman Conquest, Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, be-
ing mentioned as having introduced it in his diocese.
At the Reformation the altars in the churches were
looked upon as symbols of the old Catholic doctrine, in
those countries where the strtiggle lay between the
Catholic and the “Reformed” or Calvinists, who on this
point went much further than the Lutherans. In Eng-
land the name “altar” was retained in the Communion
Office in English, printed in 1548, and in the complete
English Prayer-book of the following year, known to
students as the first book of Edward. But orders were
given soon after that the altars should be destroyed, and
replaced by movable wooden tables; while from the
revised Prayer-book of 1552 the word “altar” was care-
fully expunged.
The name “altar” has been all along retained in the
Coronation Office of the kings of England, where it
occurs frequently. It was also recognized in the canons
of 1640, and an important change was then made in the
position of the communion tables, which has become
universal throughout the Church of England. In
primitive times the position of the Christian altar seems
to have been such that, like the Jewish and patriarchal
altars, they could be surrounded on all sides by the
worshippers. The chair of the bishop or celebrant was
on the west side, and the assistant clergy were ranged
on each side of him. But in the Middle Ages the altars
were placed against the east wall of the churches, or
else a screen, called a reredos (generally much decorated
with carving), was erected close to the east of the altar,
so as to cut off any one on that side from joining in the
worship, and the celebrant was brought round to the
west side, to stand between the people and the altar;
while there were often curtains on the north and south
sides.
In early times, before the altars were placed close to
the east wall or to a large reredos, they were often sur-
mounted by a canopy or baldacchino, supported by four
pillars rising from the ground just beyond the corners
of the altar. s
At first there was but one altar in a church; but for
many centuries this rule has been disregarded in the
Latin churches, and almost every large church contains
several altars dedicated in honor of different saints, and
sometimes appropriated to the use of particular guilds,
or endowed for a series of masses for the repose of the
founder. These, however, must not be confounded
with the principal altar, called the high altar or, maître
autel, situated towards the east end of the choir or
A. L T — A L U
227
chancel. A few cases occur where there are two high
altars, the second being placed near the west end of the
church.
Altars are “vested” during service; that is, covered
with cloths of various kinds. There is often a frontal,
richly embroidered, whose color depends upon the eccle-
siastical season or the particular festival; but in all cases
the uppermost cloth on the top is of linen, to represent
that in which the body of the Lord was wrapped in the
sepulchre.
Since the age of Bede, portable altars have been used
in the Latin Church; but the East has never adopted
them, and they quite put out of sight the symbolism of
the form of an altar. They consist § of a small
slab of stone, large enough to support the chalice and
paten. This must bear the incised crosses and must
have been consecrated by the bishop. They may be
carried about on a journey by a bishop or priest in a
heathen or heretical country, as now it is not allowed to
say mass except on a duly consecrated, altar, and they
are also used in oratories attached to private houses.
ALTDORF, or ALTor F, a town in Switzerland, cap-
ital of the canton of Uri, situated at the northern end
of the pass of St. Gotthard, near the lake of Lucerne.
Bürglen, a village in the neighborhood, is Tell’s reputed
birthplace. Population, 2,724.
ALTDORFER, ALBRECHT, a painter and engraver
of the early German school, was born at Regensburg,
not later than 1480, and died in 1538. His engravings
on wood and copper are very numerous, and rank next
to those of Albert Dürer.
ALTENBURG, a town in Germany, capital of the
duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, situated near the river Pleisse,
about 24 miles south of Leipsic. There is considerable
traffic in grain and cattle brought from the surrounding
district; twice a year there are large horse fairs; and the
book trade is extensive. Cigars, woollen goods, gloves,
hats, and porcelain are among the chief manufactures.
Population (1871), 19,966.
ALTEN OETTING, or ALTOETTING, a small mar-
ket town in Upper Bavaria, situated on the Mörn, not
far from its junction with the Inn.
ALTENSTEIN, a castle upon a rocky mountain in
Saxe-Meiningen, on the south-western slope of the
Thiringer Wald, not far from Eisenach. It is the
summer residence of the dukes of Meiningen, and
is surrounded by a noble park, which contains,
among other objects of interest, a remarkable un-
derground cavern, 500 feet long, through which flows a
large and rapid stream.
ALTIN, a lake of Siberia, which gives rise to the
Bija, one of the head streams of the Obi, is situated
among the Altai mountains, 320 miles south of the city
of Tomsk.
ALTING, HEINRICII, a German divine, was born at
Embden, in 1583. His father, Menso Alting, was minis-
ter of Embden, and early destined his son to thesame pro-
fession. He studied with great assiduity and success at
the universities of Herborn and Gröningen. In 1608 he
was appointed tutor of Frederick, afterwards elector-pala-
time, at Heidelberg, and in 1612 accompanied him to Eng-
land. Returning in 1613 to Heidelberg after the mar-
riage of the elector with the Princess Elizabeth of Eng-
land, he was appointed professorof theology, and in 1616
director of the Collegium Sapientia. In 1627 Alting
obtained leave from his patron to remove to Gröningen,
where he was appointed to the chair of divinity,
and there he continued to lecture, with increasing rep.
utation, until his death, which took place in 1644.
Alting was a man of great ability and extensive
learning. Among the productions of his pen are:
— Motor in Decadem Problematum Jacobi
Heidelberg, 1618; Scripta Theologica Heidelber-
gensia, Amst. 1662; Exegesis Augustae Confessionis,
Amst. 1647.
ALTING, JACOB, son of the preceding, was born at
Heidelberg in 1618. He studied theology and the
Oriental languages at Gröningen, and in 1638 he put
himself under the tuition of a Jewish rabbi at Embden.
His opinions, which seem to have excited more general
attention than they deserve, may be seen in his writings,
which were collected a few years after his death, and
published in five volumes folio, by his pupil, the well-
known Balthasar Bekker.
ALTON, a town of Hampshire, on the Wey, 17 miles
E. of Winchester, and 47 S.W. of London by road; by
the London and South-Western Railway it is 60 miles
from London.
ALTON, the leading city of Madison county, Ill., is
situated on the Mississippi river 25 miles from St. I ouis,
and 282 miles south of Chicago. The Chicago and
Alton; Chicago, Burlington and Quincy; Indianapolis
and St. Louis; and St. Louis, Alton and Springfield
railroads pass through the city. It also has communica-
tion with Mississippi river points by steamers. It con-
tains two banks, three daily and three weekly news-
papers, thirteen churches, a high school, academy, and
primary schools, a Catholic hospital and convent, four
hotels, public halls, stores, and extensive manufacturing
industries, including organs, plows, miners’ tools, agri-
cultural implements, hardware specialties, etc. A large
military prison was located here during the Civil war.
Population, 15,000.
ALTONA, the richest and most populous city of the
Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, is situated on
the north bank of the Elbe, so close to Hamburg that
the two cities are virtually one. The rise of Altona to
its present position has been rapid, at least for a conti-
mental city, and is mainly due to the fostering care of the
Danish government, who established it as a rival to
Hamburg. In 1640, when it became the property of
Denmark, it was a small fishing village; in 1871 it con-
tained 74, 131 inhabitants. After the war of 1864 it
ceased to belong to Denmark, and eventually became
part of Prussia, although, with Hamburg, it is not
included in the Zollverein.
ALTOONA, a town of the United States, in Blair
County, Pennsylvania, on the Central Railway, 244
miles west of Philadelphia, situated near the eastern base
of the Alleghany Mountain, where the railroad begins to
ascend it. Its situation at this point was the inspiration
of that famous engineering feat, the erection of the
“Horseshoe Bend.” The town is essentially a manu-
facturing community, some of the most extensive ma-
chine works in the world being located here. One of
the largest of these is the locomotive and repair works of
the Pennsylvania railroad, in which over 5,000 men are
employed. The town has ample banking and telegraph
accommodations, churches, and schoois. Several news-
papers are published here. Its growth has been rapid,
the increment of population and wealth being about 100
per cent. in the past ten years. Pop. 1889, 3O,OOO.
ALTO-RILIEVO (high relief), is the term applied
to sculpture that projects from the plane to which it is
attached to the extent of more than one-half the outline
of the principal figures. See RELIEF and Sculp-
TU R.E.
ALTRINGHAM, or ALTRINCHAM, a market town
in the north of Cheshire, 8 miles south of Manchester,
with which it is connected by railway.
ALUM, a compound Salt employed in dyeing and
various other industrial processes. It is soluble in
water, has an astringent, acid, and sweetish taste;
Behm, reddens vegetable blues, and crystallises in regular
228
A L U
octahedrons. When heated, it liquefies; and if the
heat be continued, the , water of crystallisation is
driven off, the Salt frothes and swells, and at last a
white matter remains, known by the name of burnt
alum.
Its constituents are sulphuric acid, alumina, an alkali,
and water. The alkali may be either potash, soda or
anemonia. Hence there are three distinct species of
alum, depending upon the nature of the alkali which
each contains.
The progress made by chemists in the discovery of the
constitution of alum was very slow. The species firstin-
vestigated was potash alum. That it contained sul-
phuvic acid as a constituent was known even to the
alchemists. Pott , and Marggraff demonstrated that
alumina was another constituent. Pott, in his Litho-
geognosia, showed that the earth of alum, or the pre-
cipitate obtained when an alkali is poured into a solu-
tion of alum, is quite different from lime and chalk, with
which it had been confounded by Stahl. Marggraff
went much farther. He not only showed that alumina is
one of the constituents of alum, but that this earth
possesses peculiar properties, is different from every
other substance, and is one of the ingredients in common
clay. Marggraff showed likewise, by many experi-
ments, that crystals of alum cannot be obtained by
dissolving alumina in sulphuric acid, and evaporating
the solutions. The crystals formed are always soft,
and quite different in their appearance from alum
crystals. But when a solution of potash or ammonia is
dropped into this liquid, it immediately deposits perfect
crystals of alum (“Sur la Régénération de l’Alum,”
Marggraff’s Opusc. ii. 86). He mentions likewise that
manufacturers of alum in general were unable to pro-
cure the salt without a similar addition; that at first it
had been customary to add a quantity of putrid urine,
and that afterward a solution of carbonate of potash
was substituted in its place. But subsequent chemists
do not seem to have paid much attention to these im-
portant observations of Marggraff; they still continued,
without any rigid examination, to consider alum as a
sulphate of alumina.
he word alumezz, which we translate alum, occurs
in Pliny’s Matural History. In the 15th chapter of his
35th book he gives us a detailed description of it. By
comparing this with the account of 6 rv7trmpia given by
Dioscorides in the 123rd chapter of his 5th book, it is
obvious that the two are identical. Pliny inſorms us
that alumen was found naturally in the earth. He calls
it sa/sugo terra. Different substances, he informs us,
were distinguished by the names of alumen; but they
were all characterised by a certain degree of astringency,
and were all employed in dyeing and medicine. The
light-colored alumen was useful in brilliant dyes, the
dark-colored only in dyeing black or very dark colors.
One species was a liquid, which was apt to be adulterated;
but when pure it had the property of striking a black
with the juice of the pomegranate. This property seems
to characterise a solution of sulphate of iron in water.
It is quite obvious that a solution of our alum would
possess no such property. Pliny says that there is
another kind of alum which the Greeks call schistos. It
forms in white threads upon the surface of certain
Stones. From the name schistos, and the mode of for-
mation, there can be little doubt that this species was
the Salt which forms spontaneously on certain slaty
minerals, as alum slate and bituminous shale, and which
consists chiefly of sulphate of iron and sulphate of alum-
ina. Possibly in certain places the sulphate of iron may
have been nearly wanting, and then the salt would be
white, and would answer, as Pliny said it did, for dyeing
bright colors. Several other species of alumen are
described by Pliny, but we are unable to make out to.
what mineral he alludes.
The alumen of the ancients, then, was not the same
with the alum of the moderns. It was most commonly
a sulphate of iron, sometimes probably a sulphate of
alumina, and usually a mixture of the two. But the
ancients were unacquainted with our alum. They were
acquainted with Sulphate of iron in a crystallised state,
and distinguished it by the names of misy, sory, chalcan-
thum. As alum and green vitriol were applied to a
variety of purposes in common, and as both are dis-
tinguished by a sweetish and astringent taste, writers,
even after the discovery of alum, do not seem to have
discriminated the two salts accurately from each other.
In the writings of the alchemists we find the words misy,
sory, chalcanthum, applied to alum as well as to sul-
phate of iron; and the name atramentum sutorium,
which ought to belong, one would suppose, exclusively
to green vitriol, applied indifferently to both.
When our alum was discovered is entirely unknown.
Beckmann devoted a good deal of attention to the his-
tory of this salt, and published a curious dissertation on
the subject; but his attempts to trace its origin were un-
successful. The manufacture of it was discovered in the
East, but at what time or place is totally unknown. It
would appear that, about four or five hundred years.
ago, there was a manufactory of it at Edessa in Syria, at
that time called Rocca, hence, it is supposed, the origin.
of the term rock alum, commonly employed in Europe;
though others allege that the term originated at Civita
Vecchia, where alum is made from a yellow mineral
which occurs in the state of a hard rock.
Different alum works existed in the neighborhood of
Constantinople. About the time of the fall of the Gre-
cian empire the art of making alum was transported into
Italy, at that period the richest and most manufacturing
country in Europe.
England possessed no alum works till the reign of
Charles I. Thomas Chaloner, son of Dr. Chaloner, who,
had been tutor to Charles, while hunting on a common
in Yorkshire took notice of the soil and herbage, and
tasted the water.
Sevéral alum works exist in Sweden, particularly in
West Gothland.
Various minerals are employed in the manufacture
of alum, but by far the most important of them are
the following three: alum-stone, alum-slate, bitumin-
ozzy ſhale. -
Alum-stone or Alunite was first observed at Tolfa,
near Rome, in the 15th century, and afterwards in Hum-
gary and several other places, chiefly in trachyte or other
volcanic rocks. It appears to be produced by the action
of sulphureous vapors on the felspars they contain, and
generally occurs in compact, granular, or earthy masses,
mixed with quartz or felspar.
Alum-slate is a far more abundant substance, occur-
ring in bed in different formations. Thus it is common
in the older Palaeozoic or Silurian strata of Scandinavia
and Scotland. Generally it is distinctly slaty, but some-
times forms rounded balls or concretions. It contains.
much carbonaceous matter, and hence its color is greyish
or bluish-black. It has a dull lustre, in soft and sectile.
It contains much disseminated iron pyrites, and on de-
composition in the air yields sulphate of iron, and alum
as an efflorescence on the surface.
Several native varieties of sulphate of alumina and soda
alum occur in South America, some of the most remark-
able of which it may be proper to specify.
I. Sulphate of alumina, or Alunogene, was first
found at Rio Saldanha, but is now obtained from several
places in Europe and America.
2. Soda-alum. It occurs native in the province of
p A L U — A L V
229
St. Juan, situated to the north of Mendoza, on the east
side of the Chilian Andes, at about 30° S. lat. The
alum is white, and composed of fibres adhering longi-
tudinally, and having a certain breadth, but very thin.
When exposed to heat, it behaves very nearly as com-
mon alum.
3. There is a mineral called aluminite, which was
observed in the environs of Halle many years ago, and
which was afterwards detected by Mr. Webster in clay
resting on chalk at Newhaven in Sussex. It consists of
alumina, sulphuric acid, and water.
Four different processes are employed in the manufact-
ure of alum, according to the nature of the mineral from
which the alum is to be extracted.
The process employed at Tolfa is the simplest of all.
If the Tolfa stone be kept constantly moistened with
water for about two months, it falls to powder of itself,
and yields alum by lixiviation. But this is not the pro-
cess employed by the manufacturers. The alum-stone is
broken into small pieces, and piled on the top of a per-
forated dome, in which a wood fire is kindled. The
smoke and flame of the wood penetrate through the
pieces of alum-stone, and a sulphureous odor is disen-
gaged, owing to the decomposition of a portion of the
sulphuric acid in the stone. This roasting is twice per-
formed ; the pieces of ore which the first time were at the
edge of the dome, being the second time put in the mid-
dle. . The process of roasting this stone requires consid-
erable attention. If the heat be too great, the quality
of yielding alum is destroyed ; if the heat be too small,
the stone does not readily fall to powder. There can be
little doubt that the unroasted stone would yield more
alum than the roasted; but probably the additional
labor requisite in the latter case would more than swal-
low up the increase of product.
The roasted stone, which has now acquired a reddish
color, is placed in rows between trenches filled with
water. This liquid is so frequently sprinkled on it that
the stone is always moist. In two or three days it falls
to powder, like slacked quicklime; but the daily water-
ing is continued for a month. The success of this part
of the operation is said to depend very much on the
weather. When the weather is rainy, the alum is all
washed out, and little or nothing left for the manufac-
turer to extract.
When the stone has by this process been reduced to a
sufficiently fine powder, it is thrown into a leaden boiler
filled two thirds with water. During the boiling the
powder is frequently stirred up, and the water that eva-
porates is replaced. When the boiling has been contin-
ued for a sufficient time, the fire is withdrawn, and time
allowed for the earthy matter to subside to the bottom.
A cock is them opened, which allows the clear liquor to
flow out into deep wooden Square vessels, so made that
they can be easily taken to pieces. Here the alum gradu-
ally crystallises, and attaches itself to the sides and bot-
tom of the vessel. The mother liquid is then drawn
off into shallower wooden troughs, where more alum
crystals are deposited. The liquid has now a red color,
and is muddy; and the last alum crystals are mixed with
this red matter. They are washed clean in the mother
liquor, which is finally pumped into a trough, and used
in subsequent processes.
The alum obtained at Tolſa is known by the name of
A’oman alum, and is in very high estimation. It is always
mixed with a little reddish powdery matter, which is
easily separated from it.
In France, where alum ores are by no means abun-
dant, alum is manufactured from clay. This method
of making the salt was first put into practice by Chap-
tal when professor of chemistry at Montpellier. His
methods #: been since gradually improved, and
brought to a state of considerable perfection. The first
process tried was this: The clay was reduced to a fine pow-
der in a mill, and then mixed with sulphuric acid. After
remaining Some days, it was exposed for 24 hours to a tem-
perature of about 130°. It was then lixiviated, and the
liquid mixed with urine or potash. This method being
found inconvenient, was abandoned for the following: —
The clay being well ground, was mixed with half its
weight of the saline residue from a mixture of sulphur
and nitre. This residue is little else than sulphate of
potash. The mixture was formed into balls about 5
inches in diameter, which were calcined in a potter's
furnace. They were then placed on the floor of a
chamber in which sulphuric acid was made. The acid
vapor caused them to swell, and to open on all sides.
In about a month they were sufficiently penetrated with
the acid. They were then exposed to the air, under
shades, that the saturation might become more complete.
Finally they were lixiviated, and the liquid being evapo.
rated, yielded pure alum.
For chemical constitution and relations of the alums,
See any standard work on chemistry.
ALUMBAGH, the name of a large park or walled
enclosure, containing a palace, a mosque, and other
buildings, as well as a beautiful garden, situated about 4
miles from Lucknow, near the Cawnpore road. See
LUCKNow.
ALUMINIUM, a metallic substance, first separated
from the chloride by Wöhler in 1828. It remained a
laboratory product until Deville, about 1858, succeeded
in improving the mode of production, so as to render
the operations capable of management on the manufac-
turing Scale.
Aluminium is a white metal resembling silver in
appearance. It is very malleable and ductile, and may
be beaten and rolled into thin sheets, or drawn into fine
wire. By hammering in the cold it becomes as hard as
soft iron, but may be softened again by fusion. Being
highly sonorous, it has been used for making bells. It
is very light, being only 2% times heavier than water,
and is thus four times lighter than silver. After fusion
it has a specific gravity of 2:56; by hammering this may
be increased to 2-67. It melts at a red heat, and is non-
volatile at very high temperatures. The metal conducts
heat and electricity as well as silver. Aluminium does
not oxidise in air, even at a red heat, has no action on
water at ordinary temperatures, and is not acted upon
by sulphuretted hydrogen or sulphide of ammonium,
and thus preserves its lustre where silver would be tar.
nished and blackened. It is not attacked by nitric acid,
even when concentrated, and is not soluble in dilute
sulphuric acid, but is readily soluble in dilute or con-
centrated hydrochloric acid with evolution of hydrogen.
ALUTA, an affluent of the Danube. See ALT.
ALVA, a village in Sterlingshire, Scotland, situated as
the foot of Craigleith, one of the Ochil range, 7 milet
N.E. of Stirling, with which it is connected by railway.
ALVA, or ALBA, FERNANDO ALVAREZ DE TOLEDo,
Duke of, born in 1508, was descended from one of the
most illustrious families in Spain. His grandfather.
Ferdinand of Toledo, educated him in military science
and politics; and he was engaged with distinction at the
battle of Pavia while still a youth. Selected for a mili-
tary command by Charles V., he took part in the siege
of Tunis (1535), and successfully defended Perpignan
against the Dauphin of France. . He was present at the
battle of Mühlberg (1547), and the victory gained there
over John of Saxony was due mainly to his exertions.
In 1567, Philip, who was a bigoted Catholic, sent Alva
into the Netherlands at the head of an army of Io,000
men, with unlimited powers for the extirpation of
heretics. When he arrived he soon showed how much
23O
A M A.
A L V —
he merited the confidence which his master reposed in
him, and instantly erected a tribunal which soon became
known to its victims as the “Court of Blood,” to try all
persons who had been engaged in the late commotions
which the civil and religious tyranny of Philip had
excited. . He imprisoned the counts D'Egmont and
Horn, the tyvo popular leaders of the Protestants,
brought them to an unjust trial, and condemned them to
death. In a short time he totally annihilated every
privilege of the people, and, with unrelenting cruelty,
put multitudes of them to death. The executioner was
employed in removing all those friends of freedom whom
the sword had spared. The exiles from the Low
Countries, roused to action by his oppression, fitted out
a fleet of privateers, and after strengthening themselves
by successful depredations, ventured upon the bold
exploit of seizing the town of Breil. Thus Alva, by his
cruelty, became the unwitting instrument of the future
independence of the seven Dutch provinces. The fleet
of , the exiles having met the Spanish fleet, totally
defeated it, and reduced North Holland and Mons.
Many cities hastened to throw off the yoke; while the
States-General, assembling at Dordrecht, openly declared
against Alva's government, and marshalled under the
banners of the Prince of Orange. Alva's preparations
to oppose the gathering storm were made with his usual
vigor, and he succeeded in recovering Mons, Mechlin,
and Zutphen, under the conduct of his son Frederick.
With the exception of Zealand and Holland, he regained
all the provinces; and at last his son stormed Waerdan,
and massacring its inhabitants, proceeded to invest the
city of Haarlem, which, after standing an obstinate
siege, was taken and pillaged. Their next attack was
upon Alkmaar; but the spirit of desperate resistance
was raised to such a height in the breasts of the Hol-
landers that the Spanish veterans were repulsed with
great loss, and Frederick constrained reluctantly to retire.
On his return he was treated for some time with great
distinction by Philip. In 1581 Alva entered Portugal,
defeated Antonio, drove him from the kingdom, and
soon reduced the whole under the subjection of Philip.
Entering Lisbon, he seized an immense treasure, and
suffered his soldiers, with their accustomed violence and
rapacity, to sack the suburbs and vicinity. It is reported
that Alva, being requested to give an account of the
money expended on that occasion, sternly replied, “If
the king asks me for an account, I will make him a
statement of kingdoms preserved or conquered, of signal
victories, of successful sieges, and of sixty years’ service.”
Philip deemed it proper to make no further inquiries.
Alva, however, did not enjoy the honors and rewards of
his last expedition, for he died in January 1583, at the
age of 74. ,
ALVARADO, PEDRO DE, one of the Spanish lead-
ers in the discovery and conquest of America, was born
at Badajoz about 1495. He held a command in the ex-
pedition sent from Cuba against Yucatan in the spring
of 1518, and returned in a few months, bearing reports
of the wealth and splendor of Montezuma's empire.
During a visit to Spain, three years later, he had the
governorship of Honduras conferred upon him in addi-
tion to that of Guatemala. He died in Guatemala in
I54 I.
ALVAREZ, FRANCIsco, born at Coimbra after 1460,
a priest and almoner to Dom Manuel, king of Portugal,
was sent in 1515 as secretary to Duarte Galvão, on an
embassy to David, king of Abyssinia. The precise date
of his death, like that of his birth, is unknown; but it
must have been later than 1540, in which year he pub-
lished at Lisbon, under the king's patronage, an account
of his travels, in one volume ſolio, entitled Verdadeira
Informacam do Preste §oas das Indias.
ALVAREZ, DON José, the foremost Spanish sculp-
tor of modern times, was born in Priego, in the prov-
ince of Cordova, in 1768, and died at Madrid in 1827.
Bred to his father’s trade of a stone-mason, he devoted
all his spare time to drawing and modelling. In his
twentieth year he became a pupil of the Academy of
Granada. The most important of his numerous works,
executed during this period, was a group representing
Antilochus and Memnon, which was commissioned in
marble (1818) by Ferdinand VII., and secured for the
artist the appointment of court sculptor. It is now in
the Museum of Madrid.
ALV AREZ, DON MANUEL, a Spanish sculptor, was
born at Salamanca in 1727, and died in 1797. His
works, which are very numerous, are chiefly to be found
at Madrid. -
ALWAR, a semi-independent state of Rájputáná,
and under the control of the Governor-General’s agent.
Rájputáná, is bounded on the E. by the state of Bhart-
pur and the British district of Gurgãon, on the N. by
Gurgãon district and the states of Pátiálá and Nábhá,
on the W. by the states of Nábhá and Jaipur, and
on the S. by the states of Jaipur and Bhartpur. Its
configuration is irregular, the greatest length from north
to south being about 8o miles, and breadth from east to
west about 60 miles, with a total area of about 3000
Square miles. The total population of the state, as
ascertained by a census taken in 1882, was 778,596, con-
sisting of 598,333 Hindus, 18O,225 Mahometans, and 38.
Christians.
ALYPIUS, one of the seven Greek writers on music
whose works are collected and published, with a com-
mentary and explanatory notes, by Meibomius (Antigua
Musica, Auctores Septem, Amstel., 1652). The time in
which he flourished cannot be precisely ascertained. He
is said to have written before Euclid and Ptolemy ; and
Cassiodorus arranges his work, entitled Zntroduction to
AZusic, between those of Nicomachus and Gaudentius.
ALYPIUS OF ANTIOCH, a geographer of the 4th
century, who was sent by the Emperor Julian into
Britain as prefect, and was afterwards commissioned to
rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. Among the letters of
Julian are two (29 and 30) addressed to Alypius ; one
inviting him to Rome, the other thanking him for a geo-
graphical treatise, which no longer exists.
ALYTH, a town on the eastern borders of Perthshire,
in a parish of the same name, situated in the valley of
Strathmore, 13 miles west of Forfar. Pop. 3, IOO.
AMADEUS V., surnamed the Great, Count of
Savoy, was born at Bourget in 1249, and succeeded his
uncle Philip in 1285. The cautious prudence of Amadeus
enabled him greatly to increase his territory by means of
marriage, purchase, and donations. He gradually rose
to such eminence among the European powers, that he
was constituted their umpire to settle their differences—
an office which he performed with much reputation to
himself and advantage to them. In 1310 he was created
a prince of the empire by Henry VII. Amadeus under-
took a journey to Avignon to persuade Pope John XXII.
to preach a crusade in favor of Andronicos. He died
there in the year 1323.
AMADEUS VIII., Count and first Duke of Savoy,
and latterly pope or anti-pope, under the name of Felix
V., was born at Chambery in 1383, and succeeded his
father, Amadeus VII., in 1391. Having, by purchase
or otherwise, added large territories to his patrimonial
possessions, he became so powerful that the Emperor
Sigismund erected Savoy into a duchy in 1416; and after
his elevation Amadeus added Piedmont and other pro-
vinces to his dominions. After this increase of rank
and of territory he suddenly, in 1434, retired to a mon-
astery at Ripaille. Amadeus died at Geneva in 1451.
A M A.
23 I
AMADIS OF GAUL. The best edition for English
readers of this famous work is to be found in the abridged
translation of Southey, and the best account of it is to
be found in his preface, which, however, is not void of
error. Here, for example, is its final sentence:—“Ama-
dis of Gaul is among prose what Orlando Furioso is
among metrical romances—not the oldest of its kind,
but the best.” When the licentiate and the barber
burnt the library of Don Quixote, they spared from the
flames only three romances—Amadis of Gaul, Pal-
zneriſt of Æmg/and, and 7'iramate the White. “I have
heard,” said the licentiate, “that Amadis of Gaul was
the first book of chivalry printed in Spain, and that all
the rest sprung from it; I think, therefore, as head of so
pernicious a sect, we ought to condemn him to the fire
without mercy.” “Not so, sir,” said the barber, “for I
have heard also that it is the best of all the books of
this kind; and therefore—as being unequalled in its way
—it ought to be spared.” “You are right,” said the
priest, “and for that reason its life is granted.” Southey
thinks that the work, as it left the hands of Lobeira,
ended in the fourth book with the marriage of Amadis
and Oriana, and that all which follows is due to the taste-
less accretions of Montalus. Although this is mere con-
jecture, still it is natural that we should attach no little
force to the correct feeling of Southey. For the story
itself, it is impossible to give a summary of it—the plot
being too disconnected; but he who has read one such
tale, or even a few chapters of one, may have a general
impression of all—hacking and hewing in every page,
knights always at war and seeking adventures, giants in
the path, lions in the forest, damsels in durance, castles
to be attacked, wizards and witches with hate in their
hearts, kings everywhere plentiful as blackberries, and
lovely ladies abounding intenderness. The sentiment of
the work is very noble, and some of the descriptions are
full of fire; but the reader owes more than he is aware
to the curtailments of Southey,
AMADOU (Polyporus fomentarius), a fungus that
grows upon old trees, especially the oak, ash, fir and
cherry. When beaten soft it is used as a styptic for
slight haemorrhage, and as material for surgical pads.
AMAGER, or AMAK, a small island belonging to
Denmark, lying in the Sound, close to the east coast of
Seeland. Population about 9,000, exclusive of the in-
habitants of Christianshafen. The other towns are
Dragoe and Castrup.
AMALASONTHA, or AMALASUENTHA, daughter
of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, was born about
498 A.D. In 515 she married Eutharic, the last repre-
sentative of the Amalia family, who died (524–5), leav-
ing an only son, Athalaric. The latter was designated
by his grand-father Theodoric as the heir to the throne,
and Amalasontha was appointed his guardian. On the
death of Theodoric in 526, Amalasontha became regent,
and endeavored by a wise and vigorous administration
to carry on the work of civilization and enlightenment
which her father had commenced. She devoted herself
with special solicitude to the education of Athalaric, but
her efforts were frustrated by the opposition of the
Gothic nobles. Encouraged by them, the young heir to
the throme threw off the restraints imposed by his
mother, plunged into debauchery, and died at the age
of sixteen (534). In the same year Amalasontha mar-
ried her cousin Theodahadus, and made him co-regent
with herself. A few months later (April 535) she was
assassinated by order of her husbandon an island on Lake
Bolsena.
AMALEKITES, an ancient people, widely spread
throughout the country lying on the south and east of
Palestine, often mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures, and
celebrated also in Arabian tradition. In Scripture they
{{
occur first in Gen. xiv. 7, occupying the territory around
Kadesh, and suffering from the invasion of Chedorlao-
mer and his confederates. They appear next assaulting
the Israelites, shortly after the exodus from Egypt, at
Rephidim, in the neighborhood of Mount Sinai. In
the time of the judges they are found associated with the
Moabites, the Ammonites, the Midianites, and “the
children of the east,” in repeated attacks upon the
Israelites, invading their territory from the eastern side
of Jordan. Saul, by divine command, led an expedi-
tion into the country of Amalek, waging against them
an exterminating war, “smiting them from Havilah
until thou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt.”
Josephus agrees with Scripture in assigning to the
Amalekites the territory immediately to the south of
Palestine. Thus he speaks of them as inhabiting
“Gobolitis and Petra.” The country which they are
thus represented as occupying is suited only to a nomadic
population; and accordingly the indications of the
Scripture narrative point to this as the general character
of the Amalekite people. *
AMALFI, a town of Italy, in the Principato Citeriore,
situated at the entrance of a deep ravine on the north
side of the Gulf of Salerno. It was founded, according
to the common account, under Constantine the Great,
and was one of the first cities to recover from the irrup-
tion of the barbarians into Italy. During the IOth and
11th centuries it was an independent republic of great
commercial importance, with a trade which extended to
Egypt and the east, and a population of 50,000. Flavia
Gioja, to whom the invention of the mariner's com-
pass has been ascribed, and Masoniello were born in
Amalfi.
AMALGAM, the name given to an alloy of mercury
and another metal. The Amalgams are a very numerous
class of compounds, and many of them are used largely
in the arts. Many amalgams are produced by direct
contact of the metals, with evolution of heat. Others
are obtained by the action of the mercury on the salt of
the metal, or the action of the metal on a Salt of mer-
cury; assisted by the passage of a weak electric current
in some cases. Some amalgams are solid, others liquid.
See MERCURY and CHEMISTRY.
AMALIA, ANNA, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, was
born at Wolfenbüttel on the 24th of October 1739, and
married Duke Ernest of Saxe-Weimar in 1756. Her
husband died in 1758, leaving her regent for their
infant son, Karl August. She died on the IOth April
1807. A memorial of the duchess is included in Goethe's
works under the title Zuma Azzdenken der Färstin Anna-
Azza/za.
AMALRIC or AMAURI or BENA, so called from his
birthplace, a small village in the diocese of Chartres,
was the founder of a school of pantheists known by his
name. He lectured at Paris about the year 1200, and
attracted a large circle of hearers. In 1204 his doc-
trimes were condemned by the university; and on a per-
sonal appeal to Pope Innocent III, the sentence was
ratified, Amalric being ordered to return to Paris and
recant his errors. This he did in I2O7. His death, two
years later, was caused, it is said, by grief at the humilia-
tion to which he had been subjected. In the same year
(1209) ten of his followers were burnt before the gates
of Paris, and Amalric's own body was exhumed and
burnt, and the ashes given to the winds. The doctrines
of the Amalricians were formally condemned by the
fourth Lateran Council in I2 I5.
AMALTEO, the name of a family belonging to
Oderzo, Treviso, several members of which were dis-
tinguished in literature. The best known are three
brothers, Geronimo (1507-74), Giambattista (1525–73),
and Cornelio (1539–1603), whose Latin poems were
232
A M A
published in one collection under the title Zºrium Fra-
trzem Amza/t/teorztyn Carmizza.
AMALTEO, POMPONIo, a painter of the Venetian
school, was born at San Vito in Friuli in 1505, and died
in 1584. His works consist chiefly of frescoes and altar-
pieces, and many of them have suffered greatly from the
ravages of time. -
AMARA SINHA, a Sanscrit grammarian and poet,
of whose personal history hardly anything is known.
He is said to have been “one of the nine gems that
adorned the throne of Vikaramaditya,” and accordingly
to have flourished about 56 B.C. Amara seems to have
been a Buddhist; and an early tradition asserts that his
works, with one exception, were destroyed during the
persecution carried on by the orthodox Brahmins in the
fifth century. The exception is the celebrated Amara-
A osha (Treasury of Amara), a vocabulary of Sanscrit
roots, in three books, hence sometimes called Trikanda,
or the “Tripartite.” It contains Io,000 words, and is
arranged, like other works of its class, in metre, to
aid the memory.
AMARANTH, or AMARANT (from the Greek aud-
pav Pos, unwithering), a name chiefly used in poetry, and
applied to certain plants which, from not soon fading,
typified immortality.
AMARAPURA, literally “the City of the Gods,” a
town of independent Burmah, situated on the east bank
of the Irawadi river. The town was founded in 1783,
and made the capital of the Burmese kingdom.
AMASIA, or AMASIAYAH, a town in Anatolia, Tur-
key, situated on both sides of the Yeshil-Irmak, or Iris,
in a narrow gorge about 80 miles from the mouth of the
river. The chief productions of Amasia and the sur-
rounding districts are silk, salt, wheat, wine, and cotton.
Population of the town, 25,000.
AMASIS, King of Egypt, ascended the throne 569
B. C. From the rank of a common soldier he gradually
rose to be one of the principal officers in the court of
A pries, the last king of the line of Psammetichus. Be-
ing commissioned by Apries to quell an insurrection, he
went over to the rebels, who proclaimed him king.
Apries, whose tyranny had caused nearly all his subjects
to desert him, took the field with an army of mercenaries,
and meeting Amasis near Memphis, was defeated and
taken prisoner. The usurper treated the captive prince
with great lenity; but so violent was the popular hatred,
that he was compelled to deliver him into the hands of
his enraged countrymen, who instantly put him to
death by strangling. Under the prudent administra-
tion of Amasis, Egypt enjoyed the greatest prosperity.
The close of his reign was disturbed by the threatened
invasion of Cambyses, king of Persia, and by the rupt-
ure of the alliance between Amasis and Polycrates of
Samos. (See Poly CRATES.) Amasis, however, did not
live to see the conquest of Egypt, for he died in 525,
before the Persians had entered the country.
AMAT, FELIX, a Spanish ecclesiastical historian, was
born at Sabadell, in the diocese of Barcelona, Ioth Aug-
ust 1750. He died in a Franciscan convent near Salent
on 28th September 1824. Amat's chief work is his
Acclesiastical Aſistory, from the birth of Christ to the
end of the 18th century, originally published in twelve
volumes (1793–1803). It was condemned by the Inqui-
sition, but rather on political than on religious grounds.
His other works are numerous, the most important
being his Observations on AEcclesiastical Pozger and his
..Six Zetters to Zºenicus, in which he attacked the theory
that consent of the subjects is the necessary foundation of
sovereignty. , Amat, was a man of gigantic stature,
being, it is said, at the age of seventeen, 7 feet 2 inches
in height.
AMATI, the name of a family of violin-makers who
flourished at Cremona from about 1550 to 1692. Ac-
cording to Fétis, Andrea and Nicolo Amati, two broth-
ers, were the first Italians who made violins. They were
succeeded by Antonio and Geronimo, sons of Nicolo.
Another Nicolo, son of Geronimo, was alive in 1692.
The violins made by this family are distinguished by
their small size, exquisite finish, and the mathematical
proportion of the parts. Their tone is soft and sweet,
but deficient in intensity, owing to the flatness of their
model. Stradivari was a pupil of the Amatis.
AMATITLAN, the name of a lake and town in
Guatemala, Central America. The lake is 18 miles from
the city of Guatemala, and is about 9 miles long and 3
broad. Population of town, Io,000, chiefly mulattoes
and Samboes.
AMAUROSIS, a deprivation of sight. The term is
now limited chiefly to those forms of defect or loss of
vision which are caused by diseases not directly involving
the eye, although sooner or later the optic nerve under.
goes changes recognisable by the ophthalmoscope. Some-
times the amaurosis is temporary, disappearing with the
removal of the disease with which it is associated; but
in many cases, more especially where the brain and spinal
cord are affected, the amaurosis remains permanent.
AMAXICHI, a seaport town on the N. of the Ion-
ian island of Santa Maura. It is the capital of the
island, and the residence of a Greek archbishop.
AMAZON, MARANON, ORELLANA, or SOLIMOENS,
a river of South America, the largest in the world. Its
head stream is either the Ucayale or Apurimac, which
rises in Peru or the more northerly Marañon, also
called Tunguragua, which flows from Lake Lauricocha.
The former is the larger river, but the latter has perhaps
thc weight of authority in its favor. The Marañon
flows in a north-westerly direction, parallel to the Uca-
yale, as far as 6° S. lat., when it bends to the north-east,
and, on reaching the frontiers of Equador, turns almost
due east. It thence forms the boundary between Ecua-
dor and Peru, with an easterly direction, until it joins
the Ucayale. The united river continues to separate
Ecuador and Peru as long as these countries are conter-
minous, and thereafter strikes through Brazil, the gen-
eral direction being north-north-east. It finally dis-
charges itself into the Atlantic under the equator. From
the source of the Apurímac to the ocean this mighty
river has a length, including windings, of nearly 40CO
miles. The breadth of the river, of course, varies at
different points. At some distance below Jean, on the
Marañon, it was found to be 860 feet wide ; at a pass
called the Pongo de Manseriche its bed is suddenly con-
tracted from 25o to 25 fathoms, being enclosed on either
side by rocks, which rise like perpendicular walls to a
great height; at the junction with the Napo its breadth
has increased to 90o fathoms. Between the Negro and
the Madeira it has the breadth of a league, which extends
to two leagues at those parts where islands abound; but
during the annual rise of the water it covers a great part
of the adjacent country, and has then no determinate
limits. The main mouth is about 50 miles wide above
the island of Caviana, but the whole delta, including the
Para mouth and the island of Joannes, is nearly 200
miles from shore to shore. The depth of the Amazon
in some parts exceeds 50 fathoms, and the river is navi-
gable for vessels of the largest size up to the confluence
of the Marañon and the Ucayale. The velocity of the
water above San Borja so greatly, exceeds the average
(which is about 2% miles an hour), that navigation be-
comes difficult, and among the rapids is impossible, even
to CanCeS. .”
AMAZONS, a race of women represented in Greek
legend as having lived in the north-east of Asia Minor,
near the shore of the Black Sea, and as having there
A M B .
233
formed an independent state, with a queen at its head,
and with a mythical town of Themiscyra, on the river
Thermodon, as its capital. From this centre they made
warlike excursions, sometimes northward, but chiefly
against the people on the coast of Asia Minor. From
the traditions that to repel and conquer them was
assigned as a task to Bellerophon by the King of Lycia,
and again to Hercules by Eurystheus, it may be inferred
that they were regarded by the Greeks at least as a per-
manent source of danger. But equally, if the task of
conquering them is to be strictly compared with the
other tasks in which these heroes were generally opposed
to monsters and beings impossible in themselves, but
possible as illustrations of permanent danger and damage,
it would follow that the Amazons were mythical
illustrations of the dangers which beset the Greeks on
the coast of Asia Minor. Their impossibility as actual
beings is further recognised in works of art, in which
combats between them and Greeks are placed on the same
level as, and often associated with, combats of Greeks
and centaurs. The belief in the existence of the
Amazons, however, having been once accepted and
introduced into the national poetry and art, it became
necessary to surround them as far as possible with the
appearance of not unnatural beings. Their occupation
was hunting and war; their arms the bow, spear, axe,
a half shield, nearly in the shape of a crescent, called
Ae//a, and in early art a helmet, the model before the
Greek mind having apparently been the goddess Athene
(Minerva). In later art they approach the model of
Artemis (Diana), wearing a thin dress, girt high for
speed ; while on the later painted vases their dress is
often peculiarly Persian — that is, close-fitting trousers,
and a high cap called the Aidaris. They fought partly
on foot, partly on horseback, and always without
quarter ; SO that the epithet of oiorpata, was applied to
them. To maintain their stock, annual visits were paid
to the neighboring peoples; and when, in consequence
of this, children were born, the males were either sent
over the borders or retained and brought up crippled,
and in the condition of slaves, while the female children
were assiduously trained to hunting and war.
AMBALA, a division, district, and city of British
India, under the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant-Governor
of the Panjāb. *
AMBALĀ DISTRICT stretches N.W. and S.E. along
the lower face of the Himálayas. It is bounded on the
N. E. by the Himálayas, on the N.W. by the river
Satlej, on the S.E. by the river Jamná, and on the S. W.
by the district of Ludhianá, the state of Patiãlá, and the
district of Karnāl. The total area of the district is
2628 miles, or 1,681,930 acres, of which 945,526 acres
are cultivated, 283,989 acres are cultivable, but not
actually under tillage, and 452,415 acres are uncultivable
and waste. The total population of the district, ac-
cording to the census of 1868, amounts to 1,035,488
souls, divided into the following classes : — Hindus,
689,333; Mahometans, 286,874; Sikhs, 56,440; others,
284 I.
AMBALĀ CITY, the capital of the district of the same
name, forms a large and important station on the Sind,
Panjāb, and Dehli railway.
AMBARVALIA, or AMBAvALE SACRUM (ambio and
arzum, to go round the field), an annual festival cele-
brated in ancient Rome on three days during the month
of May. The private ambarzalla is to be distinguished
from the sacrificium deae dia, celebrated by the twelve
fratres arvales, though the two festivals were coincident
in point of time and had a common object, namely, to
obtain from the gods a favorable harvest. The Christian
festival that seems to have taken the place of the
ambarzalia is the Rogation or Gang Week of the
Roman Catholic Church, for which the perambulation
of the parish boundaries was substituted at the Reform-
ation.
AMBASSADOR, a word introduced into the
English language from Fr. ambassadeur, the Ital.
ambasciatore, or the Span. ambaxador, which Wicque-
ſort derives, perhaps without sufficient authority, from
the Span. embiar, to send. The word denotes a public
minister of the highest rank, accredited and sent by the
head of a sovereign state to a foreign court or country,
with power to represent the person of the sovereign by
whom he is sent, to negotiate with a foreign govern-
ment, and to watch over the interests of his own nation
abroad. The power thus conferred is contained in the
credentials or letters of credence of which the ambassador
is the bearer, and in the instructions under the sign-
manual delivered to himself. The credentials consist in
a sealed letter addressed by the sovereign in person whose
representative he is, to the sovereign to whom he is sent,
and they contain a general assurance that the Sover-
eign by whom he is dispatched will approve and
confirm whatever is done by the ambassador in his
Iłall le. {
Diplomatic envoys are of three ranks, as was finally
determined by a common agreement of all the powers
which was annexed to the final act of the treaty of
Vienna in 1815: — 1. Ambassadors; the ambassador
of the pope being called a nuncio, and the ambassador
of the Emperor of Austria to the Sublime Porte being
called his inter-nuncio. These only have representative
rank. 2. Envoys extraordinary or ministers plenipo-
tentiary, accredited to sovereigns (auprés des souve-
rains). 3. Chargés d'affaires, who are only entitled to
transact business with the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
We shall confine ourselves in this article to the diplo-
matic officers of the first rank. The Queen of England
has embassies at Paris, Constantinople, Vienna, St. Pe-
tersburg, and Berlin. The number of British ministers
plenipotentiary are twenty-three, and three chargés
d'affaires; but these numbers vary. The United States
Government sends out no ambassadors, their diplomatic
agents being confined to the rank of ministers plenipo-
tentiary and chargés d'affaires. The ministers are recipi-
ents of all courtesies due to accredited representatives of
the government, while at the same time the government
to whom they are sent has the right of rejection, as was
recently done by Italy in the case of Mr. Keiley.
From the 15th century, when the practice of sending
resident embassies may be said to have commenced in
Europe, down to the close of the 18th century, these
missions were surrounded with a prodigious amount of
splendor, ceremonial, and ostentatious dignity. British
ambassadors were commonly sent out till within the last
thirty years in ships of war. The ambassador repre-
sented a monarch, and was to play the part of one.
The memoirs of those ages are full of the magnificence
and profuse display which marked their progress —
lacqueys, liveries, state coaches, led horses, and all the
pageantry of state. Fierce disputes frequently arose
between rival ambassadors for precedence; sometimes
these disputes even extended to the courts and ministers
to whom these envoys were dispatched as messengers of
peace, and a vast deal of time was lost (especially at the
Congress of Münster) in adjusting them. On the part
of the sovereign to whom they were to present their
credentials the same display was made. The ambassador
had the right to stand covered in the presence of royalty.
At Venice the doge placed Sir Harry Vane, covered and
seated, on his right hand in the Council of Ten. A
speech was then delivered, in which the ambassador
declared the friendly sentiments of his own sovereign,
and his own humble desire to give effect to them.
234
*s.
A M B
Modern simplicity and the facility of intercourse has
swept away many of these formalities. Traces of them
survive at the courts of Berlin and Vienna, but else-
where an ambassador is presented with little more than
the customary ceremony of a court. It has long been
held that every state is at liberty to receive ambassadors
with or without ceremony, just as it pleases, provided
they are all treated alike.
Every state or sovereign has the right, if it thinks fit,
to refuse to receive a particular person as an ambassador,
or even to receive any ambassador at all. It is there-
fore customary to ascertain beforehand whether the
person designated for an embassy is favorably regarded
and will be well received. There have been instances,
not very remote, of unfavorable answers or refusals to
receive given individuals.
The rank of an ambassador, as regards the society of
the nation to which he is accredited, places him immedi-
ately after the princes of the blood royal, because he
represents a Sovereign power, and this rank is univer-
sally conceded to him.
The first right of an ambassador is that of personal
audience of the sovereign. His credentials must invari-
ably be presented to the sovereign in person, and he may
ask for an audience on any fitting occasion. In England,
however, the Sovereign does not officially receive an
ambassador except in the presence of one or more of
the ministers of the crown.
In all ages the perfect personal security of persons
invested with high diplomatic functions, as the repre-
sentatives of a foreign power, has been an essential and
fundamental principle of the law of nations. Indeed it
was the law of nations when there was no other. Alex-
ander the Great destroyed Tyre for an insult offered to his
ambassador; and it stands recorded in the Roman law,
“Si quis legatum hostium pulsasset, contra jus gentium
id commissum esse existimatur, quia sancti habentur
Zegati.” In moments of excessive excitement or revolu-
tionary frenzy even this principle has been violated, as in
the murder of Dr. Dorislaus at the Hague (1649), and
of the French envoys at Rastadt (1799); but such
acts leave an indelible disgrace on those who have com-
mitted them. To secure this immunity from all inter-
ference, an accredited ambassador or envoy is wholly
free from the jurisdiction of the courts of law, or of any
other authority in the country in which he is sent to
reside. This constitutes the doctrine of extraterritori-
ality. His house is as sacred as his person. It is sup-
posed, like a º at Sea, to form a part of the territory
represented by the flag which he may hoist over it. All
the members of the embassy, and even the servants of
the ambassador, share the same inviolability. They can-
not even be arrested and prosecuted for offenses without
his consent.
An ambassador or envoy pays no taxes or contribu-
tions to the public revenue of the country in which he
resides, and on this principle he is entitled to receive
commodities from abroad free of custom duties. But
he is not exempted from the payment of local rates, –
though, indeed, if he were to decline to pay them, no
process could issue against him for the purpose of levy-
ing them. He also pays the ordinary rates of postage,
but he has the privilege of sending his own couriers car.
rying sealed despatches, which exempts him from the
monopoly of the post office. These couriers, and their
despatches or mails, are also regarded by common con-
sent as inviolable messengers, unless they chance in time
of war to fall into the hands of a hostile belligerent.
In some countries ambassadors and their couriers have
been allowed to have a prior claim for post horses over
private travellers. *
Another of the important privileges of an ambassador
or envoy is the free exercise of the religion or form of
worship to which he adheres; but it is laid down by the
best writers on the subject that a foreign minister has not
the right of maintaining a chapel or chaplain within his
hotel, under the law of nations; hence the liberty of
religious worship for the ambassador and his suite was
made a matter of treaty engagement between Catholics
and Protestants, and between Christian and Mussulmans.
We now pass to the duties of an ambassador, and we
place at the head of them that of keeping his own
sovereign well informed of all that may concern his
interests in foreign countries. He is the eye of the
government he serves, specially directed to a particular
spot, and he ought to be thoroughly acquainted with the
course of policy, the movements of parties, the character
and disposition of individual statesmen, and the material
and commercial resources of the country in which he
resides. His public despatches, and his private corre-
spondence with the Minister of Foreign Affairs under
whom he serves, ought to be a record of all that can
interest or concern the state which he represents. In
this sense the diplomatic reports of the ambassadors of
former times are invaluable materials for history. His
next duty is to protect and defend, if necessary, the
persons and interests of his fellow-countrymen abroad;
and this is of especial moment in the case of a British
ambassador, whose countrymen are to be met with as
travellers, navigators, or merchants in all parts of the
globe. To them the presence and influence of the
diplomatic representatives of the country is of incalculable
value, and nothing can be more ill-judged than the
proposals that have been made to cut down and contract
our foreign embassies and missions. A third, but not
less important, duty of an ambassador is to maintain the
most amicable relations with the sovereign to whom he
is accredited, and with his ministers, and to observe
towards them the strictest respect, veracity and good-will.
It has been said in joke that the first duty of an ambas-
sador is to keep a good cook; but if this implies that he
is to exercise a liberal hospitality and to make his house
agreeable, those no doubt are means which may power-
fully assist him in the objects of his mission. The first,
perhaps we ought to say the sole duty, of an ambassador
is to protect his own national interests and to promote
the most friendly relations with the sovereign to whom
he is accredited ; and experience has proved that these
objects are best secured by confining himself to the
principal objects of his mission, and by relying on no
arts but those of sincerity, forbearance, and truth.
AMBATO, or ASIENTO D’AMBATO, a town of Ecua-
dor, on the northern slope of Chimborazo, about 65
miles south of Quinto, 8859 feet above the sea.
AMBER (Lat. Succi num, AE/ectrum; Fr. Succin,
Ambre; Ger. Berustein) is a hard, brittle substance
with a resinous lustre, sometimes found perſectly trans-
parent, but more usually of varying degrees of trans-
lucency, , and possessing a prevailing yellow color,
passing from a pale straw tint to a deep orange. It
occurs in irregular masses, and has neither taste nor, at
ordinary temperatures, odor. It developes electrical
phenomena by friction, a property which doubtless
early drew attention to amber, and invested it with the
romantic interest which attached to it in ancient times.
The popular regard for the substance among the nations
of antiquity was further, maintained by the fabulous
tales of the manner in which amber was formed and the
mystery connected with its occurrence. º
The earliest notice of amber we find occurs in the
Odyssey of Homer, where in the list of jewels offered
by Phoenician traders to the Queen of Syra occurs
“the gold necklace hung with bits of amber” (Qd.
xv. 640). Thales of Miletus, 600 B.C., noticed that
A M B
235.
amber when rubbed attracted light bodies, and that
remote and simple observation is the foundation of the
modern science of electricity. Among the Greek
fables purporting to account for the origin of amber,
it is narrated that the Heliadae, on seeing their brother
Phaethon hurled by the lightning of Jove into the
Eridanus, were by the pitying gods transformed into
poplar trees, and the tears they shed were dropped as
amber on the shores of the river.
The great source of supply of amber in all ages ap-
pears to have been the Baltic coasts, from which the
supplies of commerce still continue to be drawn.
During the reign of Nero an expedition was sent from
Rome to explore the amber-producing country, and so
successful was the party that a present of 13, ooo ſb. of
amber was brought back to the emperor, including a
piece weighing 13 ſp. It occurs in regular veins along
the Baltic coast, but in greatest abundance between
Pillau and Grosz Hubenicken, on the Prussian coast.
After heavy storms large quantities are usually found
thrown up on the coast at the localities where it is
regularly excavated, and the assumption is, that amberi-
ferous deposits crop up in the shallow waters near the
shores, from which pieces become detached during the
violent commotion of the water. It is further sparingly
cast on the Swedish and Danish coasts, and occasionally
pieces are picked up along the shores of Norfolk,
Essex, and Sussex in England. It occurs at numerous
localities inland throughout Europe, among which may
be noted the neighborhood of Basle in Switzerland, the
departments of Aisne, Loire, Gard, and Bas Rhine in
France, and in the Paris clay it is associated with
bituminous deposits. In England it has been found in
the Sandy deposits of the London clay at Kensington.
The coasts of Sicily and the Adriatic likewise afford
amber. The most beautiful specimens are perhaps
those which are found at Catania. They often possess
a beautiful play of color, approaching to purple, not to
be observed in the product of other places. Professor
Dana gives the following note on its occurrence in
America : —
“It has been found in various parts of the greensand forma-
tion of the United States, either loosely embedded in the soil
or engaged in marl or lignite, as at Gay Head or Martha’s Vine-
yard, near Trenton, and also at Camden, in New Jersey, and at
Cape Sable, near Magothy river, in Maryland.”
It is said to be taken in large quantities from the north
of Burmah to the markets of China, where it is highly
prized.
The appearance of enclosed foreign bodies, such as
insects, leaves, twigs, &c., which amber very often pre-
sents, and the markings on its surface, very early led to
correct inferences as to its origin. Pliny states that
“amber is an exudation from trees of the pine family,
like gum from the cherry and resin from the ordinary
pine ; and in accordance with this opinion is its Latin
name succi num, the gum-stone.” The opinion expressed
by Pliny is that which at the present day may be fairly
held as established ; but of course amber differs from
other resins owing to changes induced by its fossilised
condition.
The close relation of amber to ordinary resins is
further brought out by its chemical properties and com-
position. According to Berzelius, it consists mainly of
a resin, succinite, insoluble in alcohol, in combination
with small proportions of two others, isomeric with the
first, but soluble in alcohol and ether.
The value of amber depends upon its color, its lustre,
and its size. In 1576 a mass weighing II ib. was found
in Prussia, and deemed worthy of being presented to the
emperor; later, a mass of 13 ft). was found, for which it
is said 5000 dollars were refused. In the royal cabinet
at Berlin a piece is shown weighing 18 Tb.; but such
masses are of very great rarity.
AMBERG, a walled town of Bavaria, formerly the
capital of the Upper Palatinate, and at present the seat
of the appeal court for the district, is situated on both
sides of the Vils, 35 miles east of Nuremberg. The
French under Jourdan were defeated by the Austrians
near Amberg in 1796. Population in 1871, II,688.
AMBERGRIS (Ambra grisea, Ambre gris, or Grey
Amber) is a solid, fatty, inflammable substance of a dull
grey or blackish color, the shades being variegated like
marble, possessing a peculiar sweet earthy odor. . It is
now known to be a morbid secretion formed in the intes-
times of the spermaceti whale (Physeter macrocephalus),
and is found floating upon the Sea, on the sea-coast, or
in the sand near the sea-coast. It is met with in the
Atlantic Ocean, on the coasts of Brazil and Madagascar;
also on the coast of Africa, of the East Indies, China,
Japan, and the Molucca Islands; but most of the amber-
gris which is brought to England comes from the Baha-
ma Islands, Providence, &c. It is also sometimes found
in the abdomen of whales, always in lumps in various.
shapes and sizes, weighing from 9% oz. to IOO or more
fb. A piece which the Dutch East India Company
bought from the King of Tydore weighed 182 ſh. An
American fisherman from Antigua found, inside a whale,
about 52 leagues south-east from the Windward Islands,
a piece of ambergris which weighed about 130 lb. and
sold for 4.5oo sterling. The true source and character
of ambergris were first satisfactorily established by Dr.
Swediaur in a communication to the Royal Society
(Philosophical Transactions, vol. lxxiii.). It was found
by Dr. Swediaur that ambergris very frequently con-
tained the horny mandibles or beaks of the Squid (Sepia
moschata), on which sperm whales are known to ſeed.
That observation, in connection with the fact of am-
bergris being frequently taken from the intestines of the
sperm whale, sufficiently proved that it was formed
within that creature, and not an extraneous subject
swallowed by the whale. It was further observed that
the whales in which ambergris was found were either
dead or much wasted and evidently in a sickly condition.
The high price it commands makes it peculiarly liable to
adulteration, but its genuineness is easily tested by its
solubility in hot alcohol, its fragrant odor, and its uni-
form fatty consistence on being penetrated by a hot wire.
AMBERT, chief town of an arrondissement of the
same name in the department of Puy de Dôme, France,
situated on the Dore, 35 miles from Clermont.
AMIBLESIDE, a small market town in Westmoreland,
situated about a mile from the head of Lake Winder-
mere, and 14 miles from Kendal. Coarse woollen cloths
are manufactured at Ambleside.
AMBLETEUSE, a seaport town of France, in the
department of the Pas de Calais, on the English Chan-
nel, 6 miles north of Boulogne. It possesses an histor-
ical interest as the landing-place of James II. after his
abdication in 1688; and Napoleon I. in 1804 attempted
to improve the harbor for the flat-bottomed boats by
means of which he was to invade England. Near Am-
bleteuse is the column which he erected to the grand army
in 1805.
AMBO, or AMBON, a reading-desk or pulpit in early
Christian churches which was placed in the middle of the
nave. The purposes of the ambo were served in mediae-
val churches by the rood-loft, a gallery across the chan-
cel-arch, and in modern churches it has given place to the
lectern and the pulpit.
AMBOISE, a town situated in a rich wine-producing
district in the department of Indre-et-Loire, France, on
the left bank of the Loire, I4 miles east of Tours. At
Amboise the French Protestants were first called
236
A M B
Huguenots, and I2OO of them were massacred there in
I56O.
AMBOYNA, one of the Moluccas or Spice Islands,
belonging to the Dutch, lying South-west of Ceram. It
is 32 miles in length, with an area of about 280 square
miles, and is of very irregular figure, being almost divided
into two. . The south-eastern and smaller portion (called
Letimor) is united to the northern (known as Hitoe) by
a neck of land about a mile broad. The island is
mountainous, but is for the most part fertile and well-
watered. , Large tracts are covered with rich tropical
forests, which embrace a great variety of trees, although
ordinary building timber is scarce. In 1654, after many
fruitless negotiations, Cromwell compelled the United
Provinces to give the sum of £300,000, together with a
small island, as compensation to the descendants of those
who suffered in the “Amboyna massacre.” In 1796
the British, under Admiral Rainer, captured Amboyna,
but restored it to the Dutch at the peace of Amiens in 1802.
It was recaptured by the British in 1810, but once more
restored to the Dutch in 1814. Population, about
50,000. See MOLUCCAS.
AMBOYNA, the chief town of the above island, and
also of the Dutch Moluccas, is situated towards the
north-west of the peninsula of Leitimor.
AMBRACIA, or AMPRACIA, an important city of
ancient Epirus, situated on the eastern bank of the river
Arachthus, about seven miles from the Ambracian Gulf.
According to tradition, it was originally a Thesprotian
town, founded by Ambrax, son of Thesprotus, or by
Ambracia, daughter of Augeas. About 635 B.C. it was
colonised by Corinthians, and so became a Greek city.
Its power decreased rapidly until the time of the Pelo-
ponnesian war, when it commanded the whole of Amphi-
lochia, including the town of Argos, from which the
original inhabitants were expelled. In 432 B c. the
expelled citizens, with the assistance of the Athenians
under Phormion, retook Argos. In 430 the Ambracians
made an unsuccessful attempt to recover the town, and
a second attack in 426 resulted in a still more disastrous
failure. The site of Ambracia is occupied by the mod-
ern Arta, near which remains of the ancient fortifications
may be seen.
AMBROSE OF ALEXANDRIA lived in the beginning
of the third century. According to some, Ambrose
died a martyr in the persecution under Maximin, about
the year 236; but the dedication of Origen's Eight
Books against Celsus proved that he lived to the year
250, or near that period. Origen speaks of him as a
man of sincere piety, and much devoted to the study of
the Scriptures.
AMBROSE, SAINT, Bishop of Milan, was one of the
most eminent fathers of the church in the fourth cen-
tury. He was a citizen of Rome, born in Gaul,-
according to some historians, in the year 334, but accord-
ing to othels in 340. At the period of his birth his
father was praetorian prefect of Gallia Narbonensis; and
upon his death the widow repaired to Rome with her
family. Ambrose received a religious education, and
was reared in habits of virtue by his mother, an accom-
plished woman, and eminent for her piety.
The death of Auxentius, bishop of Milan, in the
year 374, made a sudden change in the fortune and
literary pursuits of Ambrose. At that period the tide
of religious contention ran high between the orthodox
and the Arians, and a violent contest arose concerning
the choice of a successor to Auxentius. When the
people were assembled in the church to elect the new
bishop, Ambrose, in the character of governor of the
place, presented himself to the assembly, and in a grave,
eloquent, and pathetic address, admonished the multi-
tude to lay aside their contentions, and proceed to the
election in the spirit of religious meekness. It is
reported that when Ambrose had finished his address, a
child cried out, “Ambrose is bishop,” and that the agitated
multitude, regarding this as a miraculous intimation,
unanimously elected Ambrose bishop of Milan.
The irruption of the Goths and the northern barbari-
ans, who rushed down upon the Roman empire at this
time, spreading terror and desolation all around, com-
pelled Ambrose, along with several others, to retire to
Illyricum, but his exile was of short duration, for the
northern invaders were quickly defeated by the forces of
the emperor, and driven back with considerable loss into
their own territories,
The eloquence of Ambrose soon found ample scope
in the dispute between the Arians and the orthodox.
About this era the doctrine of Arius concerning the
person of Christ had been extensively received, and had
many powerful defenders both among the clergy and the
common people. Ambrose espoused the cause of the
Catholics. Gratian, the son of the elder Valentinian,
took the same side; but the younger Valentian, who
had now become his colleague in the empire, adopted
the opinions of the Arians; and all the arguments and
eloquence of Ambrose were insufficient to reclaim the
young prince to the othodox faith. Theodosius, the
emperor of the East, also professed the othodox belief;
but there were many adherents of Arius scattered
throughout his dominions. In this distracted state of
religious opinion, two leaders of the Arians, Palladius
and Secundianus, confident of numbers, prevailed upon
Gratian to call a general council from all parts of that
empire. This request appeared so equitable that he
complied without hesitation; but Ambrose, foreseeing
the consequence, prevailed upon the emperor to have the
matter determined by a council of the Western bishops.
A synod, composed of thirty-two bishops, was accoid-
ingly held at Aquileia, in the year 381. Ambrose was
elected president; and Palladius being called upon to
defend his opinions, declined, insisting that the meeting
was a partial one, and that the whole bishops of the
empire not being present, the sense of the Christian
church concerning the question in dispute could not be
obtained. A vote was then taken, when Palladius and
his associate Secundianus were deposed from the episco-
pal office.
Ambrose was equally zealous in combating the heathen
superstitions. Upon the accession of Valentinian II.,
many of the senators who remained attached to the
pagan idolatry made a vigorous effort to restore the
worship of the heathen deities. , Symmachus, a very
opulent man and a great orator, who was at that time
prefect of the city, was entrusted with the management
of the pagan cause, and drew up a forcible petition,
praying for the restoration of the altar of Victory to its
ancient station in the hall of the senate, the proper sup-
port of seven vestal virgins, and the regular observance
of the other pagan ceremonies. In the petition he
argued that this form of religion had long been profitable
to the Roman state, and reminded the empel or how
much Rome had been indebted to Victory, and that it
had been the uniform custom of the senators to swear
fidelity to the government upon that altar. . To this
petition Ambrose replied in a letter to Valentinian,
arguing that the devoted worshippers of idols had often
been forsaken by their deities; that the native valor of
the Roman soldiers had gained their victories, and not
the pretended influence of pagan priests; that these
idolatrous worshippers requested for themselves what
they refused to Christians; that voluntary was more
honorable than constrained virginity; that as the
Christian ministers declined to receive temporal emolu-
ments, they should also be denied to pagan priests; that
A M B
237
it was absurd to suppose that God would inflict a famine
upon the empire for neglecting to support a religious
system contrary to His will as revealed in the Scrip-
tures; that the whole process of nature encouraged inno-
vations, and that all nations had permitted them, even
in religion; that heathen sacrifices were offensive to
Christians; and that it was the duty of a Christian
pi ince to suppress pagan ceremonies. In the epistles of
Symmachus and of Ambrose both the petition and the
1 eply, are preserved, in which sophistry, superstition,
Sound sense, and solid argument are strangely blended.
It is scarcely necessary to add that the petition was
unsuccessful.
The increasing strength of the Arians proved too
formidable for Ambrose. In 384 the young emperor
and his mothel Justina, along with a considerable num-
ber of clergy and laity professing the Arian faith, re-
quested from the bishop the use of two churches, one in
the city, the other in the suburbs of Milan. The prelate
believing the bishops to be the guardians both of the
temporal and spiritual interests of the church, and re-
garding the religious edifices as the unquestionable
property of the church, positively refused to deliver up
the temples of the Lord into the impious hands of
heretics. Filled with indignation, Justina resolved to
employ the imperial authority of her son in procuring by
force what she could not obtain by persuasion. Åm-
blose was required to answer for his conduct before the
council. He went, attended by a numerous crowd of
people, whose impetuous zeal so over-awed the min-
istels of Valentinian that he was permitted to retire
without making the surrender of the churches. The
day following, when he was performing divine service in
the Basilica, the prefect of the city came to persuade
him to give up at least the Portian church in the suburbs.
As he still continued obstinate, the court proceeded to
violent measures: the officers of the household were com-
manded to prepale the Basilica and the Portian churches
to celebrate divine service upon the arrival of the em-
peror and his mother at the ensuing festival of Easter.
Perceiving the growing strength of the prelate's interest,
the court deemed it prudent to restrict its demand to the
use of one of the churches. But all entreaties proved in
vain, and drew forth the following characteristic declara-
tion from the bishop : —“If you demand my person, I
am ready to submit : carry me to prison or to death, I
will not resist; but I will never betray the church of
Christ. I will not call upon the people to succor me;
I will die at the foot of the altar rather than desert it
The tumult of the people I will not encourage; but God
alone can appease it.”
Although the court was displeased with the religious
principles and conduct of Ambrose, it respected his great
political talents; and when necessity required, his aid
was Solicited and generously granted. When Maximus
usurped the Supreme power in Gaul, and was meditating
a descent upon Italy, Valentinian sent Ambrose to dis-
suade him from the undertaking; and the embassy was
successful. On a second attempt of the same kind Am-
brose was again employed; and although he was unsuc-
cessful, it cannot be doubted that, if his advice had been
followed, the schemes of the usurper would have proved
abortive; but the enemy was permitted to enter Italy,
and Milan was taken. Justina and her son fled; but
Ambrose remained at his post, and did good service to
many of the sufferers by causing the plate of the church to
be melted for their relief. Theodosius, the emperor of
the East, espoused the cause of Justina, and regained the
kingdom.
The generosity of Ambrose was favorably exhibited in
the year 392, after the assassination of Valentinian and
the usurpation of Eugenius. Rather than join the stand-
J
ard of the usurper, he fled from Milan; but when Theo-
dosius was eventually victorious, he supplicated the
emperor for the pardon of those who had supported
Eugenius. Soon after acquiring the undisputed posses-
sion of the Roman empire, Theodosius died at Milan
(395). Bishop Ambrose did not long survive him, hav-
ing died in the year 397.
For a description of the famous church of St.
Ambrose, founded by him at Milan 387 A.D., see
MILAN. For the Ambrosian Library, see LIBRARIES.
Notices of his LITURGY and HYMNs will be found
under these headings.
AMBROSE, ISAAC, a Puritan divine. Formerly the
practical and devotional writings of this eminent Non-
conformist rivalled John Bunyan's in popularity, and his
Looking to Jesus holds its own even now. Prominent
name as his was in his generation, very scanty are the
personal memorials of him. His own “Media,” under
the head of “experiences,” yields a few incidents of his
life. He entered Brazenose college, Oxford, in 1621, in
the seventeenth year of his age, and must therefore have
been born in 1603–4. Having taken his M.A. and
been ordained, he received at the outset a little cure in
Derbyshire, which was at that time and onward to
Puritanism what Goshen was to Egypt and Israel. By
the influence of the Earl of Bedford, he was appointed
one of the king's itinerant preachers in Lancashire.
Having later served for a time a curacy in Garstang, he
was selected by the Lady Margaret Houghton as vicar of
Preston. He was on the celebrated committee for
the ejection of “scandalous and ignorant ministers and
schoolmasters” during the Commonwealth. He was vicar
of Garstang when the Act of Uniformity was passed.
He could have conscientiously complied with many
of its requirements, for he was willing to use the Prayer-
book, and did not stickle at things whereat other tender
consciences did ; but the enforcement was so absolute,
not to say brutal, that he found himself constrained to
form one of the Two Thousand. His after years were
passed among old fliends at Preston. He died in 1664
at the age of sixty-one. Calamy says he was seventy-
two, but his college entry shows he was mistaken. As
a religious writer, Ambrose has a vividness and freshness.
of imagination possessed by scarcely any of the Puritan
Nonconformists. He is plaintive as Flavel and as
intense as Baxter. Many who have no love for Puritan
doctrine, nor sympathy with Puritan experience, have
appreciated the pathos and beauty of his writings, which
have never been out of print from their original issue
until now.
AMBROSIUS, AURELIANUs, a leader of the Britons
during the 5th century. He is said, on somewhat
doubtful authority, to have been a son of Constantine,
who was elected emperor by the Roman army in Britain
in 407. The usually received account of his life, based
chiefly upon the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth,
contains much that is evidently fabulous. The circum-
stances of his death are involved in equal obscurity.
According to Geoffrey’s account, he died of poison at
Winchester; but others state that he was killed in a
battle with Cedric the Saxon in 508.
AMBULANCE, the French ambulance, Æðpital amz-
bu/ant, derived from the Latin ambulare, to move from
place to place.
Ambulances, in military phraseology, are hospital
establishments moving with armies in the field, and
organised for providing early surgical assistance to the
wounded aſter battles. They are only prepared for
affording help of a more or less temporary kind, and
they are thus distinguished from the stationary or fixed
Aospita/s, in which sick and wounded soldiers receive
care and treatment of a permanent character. The
\
238
-
A M E
term is not unfrequently applied in common speech in
England to the ambulance waggons, or other convey-
ances by which the wounded are carried from the field
to the ambulances and fixed hospitals.
The origin of the ambulance system which now pre-
vails in all civilised armies, though variously modified
among them in particular details, only dates from the
last decade of the last century. Before that time no
ambulance establishments had been organised for effect-
ing the removal of the wounded, or for giving the requi-
site surgical attention to them, while battles were in
progress. Soldiers wounded in the ranks were either
carried to the rear by comrades, or were left to lie ex-
F. to all risks, and unheeded, until after the fighting
ad ceased. The means of surgical assistance did not
reach the battle-field till the day after the engagement,
or often later, and to a large proportion of the wounded
it was then of no avail. In 1792 Larrey introduced his
system of ambulances volantes, or flying field hospitals,
establishments capable of moving from place to place
with speed, like the flying artillery of the time. They
were adapted both for giving the necessary primary
surgical help, and also for removing the wounded quickly
out of the sphere of fighting. The first Napoleon
warmly supported Lal rey in his endeavors to introduce
and perfect the new system of surgical aid to the
wounded in battle; and, being received with much favor
by the troops, the plan obtained a firm footing, and was
subsequently brought to a high state of perfection.
About the same time another distinguished surgeon of
high position in the French army, Baron Percy, intro-
duced and developed a corps of brancardiers, or
stretcher-bearers. These consisted of soldiers trained
and regularly, equipped for the duty of collecting the
wounded while a battle was in plogress, and carrying
them on stretchers to places where means of surgical aid
were provided.
From the period when these improvements were intro-
duced most civilised armies have had ambulance estab-
lishments formed for giving surgical help near to the
combatants. It is only, however, during the last twenty
years that ambulances have acquired the completeness of
organisation which they have now attained in some
armies, especially in those of Germany. In the armies
of the United States of America, during the late great
civil war, the ambulance system attained a very complete
organisation, particularly from March 1864, when an
Act was passed by Congress, entitled “An Act to estab-
lish a uniform system of Ambulances in the United
States.” This law fixed a definite and single system of
ambulance a rangements for all the armies of the United
States at that time in the field.
One important step, taken a few years since, towards
the amelioration of the condition of the wounded of
armies in the field must be just mentioned. This was
the European Convention signed at Geneva in 1864, by
the terms of which, subject to certain regulations, not
only the wounded themselves, but the official staff of
ambulances and their equipment have been rendered
neutral ; the former, therefore, not being liable to be
retained as prisoners of war, nor the latter to be taken
as prize of war. This convention has greatly favored the
development of ambulance establishments.
The conditions of modern warfare have led to the need
of army ambulances being arranged on principles differ-
ent from what were applicable only a few years ago.
The immensely increased range of rifles and artillery in
the present day, the consequent extension of the area
over which fire is maintained, the suddenness with
which armies can be brought into the field from in-
creased facilities of locomotion, the rapidity of their
movements, the shortened duration of campaigns, the
large numbers of wounded which have to be dealt with,
not merely from the destructive qualities of the fire-arms,
but from the vast forces collected on occasions of im-
portant battles, the increased proportion of severe
wounds,-are all circumstances which have entailed need
for revision of ambulances and their administration.
The ambulances must be so organized as to be able to
keep up with the troops, and so disposed as in no way
to interfere with their movements. They must be capa-
ble of meeting the wants of a partial or general engage-
ment at any moment, and if the troops advance, must be
prepared to accompany them, so as to be ready to meet
future wants.
Ambulance arrangements have to be modified to suit
particular military operations, such as when troops dis-
embark on a hostile shore, on occasion of sieges, &c.
AMELOT DE LA HOUSSAYE, ABRAHAM
NICOLAS, historian and publicist, was born at Orleans
in February 1634, and died at Paris 8th December 1706.
Amelot published translations of Machiavel's Prince,
and of the Azznals of Tacitus, besides several other
works.
AMELOTTE, DENIs, a French ecclesiastic and
author, was born at Saintes in Saintonge in 1606, and
died October 7, 1678. In 1643 he published a Life of
Charles de Goudren, second superior of the congregation,
which by some of its remarks on the famous abbot of
St. Cylan, gave great offence to the Port Royalists.
AMENTIFERAE, or AMENTACEAE. Under this
name are included apetalous unisexual plants bearing
their flowers in catkins (amenta).
AMERICA. Our object in this article is to take a
comprehensive survey of the American continent in its
physical, moral and political relations. In attempting
this, we shall dwell at some length upon those great
features and peculiarities which belong to it as a whole,
or facts which can be most advantageously considered in
connection with one another. The new continent may
be styled emphatically “a land of promise.” The pres-
ent there derives its greatest importance from the germs
it contains of a mighty future. It is this prospective
greatness which lends an interest to the Western conti-
ment similar to that which the Eastern derives flom its
historical associations. But the Western continent also
has its past, which abounds in points of interest i elating
to both the historic and prehistoric periods. Facts show
that although America may be called the New World in
consequence of its having been the last to come under
the general knowledge of geographers, it is from most
other points of view an old world. It abounds in the
oldest known strata; it has yielded some of the oldest
known remains of man, indicating that he has long been
a denizen there; and it has aſſorded evidences of a civil-
1zed era, which may even have pieceded that of Western
Europe.
The new continent, when compared with the old, en-
joys three important advantages. First, it is free from
such vast deserts as cover a large part of the surface of
Asia and Africa, and which not only withdraw a great
proportion of the soil from the use of man, but are
obstacles to communication between the settled districts,
and generate that excessive heat which is often injurious
to health, and always destructive to industry. Secondly,
no part of its soil is so far from the ocean, as the central
regions of Asia and Africa. Thirdly, the interior of
America is penetrated by majestic rivers, the Mississippi,
Amazon and Plata, greatly surpassing those of the old
continent in magnitude, and still more in the facilities
they present for enabling the remotest inland districts
to communicate with the Sea.
In the physical formation of North and South Amer-
ica there is a remarkable resemblance. Both are very
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tr A M E
239
broad in the north, and gradually contract towards the
South till they end, the one in a narrow isthmus, and the
other in a narrow promontory. Each has a lofty chain
of mountains near its western coast, abounding in vol-
canoes, with a lower ridge on the opposite side, destitute
of any recent trace of internal fire; and each has one
great central plain declining to the south and the north,
and watered by two gigantic streams, the Mississippi,
corresponding to the Plata, and the St. Lawrence to the
Amazon. ... In their climate, vegetable productions and
animal tribes, the two regions are very dissimilar.
The extent of the American continent and the islands
connected with it is as follows:–
Square Eng. miles.
North America......................... 7,400,000
South America.............. & © e º 'º ºr gº tº º ... 6,500,000
Islands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . º I5O,OOO
Greenland, and the islands connected with l
it, lying north of Hudson's Straits,
may be estimated at................. | 900,000
* I4,950,000
The American continent, therefore, with its depend-
ent islands, is four times as large as Europe, and about
one-third larger than Africa, but somewhat less than
Asia, while it is nearly five times the size of the Australian
continent. It constitutes about three-tenths of the dry
land on the surface of the globe. It is characterised by hav-
ing a greater length from N. to S. than any other conti-
nent; and by the northern and southern portions being
connected by a comparatively narrow strip of land. South
America has a more regular form, and as a mass is situated
much farther in the east than North America. In South
America the most central point lies in about 58° W.;
but in North America the most central point would be
in about IOO9 W. As regards continuity of land,
America comprises some islands at the southern end; a
main continental portion, including South America,
Central America, and North America; some islands off
the north shore, and many other islands along the east
and west coasts, those on the east being the most impor-
tant. The most northern point of the mainland is that
of Boothia Felix, in Bellot Strait, 71° 55' N., 92° 25'
W. . The islands to the north extend beyond 82° 16' N.;
65° W., which point was reached by the “Polaris” in
August 1871. The southernmost point of the mainland
is, Cape Froward, which lies close to 54° S., 71° W.;
while Cape Horn, the most southern point of the islands
is in 56° S., 67° 20' W. The extreme points traced are
consequently 138° apart, and the continental part stretches
over about 126 degrees of latitude. This corresponds
to lengths of 8280 and 7560 geographical miles respect-
ively. The extreme east points of the continent are
Cape St. Roque, in 5°28' S., 35° 40' W., in South
America, and Cape St. Charles, in 52° 17' N., 55° 35'
W., , in North America. The most western point of
South America is Point Parina, in 4° 40' S., 81° 10'
W.; and of North America, Prince of Wales Cape, in
65° 30' N., 167° W. The greatest breadth of North
America is between Cape Lisburne and Melville Penin-
sula; and of South America, between Pernambuco and
Point Aguja. The narrowest part is 28 miles, at the
isthmus of Panama. The nearest approach to the Old
World is at Behring Strait, which is 48 miles across,
and shallow. On the east side the nearest point to the
Old World is Cape St. Roque, which is opposite the
projecting part of the African coast at Sierra Leone.
Greenland is separated from the archipelago of Arctic
America by a deep and for the most part broad sea, and
seems naturally to belong to the European rather than
the American area.
, North America, with the general form of a triangle,
naturally divides itself into five physical regions: 1. The
table-land of Mexico, with the strip of low country on
its eastern and western shores; 2. The plateau lying be-
tween the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, a
country with a mild and humid atmosphere as far north
as the 55th parallel, but inhospitable and barren beyond
this boundary; 3. The great central valley of the Mis-
sissippi, rich and well wooded on the east side; bare but
not unfertile in the middle; dry, sandy, and almost a
desert on the west; 4. The eastern declivities of the
Alleghany Mountains, a region of natural forests, and
of mixed but rather poor soil; 5. The great northern
plain beyond the 50th parallel, four-fifths of which is a
bleak and bare waste, overspread withinnumerable lakes,
and resembling Siberia both in the physical character of
its surface and the rigor of its climate.
South America is a peninsula likewise of triangular
form. Its greatest length from north to South is 455o
miles; its greatest breadth 32OO; and it covers an area,
as already mentioned, of 6,500,000 square English miles,
about three-fourths of which lie between the tropics,
and the other fourth in the temperate zone. . From the
configuration of its surface, this peninsula also may be
divided into five physical regions — 1. The low country
skirting the shores of the Pacific Ocean, from 50 to 150
miles in breadth, and 4,000 in length. The two ex-
tremities of this territory are fertile, the middle a sandy
desert. 2. The basin of the Orinoco, a country consist-
ing of extensive plains or steppes, called Llanos, either
destitute of wood or merely dotted with trees, but cov-
ered with a very tall herbage during a part of the year.
During the dry season the heat is intense here, and the
parched soil opens into long fissures, in which lizards and
serpents lie in a state of torpor. 3. The basin of the
Amazon, a vast plain, embracing a surface of more than
two millions of square miles, possessing a rich soil and
humid climate. It is covered almost everywhere with
dense forests, which harbor innumerable tribes of wild
animals, and are thinly inhabited by Savages, who live
by hunting and fishing. 4. The great southern plain,
watered by the Plata and the numerous streams descend-
ing from the eastern summits of the Cordilleras. Open
steppes, which are here called Pampas, occupy the greater
proportion of this region, which is dry, and in some
parts barren, but in general is covered with a strong
growth of weeds and tall grass, which feeds prodigious
herds of horses and cattle, and affords shelter to a few
wild animals. 5. The country of Brazil, eastward of
the Parana and Uruguay, presenting alternate ridges and
valleys, thickly covered with wood on the side next the
Atlantic, and opening into steppes or pastures in the in-
terior.
In our more particular description of the physical con-
formation, the geological structure, the mountains,
rivers, and forests, and the climates of America, we shall
first deal with the southern peninsula, as having the
more strongly marked condition.
The mountain areas of South America are as a gen,
eral rule, those which have received the thickest accumu
lations of sedimentary matter, and this thickness it
nearly proportional to their height. . During the periods
of the formation of such deposits, these areas were to a
great extent areas of subsistence, and since those beds
which once formed the Sea bottoms now constitute the
highest peaks, these areas must have been subjected to
subsequent upheaval. Vertical movements of this kind
have occurred again and again, indicating that these
areas are specially liable to disturbance, either from
comparative weakness or from the greater comparative
power as the moving forces. The history of the mount-
ain chains is almost co-extensive with that of the con-
24O
A M E
tinent, itself. In the sea the beds were deposited hori-
zontally, or nearly so; and at certain intervals the depo-
sition was arrested, in consequence of the beds being
uplifted above the sea. Each successive submergence
and emergence occupied a long period of time, during
which the rocks were at one time faulted, folded,
and metamorphosed, and at other times denuded both
by the sea and by meteoric agents. As a general rule,
the strike or line of direction of the strata ran approx-
imately parallel to the trend of the shore line on the
large scale, and the dip
direction. During each elevation the land was uplifted
in a broad band, the axis of which ran parallel to the
shore of the sea in which the beds were formed. The
axes of the principal folds and faults usually run parallel
to the stratigraphical axis or strike. The principal
ridges formed during the same period usually coincide
in direction with the stratigraphical strike of the bed
forming them. In the mountains of South America,
and especially in the Andes, several of these groups of
ridges, formed at different periods, combine to make up
a single system of mountains. The high range of
mountains which extends from the most southern parts
of South America, and runs approximately on the same
..meridian of 72° to the isthmus of Panama, forms the
Andes. These consist of a vast rampart, having an
average height of some 11,000 or 12,000 feet, and a
width varying from 20 to 300 or 400 miles. In most
places the chain rises to heights of several thousand feet,
and upon this chain rest two or three principal ridges of
mountains, enclosing lofty plains or valleys, separated
one from another by mountain knots, which mark the
spots where ridges belonging to different systems intersect.
In one sense, the lofty plains of the Desaguardero, Quito,
and others, are valleys, since they are encompassed by
mountains; but in a certain sense they are plateaus,
since they form the broad summit of the range or plat-
form on which the bounding ridges themselves stand.
Further details respecting the Andes are given under
ANDES, and in the geological remarks of this article.
Three branches of transverse chains proceed from the
Andes, nearly at right angles to the direction of the prin-
cipal chain, and pass eastward across the continent,
about the parallels of 18° of S. and 49 and 9° of N. lat-
itude; thus forming the three natural areas of the Ori-
noco, Amazon, and La Plata river basins. The most
northern of these is “the Cordillera of the coast,” which
parts from the main trunk near the south extremity of
the lake Maracaybo, reaches the sea at Puerto Cabello,
and then passes eastward through Caraccas to the Gulf
of Paria. Its length is about 700 hundred miles, and its
medium height from 4ooo to 5000 feet; but the Silla de
Caraccas, one of its summits, has an elevation of about
8632 feet; and its western part, which is at some dis-
tance from the sea, contains the Sierra of Merida, 15,-
Ooo feet in height. The second transverse chain is con-
nected with the Andes at the parallels of 3° and 4° north,
and passing eastward, terminates in French Guiana, at
no great distance from the mouth of the Amazon. It
consists properly of a succession of chains nearly parallel
to the coast, and is sometimes called the Cordillera of
Parimé, but is named by Humboldt the “Cordillera of
the Cataracts of the Orinoco,” because this river, which
flows amidst its ridges in the upper parts of its course,
forms the cataracts of Maypure at the point where it
descends into the plains. Its mean height is estimated
at 4000 feet above the level of the sea; but at 70° and
75° W. longitude, it sinks to less than 1900 feet, and at
other points rises to Io,000. This chain divides the
waters of the Orinoco and the rivers of Guiana from the
basin of the Amazon, and is covered with magnificent
forests. Its breadth is supposed to be from 200 to 400
was at right angles to their
miles, and it encloses amidst its ridges the great lake
Parimé, in longitude 60°, and several of smaller size.
At the Caratal gold-field, which lies south of Angos-
tura, the range is about 60 miles across, and the water-
shed about 1 Ioo feet above the sea. On a table-land
forming part of it, about the 67th degree of longitude,
the Cassiquiari forms an intermediate channel which con-
nects the rivers Orinoco and Negro, so that, during the
annual floods, a part of the waters of the former flows
into the latter. This singular phenomenon was made
known long ago by the Spanish missionaries, but was
thought to be a fable till the truth was ascertained by
Humboldt. The length of this chain is about 1500
miles. The third transverse chain leaves the main trunk
near 17° 25' S., and extends almost as far as Santa Cruz,
near the river Mamore. Some of the mountains in the
western part are of considerable height. South of this
range are a number of ridges having an east and west
direction, an average height of about Io,000 feet, and
terminating in the plains near the Paraguay. This coun-
try, which divides the waters of the Amazon from those
of the Plata, is a broad plateau of elevated land, rather
than a distinct mountainous ridge, and consists of low
hills or uneven plains, with very little wood, presenting
in some places extensive pastures, and in other tracts of
a poor sandy soil. Its average height probably does not
exceed 2000 or 3000 feet above the level of the sea.
The mountains of Brazil, which are of moderate
height, and occupy a great breadth of country, form an
irregular plateau, bristled with sharp ridges running in a
direction approximately parallel to the eastern coast,
connected by offsets running in a more or less east and
west direction. They extend from 5° to 25° of south
latitude, and their extreme breadth may be about IOOO
miles. Between Victoria on the north and Morro de
St. Martha on the south, a range with numerous curves
lies a little way back from the coast, and is, for the
greater part of its length, known as the Sierra do Mar;
somewhat farther inland is a higher range, the different
parts of which have different names, but it is best known
as the Sierra de Mantiqueira. It contains the highest
peaks in Brazil, amongst which may be mentioned
Mount Itacolumi, famous for the gold and diamond
yielding strata in its vicinity; the Pico dos Orgaos, which
is 7700 feet high; and Itambe, 8426 feet. Some of the
peaks are believed to be even higher, West of this the
uplands of Brazil stretch far into the interior, and at
length sink into the great central plain through which
flow the Paraguay and its tributaries.
Although large areas of South America remain as yet
unexplored by geologists, the researches of D’Orbigny,
Humboldt, Boussingault, Darwin, Forbes, Agassiz, and
many other travellers, suffice to give an approximately
correct general view. This is mainly owing to the sim-
plicity of the stratigraphy of the country. The same
groups of rocks spread over such extensive areas, that,
from what is seen in the areas which have been examined,
we can safely infer the general condition of those which
have not been explored. The general disposition of the
rocks is as follows:– The oldest rocks, which are Pre-
Silurian, possibly Laurentian, form the outermost rim of
the continent of which the N.E. and S.E. corners have
probably been swept away. These corners now corre-
spond with the mouths of the Orinoco, the Amazon, and
the La Plata rivers. Within this basin, and following
close upon these old rocks, are schists and quartzites,
which are in all probability of Silurian age., . These
enter largely into the transverse ranges by which the
central hollow is subdivided into three basins. Within
this again are sandstones and limestones, usually referred
to the Carboniferous period, which also form part of the
transverse ridges. A band of rocks of secondary age
A M E
24. I
follow, some of which are believed to be Triassic, while
others are identified as Cretaceous. Tertiary beds, some
of Miocene date, together with Post-Tertiary beds, cover
the largest part of the areas of the great river basins and
the hollows in the mountain range, and also occur on
the seaward flanks of the principal chains.
By following the development of these beds, we shall
be able to give a brief account of the growth of the pres-
ent continent. In the Argentine Confederation a few
bosses of gneiss protrude through the more recent beds
constituting the Pampas. Granite, supporting gneiss
and quartzite, occurs along the coast of Chili. In Bolivia
we find a range of granitic mountains which have a gen-
eral direction somewhat to the E. of N., and which are
flanked on either side by zones of gneiss and quartzite.
The gneiss also prevails along the shores of Peru, Ecua-
(lor, and New Granada, or, to call it by the name which
it received in 1861, Colombia. The gneiss is again seen
at the eastern base of the Andes, in the last-mentioned
State, associated with quartzites, and both these can be
traced along the Venezuelan coast. Gneiss is largely
developed near Angostura, and has a strike approaching
E. and W. At Limones, which is near the Caratal
gold-field, the country consists largely of granite and
gneiss, which latter lies here a little to the E. or to the
W. of N. In Brazil the gneiss forms a long band from
Bahia to the southern portion of the province of Santa
Catharina. Near the coast it rests upon and apparently
passes into granite; but towards the west, as far as the
Mantiqueira chain, it gradually becomes more and more
Schistoid. Gneiss, again, is met with in the mountains
which stretch through the Bolivian provinces of Moxos
and Chiquitos. It has not been ascertained if these older
rocks appeared above the waters before the deposition
of those which follow, and which will next be noticed.
In Chili the succeeding rocks are slaty schists. In
Bolivia the mountainous district crossing the country is
largely composed of talcose schists, which, where ex-
posed to the weather, have formed by their decompo-
sition a layer of clay; in advancing from the east towards
the west the schists become more and more crystalline,
and are at last replaced by gneiss. This, as has already
been stated, rests against granite, on the west side of
which gneiss is again brought in by an anticlinal arrange-
ment of the beds, and dips between a thick mass of
schists, which constitute the great bulk of the Andes in
this district. In this mountain range the lower portion
of the formation is mainly siliceous schist, alternating
with beds of compact quartz; above this come tale-
bearing quartzites, alternating with slaty Schists, which
latter become more and more prevalent as we ascend in
the strata, and at last constitute the predominating
rock. They form, indeed, the crest of the range; the
thickness of the formation may be roughly estimated at
IO,OOO feet. These rocks are much disturbed and
faulted against other and probably newer rocks, which
with them constitute the great bulk of the lofty emi-
nences in the range of which Mount Illimani forms so
conspicuous a feature. The lower argillaceous schist,
which is associated with gneiss all along the Pacific
coast from lower Peru to Panama, possibly belongs
to this group of rocks. In the high valleys of
Ecuador the oldest rocks visible are granite, gneiss
and schists, which are frequently in a vertical position.
The schistose group appears to be absent on the east
side of the Andes in Colombia, as also along the coast
of Venezuela. In the mountain range South of the
Orinoco, hornblende, talcose, and mica Schists again
appear on a large scale, more especially in the Caratal
district, where auriferous veins occur. In Brazil the
micaceous and talcose schists enter into the composition
of the Mantiqueira chain and of the uplands to the west ;
they probably pass beneath the valley of the Panama,
since they occur to the west of it, and extend through
the provinces of Goyaz and Matto Grosso, so as to
approach within a moderate distance of the similar
strata in Bolivia. They are associated with tale-bearing
quartzites, which are famous for the diamonds and
auriferous particles they have yielded in the district
around Mount Itacolumi. The soil is usually a clay,
such as would result from the decomposition of talcose
schist; but we shall have occasion to refer to the soil of
South America subsequently. Some of these rocks in
various parts of the continent have yielded Silurian.
fossils. Facts are not sufficient yet to warrant the corre-
lation of these strata with those of other countries, or
to settle how far they belong to distinct geological
periods. The prevalent strike of the rocks is about
east and west, but sometimes the strike approaches to a
north and south direction. At any rate, the rocks
which overlie them do so unconformably, indicating that,
prior to the deposition of these newer rocks, land had
appeared at least once on areas now constituting part of
South America. At this early date the continent was
represented by a few islands only ; one corresponded with
part of Brazil, another with parts of Venezuela and
Colombia ; perhaps a third more or less with Peru,
Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chili; while a few small islands
appeared where now we have the Pampas. These were
the nuclei around which the present land has accumu-
lated, and already we see faint indications of the existing
outline and broad geographic features of the future
continent.
The next group of rocks are always in stratigraphical
discordance with those beneath them ; and, in conse-
quence of the highly metamorphosed condition of those
on the west side of the continent, it is difficult to correl-
ate them with the rocks of Brazil. In the Andes of
Chili they are represented by enormous stratified masses
of quartzose porphyries, which there is good reason to
believe are metamorphosed argillaceous schists and fels-
pathic sandstones, into which rocks they have been seen
gradually to pass. These porphyries not only form the
great bulk of the principal chain of the Andes, but also
the smaller chain on the west, the interval between them
being formed by the longitudinal valley of Chili. Fur-
ther west they rest on syenitic rocks, beyond which come
the older rocks already noticed. On passing into Bolivia,
we find that to the west of the great fault developed
there, the beds consist of micaceous sandstones and dark
bituminous schists, which are believed to be the equiva-
lents of the porphyries of Chili. Such formations con-
stitute the west slope of the Andes from Sorata to Illi-
mani, and also form two bands, one stretching from
Illimani to Cochabamba, the other between Calamarca.
and Chayanta. Towards the west they dip beneath black
bituminous and siliceous limestones, which are well
developed near Tiahuanaco. Carboniferous strata with
seams of coal occur near Pisco and Arequipa in Peru. In
Brazil the beds which succeed those previously mentioned
are quartzites, rich in mica and magnetic oxide of iron;
talcose schists; and crystalline limestones, containing a
great deal of talcose. These rocks form the highest regions
and loftiest peaks in Brazil. Unconformably upon these
rest micaceous sandstones and argillaceous schists, which
occupy the western part of St. Paul province between
Y tu and the banks of the Parana. In Mount Arasoyaba
and some other places, a carboniferous limestone suc-
ceeds and is overlaid by a thick white or yellowish sand-
stone, siliceous limestones, and bituminous schists. The
limestones occupy most of the area between the Uruguay
and the Parana. In the Diamantina district the car-
boniferous limestone is overlaid by red sandstone, which
belongs to the succeeding group of beds. The beds in
16 A
242
A M E
Drazil appear to be fuller than those on the west side of
the continent, and represent probably both the Devonian
and Carboniferous periods. Rocks of this age are also
exposed in a narrow band round portions of the basin of
the river Amazon. The strata next in succession are of
the secondary age. The lowest formation is a red sand-
stone, which is spread over a very extensive area. It is
remarkably well developed in Chili, where, together
with more recefit beds, it is a marked feature in the crest
of the Andes. In the small chain to the west it is asso-
ciated with conglomerates. In the small chain of Color-
ado, near Tiahuanaco, a thick conglomerate rests on the
older limestones, and supports red sandstones and con-
glomerates dipping "west between marls. The red sand-
stone extends across the province of Carangas, and unin-
terruptedly over both slopes of the western Cordillera. In
the desert of Atacama the red sandstone, with the over-
lying marls, forms a number of parallel chains directed
north and south. Red sandstones and conglomerates
form the base of the Cordilleras of Quito ; they stretch
north into the basins of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers,
and east over the basin of the Orinoco. In the province
of Bahia, and far away to the north, there is a great
development of red sandstone. The age of these sand-
stones has been variously stated; their stratigraphical
position would indicate a secondary age, and possibly
they may be Triassic. After their deposition, and prior
to that of the marls, syenitic rocks were introduced
amongst the strata in the Andes, causing the red sand-
stones, as also the older Sandstones and schists, to be
converted into porphyries. This eruption was also
accompanied by, and probably connected with, the forma-
tion of auriferous veins, the elevation of the strata, and
the faulting of the rocks. The strike of the strata, as
also of the faults, was about 8° to the E. of N., but
subsequent movements have modified the direction in
places. The red sandstone has a similar strike from
Venezuela in the north to Magalhaen's Strait on the south,
and this favors the idea that all are of the same age.
Several of the ranges in the Andes have a corresponding
direction. As the sandstone is believed to underlie the
basins of the great rivers, it appears that during its deposi-
tion South America was still represented by a few large
islands only. Its elevation gave rise to north and south
trending mountains, whereby these scattered portions were
connected, and the Andes received their first development.
The great features of the continent were then first dis-
tinctly marked out, and only a few gaps remained to be
filled up. The next succeeding period, represented by
strata, is characterised by Saliferous and gypseous marls,
which rest unconformably on the rocks beneath. In Chili
they occur in the lower plains, or abut against the western
spurs of the Andes; but they have beenlargely denuded,
so that they now occur in isolated plateaux or basins, and
there is a patch capping the lofty Aconcagua. It is stated
that in Chili the marls, or at least some of them, are Liassic.
In Bolivia, also, they form plateaux between San Andres
and the mountains of Tarija. Here they consist of alter-
nations of greenish marls and wine-colored beds support-
ing limestones, with interstratified beds of gypsum and
Saliferous clay. There are beds of gypsum and limestone
in the Orinoco plains. Marls are associated with marly
sandstones in the Gulf of Bahia and in the plains of Re-
concavo. These beds are arranged along strikes which
are approximately east and west, and their elevation is
apparently connected with the formation of chains running
in the same direction, as, for instance, most of the
lateral spurs from the Andes. Some geologists think it
is also connected with the east and west faults, through
which, in the Andes, labradorite and hypersthenite
rocks have been erupted. This eruption, it is said, has
caused the metamorphism of the calcareous rocks into
crystalline limestones, marls into jaspers, and red sand-
stones into porphyries; and has also given rise to the
copper-bearing veins. Calcareous beds occupy large
areas in Venezuela, Colombia, and other parts of the
continent. Miocene strata occur in Venezuela, and
probably in other districts. Finally, there are deposits
of Post-Miocene date, which chiefly belong to the Post-
Pliocene and recent periods, and which cover most of
the lower lands along the coasts and in the interior of
the continent. In Chili they occur in the valleys, and
fill up the gulfs in the old granite range near the coast.
Here the succession is a calcareous sandstone abound-
ing in marine shells and beds of lignite; above this is a
pumiceous conglomerate, which passes in places into a
pebbly conglomerate, and then follow the marine sands
which stretch from Coquimbo across the desert of
Atacama. The most recent formation is drift, which
occurs in patches and sheets. In the valley plains of
the Desaguadero there are clays and Sandy marls over-
lain by pumiceous conglomerates, which near La Paz
are surmounted by drift. Near this place the drift is
many hundred feet thick, and formed of large blocks;
but, on receding from the mountains, it passes into a
sand which encircles the plains of the Desaguadero,
which are chiefly formed by limestone deposits, such as
concretionary limestone, which abounds in the fossil
remains of plants and fresh water shells. The lacustrine
beds approximate in age to the marine tertiary beds
near the coast. In Peru the pumiceous conglomerate
is overlaid by drift. Tertiary beds occur at Guayaquil
in Ecuador, while in the valley of Quito there are
enormous layers of pumice, scoriae, and drift, which last
has yielded the remains of various Post-Pliocene mammals
and terrestrial shells. Drift with similar remains occurs
in the lower grounds of Colombia. In the Gulf of
Bahia there are recent beds; and near St. Paul, as also
in many other parts of Brazil, there are patches of
lacustrine deposits. On the west side of the continent
the pumiceous conglomerate is intimately connected
with trachytes, and indeed is formed from them. It is
intermediate in age between the lacustrine beds, the
marine deposits near the shore, and the drift, which is in
its turn covered by the more recent lava overflows; and
it is in this intermediate age that the upheaval of the
principal chain of the Andes occurred. The ranges
and faults which are assigned to this period, probably
Pliocene or Post-Pliocene, run very nearly north and
south. This elevation did not materially alter the
extent of land west of the Andes, its general effect
being to add a strip about thirty miles in width. On
the east the change was great, since the larger propor-
tion of the great central plain then emerged, and thus
connected the high lands on the east, west, and north
into one great continent. The eruption of the trachytes,
which form so marked a feature in the Andes, was
accompanied by a metamorphism distinct in character
from those of earlier ages. The rocks were then sub-
jected not only to heat and water, but also to acid
vapors, which changed the felspar into sulphates of
alumina and iron, salt into anhydrous sulphate of Soda;
and, probably, by freeing the chlorine and iodine,
originated the chlorides and iodides which are , so
abundant in the argentiferous veins. Since the drift
there has been a slight elevation along a meridianal
3.X1S.
Such is a brief account of the growth of South Amer-
ica. We must, however, mention that Professor Agassiz
and his coadjutors believe that the red soil and immedi-
ately underlying beds, seen near Rio Janeiro and in the
valley of the Amazon, are true glacial formations, and
infer that the similar beds which are spread over such an
enormous area in South America have been formed
A M E 243
under similar conditions. Professor Agassiz has found
moraines and ice-transported boulders in various places
in the mountains of Brazil, as also indications of valley
glaciers. Professor Orton has found marine shells in
these beds at Pebas in Ecuador.
The foregoing sketch indicates that there have been
several periods of volcanic activity; and that, so far as
our present knowledge goes, such activity has only been
manifested along the line of the Andes. Volcanic rocks
have rarely been observed on the east side of the conti-
nent, but some of the Tertiary and Post-Tertiary beds
of the plains contain matter which has been showered
upon them during eruptions, and which now forms
a portion of the Pampean deposits. At one period or
other the whole system of Andes has been subjected to
volcanic disturbance, but at the present time the active
volcanoes occur in groups more or less widely separated.
The most Southern active volcano is Corcovado, in 439
IO' S. There are, besides, some twenty or more
volcanic comes, of which about a dozen are known to be
active. Bolivia has one or two active vents, and Peru
several; but it is in Ecuador, with its dozen ignivomous
vents, that have occurred the grandest and most frequent
displays. Colombia has four or five volcanoes. With
the exception of the Moluccas, no country in the world
has had so many and so destructive earthquake shocks as
South America. But these are concentrated, both as
regards frequency and strength, along the Andes, and
more particularly their western slope. Comparatively few
are felt in the plains to the east of them; but occasionally
it happens that shocks are felt at points on the opposite
slopes of this great range without being perceived in the
intermediate higher regions. Peru seems to be the prin-
cipal focus of action; and next to it in importance as a
seismic area comes Chili; but although some earthquake
shocks spread over both these areas, there does not seem
to be the community of action which we should expect
between the two areas. In Peru the maxima of seismic
intensity were in the decades ending 1590, 1610, 1660,
I690, 17 Io, I72O, I730, 1750, 1770, 1790, 1840, 1870.
In Chili they occurred in the decades ending 1580, 1640,
I650, 1660, 1690, 1730, 1780, 1800, 1820, 1840, 1850.
Nearly every other portion of the continent is subject to
earthquakes. Bolivia, which lies between Peru and
Chili, is comparatively free from them, as also are Brazil,
Patagonia, and the Argentine Confederation, but they
are more frequent in Ecuador, Columbia, Venezuela,
and the three Guianas.
The mountains of North and Central America will
not detain us long. The ranges of Central America
have no relation to the Andes, differing from them both
as regards age and direction, which is generally N. 55°
W., and being separated from them by gaps only a few
hundred feet above the sea, and upwards of 100 miles
wide. During the Tertiary period the mountains of N.
and S. America had still less connection than at present,
for where the isthmus now forms a bridge of land there
was a broad strait, which lasted up to the end of the
Pliocene, or beginning of the Post-Pliocene period.
Volcanoes are frequent in Central America; and basalt
and other volcanic products cover a large portion of the
country. The large development of trachytes indicates
an earlier period of volcanic activity, during which most
of the Tertiary strata were metamorphosed into porphy-
ries. At any rate these rest upon cretaceous limestones.
In many places the clays and sandstones of the Creta-
ceous age have been metamorphosed into granite rocks.
From Puebla to Durango the Mexican mountains no
longer present the appearance of a chain, but spread out
to a table-land or elevated plain, from 5000 to 9000 feet
in height, and from Ioo to 300 miles in breadth. Across
this plain, close to the 19th parallel, six volcanoes are
distributed in a line running east and west, as if a vast
rent, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, had
opened a passage for the internal fires of the globe at
this spot. Two of those on the east of the continent,
with a group of four or five other cones lying between
Jalapa and Cordoba, have an elevation exceeding 17,000
feet, and are the only mountains in New Spain that rise
to the region of perpetual Snow, which commences here
at 15,000 feet above the level of the sea. Jorullo, the
lowest of the six volcanoes, rose suddenly in the middle
of a plain, in September 1759, after fearful concussions
of the ground, which continued for fifty or sixty days.
Near the tropic the Mexican Cordillera divides into
three parts. One runs parallel to the eastern coast at
the distance of thirty or forty leagues, and terminates in
New Leon. Another proceeds in a north-western direc-
tion, and sinks gradually as it approaches the Californian
Gulf in Sonora. The third or central Cordillera tra-
verses Durango and New Mexico, divides the sources of
the Rio Gila from the Rio Bravo del Norte, and dies
out before reaching the Rocky Mountains.
In a scientific survey of the Rocky Mountain range,
conducted by Professor Hayden of Yale College, a higher
peak was discovered than had been formerly known.
Holy Cross mountain was computed to reach 17,000 feet
above the sea, or 2000 feet higher than Big Horn (15,000),
which had hitherto been supposed to be the highest of the
chain. The greatest altitudes on the North American
continent are now said to be the following—St. Elias
(17,900) in Alaska, Popocatepetl (17,884) in Mexico,
Orizaba (17,337) in Mexico, Holy Cross (17,000), Rocky
Mountains, Big Horn (15,000), and Mount Lincoln
(14,300), both in the same chain. The Great Salt Lake
of Utah is in 41° N. and 112° W., and has intensely
salt waters. It is nearly 300 miles in circumference, and
its shores, for a breadth of several miles, are covered with
an incrustation of very pure salt. It lies in a basin,
which measures about 500 miles each way, and contains
much fertile soil.
If we run a line westward across the continent of
North America at the latitude of Delaware Bay (389),
the geological formations present themselves in the
following order: — 1. Tertiary and Cretaceous strata on
the shores of the Atlantic; 2. Gneiss underlying these
strata, and presenting itself on the eastern slope of the
Alleghany or Appalachian mountains, but covered in
parts by New Red Sandstone; 3. Palaeozoic rocks, con-
sisting of Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous strata,
curiously bent into parallel ſoldings, with synclinal and
anticlinal axes, the crests of the latter forming the ridges
of the Alleghany Mountains, which in this region rise
to the height of 2500 feet. Upon these Palaeozoic rocks
rest three great coal-fields—the Appalachian, that of
Illinois, and that of Michigan, covering a large portion
of the space between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi,
and embracing collectively an area equal to the surface
of Great Britain. From the Mississippi westward to
Utah the Palaeozoic rocks occur in great folds, between
which are extensive areas of Triassic, Oolitic, Cretaceous,
and Tertiary beds. In California the rocks are chiefly
metamorphosed secondary strata on which lie patches of
Tertiary sediments. In British America there is an
enormous development of the Laurentian and Huronian
rocks, which are the oldest yet discovered, and occupy
most of the country immediately north of the large lakes.
Newfoundland and the neighboring British territories
consist of Pre-Silurian, Silurian, Devonian, Carbonifer-
ous (which includes coal-fields of considerable extent),
and Triassic rocks. The area north of about 40° N. is
also covered and strewed with glacial drift and boulders.
The Ozark Mountains resemble the Alleghanies in
their mineral structure, containing the same rocks from
244
A M E
the granite to the carboniferous, and probably upwards
to the chalk.
In no single circumstance is the superiority of America
over the old world So conspicuous, as in the number and
magnitude of its navigable rivers. The Amazon alone
discharges a greater quantity of water than the eight
principal rivers of Asia, the Yenesei, Indus, Ganges, Oby,
Lena, Amoor, and the Hoang-ho and Yang-tse of
China. The Mississippi, with its branches, affords a
greater amount of inland navigation than all the streams,
great and small, which irrigate Europe; and the Plata,
in this respect, may probably claim a superiority over
the collective water of Africa. But the American rivers
not only surpass those of the Old World in length and
volume of water, they are so placed as to penetrate.
everywhere to the heart of the continent. By the
Amazon, a person living at the eastern foot of the Andes,
2OOO miles of direct distance from the Atlantic, may
convey himself or his property to the shores of that sea
in forty-five days, almost without effort, by confiding his
bark to the gliding current. If he wish to return, he has
but to spread his sails to the eastern breeze, which blows
perennially against the stream. The navigation is not
interrupted by a single cataract or rapid, from the At-
lantic to Jean, in west longitude 78° where the surface
of the stream is only 1240 feet above the level of its
estuary at Para. The part of North America most re-
mote from the sea is the great interior plain extending
from the Rocky Mountains to the Alleghanies and the
lakes, between the parallels of 40° and 50°; but the
Mississippi, Missouri, and St. Lawrence, with their
branches, are wonderfully ramified over this region, and
the Missouri is in some degree navigable to the centre of
the continent. It is only necessary to cast the eye over
a map of South America, to see that all the most se-
questered parts of the interior are visited by branches of
the Plata and the Amazon. These streams, having their
courses in general remarkably level, and seldom inter-
rupted by cataracts, may be considered without a figure
of speech, as a vast system of natural canals, terminating
in two main trunks, which communicate with the ocean
at the equator and the 35th degree of South latitude.
Since the invention of steam navigation, rivers are, in
the truest sense of the term, Nature’s highway, especi-
ally for infant communities, where the people are too
poor, and live too widely dispersed, to bear the expense
of constructing roads. There is little risk in predicting,
that in two or three centuries the Mississippi, the Ama-
zon, and the Plata, will be the scenes of an active inland
commerce, far surpassing in magnitude anything at pres-
ent known on the surface of the globe. The Mississippi
is navigable for boats from the sea to the falls of its
rincipal branch the Missouri, 1700 miles from the
exican Gulf in a direct line, or 3900 by the stream;
and the whole amount of boat navigation afforded by
the system of rivers, of which the Mississippi is the
main trunk, has been estimated as equal to 40,000
miles in length, spread over a surface of 1,350,000
Square miles. This, however, is perhaps an exaggera-
tion; a navigable length of 35,000 miles may be nearer
the truth.
The Amazon contains many islands, is broad, and in
the upper part so deep, that on one occasion Condamine
found no bottom with a line 62o feet long. At its mouth,
two days before and after the full moon, the phenome-
non called a Bore occurs in a very formidable shape. It
is a high upright wave of water rushing from the sea,
which no small vessel can encounter without certain
destruction.
The estuaries of all these great American rivers open
to the eastward ; and thus Providence seems to have
plainly indicated that the most intimate commercial rela-
tions of the inhabitants of America should be with the .
western shores of the Old World. It should at the same
time be observed, that this position of the great rivers of
America is but one example of a physical arrangement
which is common to the whole globe; for it is remarka-
ble that, in the Old World as well as in the New, no
river of the first class flows to the westward. Some, as
the Nile, the Lena, and the Oby, flow to the north ;
others, as the Indus and the rivers of Ava to the south;
but the largest, as the Volga, the Ganges, the Yang-tse,
the Hoang-ho, the Euphrates, and the Amoor, have
their courses to the east or south-east. This arrange-
ment is not accidental, but depends most probably on
the inclination of the primary rocks, which, in all cases
where their direction approaches to the south and north,
seem to have their steepest sides to the west and the
longest declivities to the east. We have examples in the
Scandinavian Alps, the mountains of Britain, the Ghauts
of India, the Andes, and the Rocky Mountains.
The following table exhibits the lengths, size of the
basins, and probable extent of the navigable waters of the
greater rivers of America.
Table of Principal American A'ivers.
Area of Navigable
Length, basin, waters,
miles. sq. miles. miles.
Mississippi to source of
jº, e e e º e º a e e e s e e | 43OO I,350, 35,
St. Lawrence through the
lakes. . . . . gº tº **{…, 600, 4,
Orinoco. . . . . . . . . • * * tº e º e I8OO 4OO,OOO 8,000.
Amazon, not including
Araguay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 2, IOO, 50,000.
Plata, including Uruguay. 2400 1,200,000 20,000.
The latitude and elevation of the land in each country,
its position in reference to the sea, and the direction of
the prevailing winds, are the chief circumstances which
determine the nature of the climate. We have already
mentioned that three-fourths of South America lie
within the tropics, and the remaining fourth in the tem-
perate zone; but, in both divisions, it might be naturally
inferred that a huge wall like the Andes, rising into
the atmosphere to the height of two or three miles, and
running across the course of the tropical and extra-
tropical winds, would exert a powerful influence on the
temperature, the humidity, and the distribution of the
seasons. This is actually the case; and it is this vast
chain of mountains, with its prolongation in North
America, which affords a key to the most remarkable
peculiarities in the climate of the whole continent.
The subject, which has been frequently misunderstood,
admits of being explained in a very simple manner.
The trade-winds blowing from the east occupy a zone
60 degrees in breadth, extending from 30° of N. to 300
of S. latitude. Beyond these limits are variable winds;
but the prevailing direction in the open sea, where no
accidental causes operate, is well known by navigators to
be from the west. Now these winds are the agents
which transport the equable temperature of the ocean,
and the moisture exhaled from its surface, to the interior
of the great continents, where it is precipitated in the
shape of rain, dew, or snow. Mountains receive the
moisture which floats in the atmosphere; they obstruct
and lift the aerial currents, and by causing a reduction of
temperature, favor precipitation. Rain, accordingly, in
all countries falls most abundantly on the elevated land.
Let us consider, then, what will be the effect of a mural
ridge like the Andes in the situation which it occupies.
In the region within the 30th parallel, the moisture
swept up by the trade-wind from the Atlantic will be
precipitated in part upon the mountains of Brazil, which
A M E
245
are but low, and so distributed as to extend far into the
interior. The portion which remains will be borne
westward, and, losing a little as it proceeds, will be
arrested by the Andes, and fall down in showers on their
slopes. The aerial current will now be deprived of all
the humidity which it can part with, and arrive in a
state of complete exsiccation at Peru, where no rain
will consequently fall. That even a much lower ridge
than the Andes may intercept the whole moisture of the
atmosphere, is proved by a well-known phenomenon in
India, where the Ghauts, a chain only 3000 or 4000 feet
high, divide Summer from winter, as it is called; that is,
they have copious rains on their windward side, while on
the other the weather remains clear and dry; and the
rains regularly change from the west side to the east, and
zºice wersa, with the monsoons. In the region beyond
the 30th parallel this effect will be reversed. The
Andes will in this case serve as a screen to intercept the
moisture brought by the prevailing west winds from the
Pacific Ocean; rains will be copious on their slopes, and in
Chili on their western declivities, but none will fall on
the plains to the eastward, except occasionally, when the
winds blow from the Atlantic. The phenomena of the
weather correspond in a remarkable manner with this
hypothesis. On the shore of the Pacific, from Coquimbo,
at the 30th parallel, to Amatapu, at the 5th of softh
latitude, no rain falls; and the whole of this tract is a
Sandy desert, except the narrow strips of land skirting
the streams that descend from the Andes, where the soil
is rendered productive by irrigation. From the 30th
parallel southward the scene changes. Rains are fre-
quent; vegetation appears on the surface, and grows
more vigorous as we advance southward. “At Concep-
cion,” says Captain Hall, “the eye was delighted with
the richest and most luxuriant foliage; at Valparaiso the
hills were poorly clad with a stunted brushwood and a
poor attempt at grass, the ground looking starved and
naked; at Coquimbo the brushwood was gone, with
nothing in its place but a vile sort of prickly pear bush,
and a thin sprinkling of gray wiry grass; at Huasco
(latitude 28%9) there was not a trace of vegetation, and
the hills were covered with bare sand.” It follows
from the principle we have laid down, that in this
southern part of the continent the dry tract should be
found on the east side of the mountains, and such is the
fact. At Mendoza, in latitude 32°, rain scarcely ever
falls, and the district along the east foot of the Andes
is known to consist chiefly of parched sands, on which a
few stunted shrubs grow, and in which many of the
streams that descend from the mountains are absorbed
before they reach the sea. The whole country, indeed,
south of the Plata, suffers from drought; but on the
eastern side this is remedied to some extent by winds
from the east or South-east, which bring occasional rains
to refresh the soil. From Amatapu northward, on the
other hand, the west coast is well watered and fruitful;
and this is easily accounted for. The line of the coast
here changes its direction, and trends to the north-east
as far as the isthmus of Panama, where the mountains
sink to a few hundred feet in height, and leave a free
passage to the trade-wind, which here often assumes a
direction from the north-east, or even the north. The
exhalations of the Atlantic are thus brought in abun-
dance to the coast of Quito, which is in consequence well
watered; while the neighboring district of Peru suffers
from perpetual aridity.
Our principle applies equally to the explanation of
some peculiar facts connected with the climate of North
America. The western coast of Mexico, as far as St.
Blas or Mazatlam, in latitude 23° N., is well watered,
because, first, the continent here is narrow ; secondly,
the table-land of Mexico, which is much lower than the
Andes of Chili, is not so effectual a screen to intercept
the moisture; and, thirdly, there is reason to believe
that a branch of the trade-wind, which crosses the low
part of the continent at Panama and Nicaragua, sweeps
along the west coast during part of the year, and trans-
ports humidity with it. But beyond the point we have
mentioned drought prevails. Sonora, though visited oc-
casionally by rains, consists of sandy plains without
herbage, where the streams lose themselves in the parched
soil without reaching the sea ; and even Old California,
which has the ocean on One side, and a broad gulf on
the other, and ought apparently to be excessively humid,
is covered with sterile rocks and Sandy hills, where the
vegetation is scanty, and no timber is seen except brush-
wood. This dry region extends as far as 33° or 34° N. ;
but immediately beyond this we have another change of
scene. New California is in all respects a contrast to
the Old. It is rich, fertile and humid, abounding in lux-
uriant forests and fine pastures; and the other American
possessions to the northward preserve the same character.
How can we account for this singular diversity of cli-
mate, except upon the principle which has been explained,
namely, that in all regions where ranges of mountains in-
tersect the course of the constant or predominant winds,
the country on the windward side of the mountains will
be moist, and that on the leeward dry ; and hence
parched deserts will generally be found on the west side
of countries within the tropics, and on the east of those
beyond them 2 Our hypothesis applies equally to the
country east of the Rocky Mountains. For the space
of about 3000 miles along the foot of this chain the sur-
face consists of dry sands or gravel, sometimes covered
with saline incrustations, almost destitute of trees and
herbage, and watered by streams flowing from the mount-
ains, which are sometimes entirely absorbed by the arid
soil. The central and eastern part of the basin of
the Mississippi would in all probability have been
equally barren had the configuration of the land been
a little different in the south. A tract of country
extremely low and level extends along both sides of this
river; and a portion of the trade-wind blowing from the
Mexican Gulf, finding its motion westward obstructed
by the high table-land of the Cordillera, is deflected to
the right, and ascends the valley of the Mississippi and
Ohio. This wind, whose course was first traced by Vol-
ney, bears with it the humidity of the torrid zone, and
scatters fertility over a wide region that would otherwise
be a barren waste. -
The views on the subject of climate we have been
unfolding will enable us to throw some light on an
interesting point — the distribution of forests. We are
induced to think, that in all countries having a summer
heat exceeding 70°, the presence or absence of natural
woods, and their greater or less luxuriance, may be taken
as a measure of the amount of humidity, and of the fer-
tility of the soil. Short and heavy rains in a warm
country will produce grass, which, having its roots near
the surface, springs up in a few days, and withers when
the moisture is exhausted ; but transitory rains, however
heavy, will not nourish trees, because after the surface
is saturated with water, the rest runs off, and the
moisture lodged in the soil neither sinks deep enough,
nor is in sufficient quantity to furnish the giants of the
forest with the necessary Sustenance. It may be assumed
that 20 inches of rain falling moderately, or at intervals,
will leave a greater permanent supply in the soil than 40
inches falling, as it sometimes does in the torrid zone, in
as many hours. It is only necessary to qualify this con-
clusion by stating, that something depends on the subsoil.
If that is gravel, or a rock full of fissures, the water
imbedded will soon drain off; if it is clay or a compact
rock, the water will remain in the soil. It must be
246
A M E
remembered, also, that both heat and moisture diminish
as we ascend in the atmosphere, while evaporation
increases; and hence that trees will not grow on very
high ground, though its position in reference to the sea
and the prevailing winds should be favorable in other
respects. In speaking of the region of forests, we
neither restrict the term to those districts where the
natural woods present an unbroken continuity, nor extend
it to every place where a few trees grow in open plains.
It is not easy to give a definition that will always be
appropriate; but in using the expression, we wish to be
understood as applying it to ground where the natural
woods cover more than one-fourth of the surface.
Great misapprehensions have arisen with regard to the
climate of America, from comparisons being drawn be-
tween the east side of the new continent and the west
side of the old. We have already pointed out the in-
fluence of winds blowing from the sea in modifying the
state of the atmosphere over the land, both as to heat
and humidity. When this circumstance is attended to,
and when the east and west sides of the old and the new
continents are respectively compared with one another,
the difference is found to be small, and easily accounted
for. In the torrid zone, and on the sea-shore, the tem-
perature of both continents is found to be the same, viz.,
82°; but in the interior the difference is rather in favor
of America. There is no counterpart in the New World
to the burning heats felt in the plains of Arabia and N.
Africa. Even in the western and warmest part of the
parched steppes of Caraccas, the hottest known region
in America, the temperature of the air during the day is
only 98° in the shade, which rises to 1129 in the sandy
deserts which surround the Red Sea. At Calabozo,
farther east in the Llanos, the common temperature of
the day is only from 889 to 90°; and at sunrise the ther-
mometer sinks to 80°. The basin of the Amazon is
shaded with lofty woods; and a cool breeze from the
east, a minor branch of the trade wind, ascends the
channel of the stream, following all its windings, almost
to the foot of the Andes. Hence this region, though
under the equator, and visited with almost constant
rains, is neither excessively hot nor unhealthy. Brazil,
and the vast country extending westward from it between
the Plata and the Amazon, is an uneven table-land, blest
with an equable climate. At Rio Janeiro, which stands
low, and is exposed to a heat comparatively great, the
temperature in summer varies from 689 to 820 Fahr.,
and the mean is only about 74°. Farther north, and in
the interior, the Indians find it necessary to keep fires in
their huts; and in the country near the sources of the
Paraguay, hoar-frost is seen on the hills during the
colder months, and the mean temperature of the year
falls below 65° or 67°. On the declivities of the Andes,
and on the high plains of Upper Peru, the heats are so
moderate that the plants of Italy, France, and Germany
come to maturity. Lower Peru, though a sandy desert,
enjoys a wonderful degree of coolness, owing to the
fogs which intercept the solar rays. At Lima, which is
540 feet above the sea, the temperature varies from 53°
to 82°, but the mean for the whole year is only 729.
In the plains of La Plata the mean temperature of the
year, is very nearly the same as at the corresponding
north latitudes on the east side of the Atlantic. At
Buenos Ayres, for instance, the mean annual heat is
19° 7 of the centigrade thermometer (680 Fahr.), while
that of places on the same parallel in the Old World is
19°8. The range of temperature is probably greater in
the basin of the Plata; but as we advance southwards,
the diminishing breadth of the continent makes the
climate approximate to that of an island, and the ex-
tremes of course approach each other. In the Strait of
Magalhaen the temperature of the warmest month does
not exceed 439 or 469; and snow falls almost daily in
the middle of winter, though the latitude corresponds
with that of England. But the inference drawn from
this, that the climate is unmatched for severity, is by no
means just, for the winter at Staten Island is milder than
in London. In point of fact, the climate of Patagonia
is absolutely colder than that of places in the same lati-
tude in Europe; but the difference lies chiefly in the very
low temperature of the summer. This peculiarity no
doubt results chiefly from the greater coolness of the sea.
in the southern hemisphere; for beyond the parallel of
48°, the difference of temperature in the North and
South Atlantic amounts, according to Humboldt, to IOP
or 129 of Fahrenheit's scale. If we push our researches
a step farther, and inquire what is the cause of the great
warmth of the Northern Sea, we shall be forced to admit
that a very satisfactory answer cannot be given. Some-
thing may be due to the influence of the Gulf Stream, a
minute branch of which is supposed to carry the waters
of the torrid zone to the shores of Shetland and Norway;
but such an agent seems too trifling to account for the
phenomenon. The sum, then, of the peculiar qualities
which distinguish the climate of South America may be
briefly stated. Near the equator the new continent is
perhaps more humid than the old; and within the
tropics generally, owing to its vast forests, the absence
of sandy deserts, and the elevation of the soil, it is cooler.
Beyond the tropics the heat is nearly the same in the
south temperate zone of America and the northern one
of the old continent, till we ascend to the latitude of
Cape Horn, where we have cold summers and a very
limited range of the thermometer.
The mountain ranges of North America form two
widely distant highland regions, separated from each
other by the vast interior plain, which contains, in its
southern slope, the Mississippi with all its tributaries,
and the other rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico,
while its northern part contains the great fresh-water
lakes, and many rivers taking a northward course to
Hudson's Bay or to the Arctic seas. The watershed of
this plain, dividing the streams that run into the Mis-
souri and Mississippi from those communicating with the
Saskatchewan, with Lake Winnipeg, and with Lake
Superior, is along a line from west to east nearly coin-
ciding with the 48th parallel of latitude, and has a mean
elevation of 1500 feet.
Along the whole of the western side, from near the
mouth of the Mackenzie in the Arctic Ocean, and from
Alaska on the Pacific shore, to the Isthmus of Nicaragua.
and Panama, that is, across 60° of latitude from north
to south, extends with a grand double curve the continu-
ous length of the Rocky Mountains, and others which
prolong the line, having a position in North America
similar to that of the Andes in South America, and shut-
ting off, in some parts, a comparatively narrow portion
of the continent, with the Pacific shore, from the great
central plain. But several minor ranges, branching off
or confronting the principal mountain-ridge or back-
bone of North America, enclose large spaces of a table-
land, traversed by the Columbia, the Fraser, and the
Colórado rivers, with those which join them, and hold-
ing the Great Salt Lake of Utah in its central basin.
The Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon,
the Sierra Nevada of California, and the Coast Range
prolonged through the Californian peninsula, haye a geº-
eral direction from north to south; while the Wahsatch,
the Humboldt, the Blue Mountains, the Salmon River,
and other ranges, stand rather across the table-land, or
obliquely, from west to east. It may be convenient to
speak of the former series, regarded altogether, as the
general Pacific Coast Range, which we also observe to
be continued northward, with some intervals, beyond
A M E
247
latitude 60° N. to the peninsula of Alaska, presenting
summits of increased height, that of Mount St. Elias
being about 17,000 feet, and Mount Fairweather nearly
15,000 feet. In the Cascade Range are Mount St.
Helen’s, north of the Columbia River, attaining an ele-
vation of 15,750 feet; Mount Hood and Mount Jeffer-
son, about 15,000 feet. The Sierra Nevada, at its north-
ern extremity, where it forms an acute angle with the
coast range, displays the lofty terminal peak of Mount
Shasta, having an altitude of 14,400 feet. The minor
Californian Coast Range nowhere rises to 4000 feet.
The main Cordillera or spine of Western North America,
which in the British Dominion and in the United States'
territory is called the Rocky Mountains, but which takes
the name of the Sierra Madre in Mexico, and in the
isthmus, farther south, is split into two lower groups of
a volcanic character, attains the height of 16,000 feet in
Mount Brown, and 15,700 feet in Mount Hooker, both
near the 54th degree of latitude, above the source of the
Saskatchewan river; but Fremont, in the Wind River
group, between Oregon and Nebraska, is 13,560 feet
high, and there are peaks of Io,000 feet or 12,000 feet in
Utah and New Mexico. The highest mountains, how-
ever, in North America, excelling even Mount St. Elias,
belong to a volcanic series which crosses the table-land
of Southern Mexico from west to east, and of which the
culminating points are Popocatepetl, 17,884 feet, and Ori-
zaba, 17,373 feet; while Agua, in Guatemala, rises to
13,000 feet. Thus we may remark, at each extrem-
ity of the Cordillera, at its north end, towards Alaska,
and at its South end, in Central America, it is encoun-
tered by a cluster of volcanoes, Mount St. Elias being
one of this description, which exceed the height of the
Rocky Mountains. The spaces enclosed between the
main trunk and branches of this immense system of
mountains are several hundred miles wide, and the sur-
face is elevated 5000 feet or 6000 feet above the sea-level,
as in the Utah lake-basin, the Nevada territory, and the
plateau of Anahuac, or southern Mexico, which last has
an elevation of 6000 feet to 8ooo feet, and has therefore
a temperate climate within the tropics.
An outline merely has been given of the western high-
land region of North America. The eastern highlands
of this continent are mainly constituted by the Allegha-
nies or Appalachian system of mountains, with their
dependencies, which are of no great height, the Black
Mountain, or Mount Guyot, in North Carolina, being
the highest, at 6476 feet; but they extend nearly 2006
miles, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of
Mexico, having a general direction from north-east to
South-west. The strip of land, one or two hundred
miles wide, between these mountains and the Atlantic
coast, is of the greatest historical interest, as it includes
the seats of all the older English settlements on this
continent, which seems destined for the grandest dwell-
ing-place of our nation. North of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, through the peninsula that terminates with
Labrador between the Atlantic and Hudson's Bay, the
Appalachian system of mountains is continued, or re-
sumed, in a range called the Watchish, only 1500 feet
high, but in the severe climate of that region covered
with perpetual snow. The Alleghanies, south of the
St. Lawrence, including the Green Mountains of Ver-
mont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire,
are not so much a chain of mountains as a long plateau,
crested by several different ridges, and intersected by
wide valleys of considerable elevation, but altogether on
a much smaller scale than the highlands of Western
America. East of the river Hudson the mountains are
chiefly granitic, with rounded summits, often covered
with turf or moss to the top; they assume a more regular
formation in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Caro-
lina, but again decline and break into detached groups
in approaching their southern extremity in Alabama.
Next to the summit in North Carolina, which is named
above, Mount Washington in New Hampshire stands
pre-eminent, with an altitude of 6428 feet. The scenery
of these “White Mountains" is very striking, especially
where the Saco river cleaves its way through the barrier
of granite by a cutting two miles long, in one place only
22 feet wide, between lofty precipitous walls. It is in
the “Green Mountains,” succeeding these to the west,
and giving their name in French to the neighboring
State, that the prevalent form becomes that of round
humps on a broad base, with firs or shrubs growing on
the slopes, and with scanty grass or lichens on the sum-
mits. Both these two contrasted groups of New Eng-
land mountains enter the State of Massachusetts from
the north; the Hoosac and Taconic extensions of the
Green Mountains rise on the west side, while the White
Mountains are continued by those of which Mount
Holyoke and Wachusett are the most conspicuous; and
between their parallel ranges is the Connecticut river,
with the Housatomic, Mount Tom, and Blue Hills to
overlook its lower course. These features of the coun-
try, though of far less physical importance than the tow-
ering peaks of Colorado and California, will always be
associated with the genuine traditions of English
rural, domestic, and social life, transplanted to
the New World in the 17th century, and defended
by a long struggle against Stern nature and Savage
men in the early age of the American colonies.
The natural boundary separating New England from
the great and more modern State of New York is that
noble river the Hudson, rising in the Adirondack Mount-
ains, near Lake Champlain and the waters of the St. Law-
rence, but pouring its beautiful and useful stream directly
south, to the greatest of American commercial ports and
cities. This river passes close by the Catskill and
Shawankunk Mountains, from which is continued the
general distribution of the eastern American highlands
along the Atlantic states, but with a more westerly de-
climation from the coast, running through Pennsylvania,
West Virginia, the borders of Tennessee, and North
Carolina, the upper parts of Georgia and Alabama. It
is in Virginia that the Alleghanies have their
greatest breadth, which is about 150 miles. They rise
higher in North Carolina and Tennessee, and subse-
quently keep up a distinct line of position, across the
cotton-growing States, between those of the Atlantic
seaboard and those of the Lower Mississippi. This cir-
cumstance, it may be remarked, has had most important
effects on the political and military events of late years,
in the results of the attempted secession of the slave-
holding States from the Union. Another feature of
physical geography, which probably conditioned the
earlier stages of that momentous civil struggle, in the
disputes relating to the Missouri compromise and to the
admission of Kansas as a free-soil State, is the existence
of the Ozark range of mountains. ... These stand in the
middle of the great Mississippi valley, stretching across
from northern Texas to Arkansas and the confluence of
the Missouri with the Mississippi. By the elevation
they give to the soil, in latitudes between 30° and 40°,
as well as by the raised table-land of New Mexico and
Arizona farther west, the area of the United States’
territory suitable for cotton plantations and for slave
labor was so far limited, and confined to the shores of
the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic seaboard. At the
same time, in the latitudes north of these, between 40°
and 50°, the whole vast prairie region, from the Ohio to
the Rocky Mountains was adapted to the growth of
corn, while it had such continuity and uniformity of
surface, and was so pervaded by the grand river-system
4
248
A M E
of this middle plain of North America, that it could not
undergo political division. The entire West being thus
secured to the Union, and the better part of the South
being thus rescued from the curse of Negro slavery, by
the moulding hand of nature in planning the distribution
of mountain ranges and the level ground all over this
continent, we may consider that the political and social
destinies of the great American Republic, vindicated in
the civil war from 1861 to 1865, were puedetermined in
the formation of the land.
The North American continent affords an interesting
study of the geological changes and adjustments, by
which the mighty work of preparation for what promises
to be a noble development of humanity was slowly
effected in the remote epochs of the past. The oldest
sedimentary rocks anywhere found on the globe are
those which underlie the whole of Canada, New Bruns-
wick, and Newfoundland, the Labrador peninsula, and
the country north of Lake Superior, perhaps also
the less explored regions of the north-west towards the
Arctic Sea. This series, named the Laurentian from
the St. Lawrence river, is perceived to exist in Europe
only in a few scattered instances, in the Hebrides, and
in Norway or Sweden. In North America it occupies
the most extensive areas; the thickness of its beds is
estimated by Sir William Logan at 30,000 feet; it rises
to hills or mountains 4000 feet high, and in the deep
gorge of the Saguenay river, forms perpendicular cliffs
of 1500 feet. Only one fossil animal, which has been
called the Eozoön Canadense, has been discovered to
have left its trace in this most ancient bottom of the
primeval ocean; it was one of the Foraminiſera, which
covered its gelatinous body with a thin crust of carbonate
of lime, having numerous holes or pores for the emission
of its filament-members, with which to feel and feed out
side. Next to the Laurentian, but with a vast unknown
interval of time, comes the Huronian or Lower Cam-
brian series. It is suggested by geologists that, as the
wast level bed of the Laurentian sea was cracked by
internal changes of the earth’s density, these cracks
threw up certain ridges along the surface of the present
continent, which laid a foundation for the principal
mountain ranges we have described. At the borders and
extremities of these mountain ranges, it is evident that
there were intense volcanic eruptions, producing great
quantities of Lava and conglomerate, basalt, greenstone,
and other formations resulting from igneous action. The
northern shores of Lakes Huron and Superior exhibit
results of this kind; but it is in the table-land between
the Rocky Mountains and the west coast ranges, as in
the singular lava beds near the Klamath, on the frontier
of Oregon and North California, that volcanic forces
have made their strongest marks on the earth. On the
eastern side also of the grand Cordillera, between the
sources of the Missouri and of the Yellowstone rivers,
is a wonderful region of boiling springs or geysers, of
sulphur beds and other natural curiosities, which have
been ably described by Dr. Hayden, of the United
States’ Government Survey. To speak more generally
of the local arrangement of the different geological
formation, it may be remarked that crystalline rocks
are spread over the western parts of North America,
from Alaska to Nicaragua, and over the most northern
parts, also including Greenland; but some of later date
are found in the eastern Appalachian range, consisting
of felspathic gneiss and quartz rocks, mingled with tal-
cose and chloritic schists. The Palacozoic formations
occupy that middle part of the continent which lies
between the Rocky Mountains and the great lakes, as
well as the shores of Hudson's Bay, and some portions
of the Atlantic coasts. With reference to the Lower
Silurian or Siluro-Cambrian period, it is abundantly
illustrated by the Trenton and associated limestones,
which can be traced over 40° of longitude, their beds
consisting entirely of débris of coral, shells, and crinoids,
from the shallow inland Sea, teeming with animal life,
that once filled the whole level space between the Alle-
ghanies and the Rocky Mountains, separated by these
ridges from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and shel-
tered from the cold Arctic currents by the northern
Laurentian highlands. This space, which is now the
central plain of North America, comprising the prairies
and the Mississippi valley, was then a coral sea with
archipelagos of volcanic isles, resembling that of
Australasia in the South Pacific. The next formation
succeeding the Silurian presents immense deposits of
sandstone and shale from the muddy waters troubled by
subterranean motions; this is the Devonian formation,
which in America has been called the Erian, on account
of the great development of such beds South of Lake
Erie. The deposits of this period in the western conti-
nent are stated to be 15,000 feet in thickness. They
include the cliff limestones, studded with calcareous
corals of great size and beauty of shape, noticed by Sir
Charles Lyell at the falls of the Ohio, near Louisville;
there limestones are estimated to extend, as an ancient
coral reef, over 500,000 square miles of the American
middle plain. In the State of New York and in West-
ern Canada there is the corniferous limestone, in which
the imbedded corals have been replaced, in the cavities
they once filled, by flinty hornstones which present the
perfect coral forms, as though castin a mould. In the
Carboniferous age the great internal sea of the conti-
ment was slowly changed into swampy flats and shallow
lakes or creeks, and gradually filled with a rank vegeta-
ble growth, afterwards buried under later marine
deposits and pressed into the existing coal-beds. Of
this period there are very extensive developments
throughout the eastern half of the great middle plain to
the Alleghanies. This portion of America seems to
have been land, covered with the forests of that period,
while the western half of the middle plain, a northward
extension of the Gulf of Mexico, was still under water.
As the eastern half of North America, between the
Mississippi and the Atlantic, was thus in the Carboni-
ferous era well raised out of the sea, it exhibits no
traces of the succeeding Permian age, such as we find
in Europe. The earliest periods also of Mesozoic time
have failed to leave any record here, but their forma-
tions appear towards the western range of mountains in
what was the bed of a mediterranean sea. It is, how-
ever, the Cretaceous system, with its characteristic
greensand, its sands, clays, marls, and soft grey lime-
stones, that occupies most space in Western America,
between the meridians of 97° and I 12°. These strata,
overlaid sometimes by those of the Tertiary periods,
extend through the country up the Missouri, the Platte,
the Arkansas, and the Red River, to the Rocky Moun-
tains; they also form parts of the plains enclosed by
different mountain ranges beyond the Cordillera.
Along the eastern side of the Appalachians there is a
broad belt of the Cretaceous formation, stretching from
the Delaware across the upper parts of Virginia, Caro-
lina, Georgia, and Alabama. Among the fossil animal
remains discovered in this formation in North America,
which are enumerated in a separate list, one of the most
remarkable is that of the Mosasarus, a combination
of the serpent with the lizard form, sometimes, 80 feet
in length, and of aquatic habits. The Tertiary deposits,
including the boulder clay, prevail chiefly along, the
seward districts from Long Island, above New York, to
the peninsula of Florida, and around the shores of the
Mexican Gulf, and likewise or, the Pacific shore from
Lower California to Vancouver Island, also in some
A M E * 249
<letached instances, as in Nebraska, in the midst of the
interior plain. The newer Pliocene is met with in the
southern part of Maine, and on the shores of Lake
Champlain. The drift formation lies mostly north of
40° latitude. Alluvial deposits are of great amount
from the large rivers and lakes, especially in the delta
of the Mississippi, which has an area of 13,600 square
miles, and must, by Sir Charles Lyell’s reckoning, have
taken 67,000 years for its composition, at the rate of the
bringing down of solid matter by that mighty river.
The mineral products of North America are of un-
equalled richness and variety. Gold is abundant, to a
proverb, in California, and likewise in Nevada and
Montana. It is also ſound in British Columbia, Mexico,
Central America, and Canada, and sparingly in Vir-
ginia and South Carolina. Silver is obtained from
Nevada in larger quantities than from any other country;
it is supplied also by California, Mexico, Honduras, and
a vein of this metal is worked in Newfoundland. Great
masses of almost pure copper are found in the Huronian
rock strata, the north and east shores of Lake Superior
being the richest of copper-mining regions; while New
York State and Indiana possess a share of the same
metal, and it is found among the western mountains in
different countries from British Columbia to the isthmus.
The iron ores of Pennsylvania, and those of Canada,
including New Brunswick, are of the greatest impor-
tance; the former are rendered more available by their
occurring close to the beds of bituminous coal, giving
materials for the manufacturing industry of Pittsburg;
while anthracite coal is obtained from the eastern
districts of Pennsylvania. It is estimated that one-
third of the total area of this State is occupied by
coal-fields, which can scarcely be exhausted. Lead is
found in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri, in New
York State, in Canada, in California, and in Central
America, as well as quicksilver; white zinc is got from
Arkansas and New Jersey; both Canada and Mexico
produce tin. Reverting to the subject of coal, as hav-
ing an intimate economic connection with all metallic
wealth, it should be observed that the united area of all
the coal-fields in the United States is estimated at 190,-
OOO square miles, exceeding twentyfold those of Europe.
The chief of these coal-fields are, first, the Appala-
chian, extending from the Susquehanna, in Pennsyl-
vania, to the Tuscaloosa, in Alabama, along the west
side of the Alleghany Mountains; the area of this coal-
field is 70,000 square miles, and its greatest thickness
2500 feet; secondly, the coal-field of Michigan, about
the centre of that State; thirdly, the extensive coal-
field between the Ohio and the Mississippi, across the
States of Indiana and Illinois; lastly, the Iowa and
Missouri coal-field, which occupies a large space in the
very centre of the continent. Coal is found also in
Nova Scotia, in British Columbia, and Vancouver
Island, and wherever the Upper Palaeozoic strata prevail
in the geological structure. But in the vast extent of
British American territory north-west of Lake Superior,
around Lake Winnipeg and up the Saskatchewan river,
even as far as the Peace river, in latitude 56° N., it
may be expected that manufacturing as well as agri-
cultural prosperity will result from the use of immense
stores of natural wealth existing in the soil of that
long-neglected land, which is now proved to have a
climate not more severe than the inhabited provinces of
Canada. The iron and copper, more especially of the
Canadian Dominion, will employ and enrich, in all
probability, at some future period, a nation that may
become greater in material resources than the most
powerful kingdoms of Europe. In view of these pros-
pects from the working of the useful metals, by the aid
of that most useful product of the earth which supplies
heat and mechanical force to the service of human
industry, we may regard the Californian gold-fields as a
matter of secondary importance. They have indeed
been surpassed by the productiveness of those in Aus-
tralia and New Zealand.
Nine-tenths of North America lying under the tem-
perate zone, the climate follows a different law from what
is observed in the Southern peninsula, and presents more
striking contrasts with that of the best known parts of
the Old World. The long narrow region now denomi-
nated Central America, which connects the two great
divisions of the continent, stretching from Panama to
Tehuantepec, has in general a very humid atmosphere;
but, for a tropical country, it must be only moderately
hot, as every part of it is within a small distance of the
sea. At Vera Paz the rains fall during nine months of
the year. Mexico is hot, moist, and unhealthy on the
low coasts; but two-thirds of its area, comprising all the
populous districts, consists of table-land, from 5000 to
9000 feet in height. In consequence of this singular con-
figuration of its surface, Mexico, though chiefly within
the torrid zone, enjoys a temperate and equable climate.
The mean heat at the capital, which is 74OO feet above
the sea, is 62%9, and the difference between the warmest
and coldest months, which exceeds 30° at London, is
here only about 12°; but the atmosphere is deficient in
moisture, and the country suffers from drought. Beyond
the parallel of 24° N. the western shores are hot and
arid.
In the extensive region lying between the parallels of
30° and 50° N., which comprehends three-fourths of the
useful soil of North America, we have three well-marked
varieties of climate, that of the east coast, the west
coast, and the basin of the Mississippi. On the east
coast, from Georgia to Lower Canada, the mean temper-
ature of the year is lower than in Europe by 9° at the
latitude of 40°, and by 12%9 at the latitude of 50°, ac-
cording to Humboldt's calculation. In the next place,
the range of the thermometer is much greater than in
Europe, the summer being much hotter and the winter
much colder. At Quebec the temperature of the warm-
est month exceeds that of the coldest by no less than
60% of Fahr. ; while at Paris, which is nearly under
the same latitude, the difference is only 31°. In the
third place, the climate undergoes a more rapid change
in America as we proceed from South to north, a degree
of latitude in the middle of the temperate zone produc-
ing a decrease of annual temperature of I*. 13 Fahr, in
Europe, and 19.57 Fahr. in America. . The comparison
is greatly to the disadvantage of America when made in
this form ; but when the east coasts of the two conti-
nents are compared, the case is altered; the Old World
is found to have no superiority over the New, for Pekin
has still colder winters and warmer summers than Phila-
delphia, which is under the same latitude. It is the west
coast of the new continent which ought to exhibit the
climate of Europe; and from the observations made,
we have reason to believe that it is quite as mild and
equable. At the mouth of Columbia river, in latitude
46%8 N., it appears that the mean heat of the warmest
month was about 62° Fahr., of the coldest about 36°,
and of the whole year 5.1°. Now the place is under the
same latitude with Quebec, where the snow lies five
months, and the mean temperature during the three
winter months is 18° below the freezing point. This
single circumstance marks emphatically the contrast in
the climate of the east and west coasts of North America.
But the mouth of Columbia river is also under the same
parallel with Nantes at the mouth of the Loire; and we
have, therefore, good grounds to conclude that the west
coast of America, in the middle latitudes, has nearly as
mild and equable a climate as the west coast of Europe.
25G
A M E
The climate of the great central valley, or basin of the
Mississippi, has a considerable affinity to that of the east
coast. It was long a matter of dispute in what the dif-
ference between the two consists, but this seems at last
to have been clearly settled by the meteorological regis-
ters kept at the military posts of the United States.
From a comparison of four of these registers, from posts
near the centre of this great valley, with others kept on
the Atlantic coast in the same latitudes, it appears that
the extremes of heat and cold in the basin of the Mississ-
ippi are from 5° to 6° degrees higher and lower than on
the coasts of New England. The proportion of fair
weather to cloudy is as 5 to I in favor of the east coast.
The climate of the interior, therefore, exhibits in still
greater excess those extremes of temperature which dis-
tinguish the eastern coast of this continent from the
western, and from the shores of Europe. The fourth
region of extra-tropical American includes the parts be-
yond Mount St. Elias on the west coast, and, in the
interior, the plains extending from the 50th parallel to
the Polar Seas. The intensity of the cold in this tract
of country is scarcely equalled by anything that is known
under the same parallels in Northern Asia. The
northernmost spot in America where grain is raised is at
Lord Selkirk’s colony, on Red River, in latitude 50°.
Wheat, and also maize, which requires a high summer
heat, are cultivated here. Barley would certainly grow
as far north as Fort Chippewyan, in latitude 5834°,
where the heat of the four summer months was found by
Captain Franklin to be 4° higher than at Edinburgh.
There is even reason to believe, that both this species
of grain and potatoes might thrive as far north as Slave
Lake, since the spruce fir attains the height of 50 feet 3
degrees farther north at Fort Franklin, in latitude 65°.
The zoology of America is especially interesting, on
account of the contrast which exists between the
fauna of the north and South portions of the continent—
a contrast which is especially exhibited in the case of
the Mammalia. The zoological province which natur-
alists mark off as constituted by South America and
part of Central America has been termed the neotropical
region, and the area which has the nearest relationship
to this is the Indian region. As regards South America,
the Andes have the highest value as zoological bound-
aries; next to them in importance are the rivers, and
then the confines of the forest region. The Quadrumana
are well represented, and are especially characteristic of
the forest region which principally prevails in the western
half of the continent. None are known to occur on the
west side of the Andes south of Guayaquil. The sub-
order Platyrhina is peculiar to South America, and so
far as research has yet extended, it is not known even to
have existed on any other area. On the other hand, no
catarhine or lemurine Quadrumana have yet been found
in South America. Some of the lower forms of monkey
appear to have some affinity with the Lemuridae, which
occur in India, Africa, and Madagascar. There are two
families, viz., the Cebidae and Hapalidae, all members of
which are stirctly arboreal in habits. Some of these
monkeys are the most highly developed tree-climbers
known, and in many cases they rarely if ever descend to
the ground; and since the monkeys of South America
have never been seen to swim, it might be expected that
the broad streams of the continent effectually limit the
distribution of certain monkeys. The largest species is
Alagothrix A umbo/dtii, so that as a whole the American
monkeys are smaller than those of Asia and Africa.
As they are the most powerful of arboreal Mammalia,
they rule, the forests, and this may in part account for
the scarcity of Squirrels in this region. The Cebidae
have a wide range, extending from the south of Mexico
to Uruguay. They include the highest forms of American
*.
monkey, and its most specialised representatives are
those which have the best adaptation for life in trees, as
may be exemplified by Ateles, with its long limbs and
prehensile tail. This latter organ serves all the purposes
of a fifth hand; the undersurface is bare and provided
with tactile papillae, so that a monkey not only holds by,
but also feels with it. It is as mobile and flexible, and
in its way as useful to this genus of monkey as is the
trunk to the elephant. The genus includes numerous
species, the estimate of different naturalists varying
from 8 to 40, but about IO species have been well estab-
lished. Most of them occur in Brazil and the Guianas;
but each species generally has circumscribed limits.
.The existing mammals of North America must now
be considered. We can only refer to a few of the more
conspicuous species here. South America has numer-
ous families peculiar to itself, but North America has
none which are not also represented in South America.
There are numerous representatives of the Cazzidae or
dog family, such as the prairie, Mexican, and maned
wolves, and several foxes, of which the Arctic, common
American, cross, and silver foxes are of high commercial
value on account of their furs. Among the cats are three
or four species of lynx, which afford valuable furs. The
beaver, though abundant in some places, is, like the
bison, fast diminishing before the encroaching steps of
the colonists. The grizzly, the black, and the polar bears
are common in the more mountainous and colder regions
of the continent, and are much hunted by the fur traders.
Raccoons and Virginian Opossums are prevalent in the
South portion of the United States. The Rocky Mount-
ain goat reigns supreme amidst the rocks in inaccessible
fastnesses of the Rocky Mountain range; while the rein-
deer, the elk and the wapiti give a character to the mam-
malian fauna of the more level districts.
The birds of America are very numerous in almost
every great family. The researches of Wilson, Charles
Lucien Bonaparte, Audubon, Richardson, Dekay, Bla-
kiston, Cassin, Gundlach, Lord Lawrence, Seiater, Sal-
vin, and Baird, have beautifully illustrated the ornith-
ology of North America; while those of Azara, Hum-
boldt, Swainson, Waterton, Edmonstone, Darwin,
Landbeck, Philippi, Cassin, &c., have thrown great light
on that of South America. The North American spe-
cies of birds already described amount to nearly 700 ;
the species of South America are over 23oo; so that we
may fairly estimate the ornithology of America to include
upwards of 3000 species. The fossil remains deserve par-
ticular notice. It is very probable that the footprints on
the older secondary rocks of North America are those of
birds. A large number of remarkable genera found in
the Cretaceous rocks have recently been described by
Professor Marsh and others.
The serpents of America are very numerous, and
include amongst others the following genera :- Tor-
trix, Calamaria, Coronella, Xenodon, Heterodon, Lyco-
don, Coluber, Herpetodryas, Psammophis, Dendrophis,
Dryophis, Dipsas; Tropidonotus, Homalopsis, Boa,
Elaps, Trigonocephalus, Crotalus.
The multitude of fishes in South America is extra-
ordinary, and still more so is the marvellous variety of
form which they exhibit. A large number of species
have very circumscribed ranges, so that not only does
each river basin have a distinct fauna, but a number of
distinct faunas, occupy different portions of the same
river, as is well exemplified in the Amazons, Tocantins,
Rio Negro, and other rivers, where most of the fishes at
stations a few hundred miles apart are for the most part
specifically distinct. Professor Agassiz, in his scientific
journey through Brazil, collected about 2000 species
ſrom the Amazon basin only. In other classes, as in
fishes, there is a remarkable difference between the
A M E
25 I
faunas of North and South America, and in this class
also North America has much in common with Europe
and North Asia. The sturgeons abound in North
America, but are absent in South America, where the
corresponding group is the Goniodonts; the Siluroids
are abundant in both portions of the continent; the
perches are numerous throughout North America, but
none occur in South America, where, however, they are
represented by the Chromids. The Cyprinoids are
abundant in North America, but absent in South
America, where we have the allied group of Cyprino-
donts. . The Characines of South America represent
the Salmonidae of North America, each group being
confined to its own portion of the continent. There are
Several other small families present in South America,
such as the Erythrinoids, Gymnotides, and others.
Northern America, though its vast forests have now
been exposed for centuries to the axe of civilised man, is
still one of the best wooded regions of the world.
Among the principal forest-trees are the pine, oak, ash,
hickory, red-beech, Canadian poplar, Jºãº, black
walnut, maple, tulip-tree, and white cedar.
Central America produces extensively mahogany,
pimento, Sarsaparilla, vanilla, Peruvian balsam, and many
other valuable woods and drugs.
Nearly two-thirds of the surface of South America
is still covered with gigantic forests, which must ulti-
mately disappear, like many of those in the north, before
the combined efforts and necessities of commerce and
agriculture. The most distinctive and valuable forest-
trees of South America are the greenheart and the mora.
The cow-tree, which yields a juice very like milk in its
properties, is also a remarkable product of this region.
Maize is by far the most important farinaceous product
of the New World. It was the only grain which the
earliest European settlers found cultivated, to some
extent, by the natives.
wheat, but it is much more prolific, and is suited to a
greater variety of soils. Tobacco is also indigenous to
America, whence its use has extended over the whole
world. Among roots, the potato, which we also owe to
America, is without a rival. Millet, tapioca, arrow-root,
cocoa, Copaiva, cinchona, jalap, Sassafras, nux-vomica,
the cochineal plant, the agave or American aloe, and the
pine-apple are also indigenous to the continent.
It is impossible here to do more than touch on the
vast subject of the botany and the indigenous vegetable
products of the New World. For fuller information,
in addition to that contained in articles in the present work
that treat of the geographical distribution of plants, the
reader is referred to the numerous valuable American
works of such authors as Beck, Bigelow, Breckenridge,
Brown, Carson (Medical Botany), Darby, Darlington
(Agricultural Botany), Asa Gray, Harvey (Algae), Rave-
nel, Sprague, Strong, Torrey, &c. An extended descrip-
tion of the forest trees of North America will be found
in the great work of Michaux and Nuttall, 7%e Moz-z/.
American Sy/za.
The origin, history, languages, and condition of the
American nations present ample materials for specula-
tion; but before touching on these subjects, the question
presents itself, What is the total of the indigenous pop-
ulation ? Humboldt, in 1823, estimated the number of
Indians at 8,610,000. Bollaert estimated the number
existing in 1863 as follows: —
Mexico. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000, Ooo
Peru. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600,000
Bolivia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .----. . . . . . . . . . . . . . I,4OO,OOO
Central America. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I,OOO,OOO
Paraguay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Oo, Ooo
Pcaudor. . . . . . . . . . ------ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5OO,OOO
United States. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5OO,Ooo
Other countries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T,3I4, 7 IO
For nutrition it is inferior to:
It is probable that these numbers have been dimin-
nished ; the latest official returns of the United States’
territories, in 1889, estimate the Indian population at
250,000.
The indigenous population of America presents man
under many aspects, and Society in various stages, from
the regular but limited civilisation of Mexico and Peru,
to savage life in its most brutal state of abasement. At
one extremity of the country we find the pigmy Esqui-
maux of four feet and a half in height, and at the other
the Patagonian standing above six feet. In complexion
the variety is great, and may be said to embrace almost
every hue known elsewhere on the face of the earth,
except the pitchy black of the Negro. About one-half
of all the known languages belong to America ; and if
we consider every little wandering horde a distinct com-
munity, we have a greater number of nations here than
in all the rest of the world. Amidst all this diversity
philosophers have thought they were able to discover
certain general characters, sufficiently marked to dis-
tinguish the American nations from those of the old
continent. It is foreign to our purpose to inquire
whether the varieties of form, stature, and complexion,
in the human species, are modifications produced by
external causes operating differently on distinct portions
of the progeny of one primitive pair, or whether several
races were originally created, and have given birth, by
their mixture, to the amazing varieties we witness. We
assume the ſormer opinion as true because the proba-
bilities seem to be in its favor; but the phenomena
present themselves to us in the same light in whichever
way they originated.
Physiologists are not at one in their accounts of the
characteristics of the aborigines of the new world, nor
are they agreed as to whether they should be considered
one race or several. Blumenbach places them all under
one class, except the Esquimaux. Bory St. Vincent
divides them into four races, or five if we include the
Esquimaux, under the following designations:– I. The
Colombiazz, which comprehends the tribes formerly in-
habiting the Alleghany Mountains, Canada, Florida, the
eastern coasts of Mexico, and Central America; and the
Caribs, who occupied the West India Islands and Guiana.
2. The American, embracing the tribes which occupy
all the other parts of South America east of the Andes,
except Patagonia. 3. The Patagonian race, inhabiting
the southern extremity of the continent. 4. The AVep-
Zunian, inhabiting the western coasts of both divisions
of the continent, from California to Cape Horn, and
which he considers as essentially the same with the race
spread over the Malay Peninsula and the Indian Archi;
pelago. With this race are classed the Mexicans and
Peruvians. By another writer the species are reduced
to two, the Colombian and the Americane : the former
including all the North American tribes, with the Caribs,
the Mexicans and Peruvians, and other inhabitants of
the Cordillera; and the latter the Brazilian Indians and
Patagonians. Neither of these systems, when tested by
facts, is very satisfactory. Dr. Prichard thinks that the
mutual resemblance among the American nations has
been exaggerated by some writers; yet it is certain that
there is more of a common family character in their
organisation than in that of the indigenous population
of Asia or Africa. “The Indians of New Spain,” says
Humboldt, “bear a general resemblance to those who
inhabit Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil. We have the
same swarthy and copper color, straight and smooth
hair, small beard, squat body, long eye, with the corner
directed upwards towards the temples, prominent cheek
bones, thick lips, and expression of gentleness in the
mouth, strongly contrasted with a gloomy and severe
look. Over a million and a half of Square leagues, from
252
A M E
‘Cape Horn to the river, St. Lawrence and Behring's
Straits, we are struck at the first glance with the general
resemblance in the features of the inhabitants. We
think we perceive them all to be descended from the
same stock, notwithstanding the prodigious diversity of
their languages. In the portrait drawn by Volney of the
Canadian Indians, we recognise the tribes scattered over
the Savannahs of the Apure and the Caromy. The same
style of features exists in both Americas.”
On the authority of Dr. Morton, the most natural
division of the Americans is into two families, the Zolte-
cazz and the America/z; the former of which bears evidence
of centuries of half-civilization, while the latter embraces
all the barbarous nations of the New World, with the
exception of the Polar tribes, which are evidently of
Mongolian origin. In each of these, however, there are
several subordinate groups, which may be distinguished
as the Appalachian, the Braziliazz, the Patagonlam,
and the Fuegian. The Appalachian branch includes all
the nations of North America, except the Mexicans, to-
gether with the tribes of South America north of the
river Amazon and east of the Andes. In this race the
head is rounded, the nose large, salient, and aquiline; the
eyes dark brown, with little or no obliquity of position;
the mouth large and straight; the teeth nearly vertical;
and the whole face triangular. The neck is long, the
chest broad but rarely deep, the body and limbs muscu-
lar, and seldom disposed to fatness. In character these
nations are warlike, cruel, and unforgiving; they turn
with aversion from the restraints of civilized life, and
have made but little progress in mental culture or the
useful arts. The Brazilian branch is spread over a great
part of South America, east of the Andes, including
the whole of Braziland Paraguay, between the river Ama-
zon and 35° S. latitude. Their physical characteristics
differ but little from those of the Appalachian branch;
they possess, perhaps, a larger and more expanded nose,
with larger mouths and lips. The eyes are small, more
or less oblique, and far asunder; the neck short and thick;
the body and limbs stout and full, even to clumsiness.
In character, also, they differ little. None of the Ameri-
cans are less susceptible of cultivation; and what they
are taught by compulsion seldom exceeds the humblest
elements of knowledge. The Patagonian branch includes
the nations to the south of the Plata, as far as the Strait
of Magalheans, including also the mountain tribes of
Chili. They are chiefly distinguished by their tall stature,
handsome forms, and indomitable courage. The Fue-
gians, who call themselves Yacamzzacuzzzzee, rove over the
sterile wastes of Tierra del Fuego, which is computed to
be half the size of Ireland, and yet their whole number
has been computed as not exceeding 2000. The physical
aspect of the Fuegians is altogether repulsive. They are
of low stature, with large heads, broad faces, and small
eyes. Their chests are large, their bodies clumsy, with
large knees and ill-shaped legs. Their hair is lank,
black, and coarse, and their complexion a decided brown,
like that of the more northern tribes. Their expression
of face is vacant, and their mental operations are to
the last degree slow and stupid ; they are almost desti-
tute of the usual curiosity of savages, caring little for
anything that does not minister to their present wants.
The American race is distinguished by the form of the
skull, which, except in its greater length, resembles the
Mongol type. . The cheek-bones are prominent, but not
so angular, as in the Mongol head; the occiput is rather
flat, the cavity for lodging the cerebellum small, the
orbits large and deep. The nose is generally aquiline,
but in Some tribes flat, and the nasal cavities are large.
Compared with the head of the Negro, that of the
"American is broader and the teeth are less prominent:
when placed by the side of the Caucasian head, it is seen
to be smaller in size, less round and symmetrical, and less
developed in the part before the ear. The skull is gen-
erally thin and light. There are, however, many devia-
tions from this typical form. The Carib skull and the
Araucanian are large; the Peruvian small, and singularly
flattened behind, so as to present a short line from the
forehead to the occiput.
The color of the Americans, though it includes a con-
siderable diversity of shade, is more uniform than that
of the inhabitants of Asia or Africa; and, what is more
remarkable, its varieties do not bear any visible relation
to the temperature of the climate. A brownish yellow,
or copper color, as it has been called, pervades nearly
all the numerous tribes from the Arctic Ocean to Cape
Horn, but still with many different degrees of intensity.
The eastern nations of Chili have but a slight tinge of
the brown color, and the Boroanes are still whiter. On
the north-west coast, from latitude 43° to 60°, there are
tribes who, though embrowned with soot and mud, were
found, when their skins were washed, to have the brill-
iant white and red which is the characteristic of the
Caucasian race. But within the tropics, the Malapo-
ques in Brazil, the Guaranis in Paraguay, the Guiacas of
Guiana, the Scheries of La Plata, have tolerably fair
complexions, sometimes united with blue eyes and auburn
hair; and, in the hot country watered by the Orinoco,
Humboldt found tribes of a dark, and others of a light
hue, living almost in juxtaposition. It is remarkable,
too, that the nations whose color approaches nearest to
black are found in the temperate zone, namely, the Char-
ruas of the Banda Oriental, in latitude 33° S., and the
Cochimies, Pericus, and Guaycurus, spread over the
peninsula of California. These people have skins of a
very deep hue, but are not absolutely black; and they
have neither the woolly hair of the Negroes, nor their
social and good-humored disposition. The Charruas,
especially, are distinguished by a high degree of that
austerity and stern fortitude which are common to the
American nations. The Caribs and some Brazilian
tribes have the yellowish hue of the Chinese, and the same
cast of features. Among the nations dwelling on the
west side of the Alleghanies, and near the northern lakes,
there is also a considerable variety of complexion; but the
brown or copper shade is found more or less in them all.
It may be said, then, of the American nations, that,
with the exception of two or three tribes on the north-
west coast, who probably arrived from Asia at a later
period than the others, the two extremes of complexion,
the white of Northern Europe and the black of Ethi-
opia, are unknown amongst them; and that, when com-
pared with the Moors, Abyssinians, and other Swarthy
nations of the Old World, their color inclines less to the
yellow, and more to the reddish brown.
Long, black, lank hair is common to all the American
tribes, among which no traces of the frizzled locks of
the Polynesian, or the woolly texture of the African
Negro have ever been observed. The beard is very de-
ficient, and the little that nature gives them they assid-
uously root out. A copper-colored skin has been also
assumed by most writers as a characteristic distinction
of the Americans; but their real colorisingeneral brown,
of the hue most nearly resembling that of cinnamon; and
Dr. Morton coincides in opinion with Dr. M’Culloch,
that no epithet derivable from the color of the skin so
correctly designates the Americans as that of the brown
race. There are, however, among them occasional and
very remarkable deviations, including all the varieties of
tint from a decided white to an unequivocally black skin.
That climate has a very subordinate influence in produc-
ing these different hues must be inferred from the fact
that the tribes which wander in the equinoctial regions
are not darker than the mountaineers of the temperate
A M E
253
zone. The Puelches, and other tribes of the Magellanie
regions, beyond 55° S. latitude, are darker than the
Abipones, Mocobies, and Tobas, who are many degrees
nearer the equator; and the Botocudos are of a clear
brown color, sometimes approaching nearly to white, at
no great distance from the tropic; while the Guiacas
under the line are characterised by a fair complexion;
the Charruas, who are almost black, live at the 30th
degree of S. latitude; and the still blacker Californians
are 25° north of the equator. Everywhere, indeed, it is
found that the color of the American depends very little
on the local situation which he actually occupies; and
never, in the same individual, are those parts of the body
which are constantly covered of a fairer color than those
which are exposed to a hot and moist atmosphere. Chil-
dren are never white when they are born, as is the case
among even the darkest of the Caucasian races; and the
Indian caciques, who enjoy a considerable degree of
luxury, and keep themselves constantly dressed, have all
parts of their body, except the palms of the hands and
the soles of the feet, of the same brownish-red or cop-
per color. These differences of complexion are, how-
ever, extremely partial, forming mere exceptions to the
general tint which characterises all the Americans, from
Cape Horn to Canada. The cause of such anomalies
is not easily ascertained; that it is not climate is suffici-
ently obvious; but whether or not it arises from partial
immigrations from other countries remains yet to be de-
cided. g
The Americans of indigenous races might also be
divided into three great classes distinguished by the pur-
suits on which they depend for subsistence, namely, hunt-
ing, fishing, and agriculture. The greater number of
them are devoted to hunting; the fishing tribes are not
numerous, and are wholly destitute of the spirit of
maritime adventure, and even of fondness for the sea.
A few tribes were strictly agricultural before the arrival
of Europeans, but a much greater number have become
so since. Many tribes regularly resort to all these modes
of subsistence, according to the seasons; employing the
spring in fishing, the summer in agriculture, and the
winter in hunting.
The intellectual faculties of this great family appear
to be decidedly inferior, when compared with those of
the Caucasian or Mongolian race. The Americans are
not only averse to the restraints of education, but are
for the most part incapable of a continued process of
reasoning on abstract subjects. Their minds seize with
avidity on simple truths, but reject whatever requires
investigation and analysis. Their proximity for more
than two centuries to European institutions has made
scarcely any perceptible change in their mode of think-
ing or their manner of life; and, as to their own social
condition, they are probably in most respects exactly as
they were at the earliest period of their national exist-
ence. They have made few or no improvements in con-
structing their houses dr their boats; their inventive and
imitative faculties appear to be of very humble capacity,
nor have they the smallest tastes for the arts and sciences.
One of the most remarkable of their intellectual defects
is the great difficulty they find in comprehending the rela-
tions of numbers; and Mr. Schoolcraft, the United
States Indian agent, assured Dr. Morton that this
deficiency was one cause of most of the misunderstand-
ing in respect to treaties entered into between the United
States Government and the native tribes. The natives
sell their land for a sum of money, without having any
conception of the amount; and it is only when the pro-
ceeds come to be divided that each man becomes
acquainted with his own interest in the transaction.
Then disappointment and murmurs invariably ensue.
Every unwritten tongue is subject to continual fluctua-
tions, which will be numerous and rapid in proportion
as the tribe using it is exposed to frequent vicissitudes of
fortune, and the individuals composing it have little
intercourse with one another. When the population of
one of these societies increases, it splits into several
branches; and if these have little intercourse, the original
language divides by degrees into as many dialects.
These smaller societies subdivide in their turn with the
same effects; and, in such continual subdivisions, the
dialects of the extreme branches deviate farther and
farther from one another, and from the parent tongue,
till time, aided by migrations and wars, producing mixt-
ures of different hordes, obliterates all distinct traces.
of a common origin. The cause of these changes be-
comes more obvious when we reflect on the principles.
which give stability to a language. These are—I. The
abundant use of writing; 2. The teaching of a language
as a branch of education; 3. Frequency of intercourse
among all the people speaking it; 4. The existence of
an order of men, such as priests or lawyers, who employ
it for professional purposes; 5. Stability of condition in
the people, or exemption from vicissitudes and revolu-
tions: 6. A large stock of popular poetry, which, if umi-
versally diffused, may almost become a substitute for
writing. All these conditions were wanting (with some
trifling exceptions) in the whole of the wandering tribes
of America. The great multiplication of languages,
therefore, proves two things—first, that the people are
in a low state of Savage life; and secondly, that they
have been for many ages in this condition; for time is a
necessary element in the process of splitting human
speech into so many varieties.
Among the seven or eight millions of American aborig-
ines, it is estimated that there are as many languages
spoken as among the seven or eight hundred million
inhabitants of the Old World. Just as there is a marked
physiological resemblance attaching to all the New
World tribes, so judged by the evidence of language, the
native American is sui generis, having no connection,
except the most remote, with the rest of the human
family. The few corresponding words in the Old and
New World languages, which are not of an imitative
character, bear the stamp of fortuitous coincidence
rather than that of common origin. Vater, in his
Zizyguarum Totius Orbis /ndex, estimated the number
of American aboriginal languages at about 500, and
Balbi at 423, of which 2 II belonged to North, 44 to
Central, and 158 to South America. In the absence of
certain data, it may be safe to set down the number of
native American languages at about 450.
Throughout the whole of these runs a thread of con-
nection. They are all characterized by polysynthesis, as
Duponceau calls it, or holophrasm, to adopt the phrase:
ology of Dr. Lieber. Holophrasm is a process more or
less common to every language at a particular stage of
its development. We have glimpses of it in most of the
Turanian group of languages, and it appears, in a faint
degree, in the Basque; but it belongs to a very large
proportion of the languages of America, so extremely
numerous, and many of which have nothing else in
common. This diffusion of a peculiar and common
character over materials so dissimilar has been plausibly
accounted for by the supposition of a community of
origin in the tribes, whether few or many, which peopled
the continent. As no person has the full command of
all the vocables in his native language, individual terms
must be continually dropped out of dialects preserved by
oral communication; and new ones will be introduced
as new wants and new objects, solicit attention. But
during the gradual change which thus takes place, the
new words will be combined and modified according to
the rules which belong to the genius of the spoken dialect
254
A M E
with which they are incorporated; and thus it may happen
that the grammatical forms of an ancient language may
live, while its materials perish. The changes of structure
which present themselves in the history of European
languages, it must be remembered, took place in pro-
gressize communities. Among nations like the American
Indians, whose barbarism, we may suppose, remained
almost stationary, the forms of speech might be more
permanent, though its substance was in a state of slow
but constant mutation. But even were this community
of origin admitted, it cannot be looked on as entire and
absolute among the American nations.
Though any attempt to reduce the American popula-
tion under a few general classes, either on physical or
ethnographical grounds, would be idle, we may notice
one or two of the most remarkable nations or families.
All the northern coast of the continent is tenanted by
the Esquimaux, a dwarfish race, rarely exceeding five
feet in height. Their territories commence near Mac-
kenzie’s River, in 68° north lat., and extend to the Arc-
tic Ocean. They occupy all the northern Archipelago,
the shores of Hudson’s and Baffin's Bays, of Labrador,
and of Russian America round by Behring's Straits, to
the peninsula of Alaska. They live entirely by fishing,
the whale and the seal being their most common food;
they inhabit skin tents during their short summer, and in
winter caves or houses built with snow in the shape of
domes, within which a single rude lamp is kept perpetu-
ally burning. They are crafty and dirty, but appeared
to Captain Franklin more intelligent and provident
than the northern Indians. There is a wide diversity
in their dialects, which still display decided marks of
identity in their roots. s
The north-west coast of Alaska, from Cook’s Inlet to
the 48th parallel, is inhabited by four tribes, of whom
the Kaluschi are the most remarkable. These people
are distinguished from all the native races of America
by having as fair a complexion when their skins are
washed as the inhabitants of Europe; and this distinc-
tion, accompanied sometimes with auburn hair, has
been considered as indicating an origin different from
that of the copper-colored tribes who people all the rest
of the continent.
The Indians of the east coast belong almost entirely
to three stems; and, before the arrival of the English
colonists, occupied both sides of the Alleghany Mount-
ains from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada and New
Brunswick. I. The Delaware or Algonquin Indians,
comprehending the Ottogamies, Shawnees, Narragan-
setts, Chippeways, Knisteneaux, Delawares, and other
nations, to the number of thirty or forty, were spread
over the space between the Mississippi and the Atlantic,
as far north as Hudson's Bay, and all spoke dialects of
one language. 2. The Iroquois, often called the “Five
Nations,” and the “Six Nations,” but comprehending
15 tribes or more, among whom were the Mohawks,
9neidas, Hurons, and Senecas, all spoke dialects of one
language. They lived on the south side of the great
lakes, and finally obtained a complete ascendency over
the Algonquin race. 3. The Florida Indians, includ-
ing the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, Chickasaws,
Natches, and Mobiles. Tribes belonging to these
three families (with the Wocons and Catawbas) occu-
pied nearly all the region east of the Mississippi, from
the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay, comprising more
than a million of Square miles. The Catawbas alone,
however, are said to have included 20 tribes, and nearly
as many dialects. The Powhattans were a confederacy
of 33 tribes, comprehending Io,000 persons. It is
probable that when the English settlers landed in this
country, the region mentioned was inhabited by a quar-
ter of a million of 'ºdians. *-*ded into many tribes.
* * —-. *TN-- -
In regard to these tribes the following (written some
years ago) is interesting:
These nations have the virtues of savage life — a high
sense of honor, according to their perceptions of duty,
mutual fidelity among individuals, a fortitude that mocks
at the most cruel torments, and a devotion to their tribe
which makes self-immolation in its defence easy. On the
other hand, they treat their wives cruelly, and their chil-
dren with indifference. The apathy under the good and
ill of life which the stoic affected, is the grand element
of the Indian’s character. Gloomy, stern, and severe,
he is a stranger to mirth and laughter. All outward
expression of pleasure or pain he regards as a weakness;
and the only feeling to which he ever yields is the bois-
terous joy which he manifests in the moment of victory,
or under the excitement of intoxication. He is capable
of great exertions in war or the chase, but has an un-
conquerable aversion to regular labor. He is extremely
improvident; eats enormously while he has abundance
of food, without thinking of the famine which may ſol-
low; and, when liquors are supplied to him, will continue
drunk for days.
Most of the Indians of North America believe in the
existence of a supreme being, whom they call the Great
Spirit; and of a subordinate one, whose nature is evil
and hostile to man. To the latter their worship is prin-
cipally addressed; the Good Spirit, in their opinion,
needing no prayers to induce him to aid and protect his
creatures. They generally believe in a future state, in
which the souls of brave warriors and chaste wives enjoy
a tranquil and happy existence with their ancestors and
friends, spending their time in those exercises in which
they delighted when on the earth. The Dakotas believe
that the road to these “villages of the dead" leads over
a rock with an edge as sharp as a knife, on which only
the good are able to keep their footing. The wicked
fall off, and descend to the region of the Evil Spirit,
where they are hard worked, and often flogged by their
relentless master.
Polygamy is allowed; and a number of wives is con-
sidered as adding to a man’s consequence. Marriage
customs differ in different tribes, but in every case the
presenting of gifts to the father of the intended wife is
an essential feature of the transaction, and shows that
the wife is considered as procured by purchase. Deformed
children, and lame or decrepit old persons, are destroyed
sometimes; but the practice is uncommon. Incest and
unnatural vices are practised in some tribes, but they are
always viewed as matters of reproach. The Indian fune-
rals are conducted with much decorum. The deceased is
dressed in his best clothes, and laid in a grave, in a verti-
cal, horizontal, or inclined position, according to his own
previous directions, with his moccasins, knife, money, and
silver ornaments beside him, and a small quantity of food
near his head. It is usual to mark the graves with a post,
on which figures are carved expressive of the nature of the
pursuits and achievements of the deceased.
Some nations of Indians wear little or no clothing;
but the general dress of the men in the temperate and
cold parts of the country, previous to the arrival of the
Europeans, consisted of three articles: a cloak of buf-
falo-skin hanging from the shoulders, a piece of skin
used as an apron, and a pair of moccasins or loose boots,
made of undressed skin also. The women wore a long
robe of the same material, which was fastened round
the waist; but among the tribes living near the whites,
coarse woollens are now frequently substituted for the
hides of wild animals, except for the moccasins. The
habitations of the Indians are huts or cabins, generally
of a circular form and small size, but sometimes of 30
or 40 feet in diameter, formed by stakes fixed in the
ground, and covered with the bark of trees. Some-
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A M E
255
times the spaces between the stakes are filled up with
twigs, grass, and mud, and the roof is covered nearly in
the same way. A hole in the top serves for the escape
of the smoke, and the skins of wild beasts form the beds
and seats. When they go to a distance to hunt, they
erect for temporary use large tents, which are covered
with skins. On the west side of the Mississippi, where
the ground is open, many of the tribes make use of
horses, which are seldom employed amidst the woods
covering the territories east of that river. The custom
of painting their bodies is nearly universal. They in-
troduce the colors by making punctures on their skin;
and the extent of surface which this ornament covers is
proportioned to the exploits they have performed.
some paint only their arms, others both their arms and
legs, others again their thighs; while those who have
attained the summit of warlike renown have their bodies
painted from the waist upwards. This is the heraldry
of the Indians, the devices of which are probably more
exactly adjusted to the merits of the persons who bear
them than those of more civilized countries. Besides
these ornaments, the warriors also carry plumes of
feathers on their heads, their arms or ankles. Their
arms were the tomahawk, the war-club, knife, the bow
and arrow, but now they have muskets.
Each tribe is governed by a chief and council, who
are elective; but in matters of importance the whole
warriors are consulted; and Mr. Keating informs us
that questions are not decided by the votes of a major-
ity, but the resolution adopted must have the consent
of every individual warrior. Their assemblies are con-
ducted with much formality and decorum. The eldest
chief commences the debate, which is often carried on
by set speeches, abounding in bold figures and meta-
phors, and bursts of a rude but impassioned eloquence.
The young are permitted to be present and to express
their approbation by cries, but not to speak. In their
wars the object commonly is, to secure the right of
hunting within particular limits, to maintain the liberty
of passing through their accustomed tracts, and to
guard from infringement those lands which they con-
sider as their own tenure. War is declared by sending
a slave with a hatchet, the handle of which is painted
red, to the nation they intend to break with. They
generally take the field in small numbers. Each war-
rior, besides his weapons, carries a mat, and supports
himself till he is near the enemy by killing game.
From the time they enter the enemy’s country, no game
is killed, no fires lighted, or shouting heard, and their
vigilance and caution are extreme. They are not even
permitted to speak, but must communicate by signs and
motions. Having discovered the objects of their hos-
tility, they first reconnoitre them, then hold a council;
and they generally make their attack just before day-
break, that they may surprise their enemies while
asleep. They will lie the whole night flat on their faces
without stirring, and, at the fit moment for action, will
creep on their hands and feet till they have got within a
bow-shot of those they have doomed to destruction.
On a signal given by the chief warrior, which is an-
swered by the yells of the whole party, they start up,
and, after discharging their arrows, they rush upon
their adversaries, without giving them time to recover
from their confusion, with their war-clubs and toma-
hawks. If they succeed, the scene of horror which
follows baffles description. The savage fury of the
conquerors, the desperation of the conquered, the horrid
yells of both, and their grim figures besmeared with
paint and blood, form an assemblage of objects worthy
of pandemonium. When the victory is secured, they
select a certain number of their prisoners to carry
home; they kill the rest in cold blood, take their scalps,
and then march off with the spoils. The prisoners des-
tined to death are soon led to the place of execution,
where they are stripped, have their bodies blackened,
and are bound to a stake. In this situation, while the
burning faggots embrace his limbs, and the knives of
his revengeful enemies are inflicting a thousand tor-
tures, it is common for the warrior to recount his ex-
ploits, boast of the cruelties he has committed upon his
enemies, and to irritate and insult his tormenters in
every way. Sometimes it happens that this has the
effect of provoking one of the spectators to dispatch him
with a club or tomahawk. Sometimes the male adult
prisoners are given as slaves to women who have lost
their husbands in the war, and by whom they are often
married. The women taken are distributed among the
warriors; the boys and girls are considered as slaves.
Nearly all the Indian tribes raise maize, beans, and
pumpkins, by the labor of their women, but only to a
small extent, and as a resource against famine, their
chief reliance being upon the chase. The buffaloes
formerly wandering over the prairies of the West, in
herds of tens of thousands, were their great support;
but deer, bears, and, in time of need, otters, beavers,
foxes, squirrels, and even reptiles, were devoured.
All this has been changed of late years by the depo-
sition of the Indians within our boundaries in agencies,
under the control of the government, and the efforts to
civilize these people are meeting with partial success.
The Toltecan family embraced the civilised nations of
Mexico, Peru, and Bogota, extending from the Rio Gila
in 33° N. latitude along the western shore of the conti-
nent to the frontiers of Chili; and on the eastern coast,
along the Gulf of Mexico, in North America. In South
America, on the contrary, this family chiefly occupied a
narrow strip of land between the Andes and the Pacific
Ocean, bounded on the south by the great desert of
Atacama. Farther north, however, in New Granada,
were the Bogotese, a people whose civilisation, like their
geographical position, was intermediate between that
of the Peruvians and the Mexicans. But, even before
the Spanish conquest, the Toltecan family were not the
exclusive possessors of the regions which we have
assigned to them; they were only the dominant race or
caste, while other tribes of the American race always
constituted a large mass of the population. The arrival
of the Spaniards reduced both classes alike to vassalage;
and three centuries of slavery and oppression have left
few traces of Mexican and Peruvian civilisation, except
what may be gleaned from their history and antiquities.
These nations can no longer be identified in existing
communities; and the mixed and motley races which
now respectively bear the name, are as unlike their
predecessors in moral and intellectual character, as the
degraded Copts are unlike the ancient Egyptians. . It is
in the intellectual faculties that the great difference be-
tween the Toltecan and the American families consists.
In the arts and sciences of the former we see the evi-
dences of an advanced civilisation; their architectural
remains everywhere surprise the traveller and con-
found the antiquary.
The origin of the populations of America is a prob-
lem which has yet to be solved. It is known that in
Europe man was in existence at a very remote period;
and there are facts which lend some support to the
view that man had also been a denizen of America for
ages. Thus there have been found portions of the
human skeleton and fragments of human handiwork,
associated with the bones of mammals which now have
no existence, under circumstances which imply great
antiquity. In most instances, however, it is not cer-
tain that such relics are of the age of the deposit in
which they have been found. Human skeletons and
256
A M E
bones in a fossilized state, or associated with bones of
extinct mammals, have been found at Guadaloupe, in
Missouri, near Natchez, at New Orleans, in the coral
reef of Florida, near Charleston, in California, in
Orchilla, at Petit Anse, and in Kansas. Some of these
are referred to a very distant period. Thus the con-
glomerate in which the remains occur in the Florida
reef is estimated by Agassiz to be 10,000 years old; but
what is still more amazing, the skeleton found by Dr.
iDowler beneath four buried forests in the delta near
*Jew Orleans, is said to be 50,000 years old, and the re-
1.nains from California were found in a deposit beneath
Table Mountain, which deposit was formed in an old
river of the Post-Pliocene, or Pliocene period. At any
rate, when this deposit was formed there was a river
valley here, down which an overflow of volcanic matter
was poured. Since that time denudation has been so
great, and the volcanic matter so hard, that the sides of
the valley have been swept away, leaving the valley bot-
tom with its protecting cover standing up far above the
level of the neighboring country. Articles made by man
also occur under conditions indicating great antiquity.
Thus along the coast of Ecuador there are volcanic deposits
which belong to the period of volcanic activity preced-
.ng the present, which may probably be referred to the
Post-Pliocene period. This matter' is arranged in ter-
races, and in one of these terraces, now 24 miles from
the coast and 150 feet above the sea, Mr. Wilson has
found beneath the vegetable mould, beds of clay with
sand and gravel which contain fragments of pottery.
These beds, it is believed, were deposited beneath the
sea, implying an elevation of 150 feet since their forma-
tion. On the coast there is a pottery-containing stratum,
which has been followed for 80 miles, and patches of a
similar bed occur over a further distance of 200 miles.
These facts taken in conjunction with what we learn
from the traditions and histories of numerous nations,
as also the characters of the present natives, render it
highly probable that man existed in America long before
the origin or arrival of the civilised communities to
which allusion will be presently made. The histories
of these communities generally agree that civilisation
was introduced by persons who first appeared as
strangers amidst the people already in possession of the
country. Hence the question has a two-fold aspect,
viz., the origin of the first civiliser, as well as that of
the earliest civilised tribes. It is possible, as the tradi-
tions suggest, that people have arrived from various
quarters and at various times. As yet we have little
positive evidence to rely upon, and caution is required
in drawing conclusions from resemblances in customs
or religion. For instance, to take one remarkable case.
Amongst tribes living high up the Amazon basin there
are customs which correspond with those in Borneo.
In both areas we find blow-pipes for discharging ar-
rows; large houses inhabited by several families and
similarly constructed; baskets and bamboo boxes of
almost identical form and construction; and the smoke-
dried head of enemies hung up in the houses. In one
tribe on the Amazon the throwing-stick is used, and not
the blow-pipe, which is employed by all the surround-
ing tribes; the throwing-stick is also used by the Esqui-
maux, the Adaman Islanders, and the Australians. On
the Amazon an arrow or spear is used for catching
turtle, which has the barb loosely attached to the shaft,
so that when the turtle disappears the shaft floats on the
surface and indicates its movements and position. The
Australians catch turtle in precisely the same way.
Again, many other customs are common to the Ameri-
cans and tribes living in areas far remote from them,
with which they have no apparent relationship. If
these analogies were always proof of affinities, then we
might infer, as has been done, that America was first
peopled by emigrants from the opposite shores of Africa,
W. Europe, E. Asia, and Polynesia.
In the great valley of the Mississippi and its mighty
tributaries, the Ohio and Missouri, are the remains of
the works of an extinct race of men, who seem to have
made advances in civilisation far beyond the races of red
men discovered there by the first European adventurers.
These remains consist chiefly of tumuli and ramparts of
earth, enclosing areas of great extent and much regu-
larity of form. Some of them recall the barrows of
Europe and of Asia, or the huge mounds and ramparts.
of Mesopotami, as displayed at Babylon and Nineveh;
while others remind us of the ruined hippodromes and
amphitheatres of the Greeks and Romans. In that part
of North America the barrows are usually truncated
cones; but in advancing farther south, they often assume
the figure of four-sided pyramids in successive stages,
with flattened tops, like the 7eocallis, or temples of
Mexico and Yucatan. They have been accurately de-
scribed, and many of them delineated, in the Smithson-
ian Contributions to Knowledge, from the researches of
Messrs. Squier and Davis. (See MoUNDBUILDERS.)
The barrows and ramparts are constructed of mingled
earth and stones; and from their solidity and extent,
must have required the labor of a numerous population,
with leisure and skill sufficient to undertake combined
and vast operations. The barrows often contain human
bones, and the smaller tumuli appear to have been
tombs; but the larger, especially the quadrangular
mounds, would seem to have served as temples to the
earlier inhabitants. These barrows vary in size, from a
few feet in circumference and elevation, to structures
with a basal circumference of IOOO or 2000 feet, and an
altitude of from 60 to 90 feet, resembling, in dimen-
sions, the vast tumulus of Alyattes near Sardis. One in
Mississippi is said to cover a base of six acres. The
ramparts also vary in thickness, and in height from 6 to
30 feet, and usually enclose areas varying from IOO to:
2OO acres. Some contain 4oo; and one on the Missouri
has an area of 600 acres. The enclosures generally are:
very exact circles or squares, sometimes a union of both;
occasionally they form parallelograms, or follow the sin-
uosities of a hill; and in one district, that of Wisconsin,
they assume the fanciful shape of men, quadrupeds,
birds, or serpents, delineated with some ingenuity, on
the surface of undulating plains or wide savannahs.
These ramparts are usually placed on elevations or
hills, or on the banks of streams, so as to show that
they were erected for defensive purposes, and their sites.
are judiciously chosen for this end. The area enclosed,
therefore, bears no proportion to the relative labor
bestowed on such ramparts: thus, in Ohio, an area of
not more than 40 acres is enclosed by mounds of a mile
and a half in circumference; and on the Little Miami,
in the same state, is found an enclosure fully four miles
round, that contains an area of about IOO acres. These
remains are not solitary and few, for in the state of
Ohio they amount to at least 10,000.
The enclosures in the form of animals are more rare
than those now noticed, and seem nearly confined to
Wisconsin. One of these represents a gigantic man
with two heads, the size of which may be estimated, by
the body being 50 feet long, and 25 feet across the breast.
Another on a slope near Bush Creek, represents a tolera-
bly designed snake, with an oval ball in its mouth ; the
undulating folds of its body and spiral of its tail extend-
ing to a length of 7oo feet. The forms of quadrupeds
and birds are also characteristically represented in these :
works. Those that have been explored contain human
bones; but, though the Indians deposit their dead with
them occasionally, they have no tradition of their -
A M E
257
having belonged to their ancestors. The most proba-
ble supposition respecting them is that of Mr. R. C.
Taylor, that each was the sepulchral monument of a dif-
ferent tribe, who have all disappeared from America.
The question immediately suggests itself, to what
people must we ascribe those vast works P. They can
scarcely be the works of the ancestors of the red men
discovered by Europeans in North America. Neither
can we ascribe them to the early Greenland and Iceland
colonists, who seem never to have passed westward of
the Alleghanies. We can scarcely attribute them to the
somewhat apocryphal advent of Welsh Madoc, Can
their authors be the people obscurely mentioned in the
Icelandic sagas, as the inhabitants of Mew Iceland 3
A curious tradition of the present Iroquois records
that when the Zenni Zenapi, the common ancestors of
the Iroquois and other tribes, whose language is still
widely spread among the Indians, advanced from the
north-west to the Mississippi, they found on its eastern
side a great nation more civilised than themselves, who
lived in fortified towns and cultivated the ground. This
people at first granted the Lenni Lenapi leave to pass
through their territories to seek an eastward settlement,
but treacherously attacked them while crossing the
river. This conduct gave rise to inveterate hostilities,
that terminated in the extermination or subjugation of
their opponents, aud the establishment of the red men
in those regions. This not improbable, though imper-
fect, account of such rude communities, where neither
letters nor hieroglyphics existed, is probably all that we
shall ever learn of the people who executed those works
that now excite our surprise.
As we advance southward we find proofs of still
greater refinement on the table-land of Anahuac or Mex-
ico; and on descending into the humid valleys of Cen-
tral America, the peninsula of Yucatan, and the shores
of Honduras, we find striking remains of the semi-civ-
ilisation of the races that inhabited those countries before
the Spanish invasion. The barbarous policy of Cortez
and other invaders was to eradicate every trace of the
former grandeur of the native races, and thereby to
inure them to a degrading servitude. The systematic
destruction of the native works of art and gorgeous
buildings in Mexico was relentlessly carried on for ages,
to the infinite regret of the modern ethnographical in-
quirer. Little positive information on these subjects
can be gleaned from the early Spanish historians of the
conquest; and it was not until the publication of Hum-
boldt's Researches that Europe knew anything of the
state of the Great Mexican pyramid, or of the wonder-
ful remains of Palenque and Papantla.
In the middle of the last century, however, some
Spanish adventurers penetrated with difficulty the dense
forests of the Mexican province of Chiapas, in which
they discovered the remains of an ancient city, of which
all memory had been lost, and to which they gave the
name of PALENQUE, from a poor adjacent village.
Stimulated by their report, the Spanish Government
some years afterwards despatched two intelligent trav-
ellers to explore those wilds; but the report of Del Rio
and Du Paix, from the commotions that agitated Europe
and convulsed Spain, remained unpublished until a few
years ago. It has since appeared, with very interest-
ing designs of the ruins they explored. Our knowledge
of such remains, however, has been greatly enlarged
by the labors of an enterprising citizen of our own coun-
try, Mr. Stephens, given to the world in four volumes,
entitled Zncidents of 7% avel in Central America, Chi-
apas, and Yucatam, 1838, and /ncidents of Zºravel in
Yucatan, 1842. This gentleman discovered, in the
almost impenetrable forests of those regions, the remains'
of no less than 44 towns, some of them with extensive
and highly decorated structures. These exhibit walls
of hewn stone, admirably put together with mortar,
often enriched by sculptures in bold relief, and hiero-
glyphical inscriptions, exactly resembling the Aztec
MSS. in our various museums, and in the publica-
tions of Humboldt; well executed vaulted roofs, and
obelisks covered with mythical figures and pictorial
or hieroglyphic inscriptions. These curious remains
have been concealed for ages by a luxuriant tropical
vegetation, so dense that they seem to have been un-
known to people living within half a mile of their site.
The most conspicuous ruins are those of temples and
palaces, which almost invariably have a pyramidal
form, in several stages, with wide intervening terraces,
the ascent to which is by grand flights of steps. The
chambers in those buildings have generally a length
disproportioned to their width, they have no windows,
but receive their light from the doors, just as the rooms
do at this day in Barbary and some other eastern coun-
tries. The apartments are in two párallel rows, a
narrow corridor or series of chambers runs along the
front, and the apartments behind this receive their light
only from the front rooms into which they open. Yet
these interior apartments are often richly decorated with
sculptures, ornamented with stuccos, and gaily painted
red, yellow, white, and black.
The ruins of Palenque, as may be seen in the re-
searches of Humboldt, have the characters just
mentioned. They are covered with hieroglyphics, and
sculptures in relief, with ornamental cornices. The
largest building stands on a terrace, faced with stone,
measuring 310 by 26o feet; the building itself is 200 by
180 feet; its walls are 25 feet high. The stone has been
originally covered with painted stucco; fronts the east,
and contains 14 doors, separated by piers ornamented
with stucco figures. In this building some of the figures
are erect, while others sit cross-legged, in what we term
the oriental fashion; one statue, Io9% feet high, was
found at Palenque; and two fragments of two torsos
and a head were also discovered that exhibited a severe
but fair style of sculpture, that recalls something of the
early style of Greek art. -
The ruins at Copan, in Honduras, are of vast extent.
Here a pyramidal structure remains, with an elevation
of 150 feet measured along its slope, and this appears to
be a principal temple, included with several smaller
Structures within a sacred enclosure, in the manner of
the temples of ancient Egypt. On its walls are many
skulls of a quadrumanous animal, well executed in high
relief; a large figure of a baboon was discovered among
the ruins, bearing no inconsiderable resemblance to the
cynocephalus of the Egyptians. Here also several
Sculptured obelisks occur, from II to 13 feet in height,
and from 3 to 4 feet wide, which, as well as the walls of
the temple, were highly ornamented with sculptures in
bold relief.
The similarity between the ruins at Copan and Pa-
lenque, and the identity of the hieroglyphic tablets in
both, show that the former inhabitants of Chiapas and
Honduras had the same written language, though the
present Indians of those provinces do not understand
each other.
At several places, but more especially at Uxmal, in
Yucatan, are very magnificent ruins of the same kind.
Here are found sculptured obelisks, bearing on their
principal face the figure, probably, of some deity, with a
benignant countenance represented in full, and the hands
applied to the breast. The other sides of the obelisks
are covered with hieroglyphical tablets, proving that the
same race once inhabited the plains of Honduras and the
table-land of Anahuac. The principal building at Uxmal
seems to have been a very magnificent pyramid in three
258
A M E.
stages or terraces, faced with hewn stone, and neatly
rounded at the angles. The first terrace is 575 feet long,
15 feet broad, and 3 feet high, Serving as a sort of plinth
to the whole; the second terrace is 545 feet long, 250
feet wide, and 20 feet high ; the third terrace is 360 feet
long, by 30 feet wide, and 19 feet in height. From the
centre of the second terrace, the upper part is gained by
a vast flight of well-constructed steps 130 feet wide.
This leads to the temple, the façade of which is no less
than 322 feet long, but has not had a greater elevation
than 25 feet; yet its grandeur is enhanced by the rich
sculpture that covers the upper part above a fillet, or
cornice, that surrounds the whole building at about half
its elevation. The interior consists of two parallel ranges
of chambers, II in each row. The front apartments are
entered by I I doorways, enriched with sculpture, which
gives sufficient light to those rooms; but the posterior
row receives no light except what enters by their doors
from the exterior rooms. The roofs here, unlike those
of Palenque and Copan, are not stone arches, but are
supported on bearers of a very hard wood, that must
have been brought from a distance of some hundred
miles, and these beams too are covered with hiero-
glyphics. The flat roof of this building has been externally
covered with a hard cement. In a building placed on a
lower level is a rectangular court, which has been once
wholly paved with well-carved figures of tortoises in
demi-relief. These are arranged in groups of four, with
their heads placed together; and from the dimensions of
the court, this sala de las Zortugas must have required
43,660 of such carved stones for its pavement.
The ruins of Chichen, also in Yucatan, extend over an
area of two miles in circumference. One of the best
preserved buildings with an ambit of 638 ſeet, is con-
structed in three terraces, which gave it an apparent alti-
tude of 65 feet. The buildings here, on the second
terrace, have the façades highly sculptured, both above
and below the horizontal fillet; and the doorways are
enriched with mouldings, and truss-like ornaments sup-
#. a drip-stone. The staircase here is 56 feet wide.
he front apartments are 47 feet long and only 9 wide.
There are three doors in the front, and in the central
apartment are nine niches. The roofs are stone arches;
and all have been once painted of various colors. A
curious adjoining structure consists of two parallel stone
walls, 274 feet long, and 30 feet apart. The walls
are 30 feet thick. It has been conjectured to have been
connected with the celebration of some public games,
like the pa/aestra of the Greeks.
In several of the ruins now noticed are found build-
ings to which there is no access. They have doorways,
but these seemed to have been walled up when the
buildings were erected. Their use is unknown; they are
named casas cerradas, or “shut-up houses.” Their
interior does not differ from the other apartments above
described.
It is worthy of notice, that the builders of those cities
took great pains to supply them with one of the prime
essentials of human comfort—abundance of good water,
by means of wells and cisterns of excellent construction.
The remains in all the 44 ancient towns visited by
Stephens have a similar character; so that we can have
no hesitation to ascribe them to the same nation, or to
kindred races of men, who had certainly attained no
inconsiderable civilisation, although unacquainted with
the use of iron, or even of bronze. Many of these
towns are repeatedly referred to in the native histories,
and it is almost certain that a large proportion of them
were founded and inhabited by the Tutul-Xius, Nahoas,
and other tribes speaking the Nahuatl tongue. In not
a few instances the dates and the names of the founders
have been preserved.
It has been generally admitted by physiologists, that
the temperate regions of the globe are best fitted to
develope all the powers of our nature; and it is a fact in
accordance with this opinion, that among the aborigines
of America civilisation followed very closely the chain of
the Andes, and was found either upon their sides or the
table-land of their summits, where the elevation of the
ground moderates the heat of the tropical sun, and pro-
duces a climate analogous to that of Central and South-
ern Europe. This civilisation did not exist merely at
the two distant and isolated points of Mexico and Peru,
but presented itself at intermediate places, and may be
said to have formed a continuous line from lat. 35° N.
to lat. 35° S, with few interruptions, except at those
parts where the mountainous chain disappears, or sinks
down to a trifling elevation. Some large buildings near
the Rio Gila, in lat. 33° N., with fragments of porce-
lain, indicate the existence of a people there who had
some knowledge of the arts. . These were most probably
a branch of the Aztecs or Toltecs, who afterwards occu-
pied Mexico, as the annals of that country tell. Though
some pursued their march Southward, it may be reason-
ably supposed that a part remained in the district ; and
the Indians living here, who cultivate corn, weave cloth,
and live in villages consisting of houses built of solid
materials, sometimes two stories in height, may either
be their descendants, or have borrowed from them the
improvements they possess. Next in order as we pro-
ceed southward, are the various nations of Mexico, of
whose condition we shall speak by and by. In Chiapa
were the Zapotecs, in Yucatan the Mayas, in Guatemala
the Quiches and Kachiquels, all nearly as much advanced
in civilisation as the Mexicans, and probably of the same
primitive stock. From this point, where the Andes lose
their elevation, or break into isolated cones, no distinct
traces of civilisation appear till we enter the Southern
continent. Here were found the Muyscas or Moscas,
on the table-land of Bogota, a nation consisting of several
tribes, who worshipped the Sun and practised some of the
useful arts. To these succeeded the nations of Peru,
living under the Incas, whose dominion extended from
the equator to the 35th degree of S. latitude. Beyond
this boundary were the Chilian tribes, who, though infe-
rior to the Peruvians, had made some advances beyond
the rudeness of the Savage state. It is proper to men-
tion that some of the nations named were extinct before
the arrival of the Spaniards; but the degree of civilisa-
tion they had attained is attested by the monuments they
have left behind them. There were no other tribes in
the new continent which had made any progress in Social
improvements. We would not except the Guaranis of
Brazil, and a few others, who derived their subsistence
chiefly from agriculture, but were in other respects say-
ages. We place among the exceptions, however, the
extinct race of the Allegewis, or whatever was the name
of the people, who erected the military works existing
between the Ohio and the northern lakes ; but they also,
it must be remembered, inhabited a temperate climate,
though not a mountainous country. It may be affirmed,
then, as a general proposition, that from 35°, of N. to
35° of S. latitude, the sides and summits of the Andes
were the exclusive seats of American civilisation. We
admit that some of the tribes in Chiapa, Oaxaca, and
Yucatan, inhabited low districts; but they were still near
the Cordillera, and may be fairly considered as offshoots
from the nations dwelling upon it. The fact is impor-
tant, as marking the effects of climate on the active ener-
gies of our species. There is no doubt that, with the
improved arts of modern times, civilisation can subsist
under the burning sky of the torrid zone, but not in such
vigor as in countries which enjoy a more moderate tem-
perature. Perhaps it will be found that the moral and
A. M. E.
259
physical powers of man attain their highest perſection
in those regions where he is accompanied by w/leaf and
the zºne. The zone occupied by the former extends from
the 3oth to the 57th or 58th parallel; and within the
tropics the corresponding climate is found on the flanks
or summits of mountains, from 4500 to IO,OOO feet above
(the level of the sea.
It is remarkable that the Mexican annals reach to a
very remote date, although they were preserved merely
by picture-writing. We do not pretend to enter into
the question as to the authenticity of the records them-
selves, and their correctness. It is enough that they
have received credit from Humboldt, Vater, and other
men of learning and judgment. From the annals thus
preserved, of which further details will be subsequently
given, we learn that at the earliest dawn of history the
Quinames were in possession of the country, that civil-
isation was introduced by strangers coming from the
east, and that several nations belonging to one race
migrated in succession from the north-west, and settled
in Azza/İztac or Mexico. The Toltecs, it is stated, left
their original seat, far to the west, in 544 of our era,
and after a long journey invaded Mexico, then occupied
by wandering hordes, in 648. This people, who pene-
trated to Nicaragua, if not to South America, were
nearly destroyed aſter the lapse of some centuries; but
were followed by the Chichimecs, a half savage tribe,
about 1 I2O, and these a few years afterwards by the
Anahuatlels, or seven tribes, including the Acolhuans, the
Tlascaltecs, and the Aztecs or proper Mexicans. All
these people spoke dialects of one language, and had
similar arts, customs, and institutions. The town of
Mexico or Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325, and the
series of Mexican kings which commenced in 1352 was
continued through eight monarchs to Montezuma. The
monarchy was small at first, and passed through many
vicissitudes; but it was gradually enlarged, especially by
the policy and enterprise of the later princes of the line.
When Cortes arrived, it embraced what are now the
provinces of Vera Cruz, Oaxaca, Puebla, Mexico, and
part of Valladolid, a surface of 130,000 Square miles;
but within this were comprehended three small inde-
pendent states, Tlascala, Cholullan, and Zapeaca. The
pastoral state, which forms the intermediate stage
between savage and civilised life, had never existed in
Mexico; for the native wild ox had not been tamed, and
the use of milk as food was unknown. The Mexican
nations derived their subsistence from agriculture, which,
however, was conducted in the rudest manner, with
very imperfect instruments. They cultivated maize,
potatoes, plantains and various other esculent vegetables.
They raised cotton, and understood the art of spin-
ning and weaving it into cloth, of a texture wº
excited the admiration of the Spaniards. They had no
iron, but showed considerable skill in fashioning the
gold, silver, and copper found in a native state,
into domestic utensils and ornamental articles. In some
of their buildings the stones were hewn into regular
forms, and accurately joined; and from the ruins of the
palace of Mitla, in Oaxaca, still existing, it appears that
they had the art of designing ornaments like arabesques,
in paste, with great neatness, and attaching them to the
walls; but solid structures of masonry evincing any con-
siderable skill are extremely rare in the country. Their
carvings in wood were tolerably well executed, but the
figures were disproportioned and uncouth. The same
remark applies to their hieroglyphical drawings, which
were far inferior in taste and design to those of the Hin-
doos, Japanese, and Thibetians. For paper they em-
ployed sometimes the large leaves of the aloe, sometimes
cotton cloth, or the skins of deer dressed. Their books
consisted of strips or webs of such materials, composed
of pieces neatly joined, one or two feet broad and twenty
or thirty long, which were divided into pages by folding
them in a zig-zag manner; and two pieces of thin deal
attached to the outermost folds served as boards, and
gave these manuscripts, when closed, an appearance very
much like our old folios in wooden binding. The writ-
ten language of Mexico contained a few real hieroglyph-
ics or symbols, purely conventional, to designate such
objects as water, earth, air, day, night, speech, and also
for numbers; but it was essentially a system of picture-
writing in which objects were represented by colored
figures having a resemblance more or less exact to them-
selves. With all its necessary imperfections, this instru-
ment was familiarly employed to a prodigious extent in
deeds and instruments for effecting the transmission and
sale of property. The government kept couriers for con-
veying intelligence from all parts of the empire; and the
capital was watched and cleaned by a sort of police estab-
lishment. This is the bright side of Mexican civilisation.
On the other hand, it must be kept in view, that the
Mexicans had no tame animals, no made roads, no money
to serve as a universal medium of exchange in commer-
cial transactions. The government was originally a per-
ſect feudal monarchy, in which all power was monopo-
lised by a numerous mobility and the priesthood. The
great mass of the people were serfs, attached to the soil,
and transferred with it from owner to owner by descent
or purchase. The peasants or slaves of a nobleman were
allowed a certain portion of land, which they cultivated in
common for their subsistence: the rest of their labor
belonged to their lord. The country swarmed with
beggars, and thousands were swept off every few years
by famine. As among the ancient Egyptians and the
Chinese, immutable custom, regulating every act of
civil and common life, chained up the course of improve-
ment, and spread a languid monotony over society.
The crown was elective, and the powers of the monarch
small, till the privileges of the nobles were destroyed
by the policy and ambition of Montezuma. The relig-
ion of the Mexicans breathed a savage spirit, which
degraded them, in a moral point of view, far below the
hordes of wandering Indians. Their deities, repre-
sented by mis-shapen images of serpents and other
hideous animals, were the creation of the darkest
passions of the human breast, of terror, hatred, cruelty,
and revenge. They delighted in blood, and thousands
of human sacrifices were annually offered at their
shrines. The places of worship, called Teocallis, were
pyramids composed of terraces placed one above
another, like the temple of Belus at Babylon. These
were built of clay, or of alternate layers of clay and
unburnt bricks, but in some cases faced with slabs of
polished stone, on which figures of animals are sculp-
tured in relief. One or two small chapels stood upon
the summit, enclosing images of the deity. The
largest known, which is composed of four stories or
terraces, has a breadth of 480 yards at the base, and a
height of 55. These structures served as temples,
tombs, and observatories.; and it is remarkable that
their sides are always placed exactly in the direction of
the meridian. This leads us to the most interesting
fact connected with Mexican civilisation, we mean the
perfection of their calendar. The civil year was com-
posed of 365 days, divided into 18 months of 20 days,
and 5 supplementary days. . The Mexicans had besides
a ritual or religious year for the regulation of their
festivals; and, by means of a cycle of 52 years, and a
very complicated method of computation, the religious
and civil periods were connected with one another, and
the civil year was made to correspond with the natural
by the intercalation of 13 days at the end of the cycle.
The month was divided into four weeks of five days,
26O
A M E
but each day of the month had a distinct name; and
Humboldt has given strong reasons for believing that
these names were borrowed from an ancient zodiac
formed of 27 or 28 lunar houses, which was made use
of from the remotest antiquity in Tartary, Thibet, and
India. The calendar of the Mexicans bespeaks a
degree of scientific skill, and an accuracy of observa-
tion, which are not easily reconciled with their semi-
barbarous habits, their general ignorance in other
things, and the recent date of their civilisation according
to their own account. It is here, indeed, and not in
their language, that we find distinct traces of their con-
nection with Asiatic nations. The character of the
Mexicans is probably the same at thic lay as before the
conquest, which we are disposed -o think, made less
change in the situation of the people than is often sup-
posed, though it annihilated the rank and privileges of
the nobles. The Mexican Indian is grave, suspicious,
and taciturn; quiet and placid in his external deport-
ment, but rancorous in his spirit; submissive to his
superiors, harsh and cruel to those beneath him. His
intellect is limited, and chiefly developes itself in imita-
tive labors and mechanical arts. Slow, cautious, and
persevering, he loves, both in his acts and thoughts, to
travel in a beaten track. The people, though speaking
many different languages, have nearly the same physical
character. The Mexicans have olive complexions, nar-
row foreheads, black eyes, coarse glossy black hair, and
thin beards. They are of the middle size, and well-
proportioned in their limbs. A person with any defect
or deformity is rarely seen amongst them. They are
healthy, and live to an advanced age, when life is not
shortened by drunkenness. The Toltec and Aztec
races, when they established themselves in the country,
diffused their own language partially from the Lake of
Nicaragua to the 37th parallel. They reclaimed, by
degrees, many of the neighboring savage tribes to a
settled mode of life, and spread a feeble degree of civil-
ization over a mixed mass of nations, speaking, according
to Clavigero, 35 languages, of which Humboldt tells us
that 20 still exist. The Aztec language is one of the
most copious and polished of the American tongues,
and abounds in words of the immoderate length of 12
or I5 syllables. It is uncertain what was the number
of subjects over whom Montezuma ruled. The ruins
in the valley of the Tenochtitlan, on which the capital
now stands, show that it must have been more populous
before the conquest than now; but the population at
present is diffused over an incomparably wider space;
and, upon the whole, there are no good grounds for
believing that the number of civilised Indians was much
greater when Cortes landed, than in 1803, when it
amounted to 2,000,000.
. The civilisation of Mexico, as well as of Peru, owed
its existence to a single cause,_ the patient, submissive,
and superstitious character of the people, which fitted
them to be beasts of burden, under an aristocracy of
priests and nobles, who were led, perhaps, partly by
influences from abroad, partly by the instinct of self.
interest, to devise means for holding the mass of the
community in subjection. Many of the nations which
continued savage, such as the Algonquins and Iro-
quois, were probably equal to the Mexicans in intel-
lect ; but their P. to superstition was less, and
their energy of character was too great to permit of
their being enslaved by their chiefs. It is chiefly in the
variety of their primitive character that we must seek
for the cause of the diversity of manners and institu-
tutions we find among the American nations.
The ancient empire of Peru, more extensive than
that of Mexico, embraced the whole sea-coast from Pas-
tos to the river Maule, a line of 2500 miles in length.
Its breadth is uncertain; but as it included both declivi-
ties of the Andes, it must have extended in some cases to
500 miles, and the entire surface of the empire probably
exceeded 500,000 square miles. It is plain, however,
from the imperfect history of the Incas which has been
preserved, that within this space there were many districts
where their authority was feeble, and others inhabited
by tribes which were entirely independent. One part of
the country, besides, consisted of a sandy desert, while
the most elevated tracts were uninhabitable from cold.
It must not therefore be supposed that the capacity of
the country to support population was commensurate
with the extent of its surface. Still the magnitude of
the Peruvian empire, in the midst of an immense multi-
tude of independent Savage communities, so extremely
minute, that a hundred of them might have been planted
without crowding in one of its provinces, is an extraor-
dinary phenomenon. The creating and maintaining of
such an empire is a proof that the Peruvians had
made no trifling progress in the useful arts and
in the science of government. To keep in subjec-
tion so many remote provinces, there must have been
an efficient military force, rapid means of communica-
tion, considerable revenues, and an organised magistracy
capable of understanding and executing the plans of
rulers, who had sufficient political skill and knowledge
of human nature to adapt their institutions and arrange-
ments to the wants, habits, and character of a great
variety of dissimilar nations, spread over a territory
reaching as far as from Lisbon to the banks of the Volga.
It is clear that the ruling tribe, which was able to extend
its dominion, and to a considerable extent its language,
over a space of 25,000 miles, must have possessed a
marked superiority of some kind over the hordes that
surround it. We mustremember, besides, that the Peru-
vians lay under the disadvantage of being destitute of
even such an imperfect instrument of communication as
the hieroglyphic language of the Mexicans, and that they
were extremely deficient in military spirit. Indeed, it is
one of the most singular facts connected with the history
of America, that by far the largest empire it contained
was formed by the most unwarlike people in it. The
dominion of the Incas was founded entirely on policy,
superstition, and the arts. It could only be by the in-
telligence and skill which civilisation developes, that the
Peruvians conquered tribes superior to themselves in
courage; and it was by policy and superstition that the
Incastamed therudeness of savage tribes, and held distant
countries in subjection. Robertson justly observes, that
the Peruvians “had advanced far beyond the Mexicans,
both in the necessary arts of life, and in such as had
some title to the name of elegant.” In two points only
were they inferior; in their calendar or mode of comput-
ing time, and in their want of such a substitute for writ-
ing as the Aztecs possessed in their hieroglyphics.
Agriculture was conducted with greater care and suc-
cess in Peru than in Mexico. The lands capable of
cultivation were divided into three shares. One was
consecrated to the service of religion, the erection of
temples, and the maintenance of priests; the second was
set apart as a provision for the support of the govern-
ment; and the third and largest share, which was
reserved for the people, was parcelled out, not among
individuals, but among the hamlets and villages, accord-
ing to the number and rank of the inhabitants; and a
new division was made every year to meet any change
that might arise in the circumstances of the parties.
The members of each little community went to the
fields under overseers, and cultivated the land by their
joint labor. The produce was distributed among the
families and individuals according to their wants, while
the evils of famine were provided against by storing up.
A M E
26 I
the corn in granaries. The Peruvians having no
draught animals, and no ploughs, turned up the earth
with wooden mattocks; but their skill and care were
exemplified in irrigation, which they practised extensively,
and in their employing as manure guano, or the
dung of sea birds, which abounds on the island near the
coast. Their masonry was superior to that of the
Mexicans. Like the ancient Egyptians, they under-
stood mechanics sufficiently to move stones of vast size,
even of 30 feet in length, of which specimens are still
existing in the walls of the fortress of Cuzcº. They
had the art of squaring and cutting blocks for building
with great accuracy; and they did not effect their pur-
pose, as Robertson supposes, merely by chipping the
stones, or rubbing them together so as to fit the surface
of the one to that of the other, without regard to sym-
metry of form. It is now known that they had hard
chisels made of copper, with a mixture of 6 per cent. of
tin, - a proof of considerable skill in the working of
metals. With these they have hewed the stones into
parallelopipeds, which were disposed in “courses as
regular,” says Humboldt, “as those of Roman work-
manship.” They are joined with such nicety, that the
line which divides the blocks can scarcely be preceived;
and the outer surface is in some cases covered with
carving. The palaces or lodges of the Incas, of which
there are many remains, had doors with slanting sides
like the Egyptian; slooping roofs, which, it is supposed,
were covered with rushes or stone slabs; no windows,
but niches symmetrically distributed. Ancient stone
structures, which are so rare in Mexico, are pretty
abundant in Peru, - a fact for which we can only
account by the difficulty with which the Mexicans
erected buildings, in consequence of their inferiority in
the art of masonry. The architecture of the Peruvians,
like everything else connected with their social state, dis-
plays a remarkable uniformity, not only of style, but of
plan. “It is impossible,” says Humboldt, “to examine
a single edifice of the time of the Incas, without recog-
nising the same type in all the others which cover the
ridge of the Andes, along an extent of 450 leagues.”
The ancient public roads of Peru are justly considered
as striking monuments of the political genius of the
government. One of these extended along the sides of
the Andes from Quito to Cuzco, a distance of 1500
miles. It is about forty feet broad, and paved with the
earth and stones which were turned up from the soil; but
in some marshy places it is formed, like the old Roman
roads, of a compact body of solid masonry. A tolerably
level line is preserved, by filling up hollows, cutting
down small eminences, and winding round the sides of
large ones. At proper distances tambos or storehouses
were erected, for the accommodation of the Inca and
his messengers. A similar road was made along the
coast in the low country. Fissures a few yards in
breadth were passed by bridges formed of beams laid
horizontally ; and an invention, at once bold and ingeni-
ous, afforded the means of crossing deep ravines, or the
channels of rivers, which happened to intersect the
route. This consisted of a suspension bridge, perfectly
analogous in its principle to those with which we are
familiar. It was formed of half a dozen cables of
twisted osiers, passed over wooden supports, and
stretched from bank to bank; then bound together with
smaller ropes, and covered with bamboos. Humboldt
passed over one of these pendulous bridges, of 120 feet
span; and Mr. Miers crossed one of 225 feet span, over
which loaded animals might travel. In low grounds the
rivers were crossed on rafts with a mast and Sail, which,
by a particular contrivance, could be made to tack and
veer. In this respect the Peruvians were a stage in ad;
vance of all the other American races, who had nothing
superior to the canoe with paddles. The Peruvians
manufactured a rude species of pottery : they understood
the art of spinning, and, in an imperfect degree, that of
weaving. They procured native gold by washing the
gravel of rivers; and, silver, and perhaps copper, by work-
ing veins downward from the outcrop. They knew how
to smelt and refine the silver ore; and they possessed the
secret of giving great hardness and durability to copper
by mixing it with tin. Their utensils and trimkets of
gold and silver are said to have been fashioned with
neatness and even taste. On the other hand, they had
no money, no knowledge of iron or glass; and they were
ignorant of the mode of mortising or joining beams,
and of casting arches. They had no animals fitted for
draught; but the llama, a small species of camel, which
they had tamed, was employed to some extent as a beast
of burden.
The political organization of Peru, which was artificial
in a high degree, reminds one, in some of its features, of
the old system of the Saxons in England, but bears a
more general resemblance to that of the ancient Egypt-
ians. The mass of the people were in a state of servi-
tude, except a small number, who were free; above these
in rank were the Curacas, or chiefs of districts, who
formed a sort of nobility; and above the whole, the
family of the Incas, the members of which, by intermar-
rying only with themselves, formed a numerous and
distinct caste. For the purposes of police and civil
jurisdiction, the people were divided into parties of ten
families, like the tithings of Alfred, over each of which
was an officer. A second class of officers had control
over five or ten tithings, a third class over fiſty or a
hundred. These last rendered account to the Incas, who
exercised a vigilant superintendence over the whole, and
employed inspectors to visit the provinces as a check
upon mal-administration. Each of these officers, down to
the lowest, judged, without appeal, in all differences that
arose within his division, and enforced the laws of the
empire, among which were some for punishing idleness,
and compelling every one to labor. It is probable that
the tithings and hundreds, as in England, would lose their
numerical signification in course of time, and become
mere local allotments. In the hamlets and villages a
person mounted a tower every evening, and announced
where and how the inhabitants were to be employed next
day. The taxes were paid in the produce of the fields,
and magazines for receiving them were established in
every district. Such is the account given by Acosta and
Garcilasso of the civil institutions of Peru, which may be
correct with regard to the oldest possessions of the Incas
near Cuzco, where their power had been long established;
but it is not probable that such a complicated system was
ever fully in operation.in the more distant parts of the
empire.
The government of Peru was a theocracy. The Inca
was at once the temporal sovereign and the Supreme
pontiff. He was regarded as the descendant and repre-
sentative of the great deity the sun, who was supposed
to inspire his counsels, and speak through his orders and
decrees. Hence even slight offences were punished
with death, because they were regarded as insults offered
to the divinity. The race of the Incas was held sacred.
To support its pretensions, it was very desirable that it
should be kept pure and distinct from the people; but
human passions are often too strong for the dictates of
policy; and though the marriages of the family were
confined to their own race, the emperor, as well as the
other males of the blood royal, kept large harems
stocked with beauties drawn from all parts of the em-
pire, and multiplied a spurious progeny, in whom the
blood of the “children of the sun * was blended with
that of the “children of the earth.” Among a simple-
262
A M E
minded and credulous people the claims of the Incas to
a celestial origin seem to have been implicitly believed.
They were blindly obeyed, and treated with a respect
bordering on adoration, by the nobles as well as the
common people. The Peruvians worshipped the sun,
the moon, the evening star, the spirit of thunder, and
the rainbow, and had erected temples in Cuzco to all
these deities. . That of the sun, which was the most mag-
nificent, had its walls covered with plates of gold. The
sacrifices consisted of the objects most prized by the
people, of grain and fruits, of a few animals, and of
the productions of their own industry. Sabianism, as it
is the most rational of all the forms of idolatry, is also
generally the most mild; and doubtless this results from
the tendency which it has to fix the thoughts on the
marks of beneficence and wisdom which are displayed in
the works of nature. The Peruvian temples were ac-
cordingly never polluted, like those of Mexico, with the
blood of human victims; and the Incas even went far-
ther, and signalised their zeal against such horrid rites,
by suppressing them in all the countries they conquered.
Though their history exhibits some bloody deeds, the
general character of their government was the reverse
of cruel. The severe punishments prescribed by their
laws were rarely inflicted, and rebellion was scarcely
known in their dominions. The Inca not only assumed
the title of the father of his people, but the vices as
well as the merits of his government sprung partly from
the attempt made to construct the government on the
model of paternal authority, and partly from the blend-
ing of moral and religious injunctions with civil duties.
Hence the idle pretension of the state to reward virtu-
ous conduct, as well as to punish crimes; hence too the
plan of laboring in common, the extinction of individual
property, the absurdities of eating, drinking, sleeping,
tilling, building, according to fixed universal rules; in
fine, that minute and vexatious regulation of all the acts
of ordinary life, which converted the people into mere
machines in the hands of an immense corps of civil and
religious officers.
This system of the Peruvian monarchs, by which the
people were kept in a state of perpetual tutelage, merits
the greater attention, because it is precisely that which
the Jesuits employed, in Paraguay and other districts, to
reduce the natives to a settled mode of life; and it seems,
in fact, to be the only method by which a semblance of
civilisation can be introduced amongst the American
nations. Two things must be supposed to account for
its prevalence; first, a certain amount of timidity, pas-
siveness, and superstition, in the body of the people,
implying weak passions, but not necessarily smallness
of intellect; and, secondly, a few minds of a higher
class, to give an impulse to the rest, and to control and
regulate their acts. In the case of Peru, did these rul-
ing intellects spring from the body of the people, and,
after striking out new lights in morals and legislation
for themselves, devise a complex and artificial system
for establishing their power over the minds of the rest,
by the help of superstition and force? or were they
strangers from another country, and imbued with the
principles of a higher civilisation? If we may believe
the Peruvian annais, the latter was the case. About the
year IOOO of our era, or perhaps a century later, Manco
Capac, with his wife and sister Mama Ocello, appeared
as strangers on the banks of lake Titicaca. They were
persons of majestic appearance, and announced them-
selves as “children of the sun,” sent by their benefi-
cent parent to reclaim the tribes living there from the
miseries of Savage life. Their injunctions, addressed to
a people who probably worshipped the god of day, were
listened to by a few, who settled around them, and
founded Cuzco.
to renounce their wandering habits. Manco Capac
instructed the men in agriculture and the arts, and
Mama Ocello taught the women to spin and to weave.
Laws, institutions, and religious rites, were added. The
form of a civilised society arose, which was gradually
extended by persuasion or conquest,-- the Incas having
always planted their arts and religion wherever they
established their authority. Huayna Capac, the twelfth
in succession from the founder of the dynasty, occupied
the throne when the first party of Spaniards visited Peru
in 1527, and the empire was then still in a state of prog-
ress. There is, however, little doubt that some ad-
vance in civilisation had been made in times before the
Incas.
Such is the account which the Peruvians give of the
origin of their civilisation, which we should be disposed
to reject as a fable, if there were not peculiar circum-
stances which give it some credibility. First, their
institutions, taken in the mass, do not present what may
be called the American type. The mild and paternal
character which they display, the injunction to “love
one another ” raised to the rank of a positive precept,
the preference of the useful arts to war, all breathe a
spirit, not only foreign to the genius of the American
tribes, but exactly opposed in character to anything
which a native self-taught legislator was likely to pro-
duce. Secondly, the artificial and systematic form of the
Peruvian institutions renders it improbable that they
were developed by the natural action of political causes,
but strongly favors the idea, that they were framed by a
few designing heads, as an instrument to tame and
govern a patient, feeble, and credulous people of rude
or savage habits. A small number of Jesuits were
led, by a Sagacious study of the Savage character, to
devise a system extremely similar in its nature, which
worked admirably. These missionaries were the Manco
Capacs of Paraguay; and, like the Incas, might in the
course of two or three centuries, have extended their
theocracy over as large a space as Peru, if their situation
had permitted them to employ force. Thirdly, a million
of native Peruvians yet survive, the living descendants of
those who built the temples of Cuzco; and their extreme
stolidity, apathy, and feebleness of character, sufficiently
testify that the chances were nearly as great against a
legislator like Manco Capac arising amongst them, as
against the Jews in the time of Augustus producing a
being like Jesus Christ. They have the weakness and
passiveness which fit them to receive an impression from
superior directing minds; but they discover no trace of
the intelligence, energy, and originality which must have
been united in the persons who planned and carried into
effect the political system of the Incas. We admit that
depression may have degraded their character, but it
cannot have entirely changed it.
If, then, the civilisation of Peru was exotic, whence
was it derived? To us it appears most probable, that
the legislators of Peru were either Chinese, or persons
who had received at second-hand a knowledge of the
arts and institutions of China; and our opinion is
grounded on traits of resemblance in the manners, laws,
arts, and institutions of the two nations, which, in our
opinion, are too numerous, striking, and peculiar, to be
the effect of chance. We shall mention some of the
most prominent.
I. The first and most obvious resemblance is in the
singularly artificial frame of society in both countries.
In China, as in Peru, the legislation is directive as well
as punitive, and is distinguished by that minute and elab-
orate system of regulation, inspection, and control,
which interferes with the most trifling actions of ordi-
nary life, and reduces the mass of the people to the con-
By degrees, other tribes were induced idition of automata, moved and guided in everything by
|
the rulers, China, says Mr. Barrow, is a great school,
in which the magistrates are the masters, and the people
the scholars. . It might be more correctly compared to a
large monastic establishment, in which each person has
his place and his duty assigned to him, and all his acts
directed by superiors, whose wisdom and authority he is
not permitted to question. The Chinese have the same
immense multitude of civil officers which the Peruvians
had, and the same chain of subordination from the
emperor down to the petty constable. In China this
system was undoubtedly the growth of many centuries;
but it was too artificial to occur to the thoughts of a
cacique, educated amongst a tribe of savages on the
sides of the Andes. 2. In China, as in Peru, the
emperor assumes the title of the “father of his people;”
and his government is modelled upon this figure of speech.
He affects to be sprung from progenitors who descended
Jrom heaven like the children of the sun, and he unites
the character of supreme pontiff with that of temporal
rince. , There are yestiges, too, of the worship of the
eavenly bodies in Chinā. 3. ‘The Chinese emperor
extends an Ostentatious patronage to agriculture by cele-
brating an annual festival in its honor, on which occasion
he proceeds to the field in great pomp, and takes a part
in the labor of cultivating the ground with his own
hands. This singular custom existed in Peru, where the
Incas went through an annual ceremony perfectly sim-
ilar. How foreign was such an institution to the spirit
of the American tribes 4. In China agriculture is in
a rude state, and exhibits proofs of intelligence and
skill only in two things—the use of manures, and a
laborious system of irrigation. Precisely the same
circumstances characterized the iculture of Peru.
5. The internal taxes of bº,"; those of Peru,
are paid in kind (maize, rice, silk, cotton, &c.), and
stored in public magazines or granaries. 6. The
Chinese government maintained public roads, even in
those provinces where neither carriages nor beasts of
burden were used, of course for the use of pedestrians,
and storehouses or places of refreshment were built upon
them at proper distances. The Peruvians constructed
roads on precisely the same plan, and for the same pur-
poses ; and this was done by no other people in America.
7. The Chinese do not inter the bodies of the dead, but
lay them on the ground and raise a tumulus or conical
heap of earth over them. Such was also the practice in
Peru. The only barbarously cruel rite practised in
Peru, that of immolating the Inca's domestics at the
obsequies of their masters, was brought into China by
the Tartars. Its existence is an anomaly in each case,
for the genius of both nations was peaceful and mild.
8. The architecture of the Chinese displays little taste,
but is distinguished by two peculiarities— the power
shown of cutting and moving immense masses of stone,
and the uniformity of style which pervades their struc-
tures, of every size and description. “All the build-
ings,” says Mr. Barrow, “from the meanest hut to the
viceroy's palace, are upon one plan.” Humboldt re-
marks the same adherence to a single model among the
Peruvians, and the walls of Cuzco show that they were
acquainted with the method of moving stones of
prodigious size. The Chinese were fond of covering
their walls with carving, and examples of the
same practice occur in Peru. If any of the
Peruvian buildings had remained entire with their roofs
on, it would perhaps have been found, that the type or
primary architectural form employed in the two
countries was not very dissimilar, and Some allowance
should be made for §. circumstance, that Peru must
have borrowed her models from China 700 or perhaps
IOOO years ago. The Peruvians made coarse pot-
tery, and all the world knows that this is an art in
which the Chinese excel.
The Peruvians were the only
American nation who had made any progress in the art
of fusing and alloying metals, in which the Chinese
have long been distinguished by their skill. Io. The
Peruvians had dramas and dramatic spectacles. Whence
could a people so uninventive have derived the idea of
such entertainments, if not from China, where they have
been long familiar to the people? There were mimics
and buffoons in Mexico, but nothing, we believe, to
which the term drama could be applied. II. But per-
haps the most remarkable coincidence is found in an in-
vention entirely confined to the two countries. We
have described the suspension bridges made of ropes,
employed by the Peruvians in crossing deep ravines.
Now, it is singular that bridges of the very same descrip-
tion, some of chains, and some of ropes, are found in
the south of China, and nowhere else except in Thibet,
which has interchanged arts and customs with China
from time immemorial. This single fact we would con-
sider as a proof of communication between the two
countries. The Peruvians made their ropes of twisted
osiers, and the Chinese had ropes also of this description.
I2. From what people nearer than the Chinese could
the Peruvians borrow the idea of rafts with a mast and
sail? These rafts, supporting covered huts, may be con-
sidered as literal copies of some that are used in China;
and the peculiar mechanism employed in lieu of a rud-
der is no doubt borrowed from the paddles attached to
the Chinese boats, fore and aft. 13. The Chinese in
ancient times made use of quipus or knotted cords to
facilitate calculation. Is it not probable that this inven-
tion had passed from them to the Peruvians, the Mexi-
cans, the Kaluschi, and other American nations who em-
ployed it? It would be easy to trace similar analogies
in many other customs, laws, and institutions of the two
nations. Both had nunneries or religious Societies of
women, who lived under a vow of celibacy; both had a
class of literary men (the Haravecs and Amautas, or
poets and philosophers, in Peru), patronised by the gov-
ernment; both divided the year into twelve months, and
placed the beginning of it in January (a coincidence the
more remarkable, as the year of the Mexican and other
northern nations consisted of 18 months); both were
strangers to the use of milk, cheese, and butter. Our
position is, not that the Peruvians are descended from
the Chinese, but simply that Peru had been inoculated
with civilisation by persons who derived their ideas from
hina. If it be asked why these persons did not import
from China the use of letters, the method of casting
arches, and many other arts practiced there, our answer
is, that no individual, and still less any casual assemblage
of individuals such as the purposes of trade or naviga-
tion might bring together, possesses a knowledge of every
art and science which exists in his country.
The Quichna language or that of Peru, was spread,
by the care of the Incas, over all the countries which
they conquered, so far at least as to be understood, if
not spoken, by the great variety of tribes subject to
their sway. It is understood at present as far as
Santiago del Estero, 1200 miles of direct distance south-
east from Cuzco. This single fact proves both the long
duration of their power, and the efficiency of their in-
termal administration. It is said to be the most rich,
polished, and harmonious of the South American lan-
guages, abounding in vowel sounds, but wanting those
corresponding to the Spanish consonants à, d, f, g, Z, x,
v. About ten years ago a copy of an old M.S. was dis-
covered, which contained an account of the Maya
alphabet of Yucatan — the only alphabet yet known to
have existed in America.
The Peruvians of the aboriginal Quichua, race are
of a copper color, with a small forehead, the hair grow-
-**
264
A M E
ing on each side from the extremities of the eye-brows;
they have small black eyes, a small nose, a moderately
sized mouth, with beautiful teeth; beardless chim (except
in old age), and a round face. Their hair is black,
coarse, and sleek, the body well proportioned, the feet
small, the stature rather diminutive. Their intellectual
qualities, according to M. Ulloa, are of the lowest
order. The most prominent trait in their character is
an imperturbable and incurable apathy. Though half-
naked, they are as contented as the Spaniard in his most
splendid raiment. Gold and silver have so little in-
fluence over them, that the greatest recompense will not
‘induce them to perform the slightest service voluntarily.
Neither power nor dignity moves them, and they receive
with the same indifference the office of alcalde and that
of executioner. They are habitually slow in their mo-
tions, and extremely indolent. When employed at any
piece of labor, if the master withdraw his eye for a
moment, they cease to work. They are timid, shy,
secretive, and always grave, even in the dances, which
are their favorite pastime. The love of intoxicating li-
quors is deeply rooted in their nature. They prepare a
fermented beverage called chicha from maize, by a pro-
cess known to them before the conquest, and at their
festivals drink till their senses fail them, day after day.
This vicious habit, however, is common to all the Amer-
ican nations, and is confined to the men, for the women
are in general strictly sober. The Peruvians are a
gentle and mild people; they are fond of their dogs, and
breed up hogs, geese and chickens, for which they have so
tender a regard, that they will often neither kill nor sell
them. Their huts, says Mr. Stevenson, consist of stones
laid upon one another without any cement or mortar,
thatched over with long grass or straw, affording
no defence from either the wind or the rain. One Small
room contains the whole family; their bed a sheep-
skin or two ; their furniture one or two earthen pots.
The principal food of the Peruvians is maize; but they
raise also potatoes, wheat, beans, tomatoes, yucas,
pumpkins, and other yegetables. Christianity, im-
posed upon them dogmatically, by priests who take no
pains to enlighten them, has scarcely gained admission
to their understandings, and has no hold on their affec-
tions. They attend divine service from the dread of
chastisement, and give an outward assent to whatever
they are taught, but without any real religious impres-
ision being made upon their minds. They meet death
with the same stupid indifference as the ordinary acci-
dents of life, and rather decline than seek the assistance
of a priest in their last hours. It ought not to be for-
gotten, however, that the intellectual torpor which the
Peruvians display may be attributed in part to the dead:
'ening and debasing effects of three centuries of brutal
oppression. They still cherish in secret a strong ven-
eration for their ancient faith and their native govern-
ment, which displays itself even in the large towns.
The story of Manco Capac (whom, since numbers of
our countrymen appeared in Peru, they affect to call an
Englishman) and Mama Ocello, the wealth, power, and
beneficence of the Incas, are still fresh in their memo-
ries, and are handed down from father to son with a
degree of fond admiration which three centuries of
Thumiliation and misfortune seem only to have rendered
more intense. The barbarous murder of the Inca
Atahualpa by Pizarro is annually represented in the
form of a tragedy. “In this performance,” says Mr.
Stevenson, “the grief of the Indians is so natural,
though excessive, their songs so plaintive, and the
whole is such a scene of distress, that I never witnessed
it without mingling my tears with theirs. The Spanish
authorities have endeavored to prevent this exhibition,
but without effect. The Indians in the territory of
Quito wear black clothes, and affirm that it is mourning
for their Incas, of whom they never speak but in a dole-
ful tone.” .* -
The oppression of the mita, or forced labor in the
mines, with the introduction of the small-pox and the
use of spirituous liquors, has destroyed prodigious
multitudes of the Indians since the conquest. What
their number was before that event it is impossible to
tell; but, judging from the extent of the Inca's domin-
ions, he probably had not less than three or four mill-
ions of subjects. A pretended Spanish account, assign-
ing a population of eight millions to Peru shortly after
the conquest, is known to be fictitious. An official
estimate in 1889 made the number of Indians in Peru
amount to 1,600,000, being three-fourths of the entire
population.
In Chili there were several tribes who possessed
nearly all the arts known to the Peruvians, but were
distinguished from them by a finer physical constitution
and an 'inconquerable spirit. When the Spaniards ar-
rived, Chili, according to Molina, was inhabited by
fifteen tribes independent of each other, who were
spread over the country on both sides of the Andes,
from latitude 309 to the Strait of Magalhaens. They all
spoke dialects of one language, which is described as
rich, harmonious, abounding in compound words, and
having, like the other American tongues, very compli-
cated grammatical forms. It has no affinity to the
Quichua or Peruvian. The inhabitants of the plains
are a stout people, of middle stature; those of the
mountains are tall; and one tribe, the Tehuels or Pata-
gonians, surpass in size every other nation in the world.
All the tribes inhabiting the plains, except those of the
extreme south, now make use of horses. The Com-
plexion of the Chilian tribes is, like that of the other
American nations, a reddish brown; but one tribe is
said to be of a clear red and white. They do not paint
their bodies. The Chilians lived partly by hunting, but
chiefly by agriculture, before they had any intercourse
with Europeans. They cultivated maize, magu, guegen,
tuca, quinoa, the potato, pumpkins, and some species
of pulse; and to these they added, as food, the flesh of
the bizcacho, and of the llama or Araucanian camel, of
whose wool they are said to have manufactured cloth.
Like the Peruvians, they understood the use of manure,
practised irrigation with considerable skill, and turned
up the ground with a wooden spade or mattock. . They
boiled their grain in earthen pots, or brayed it into
meal after roasting it in hot sand; of the meal they
made puddings or bread, which they knew how to
leaven, and various species of fermented drink. . They
had gold, silver, copper, tin, and lead, procured prob-
ably by washing; but they seem to have had few or no
edge-tools of metal, those found being almost always of
basalt. They made baskets and mats, extracted Salt
from sea-water, and were able to give various dyes to
their cloths. They used guipus or knotted cords for
calculation, and, according to Mr. Stevenson, for the
transmission of intelligence and for recording, events.
They lived in villages formed of houses standing at a
distance from one another, under hereditary chiefs, but
whose power was limited. It is remarkable that the
Chinese mode of catching wild ducks on the rivers, by
covering the fisher's head with a gourd, was practised
in Chili.
The Araucanians, the most intelligent, improved, and
warlike of the Chilian tribes, occupy about 200 miles of
the sea-coast, between the 37th and 39th parallels.
They are of ordinary stature, but vigorously formed;
bold, hardy, hospitable, faithful to their engagements,
generous to a fallen enemy, ardent, intrepid, and enthu-
siastic lovers of liberty. Their vices are drunkenness,
A M E
265
and a contempt of other nations, springing from pride.
Their government, in the regularity of its form and its
sub-division of authority, has an outward resemblance
to the Peruvian; but the spirit of the two systems
differs as widely as the genius of the two nations.
Araucania contains four tetrarchies, under four toquis
or princes, who are independent of one another, but
confederated for their joint security against foreign
enemies. . Each tetrarchy is divided into five provinces,
ruled by five chiefs called apo-illmen ; and each province
into nine districts, governed by as many ulmen, who
are subject to the apo-ulmen, as the latter are to the
toquis. These various chiefs (who all bear the title of
ulmen, as our nobility of all orders are barons) compose
the aristocracy of the country. They hold their dignities
by hereditary descent in the male line, and in the order
of primogeniture. The supreme power of each tetrarchy
resides in a diet or great council of the ulmen, who
assemble annually in a large plain, like the Poles and
Germans in old times; but as the people are all armed,
and have a high love of liberty, no resolution of the
diet is of any avail if it has not their hearty concurrence.
The chiefs, indeed, are little more than leaders in war;
for the right of private revenge, which is fully admitted,
limits their authority in judicial matters; and they
receive no taxes. Their laws are merely primeval
usages. The Araucanians can raise altogether 6000 or
7000 men, besides a body of reserve. When war is
declared by the great council, messengers bearing “ar-
rows dipt in blood” are sent to all parts of the country
to summon the men to arms. Unlike many bar-
barous nations, which are immovably attached to
their ancient customs, the Araucanians were not slow
in copying the military arts and tactics of the Span-
iards. Their troops now consist of infantry and
cavalry; the former armed with pikes and clubs,
the latter with swords and lances. The infantry are
formed into regiments of ten companies, each com-
pany containing a hundred men. When they take
the field, they carry parched meal with them for pro-
visions; they station sentinels, send out scouts, and have
advanced guards preceding their main body. When
necessary for their security, they dig ditches, and plant
stakes along their sides, and throw up mounds of earth.
They advance to battle in lines, well formed, and fight
with intrepidity. Their history affords a brilliant ex-
ample of what a brave nation, animated by an enthusi-
astic love of liberty, can accomplish under the greatest
disadvantages. After resisting the best troops and the
best generals of Spain for two hundred years, they at
last compelled their proud enemies to acknowledge their
independence. The Araucanians were indebted for their
success to a deliberate species of courage, to which even
the bravest of the North American tribes are strangers;
and they combined with it a degree of Sagacity and in-
telligence which led them to adapt their mode of fighting
to the new circumstances in which they were placed.
Experience having taught, them the inefficiency of their
old missiles when opposed to musket balls, they soon
laid aside their bows, and armed themselves with spears,
swords, or other weapons fitted for close combat. Their
practice was to advance rapidly within such a distance
of the Spaniards as would not leave them time to reload
after firing. Here they received without shirking a vol-
ley, which was certain to destroy a number of them, and
then rushing forward in a close column, ſought their
enemies hand to hand. In this way they gained many
victories, and impressed the Spaniards with such respect
for their courage that an individual of that nation made
their achievements the subject of an epic poem. . Com-
bining the moral, intellectual, and physical qualities of
the Araucanians, they were certainly the finest native
race in the New World. They had nearly all the germs
of civilization which belonged to the Mexicans and Peru:
vians, without the ferocity of the former, the apathy of
the latter, or the lavish habits common to both; and
without having their minds stupefied by that grovelling
superstition which the rulers of these two nations seem
to have considered as the only secure foundation of their
authority. In true courage, in manliness, and energy
of character, they take precedence of all the American
nations.
The Araucanians believe in a supreme being, and in
many subordinate spirits, good and bad. They believe
also in omens and divinations, but they have neither
temples nor idols, nor religious rites; and discover
upon the whole so little aptitude for the reception of
religious ideas that the Catholic missionaries who have
settled among them have had very little success in im-
buing their minds with a knowledge of Christianity.
They believe in a future state, and have a confused tra-
dition respecting a deluge, from which some persons
were saved on a high mountain. They divide the year
into twelve months of 30 days, which have significant
names, and add five days by intercalation. They esteem
poetry and eloquence, but can scarcely be induced to
learn reading or writing. Chess, a game of oriental
origin, is said to have been known among them from
time immemorial; and it may be further observed, that
the numbers 5 and 9, employed in their geographical
and civil divisions, are favorite numbers in China.
The other Chilian tribes are all much behind the
Araucanians in civilisation; but some, as the Puelches
and the Tehuels, surpass them in strength and stature.
Part of them live on horse flesh, part by keeping sheep
and cattle, and part by hunting. Some of these tribes
paint their faces. They dwell in tents, and lead a
wandering life.
Of the numerous nations that inhabited Brazil there
is only one to which we can afford any special notice in
this article. The Guaranis have at one time formed a
numerous people, which seems to have been spread over
a larger surface than any other now existing in America.
Tribes, or remnants of tribes, whose relationship to the
Guaranis is attested by the strong evidence of their lan-
| guage, are found diffused over the wide space between
the Orinoco and the embouchure of the Plata, or more
than the half of South America. They are met with
among the Andes of Peru, in the province of Chiquitos,
in Matto Grosso, in Paraguay, in Minas Geraes; and
the Omaguas, in the republic of Ecuador, who, from
their nautical habits, and the influence they obtained on
the upper part of the Amazon, have been called the
Phoenicians of the new world, are believed to be of the
same race. They constituted the bulk of the native
population of Brazil when the Portuguese gained pos-
session of it, but were divided into many distinct tribes,
quite independent of one another, and living, not in con-
tiguity, but mixed with other nations. They are of low
stature, two inches shorter than the Spaniards, accord-
ing to Azara; of a square form, fleshy, and ugly. Their
color has a strong shade of the copper red, while that of
the other Brazilian tribes inclines generally to the tawny
or black. Their character, like their physical form, re-
sembles that of the Peruvians. They are patient, tor-
pid, silent, downcast in their mien, mild and passionless.
Nearly all the Indians whom the Portuguese have civil-
ised or converted belong to this race. It is difficult to
account for their dissemination through the Southern
continent, amidst nations much more brave and power-
ful than themselves. We may suppose that, like the
subjects of the Incas, they had been at one time, the
dominant tribe of an extensive empire, which derived
its force from union and civilisation' But if such a
266
A M E
state did exist, its date cannot be very ancient; for the
identity or close resemblance of the dialects spoken by
the scattered portions of the Guaranis shows that their
dispersion from a common point did not happen at a
very remote period. Yet no memorial of its existence
survives, either in traditions or monuments. The sup-
position, therefore, that the Guarani tribes are the rem-
nants of a once powerful and united people, is scarcely
admissible; and Azara thinks it more probable that
they have crept gradually from north to south. Their
dispersion is the more remarkable, as they are not a
wandering but an agricultural people. They live in the
woods, or in small open spaces in the forests; cultivate
maize, beans, gourds, yams, mandioc; and eat also wild
honey, and the flesh of monkeys and various small
quadrupeds.
The Indians whom the Jesuits civilised and collected
into communities in the celebrated settlements of Para-
guay belonged chiefly to the nation of the Guaranis.
These missionaries are said to have borrowed the plan
of the theocracy which they established here from that
which the Incas had introduced into Peru. There is no
doubt that the spirit of their system was the same ; and,
considering that they were precluded from any other
means of extending and supporting their authority than
persuasion, their success was remarkable. The settle-
ments were commenced about 16Io, and were gradually
extended over the country watered by the Parana and
Uruguay, between the 27th and 30th degrees of south
latitude, till the order of the Jesuits was suppressed in
1767. The plan of the government may be called
parochial, for it was administered entirely by the paro-
chial clergy. The Indians were collected into villages.
Each village had its church and its curate, who was
assisted by one, two, or more priests, according to the
number of Indians under his charge. The curate and
assistant priests were nominated, not by the Spanish
authorities, but by the father superior, also a Jesuit,
who exercised a vigilant superintendence over the whole.
Indians were appointed in each village with the titles of
regidors and alcaldes; but they were merely instru-
ments in the hands of the curate and his assistants, in
whom all power was lodged. The curate gave his
whole attention to religious offices, saying mass in the
church, and visiting the sick; while the assistant priests
managed all secular matters, directing the labor of the
Indians who cultivated the grounds and training others
to the crafts of the weaver, mason, carpenter, gold-
smith, painter, and sculptor; for the fine arts were by
no means neglected. Private property did not exist.
The produce of the labor of the community was stored
in magazines, from which each family was supplied
according to its wants, special provision being made for
aged persons, widows, and orphans. . The surplus was
sold by agents in Buenos Ayres, and the proceeds em-
ployed in paying the taxes to the king, in procuring
ornaments for the churches, and various articles which
the colonists could not manufacture for themselves.
The religious instruction was of the most simple kind;
but the service of the church was conducted with a well-
trained choir, a pompous ceremonial, and every acces-
sory calculated to strike the senses. The punishments
were mild; and they were always accompanied with
such admonitions as a parent would address to a
child whom he was chastising. Crimes, in truth,
were rare. . The Indians, who regarded their spiritual
chiefs with the veneration due to beneficent
beings of a superior order, scarcely felt humbled in
confessing their misdeeds; and offenders may have
solicited correction, as Raynal says, for the quieting of
their consciences. The incursions of the Portuguese
compelled the Jesuits to take means to repel force by
force. All the male Indians of the proper age were
accordingly armed with muskets, and disciplined as a
militia. In 1732, according to Dobrizhoffer, the thirty
villages or parishes under the care of the missionaries
contained a population of I41,000 souls. The Jesuits
had another establishment of the same kind among the
Chiriguas, a branch of the Guaranis, in the province of
Chiquitos, containing 30,000 or 40,000 Indians; a third,
of smaller size, in the Province of Moxos; a fourth in
California; and probably others. After the suppression
of the order, all these were committed to the care of
friars of other descriptions; and we believe they have
universally fallen into a state of decay. The social
system established in Paraguay was the most effectual
ever contrived for reclaiming the Indians from their
Savage mode of life; but even its success shows how
hopeless the attempt is to raise the American tribes to
the rank of thoroughly civilised nations. The Jesuits
were able to introduce settled habits and a slight know-
ledge of religion and the arts among the Indians only
by means of the personal ascendancy they acquired over
them. . It was a few superior minds gaining the respect
and confidence of a horde of savages, then employing
the influence they acquired to lead them as children;
giving them such portions of instruction as taught them
to trust implicitly in their guides, working alternately
on their fears, their pride, their kind affections, but never
fully revealing to them the springs of the machinery by
which they were governed. The incurable indolence of
the savages rendered it necessary to prescribe the labor
as task-work, and to carry it on under the constant
inspection of the missionaries. The plan of cultivating
the ground in common, and of storing the produce in
magazines, out of which the wants of each family were
supplied, was resorted to as a check upon their improv-
ident habits. In short, the eye and the hand of the
missionaries were everywhere; and the social system
was held together entirely by their knowledge and
address. When these were withdrawn, the fabric
soon fell into ruins, and the Indians relapsed into their
idolatry and savage habits.
To complete our general view of the aboriginal races,
a few particulars remain to be mentioned. Many of the
tribes who inhabit the Pampas of South America make
use of horses. IDobrizhoffer enumerates eight equestrian
tribes in the province of Chaco, on the west side of the
river Paraguay, who are generally distinguished by tall
and vigorous forms, and a bold and active character.
The Abipones and Mbayas are the most celebrated of
these. The woods of Brazil are too dense for eques-
trians; but horses are used by a few hordes in the great
plain of the Mississippi and in the north of Mexico.
The American tribes in general either kill their prisoners
or adopt them; but a few retain them as slaves, and
compel them to work. The Guaycurus of Brazil are an
example. The food of different tribes are extremely
various. Maize, beans, pumpkins, and mandioc are raised
in small quantities by some; natural fruits, berries, bul-
bous roots, and bananas are gathered by others. Those
who dwell on the sides of rivers live greatly on fish; in
the plains, buffaloes, horses, and sheep, are killed. In
the forests of Brazil, monkeys, pigs, armadillos, pacas,
agoutis, and tapirs are the favorite food; but birds,
turtles, deer, and the coati are also taken; and in an
emergency the Indians do not scruple to feed on Serpents,
toads, and lizards, the larva of insects, and other disgust-
ing substances. Salt is used where it can be easily ob-
tained, and some season their food with capsicum. Some
roast their meat, others boil it; and not only Several
savage tribes, but even the civilised Peruvians, ate their
flesh raw. The Ottomaques, a tribe near the Orinoco,
eat a species of unctuous clay; this strange diet, which,
A M E
267
no doubt owed its introduction to the stern monitor
famine, is not extremely rare in Brazil, and Captain
Franklin found the same food in use among an Indian
tribe near the Frozen Ocean. The clay is stated by that
traveller to have a milky and not disagreeable taste. A
great proportion of the tribes in Brazil and the basin of
the Orinoco, and some in other parts of America, in-
dulge in the horrid banquet of human flesh. Shame, in
our sense of the term, is nearly a stranger to the breasts
of these savages. In the warm regions of Brazil men
and women go entirely naked, except in the neighbor-
hood of thº Portuguese settlements, where some wear a
band of cloth round the loins. In such situations, where
the want of shelter is little felt, their dwellings are often
nothing more than a sort of arbor formed by interlac-
ing the open space between two or three trees with twigs,
and covering it with leaves so as to form a screen on the
windward side, while it is left entirely open on the other.
The manufacture of bows and arrows, war-clubs, baskets,
mats (which, swung from a tree, serve them both as seats
and hammocks), and in some cases a coarse pottery,
comprises the sum of their practical skill in the arts. It
has long been the practice of bands of Portuguese, con-
sisting chiefly of outlaws and vagabonds, to make
marauding expeditions among the Indians living near
the great rivers, and to carry them off and sell them clan-
destinely for slaves. This infamous trade is carried on
in despite of the orders of the government, which has
issued many decrees for the protection of the Indians,
and, besides employing missionaries to convert them,
enjoined the governors of provinces to furnish them with
hoes and other agricultural implements.
Owing to the fanaticism of the Spaniards a large pro-
portion of the manuscripts of the natives were destroyed,
so that now we are unable to acquire so full and accurate
a history of the more civilised nations as we might
otherwise have done. The literature which still exists,
together with the numerous remains of cities, temples,
roads, bridges, and other works of art, testify to the
general truth of the historical narratives. However
obscure they may now be, or however difficult the
reconciliation of statements, it seems clear they have
been founded on facts. As in the case of other his-
tories, there is much error and tradition, mingled with
truth, which render their correct interpretation difficult.
Amongst some of the nations we know that historians
were appointed by the government, and that such his-
torians were severely punished if they ventured to
tamper with the truth wilfully. It is stated that many
centuries before the Christian era, Votan, the oldest of
the American legislators, established himself in the
region watered by the rivers Tabasco and Usumasinta.
It is near the sources of this latter river, in the high-
lands of Vera Paz, that cities of civilised Indians still
exist, according to travellers who have recently visited
the adjoining districts. However this may be, this
river was the principal highway into the interior of
Central America for the earliest civilised tribes, as it is
now for the existing natives. Near the mouths of the
rivers mentioned the ground is scarcely above the level
of the sea, and is for the most part a recent alluvial
formation. During the rainy season it is covered with
water, and all intercourse between village and village
takes place by water. Just where the land acquires a
slight rise, Palenque, said to be the oldest city in Cent-
ral America, was founded. At this time, according to
tradition, the low land was occupied by a lake. Votan,
it seems, came from some foreign land, and found the
whole of the country from Darien to California occu-
pied by a barbarous people, who used the skins of wild
beasts for clothing, caverns and huts made with branches
for shelter, and wild fruits and roots, with raw flesh for,
food. Votan announced to these people a knowledge of
the Supreme Deity, who was at first worshipped as the
God “of all truth.” At first no temples or altars were
dedicated to him, and it was not until long after that
Nezahualcoyotl erected a teocalli, or “house of God,”
as it means in the Mexican language, and dedicated it
“to the unknown God.” At a later period the religious
ideas were considerably debased. In Votan’s time there
seems to have been but one language prevalent over a
large area, and this language was probably the Maya,
which is the stock of many of the languages formerly in
use among the natives, and is still the language of Yu-
catan. The people apparently formed tribes differing
somewhat in manners, the most prominent of which
tribes are referred to as the Quinames or giants. Votan
and his companions arrived in large ships, wore long
flowing garments, and spoke the Nahuatl language.
These strangers married the daughters of the country,
and established a settled form of government. Accord-
ing to one document, the year 955 B.C. is assigned to
these events; but it is quite impracticable to give any
trustworthy fixed date. Votan, it is said, wrote an ac-
count of the origin of the Indians, and of their immigra-
tion into America. He attempted to prove that they were
the descendants of Imos, of the race of Cham, or the
serpent. Votan made four voyages to his original coun-
try, and described the route he followed. On one of
these voyages he visited the dwelling of the thirteen
serpents, as also the ruins of an old building which
had been erected by men for the purpose of reaching
heaven. The people who lived in its vicinity told
him it was the place where God had given to each
family its particular language. Allusion is also made
by him to certain mysteries like those of Egypt and
Greece, of which traces were still made discover-
able amongst the civilised nations of America. On
returning from his first voyage to his native coun-
try he found the people at Palenque had at-
tempted to usurp his authority and overturn his power.
Thereupon he parted his monarchy into four divisions.
One of these had for its capital the town of Tulha, the
ruins of which may be seen near Ocosingo in Chiapa.
Votan also is the reputed founder of Tsequil, which was
afterwards called Ghowel, and the site of which is now
occupied by a suburb of Ciudad Real. Some time, pos-
sibly not many years, after Votan, Zamma appeared in
Yucatan. He introduced the Maya civilisation, founded
the town of Mayapan, and called the country Maayha,
or the land without water, a term well applied to the
extremity of the peninsula of Yucatan, where rivers are
almost absent. Mayapan was once the capital of Yuca-
tan, and in Zamna’s time the Sea covered the country to
within a short distance of it. IIe lived to a great age,
and during the later years of his life dwelt on the sea-
coast, and was buried at this place. The spot became
the site of a large temple erected to his honor, which
was visited by pilgrims from great distances. A town
sprung up around it called Itzamal, which is believed to
correspond with the modern Isamal, now about 30 miles
distant from the sea. The region to seaward is reported
to be geologically very recent as land, and the remark-
able absence of names of any antiquity in a country
where almost every locality has its appellation is some
confirmation of the traditions. The architectural char-
acter of the oldest towns also lends some support to the
considerable antiquity claimed for them. The forest-
covered ruins of Mexico and Central America present so
many different architectural styles that it seems very
probable they were built at different periods and by diſ-
ferent people. Those which appear to be the oldest,
and which are most uniform in style, are the substruct-
ures in Mayapan, Some of the buildings in Tuiha, many
268
A M F.
of those in Palenque, and others which occur in the
country of the Lacandons.
The names of the successors to Votan are mentioned,
but without details. One of the last of the dynasty was
Chinax, in whose reign mention is made of the Nahuatl
people. ... Not long after his death, this people, who
were called Nahoas or Toltecs, obtained the dominion
of the country, and the throne was occupied by Nahoa
princes. They originally came from Huehue-Tlapallan
(but where this country was situated is not known),
having been induced to leave it in consequence of a
revolution. This event seems to have occurred shortly
before the Christian era. The journey to America from
their native country was a long and painful one, and in-
dicates that seas and lands intervened between them.
The traditions report it to be in the far east, and that
the first comers filled seven ships and disembarked at
Tampico, near the mouth of the Panuco. The leader
of the band bore the title of Quetzalcohuatl, and was the
first known by that name. They then coasted along the
shore as far as Tamoanclia, which place was evidently
somewhere near the mouth of the Tabasco. In this dis-
trict there was a tradition in the time of the Spaniards
that twenty illustrious chiefs from the east landed there
many centuries before, who had long flowing garments
and large beards, of whom the principal was Cukulcan,
a name which has the same meaning as Quetzalcohuatl.
Quetzalcohuatl and his comrades soon obtained posses-
sion of the capital of the country, Xibalba, which is be-
lieved to be thesame as Palenque. Their success induced
others of the Nahoa nation to join the first colonists,
and their power gradually spread over a large portion of
Central America. The strangers, however, met with
considerable resistance from the princes of Xibalba,
who compelled the Nahoa to leave their country and
disperse themselves over the surrounding region. This
dispersion is stated to have occurred in A.D. 174. Before
this date, the lunar calendar, so prevalent among the
civilised nations of America, was introduced. It was
one of these parties of Nahoa that established itself in
Mexico, and founded many of the more important cities.
They were called Olmegues, and were led by Olmecatl
and Xelhua. The latter was one of Quetzalcohuatl's
companions, and was once shipwrecked along with him.
In order to commemorate his delivery he erected the
great pyramid of Cholullan. Before the arrival of the
Olmegues the valley of Mexico was inhabited by the
Quinames or giants, and they continued to dwell in the
mountains around for centuries after they had been
driven from their native valley. The Totonacs, Mixtecas,
and Othomis were the contemporaries, or possibly the
predecessors, of the Olmeques. The first mentioned
people erected the pyramids of the Teotihuocan, or the
City of the Gods, near Mexico. These tribes spoke a
language quite distinct from the Nahual. The Totonacs
placed the cradle of their race at Chicomoztoc, which
was said to be far to the north ; but the Othomis seem
to have been in possession of the land from time imme-
morial. According to the traditions of the Quiches and
other nations of North America, they originally came
from Tulan. They allude to several places of this name.
One was in the region of the setting sun and beyond the
sea ; and another, from which the Quiches came, was
alsº in the direction of the setting sun and was appar-
ently situated in California. In the descriptions given
of the migrations from the more distant Tulan, which
seem to have occurred at frequent intervals, each migra-
tion consisting of a moderate number of people, the
difficulties and hardships are prominently noticed. They
pointedly allude to the intense cold, to the long dark
night, and to the sterility of the country, which allusions
seem to point to travels in Arctic regions. The travel-
lers were reduced to such extremities as to be obliged to
suck juicy woods in order to sustain life. The name
Chichimecs, which means suckers of maguey, given to
the invading hordes from the north, may have some con-
nection with this traditional fact. Chicomoztoc has
been identified by some with the extensive ruins near
the Rio Gila, in California. The history of these early
nations is somewhat obscure, but it may be gathered
from the preserved records that the worship of the sun
and the practice of human sacrifice had nearly or wholly
superseded the earlier and purer religions. Towards the
end of the 7th century we first hear of the Chichimecs
invading Mexico from the north. This name is a
general one given to all invading hordes from the north,
and is similar to that of barbarians applied to the peo-
ple who invaded the Roman empire. The first invasion
was by the Chichimecs-Culhuas, headed by Mixcohuatl
Mazatzm. They commenced their march, or rather
progress, from Chicomoztoc about 635, and reached the
valley of Mexico about 40 years after. After many
years' fighting the Toltec empire was established in about
686; and from this period we enter upon more detailed
and trustworthy historical ground. At first the govern-
ment of the Toltecs was republican and theocratical, but
it soon became monarchical, and Nauhyotzin was elected
the first king. The most illustrious of his successors was
Topiltzin Ceacatl Quetzalcohuatl, during whose reign the
Toltec empire arrived at its most flourishing condition.
According to tradition, the Toltecs were taller and of
larger build than the existing Indians, were great run-
ners, and were as white as Europeans. They carried
many of the arts to a high state of perfection, such as
weaving, building, jewelling, and making ornaments
with the feathers of birds. There were astrologers and
poets, sorcerers and philosophers and orators. They
were well acquainted with the medical properties of
plants, and were in the habit of recording in books their
observations on diseases. Quetzalcohuatl's reign was
for the most part one of prolonged peace, but this peace
was disturbed by the religious party who advocated
human sacrifice, a practice which he used every effort
to abolish. The rebellion becoming very formidable,
Quetzalcohuatl left the country with a few chosen
attendants, and founded a new Toltec empire on the
plain of Huitzilapan, which corresponds with the one
on which La Puebla now stands. This occurred in
895. The town of La Puebla stands on the site of the
old Huitzilapan, and at the time of Quetzalcohuatl's
arrival it was said that the pyramids of Cholullan had
existed from time immemorial, and had been built by
the giants. According to this legend, the country was
inhabited by giants, all but seven of whom were either
destroyed by a great inundation or turned into fishes.
These seven took refuge in a cave, and when the waters
abated, one of them, named Xelhua, went to Cholullan,
and built the famous pyramid to commemorate his
escape. Quetzalcohuatl built a temple here, which he
dedicated to the “creator of light,” and around this
temple sprang up Cholullan, or the “town of the exile.”
His disciples carried the Toltec civilisation into Oaxaca.
After having reigned at Cholullan about ten years, dur-
ing which period his subjects enjoyed all the blessings
of peace, he was attacked by enemies again. Huemac
had ascended the throne which he had vacated, and
being jealous of Quetzalcohuatl's power, and , pros-
perity, he suddenly, resolved to march with his
army against Cholullan. In order that the town
might be spared the horrors of a siege, Quetzal-
cohuatl informed his priests of his intention to leave
the place and to visit other countries. Accordingly
he proceeded to , the mouth of the Coatzocualco
river, then entered a boat with four companions, and
A M E
269
nothing more was heard of him. Huemac finding his
enemy had escaped, wrecked his vengeance on Cholul-
lan, and took up his residence there with a view to sub-
jugating the surrounding districts. He also re-estab-
lished the practice of human sacrifice. During Hue-
mac's absence from his kingdom of Tulan, Nauhyotl
was elected king in his stead. A battle took place be-
tween the rivals, which resulted in the defeat and sub-
sequent death of Huemac and the establishment of
Nauhyotl’s power. His reign lasted for fifteen years,
and as he was one of Quetzalcohuatl's disciples, he
governed according to similar principles, so that the
reign was a prosperous one. His death occurred in
945. After this a series of disasters broke over the
country, and these, with constant civil war, weakened
the power of the empire in Anahuac. This soon be-
came known to other nations, and led to the Chichi-
mecs-Teotenancas leaving their homes in Texas and New
Mexico to make an irruption upon the valley of Mexico.
This occurred between 1041 and 1047. The internal
discord continued, and the discord was increased by the
uprising of the sect of Ixcuinames, the devotees of
which practised the most abominable rites. In the
midst of this corruption another horde of barbarians,
the Teo-Chichimecs, poured down from the north, and
took possession of the country. The Toltec power
rapidly declined, and the last king of the empire was
Huemac Atecpanecatl, who after his dethronement lived
for some years at Chapultepec, and died there in Io'70.
According to the Guatemalian traditions, four indi-
viduals of the Tutul-Xius, a nation speaking a Nahuatl
language, left their country of Tulapan, to the west of
Zuyna, in A. D. I74, and arrived the same year at Ghac-
nouitan, which seems to be the name for some place in
Yucatan. In 258 another migration of Tutul-Xius
occurred, the new colony being established in the prov-
ince of Zyan-Caan, which is believed to be the district
around Chetumal Bay. About the end of the Ioth
century, it is stated that a venerable personage arrived
in Yucatan, called Cukulcan, who retrieved the falling
fortunes of the Tutul-Xius. According to the Abbé
Brasseur de Bourboug, this personage was no other
than the Ceacatl Quetzalcohuatl whose departure from
the Coatzocualco river has already been mentioned.
After reigning here ten years, he voluntarily abdicated
the throne and left the country. According to a Mex-
ican legend he went to Tlapallan, and died there. His
successor transferred the capital of the Tutul-Xius
from Mayapan to Uxmal, a town which seems to
have been founded some centuries before, but which
first rose to importance at this period, or near the end
of the Ioth century. Numerous temples and public
buildings were erected, the ruins of which are now
so abundantly met with in Yucatan. Artificial ponds
or zonotes were constructed ; and the number and
magnitude of these indicate a large number of
towns as well as a thickly-populated country. At the
present day they have all the appearance of being mat-
ural ponds, and indeed were long considered to be
such, notwithstanding the repeated assertions of the
Indians that they had been built by their ancestors, un-
til chance led to the discovery that the muddy floor of
one was entirely covered with flat stones, the interstices
between which were stopped with a kind of clay not
known in the neighborhood. The centre was occupied
by four artificial wells, the walls of which were formed
of polished stones. Further research led to the discov-
ery of numerous other zonotes. After the final fall of
the Toltec empire there commenced the great move-
ment of the northern tribes towards the south, a move-
ment which continued throughout the IIth, 12th, and
I3th centuries. The movement consisted of a succes-
sion of migrations, and its starting-point appears to
have been in New Mexico and California, which region
was evidently the seat of a semi-civilised empire.
Amongst these invading tribes was one which subse-
quently rose to high importance. The Aztecs, or Mex-
icans proper, were living at Atzlan in the I Ith century,
a country which was surrounded by water, and where
their usual occupation was as boatmen and carriers of
wood. Other tribes also lived in this region, which is
believed to be that of Lower California. The Aztecs
commenced their journey towards Mexico in 1090. In
I 116 they reached Chicomoztoc, and in 1177 they en-
tered Anahuac. Settlements were gradually established
in the valley, towards which peoples of various nations
converged from the south as well as the north. The
number of Aztecs were slowly augmented by fresh ar-
rivals; but it was not until 1325 that they were able to
lay the foundations of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and thus to
inaugurate their assumption of power. In 1464 the
empire of the Tutul-Xius was overthrown. The Mexi-
can empire had, however, acquired large proportions,
and was conducted with a magnificence and splendor
scarcely equalled by any other court in America, and
this empire continued up to the time of the Spanish
conquest.
The discovery of a continent so large that it may be
said to have doubled the habitable world, is an event so.
much the more grand and interesting that nothing par-
allel to it can ever occur again in the history of mankind.
America had of course been known to the barbarous
tribes of eastern Asia for thousands of years; but it is
singular that it should have been visited by one of the
most enterprising nations of Europe five centuries before
the time of Columbus without awakening the attention
of either statesmen or philosophers. Iceland was dis-
covered about 860, and colonised by the Norwegians in
874. About 50, or, according to other accounts, IOO.
years later, the same people planted colonies in Green-
land. Into the disputes respecting the situation of these
colonies we have not room to enter. Sir Charles Giesecke,
a good authority, states that their ruins exist near the
Southern point of the peninsula. It is obvious that the
same adventurous spirit which enabled these northern
mariners to discover the southern extremity of the coun-
try, would not permit them to stop short without visiting
what is now known to be the most habitable part of it —
the western coast; and the fact has been established by
an inscription m run ic characters found on a stone four
miles beyond Upernavik, at the 73d parallel, intimating
that “Erling the son of Sigvat, and Enride Oddsoen, had
cleared that place and raised a hillock on the Friday after
Rogation day.” The marking of the date is indistinct,
but it is supposed by Professor Rask, the translater, to
be either 1135 or 1170; and the runic characters show
at any rate that it was anterior to the Reformation,
when this mode of writing was prohibited. Whoever
looks at the map of Greenland, and reflects on the fact
that the Norwegians must have been ascending through
Davis' Straits as high as the latitude mentioned, ammu-
ally, perhaps for two or three centuries, will admit that,
with half the spirit of enterprise which had carried them
So far, the discovery of some portion of the west coast
of these straits was almost unavoidable. Now, the posi-
tion and direction of this coast once known, it required
no great effort to trace it southwards to Labrador and
Newfoundland. We mention these particulars because
Mr. Murry, one of the few who have denied the discov-
ery of America by the Norwegians, grounded his disbe-
lief chiefly on the hypothesis that the colonies and the
navigation of that people at the period alluded to were
confined to the east coast of Greenland.
In IOOI an Icelander. sailing to Greenland, was
27o
A M E
driven away by a tempest far to the south-west, where
he saw a level country covered with wood. The wind
abating, he turned his course homeward, and on his
arrival gave such a flattering account of the country he
had seen as induced Lief, the son of the founder of the
Greenland colony, to undertake a voyage thither. Lief
and Bjorn, who sailed together, first reached a rocky
island, to which they gave the name of Helluland;
then a low country, thickly wooded, which they called
Markland; and some days afterwards they found trees
loaded with fruits on the banks of a river. They spent
the winter in the country; and one of them, who was a
German, having found wild vines growing, they called
it Vinland. They had some intercourse and traded for
furs with a people who came in leathern boats, and
were called Skraºlings, from their dwarfish size. A
colony was planted, and remained for many years in the
country, the situation of which is indicated by a fact
casually mentioned, that the sun remained nine hours
above the horizon at the shortest day. This indicates
the 41st parallel of latitude; and the actual latitude of
Rhode Island, the country which every collateral cir-
cumstance would lead us to fix upon as the seat of the
colony, is from 41° to 42°. The Skračlings were of
course the Esquimaux. The vine appears to be the fox
grape ( Vitis vulpina), which grows wild in that part of
America. Only a few unimportant particulars respect-
ing the settlement are preserved; but it was probably
abandoned or destroyed, like the Greenland colonies,
of which it was an offshoot. The account, though
meager, is distinct and consistent. Its authenticity can
scarcely be disputed; and it is almost equally ob-
vious that the country it refers to under the name
of Vinland is in the vicinity of Rhode Island. A
conclusion resting on such strong grounds scarcely
requires to be supported by the high authority of
Humboldt and Malte-Brun. That the colony disap-
peared, and that the discoveries made were not prose-
cuted farther, are not circumstances which will shake
the credit of the narrative in the minds of those who
know, the numerous reverses which befell the early
colonies in New England and other parts of America.
The hostilities of the Skraelings was no doubt the prin-
cipal cause of the abandonment of the colony. The
Norsemen describe Vinland as a rich country, with a
delightful climate. Helluland, Markland, and Vinland,
were no doubt regarded as countries either connected
with or similar to Greenland, the flattering descriptions
of which, given by the first discoverers, were sadly
belied by later experience. The interest excited by the
obscure accounts of these countries was probably such
as the announcement of a new island eastward of
Spitzbergen would produce at the present day. No
reasonable doubt can exist, however, that the north-
eastern portions of America (considering Greenland as
a distinct country) were familiarly known to the Nor-
wegians in the eleventh century.
The obscure allusions of Aristotle, Plato, and Seneca,
to a country hid in the Western Ocean, must have
derived fresh importance from the discovery of the Can-
ary Isles, Madeira, and the Azores in the early part of
the fifteenth century. The love of maritime adventure
was excited by these events; and among the active spirits
who were attracted to nautical life by the career of dis-
tinction which was then opened up was Christopher
Columbus. Our limits do not permit us to enter into
details respecting this great man, an outline of whose
life will be found under the proper heading. He had
received a learned education, and the study of the geo-
graphical systems then in vogue impressed him with a
strong conviction that a voyage to India by a course
directly westward was quite practicable with the degree
of nautical science which his contemporaries possessed.
From the old and imperfect maps of Ptolemy he was
led to believe that the parts of the globe known to the
ancients embraced 15 hours, or 225 degrees of longitude,
which exceeds the truth by more than one-third. The dis-
covery of the Azores on the west side had lengthened the
space by one hour; and the accounts gleaned by Marco Pole
in Asia induced him to think that the isles connected with
this continent stretched out so far to the eastward that
their distance from Europe could not be great. Colum-
bus was, however, without the fortune necessary to fit
out ships; and when he attempted to interest some of
the princes of those times in his project, he encountered
neglects and difficulties which would have exhausted the
patience of any mind less ardent than his own. At
length, after many delays and discouragements, Ferdi-
nand and Isabella of Spain supplied him with three
small vessels, two of them only half-decked; and in this
little armament, accompanied by I2O men, he set sail
from the port of Palos on the 3d of August 1492. He
proceeded first to the Canary Isles, where he was detained
three weeks in repairing one of his vessels. On leaving
these isles he entered on a region of ocean where all was
mystery. The trade-wind, however, bore him steadily
along, and the labor of the ships proceeded cheerfully,
till the increasing length of the voyage, the failure of
prognostics which had from time to time kept alive the
hopes of the crew, and various circumstances interpreted
by their superstition as evil omens, produced a mutinous
spirit, which all the address and authority of Columbus
would not have been able to quell had the discovery of
land happened one day later than it did. Columbus,
says Humboldt, on sailing westward of the meridian of
the Azores, through an unexplored sea, sought the east
of Asia by the western route, not as an adventurer, but
according to a pre-conceived and steadfastly-pursued
plan. He had on board the sea-chart which the Flor-
entine astronomer Toscanelli had sent him in 1477. If
he had followed the chart, he would have held a more
northern course, along a parallel of latitude from Lis-
bon. Instead of this, in the hope of reaching Zipangu
(Japan), he sailed for half the distance in the lati-
tude of Gomera, one of the Canary Islands. Uneasy
at not having discovered Zipangu, which, according to
his reckoning, he should have met with 216 nautical miles
more to the east, he aſter a long debate yielded to the
opinion of Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and steered to the
southwest. The effect of this change in his course curi-
ously exemplifies the influence of small and apparently
trivial events on the world's history. If Columbus,
resisting the counsel of Pinzon, had kept his original
route, he would have entered the warm current of the
Gulf Stream, have reached Florida, and thence perhaps
been carried to Cape Hatteras and Virginia. The result
would probably have been to give the present United
States a Roman Catholic Spanish population, instead of
a Protestant English one, a circumstance of immeasura-
ble importance. Pinzon was guided in forming his opin-
ion by a flight of parrots towards the south-west. Never,
says the Prussian philosopher, had the flight of birds
more important consequences. It may be said to have
determined the first settlements on the new continent,
and its distribution between the Latin and Germanic
races. It was on the 12th of October that the western
world revealed itself to the wondering eyes of Columbus
and his companions. What a triumph for this extraor-
dinary man, who had treasured in his breast for twenty
years, amidst neglect, discouragement, and ridicule, the
grand truth which his own incomparable skill, wisdom,
and firmness had now demonstrated in the eyes of an in-
credulous world! The spot which he first touched was
Guanahani, or Watling Island, as was suggested by
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A M E
27 I
Muñoz in 1793, and proved by Mr. R. H. Major in 1870.
After spending nearly three months in visiting Cuba,
Hispaniola, and other isles, he returned to Spain. He
made three other voyages, and in the second coasted
along a part of South America, which he rightly judged
to be a continent from the volume of water poured into
the sea by the Orinoco. But he died ignorant of the real
extent and grandeur of his discoveries, still believing that
the countries he had made known to Europe belonged to
that part of Eastern Asia which the ancients called India.
Hence the maine West Indies which the topical islands
and part of the continent have ever since received.
We should extend this article to an unreasonable
length were we to describe in detail the discoveries and
settlements made by the several nations of Europe in
America. We shall therefore confine ourselves to a
very brief chronological notice of the more important
eventS.
1492. Columbus first discovered land.
1495. The first place in which the Spaniards estab-
lished their power was the large island of Hayti or
Hispaniola, which was inhabited by a numerous race
of Indians of a mild and gentle character, a third part
of whom are said to have perished within two or three
years after the Spaniards conquered them.
1497. John Cabot discovered Newfoundland June
24th, and coasted along the shores of North America
to Florida.
1500. Cabral, a Portuguese, visited the coast of
Brazil, and discovered the mouth of the Amazon. It
was probably colonised before 1515. In 1500, too,
Cortereal touched at Labrador.
1508. Vincent Pinzon is said to have entered the
Rio de la Plata. It was in the same year that the
Spaniards, finding the aborigines too weak for the labor
of the mines in Hayti, first imported negroes from
Guinea, and thus laid the foundation of a traffic which
continued to disgrace the civilisation of Europe for
three centuries. '
1511. Diego Columbus conquered the island of
Cuba with 300 soldiers, of whom he did not lose one.
1513. Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien with
290 men, and discovered the Pacific Ocean.
1519. Hernando Cortes, sailed from Cuba with II
ships and 550 men, and landed on the coast of Mexico,
which had been discovered the previous year. The con-
quest of the empire was finished 1521 by 950 Spaniards,
assisted by a vast number of the Indians of Tlascala.
1531. Peru invaded by Pizarro, and conquered in
little more than one year, with a force of IOOo men.
1535. Jacques Cartier, a Frenchman, discovers the
Gulf of St. Lawrence.
1535. Mendoza, a Spaniard, with 2000 followers,
founds Buenos Ayres, and conquers all the country as
far as Potosi, at which silver mines were discovered
nine years after.
1537 Cortes discovers California.
1541. Chili conquered; Santiago founded; Orellana
sails for the sources of the Rio Napa down the Amazon
to the Atlantic.
1578. New Albion, on the north-west coast of America,
discovered by Sir Francis Drake.
1586. The Spaniards found St. Thomas’ Island, in
Guiana. f
1587. Davis’ Straits and Cumberland Islands discov-
ered by John Davis.
1604. De Monts, a Frenchman, founded the first
settlement in Nova Scotia, then called Acadie. *
1607. After many ineffectual attempts during more
than twenty years, the first permanent settlement of the
English in North America was made this year, on the
banks of the James River, in Virginia.
1608. Quebec founded by the French, who had had a
small neglected colony in Canada from 1542.
1611. Newfoundland colonised by the English; a
Dutch colony established at Hudson’s River.
1614. New York founded.
1618. Baffin penetrates to the 78th degree of latitude,
in the bay which bears his name.
1620. The first English colony established in New
England at Plymouth. It was in this year that the first
negroes were imported into Virginia. They were
brought by a Dutch vessel.
1635. A French colony established in Guiana.
1655. Jamaica conquered by the English.
1664. The Dutch colonies on Hudson’s River capitu-
late to the English.
1666. The Buccaneers begin their depredations on
Spanish colonies.
1682. William Penn establishes a colony in Pennsyl-
vania. La Salle takes possession of Louisiana in the
name of the French king.
1698. A colony of 1200 Scots planted at Darien. In
the following year the settlement was attacked by the
Spaniards, and abandoned.
I733. Georgia colonised by the English.
I760. Canada and all the other French settlements in
North America conquered by the English.
We must pause at this point to give a very short
account of the colonial system introduced by the princi-
pal European nations who occupied extensive tracts of
the new world. The English settlements extended
from the 31st to the 5oth degree on the east coast, and
were divided into 15 or 16 provinces. The colonists had
carried the love of liberty characteristics of their
countrymen with them; and after many struggles with
their British rulers, all the provinces, with one or two
exceptions, were permitted to enjoy a form of govern-
ment extremely popular. The executive power was
vested in a governor appointed by the king. He was
assisted by a council, j. sometimes conjoined the
functions of a Privy Council and a House of Peers.
The people were represented by a House of Assembly,
consisting of persons chosen by the freeholders in the
country parts, and the householders or corporations of
towns. The governor could levy no money without the
consent of the House of Assembly: the British parlia-
ment, however, claimed, but scarcely ever exercised, the
privilege of imposing taxes upon the colonists without
consulting them. Against this assumption of power the
local legislatures always protested as an infringement of
their rights. The vessels of foreign states were not
permitted to trade with the colonies; but the colonists .
were allowed to trade in their own ships with one
another, with the mother country, and, to a limited
extent, with foreign states. Their taxes, which were
always small, were all consumed in defraying internal
expenses; and, compared with any other people in the
new world, they enjoyed an unexampled degree of com-
mercial and political liberty. It was the growing pros-
perity of the colonies and the increasing debt of the
mother country, which induced the British ministers,
for the first time, in 1764, to attempt raising a revenue
in America, for purposes not colonial. The experiment
was made by imposing a stamp-duty on newspapers and
commercial writings. . The sum was trifling; but the
Americans, far-sighted and jealous of their rights, saw
in it the introduction of a principle which deprived them
of all security for their property. The people declared
themselves against it as one man, in local assemblies,
and by petitions and publications of all kinds. The
ministers became uneasy, and repealed the tax; but, as
a salve to the pride of the mother country, a declaratory
Act was passed, asserting her right “to bind the colo-
272
A M E
nies in all cases whatsoever.” The idea of raising a
revenue in America was not renounced, but another
mode was to be tried. Duties were laid on glass, colors,
paper; and tea, and were met by an opposition in the
colonies still more zealous and determined. The British
ministers, irritated, but wavering in their purpose,
dropped all the taxes but that on tea, and commenced
at the same time a series of alarming innovations.
They closed the port of Boston, changed the charter of
the province, placed judges and juries on a footing to
render them more subservient to the views of the
government, and introduced a strong military force to
overawe the people. On the other side, the colonists
passed resolutions not to import or consume any British
goods, and hastened to supply themselves with powder
and arms. Blood was at length shed in April 1775, at
the village of Lexington; and in the following year the
American Congress published their celebrated declaration
of independence. We shall not enter into the details of
the war, which was closed in 1782. Suffice it to say
that, on the part of the Americans, it rested on high
grounds; it was a war to vindicate a principle— for the
practical grievance was admitted to be slight; and it
was conducted with a regard to humanity of which there
are few examples in history.
The Spanish possessions in America before the revo-
lution formed nine distinct governments, all constructed
on the same plan and independent of one another.
Four of these, of the first rank, were vice-royalties,
viz., Mexico, Peru, La Plata, and New Granada; and
five were captain-generalships, viz., Yucatan, Guate-
mala, Chili, Venezuela, and the island of Cuba. The
government was vested in the viceroy or captain-general,
who was held to represent the king, and to enjoy all
his prerogatives within the colony. But in these coun-
tries, as in others where the Supreme power is apparently
unlimited, it was indirectly restrained by the influence
of the courts of justice, corporations, and other public
bodies. The royal audiences or supreme courts, com-
posed of Spaniards nominated by the crown, had
extensive judicial powers, and were independent of the
viceroys. The cabildos or municipalities, and the fueros
or corporations (similar to our guilds), also possessed
considerable privileges, which derived security and im-
portance from long prescription. Lastly, the clergy,
who were numerous and rich, necessarily possessed
great influence among a superstitious people. The
vices naturally inherent in the colonial system existed
in full force in the Spanish American dominions. There
was tolerable security for all classes except the miserable
Indians, who were regarded and treated precisely as
beasts of burden, out of whose toil and sufferings a
provision as ample as possible was to be extracted, first
to supply the wants of the royal treasury, and next to
provide for and satisfy the cupidity of a shoal of do-
nothing public officers and priests. Edicts were indeed
issued for the protection of the Indians, and persons
appointed to enforce them; but these were feeble cor-
rectives of the evils rooted in the system, and not
unfrequently increased their weight. The Indians, aſter
the conquest, were at first slaves; they paid a capitation
tax to the crown, and their labor was entirely at the
disposal of their lord. This system was modified from
time to time; but all the changes introduced down to
the revolution did not release them from their state of
vassalage. They still continued liable, in a less or
greater degree, to the performance of compulsory
labor, under the orders of persons against whom they •
had no protection. This was an enormous grievance;
but, what was equally bad, being held incompetent in
law to buy or sell, or enter into any pecuniary
engagement beyond the value of a few shillings,
without the agency of white men, the swarm of
public functionaries had an unlimited power of inter-
fering in their concerns, of vexing, harassing, and .
plundering them, under the forms of law. The
memoir of Ulloa, long buried amidst the Spanish
archives, with various other documents published
since the revolution, depicts acts of extortion, per-
fidy, cruelty, and oppression practised upon the
Indians which have rarely been paralleled. Men
rose to affluence in offices without salaries; and the
priests rivalled the laymen in the art of extracting money
from those whom they ought to have protected. As the
sole aim of the Spaniards in the colonies was to enrich
themselves, so the government at home made all its acts
and regulations subordinate to the grand object of rais-
ing a revenue. Spain retained in her hands the whole
trade of the colonies, and guarded her monopoly with
the most severe penalties. The price of all European
commodities was enhanced three, four, or six fold, in
America. The colonists were not allowed to manufac-
ture or raise any article which the mother country could
supply; they were compelled to root up their vines and
olives; and for a long period one colony was not even
permitted to send a ship to another. To support such a
system it was necessary to keep the people in profound
ignorance, and to cherish predjudices and superstition.
The schools were extremely few, and permission to
establish them was often refused, even in towns where
the Spaniards and Creoles were numerous. The impor-
tation of books, except books of Catholic devotion, was
rigorously prohibited. Even the more grave and dry
sciences, such as botany, chemistry, and geometry, were
objects of suspicion. And the more effectually to crush
all mental activity, natives of America could rarely ob-
tain leave to go abroad, to seek in foreign countries
what was denied them in their own. On the other
hand, the priests, sharing in the spoil, filled the minds
of the people with childish superstitions, as a means of
confirming their own power, and employed the terrors
of religion to teach them patience under oppression. To
create a race of servants devoted to its purposes, the
court bestowed all offices, from the highest to the low-
est, on natives of the peninsula exclusively. The wis-
dom of the plan seems questionable, but that it was
adhered to with wonderful pertinacity is certain. “It
was the darling policy of Spain,” says Mr. Ward, “to
disseminate through her American dominions a class of
men distinct from the people in feelings, habits, and in-
terests, taught to consider themselves as a privileged
caste, and to regard their own existence as intimately
connected with that of the system of which they were
the principal support.” With all those means and appli-
ances, it is extraordinary that Spain should have been
able to uphold for three centuries a system in which the
interests of so many millions of human beings were so
habitually and unrelentingly sacrificed. It was the
course of events, much more than its own inherent
weakness, which ultimately caused its subversion.
After the seizure of Ferdinand and the elevation of
Joseph Buonaparte to the throne of Spain, orders were
dispatched to all the colonies with the view to securing
their obedience to the new dynasty. The men in office
were generally disposed to submit, but the treacherous
conduct of the French excited a universal hatred of
their cause among the people; and when the regency
established in Spain presented the semblance of a
patriot government, the loyalty of the Americans blazed
forth, and poured large centributions of money into the
hands of Ferdinand’s adherents. The weak and sus-
picious conduct of the regency, however, and its sub-
Serviency to the grasping spirit of the merchants of
Cadiz, at length alienated the colonists, and roused
A M E
273,
them to take measures for their own security. But the
diversity of views and interests among the colonists
rendered the course to be adopted a matter of some deli-
cacy. Ferdinand, being a prisoner, was, politically
speaking, a nonenity. Napoleon’s brother was clearly
an usurper, odious to, and rejected by, the mass of the
Spanish people. The regency, shut up in Cadiz, with-
out troops or revenue, was but a phantom ; and the lit-
tle power it had was so employed as to raise doubts
whether its members were not secretly in league with
the enemy. In these circumstances, when the only gov-
ernment to which the colonists owed allegiance had fallen
into abeyance, the wisest course they could have pursued
was to declare themselves independent. This would at
Once put a stop to the machinations of France, which
they dreaded, and prevent the regency from compromis-
ing or sacrificing their interests by its weakness or
treachery. The Spaniards, however, who occupied all
public situations, were averse to a change which they
foresaw must lead to the downfall of their power.
This was perfectly understood by the other classes; and
in the first movements which took place in the different
colonies nothing was said derogatory to the supremacy
of Spain, though independence was clearly aimed at.
By spontaneous efforts of the people “juntas of govern-
ment” were formed, at Caraccas in April 1809, at La
Paz in Upper Peru in July, at Quito in August, at Santa
Fe and at Buenos Ayres in May 1810, and at Santiago
in Chili in September the same year. In 1810, also, the
first insurrection broke out in Mexico. The colonists
unluckily had been too long the slaves of superstition
and tyranny to be fit for so bold an experiment; and
after a struggle, which was generally short, but almost
everywhere bloody, the juntas were all put down ex-
cept in Colombia and Buenos Ayres. But in the stir
and tumult of the contest old prejudices had received a
shock, and the seeds of political change had struck
their roots too deep in the soil to be eradicated. A
desultory war was carried on for six years between
Buenos Ayres and Upper Peru, with little advantage
on either side. At length, in 1817, the former state,
which had assumed the style of an independent republic
four years before, sent an army across the Andes to
Chili, under General San Martin, and defeated the
Spaniards at Chacabuco. A second victory, gained at
Maipo in April 1818, led to the entire subversion of the
Spanish power in this colony. The war was now trans-
ferred to Peru, where the Spaniards continued to lose
ground, till the decisive battle of Ayacucho put an end
to their power in December 1824. Rodil and Olaveta,
with the obstinacy of their nation, held out for some
months longer, when every chance of success was gone;
but after the surrender of Callao in January 1826, the
Spanish flag no longer waved on any spot in the land
of the Incas.
In New Granada and Venezuela the struggle was
more bloody, variable, and protracted than in any other
art of South America. As this portion of the domin-
ions of Spain was comparatively easy of access, and from
its central position was in some measure the key to the
whole, she made immense efforts for its preservation.
No less than ten thousand troops were sent out to it
within the course of one year. The patriots, on the
other hand, possessed advantages here, in the greater
intelligence of the population, and the easy intercourse
with the West Indies. From 1809, when juntas were
established in Caraccas and Quito, to the surrender of
Porto Cabello in 1823, the vicissitudes of the war were
numerous and extraordinary. The patriots were re-
peatedly on the eve of a complete triumph, and as often
the state of their affairs seemed nearly hopeless. But
the spirit of resistance never was entirely subdued. The
.8 A . º
cause was rooted in the hearts of the people, and was
insensibly gaining ground, even during its level Ses. To
attempt the ſaintest outline of the military operations
would lead us beyond our proper limits. It is enough to
state that the decisive victory of Carabobo, gained by
the patriots in 1819, gave them an ascendancy which
they never afterwards lost; but the Spaniards, according
to their custom, continued to maintain the contest as
long as they had a foot of land in the country, and were
only finally expelled in 1823.
In Mexico the revolutionary movement began at
Dolores in 1810, and soon wore a very prosperous ap-
pearance; but the weakness or false pride of the Creoles,
who were cajoled into the ranks of their oppressors the
old Spaniards, armed against the patriots those who
should have been their firmest supporters, and by one or
two mischances, the force of the independent party was
ruined in November 1815, when Morelos, their able
leader, was taken prisoner and executed. For six years
after this period many guerilla bands maintained them-
selves in the provinces, and greatly annoyed the Span-
iards; but they did not act in concert, and no congress
or junta professing to represent the Mexican people
existed. Even during this interval the desire for in-
dependence was making great progress among the popu-
lation; but the establishment of a constitutional govern-
ment in Spain in 182O, and its extension to the colonies,
gave a new aspect to the affairs of Mexico. The vice-
roy Apodaca, while outwaldly yielding obedience to the
new system, was silently taking measures to effect its
overthrow; but he mistook the character of the agent
he employed. This person, the celebrated Iturbide,
turned his own arms against him, proclaimed a constitu-
tion under the name of “the three guarantees,” and put
an end to the dominion of Spain in 1821, almost with-
out bloodshed. Iturbide, who had nothing in view but
his own aggrandisement, called a congress which he soon
dissolved after getting himself proclaimed emperor.
His usurpation kindled a spirit of resistance. He was
exiled in 1823, made a new attempt on the liberties of
his country in 1824, was taken prisoner, and expiated
his crimes by a military death within a few weeks after
he landed.
Guatemala was the last portion of the American con-
tinent which threw off the Spanish yoke. In 1821 the
persons in office assembled and formed a junta. Divi-
sions arose, which were fomented by the intrusion of a
Mexican army sent by Iturbide. This force, however,
was beaten, and an elective assembly called, which de-
clared the country independent, and established a con-
stitution in July 1823. Spain now retains none of her
possessions in the new world but Cuba and Porto
Rico.
The government of Brazil was conducted by the Por-
tuguese on a system extremely similar to that of the
Spanish colonies. The monopoly which the mother
country retained of the commerce of the colony was
equally rigorous; the restrictions on its internal indus-
try as severe; and the same means were employed to
keep the people in a state of pupilage and ignorance.
Down to 1806 a single printing-press had never existed
in Brazil. In 1807, when the emperor Napoleon had
resolved to possess himself of Portugal, and if possible
to get the royal family into his power, the king, seeing
no other means of escaping from the clutches of his ene-
my, embarked with his suite in several ships, and sailed
for Brazil, where he arrived in January 1808. He was
received with joy by the colonists, who anticipated
great benefits from his residence, of which they were
not disappointed. One by one the fetters of colonial
dependence, fell off. Within a few months printing-
presses and newspapers were established, the ports
374
A M E
were opened to the trade of all nations, and the people
were invited and encouraged to prosecute all those
branches of internal industry from which they had till
now been interdicted. To crown and secure these ad-
vantages, Brazil was declared an independent kingdom
in 1815, subject to the crown of Portugal, but entitled
xo its separate administration and its own laws. The
revolutionary spirit pervading the Spanish colonies now
found its way into Brazil, and produced an insurrection
at Pernambuco in 1817. It was soon subdued, but re-
ceived a new impulse from the constitutional systems
suddenly introduced into Spain and Portugal in 1820.
To quiet the popular feeling, it was announced that
the Portuguese constitution would be extended to Bra-
zil. Before this had been done, however, the old king
had sailed for Europe, leaving his son Dom Pedro to
rule in his absence. The people now discovered, or be-
lieved, that the object of the king was to degrade Bra-
zil again to the rank of a colony, and to restore the old
system in all its rigor. Meetings were held, and reso-
Jutions adopted to maintain the independence of the
country at all hazards; and the patriots, gaining confi-
«lence by degrees, called loudly for the establishment of
a legislature, and besought Dom Pedro to put himself
at the head of the independent government. Ambition
or policy induced Pedro to listen to the solicitation: in
1822 he was proclaimed emperor, and had his own title
and the independence of Brazil acknowledged by his
father three years afterwards. A representative system
was at the same time introduced. An unlucky war
now arose with Buenos Ayres, which weakened both
countries; but it was at length terminated in 1828 by
the recognition of the disputed territory as an inde-
pendent state under the title of Banda Oriental.
Having finished this brief notice of the series of revo-
lutions which broke the fettels of America, we shall now
give a very short sketch of the new political ordel of
things which has arisen out of these changes, referring
for a detailed account of the several states to the articles
appropriated to them in the different volumes of the
present work.
America, with its islands, embraces at present (1890)
twenty-one independent states, and various colonies
belonging to six European powers. The former are—1.
The United States of North America; 2. Brazil; 3.
Mexico; 4. Venezuela; 5. Colombia; 6. Ecuador or
Quito; 7. Peru; 8. Bolivia or Upper Peru; 9. Chili;
Io. La Plata, or the Argentine Republic; I I. Uruguay;
x2. Paraguay; 13. Patagonia; I4. Costa Rica; I5.
Mosquitia; 16. Guatemala; 17. Honduras; 18. Nicar-
. agua; 19. San Salvador; 20. Hayti; 21. San Domingo.
The colonies belong to Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Hol-
land, France, and Spain. Patagonia is merely the geo-
graphical name of a district of Chili, occupied by inde-
pendent tribes of Indians; Mosquitia, or the Mosquito
coast, is a small Indian state ruled by a native king; and
Hayti is a negro republic proclaimed in 1867. For
detailed accounts of these various states and colonies we
refer to the articles under the proper heads. At present
we must confine ourselves to a brief notice of the more
important ones.
The United States were colonized a century later
than Spanish America; but their brilliant and rapid
progress shows in a striking light how much more the
prosperity of nations depends on moral than on physical
advantages. The North Americans had no gold mines,
and a territory of only indifferent fertility, covered with
impenetrable woods; but they brought with them intelli-
gence, industry, a love of ſleedom, habits of order, and
a pure and severe morality. , Armed with these gifts of
the soul, they have converted the wilderness into a land
feeming with life and smiling with plenty; and they
*.
have built up a social system so pre-eminently calculated
to promote the happiness and moral improvement of
mankind, that it has truly become the “envy of nations.”
The republic is bounded on the north by Canada; on
the South-west by Mexico, and on the other sides by the
Sea or the Indian lands. It now consists of for ty-four
States, with six territories and one district, which
will be converted into states as soon as each acquires a
sufficient population. The extent of the country, in-
cluding the Indian lands stretching west to the Pacific
Ocean, over which it claims a right of pre-emption, em-
braces 3,603,844 square miles of land. The agriculture
of the United States partakes to some extent of a
tropical character. The sugar-cane is cultivated in
Louisiana, Florida, and other states as far north as the
latitude of 31%". Cotton is raised in all the south-east
states S. of the 37th parallel, and tobacco chiefly in the
middle states. Wheat succeeds in the middle and
northern states, and maize thrives in every part of the
Union. Agriculture is conducted with considerable
skill; but the “high falming ” practised in England
would not pay in America, where money is of much
value and land of little. Scarcely any portion of the
soil is rented in the United States: the farmers are
almost universally proprietors; and when their property
is extensive, which rarely happens, it is soon broken into
small occupancies under the law of equal division. The
advance the Americans have made in manufactures may
be judged of from the fact that in 1880, according to
the census then taken, there were upwards of 185,472 op-
elatives employed in I,005 cotton factories, and IoS,307
in 2,066 manufactories of woolen goods. The iron in-
dustries gave employment to upwards of 160,000 hands,
the iron produced in the country reaching over two
millions of tons. In the useful arts generally America
is on a level with France and England. The internal
commerce of the United States is conducted with
extraordinary spirit. The amount of capital expended
on roads, canals, harbors, bridges, and other public
works, is very great. The length of the lines of rail-
way open for traffic now exceeds 156,802 miles, and is
rapidly increasing. The extent of the foreign trade of
the country, and the amount of its shipping, place it
next to Great Britain in the list of commercial nations.
The population of the United States in
I890 was by census. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62,480,540
In 1800 it was... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,308,483
Increase in 90 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57, I 72,057
Since 1800 the rate of increase has been remarkably
uniform at nearly 3% per cent. per annum. In 1888 the
number of immigrants was 490, Io9, of whom 189,763
migrated from the British Isles, 143,200 from Germany,
and the remainder from British North America, Swe-
den, Norway, France, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Den-
mark, and Russia.
Slaves were first introduced in 1619. In 1775 slavery
was abolished in Rhode Island; in 178o Massachusetts
abolished it; then numerous northern states followed,
and in December 1865 slavery was abolished throughout
the United States. By subsequent amendment of the
constitution all negroes were admitted to all the priv-
ileges of citizenship. Thus it was enacted on March 39.
1870, that “no discrimination should be made in the
United States among the citizens of the United States in
the exercise of their elective franchise, or in the right to
hold office in any state, on account of race, color,
nativity, property, education, or creed.”. Every person
born or naturalized in the United States is recognized to
be a citizen thereof. te
The American government is a pure representative de-
--d
A M E º
275
*mocracy in which the people are recognized as the fount-
aim of all power ; and the sole object of all its mechan-
ism is to give effect to their deliberate opinions. The
federal government and the governments of the separate
states are constituted on the same plan. The legislature
consists in every case of two bodies, a House of Repre-
sentatives chosen for one or two years, and a Senate for
a period varying from two years to six—all chosen by
popular election, except in the case of the Federal
Senate, which is elected by the legislatures of the forty-
four states. The President holds his office for four
years, but is occasionally re-elected for four years more.
The characteristic facts in the condition of America
are the non-existence of titles, of privileged classes, of
corporations in a European sense, of a landed aristoc-
racy, of mendicity except to a very limited extent, and
of an endowed church; the cheapness and efficiency of
its government, the universality of education, the om-
nipresence of its periodical press, the high feeling of
self-respect which exists in the very humblest classes,
and the boundless spirit of enterprise which pervades
all classes of society. The social customs and indi-
vidual manners of the American may be rendered
brusque, by business habits, but the American people,
taken collectively, are at least as well educated and have
as much intelligence and manliness of character as any
other nation in the world.
In 1867 the territory formerly known as Russian
America was purchased by the United States, and called
Alaska. It occupies the northwest corner of the conti-
nent, and extends along the coast as far south as Mount
Elias, where it is bounded by British Columbia and the
southern end of Prince of Wales Island, in 54° 40' N.
It comprises an area of about 570,390 square miles.
Furs and fish are the most valuable commodities. Sitka
is the capital. It is situated on an island in 57°2'45"
N. and 135° 17' 10" W. It has a population of over
2000 persons. The Yukon river, which is about 2000
miles long, flows through the territory.
British North America is bounded on the south by
the United States, on the north by the Arctic Ocean,
and on the west by Alaska. In 1867 the provinces of
Ontario (formerly Upper Canada), Quebec (formerly
Lower Canada), Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Mani-
toba (formerly Hudson's Bay Territory), and British
Columbia, were united under the title of “The Domin-
ion of Canada,” while Newfoundland and Prince Ed-
ward's Island still remain independent. The executive
power is vested in the sovereign of the British empire,
but is carried out by a Governor General and Privy
Council. The Parliament consists of a Senate and
House of Commons. The senators are nominated for
life by the Governor General, and are 75 in number.
The members of the House of Commons are elected by
the people in the proportion of one member for each
17,ooo souls. The seat is retainable for five years, and
each member Is allowed a salary and travelling expenses.
Ottawa is the capital of the Dominion. According to
the latest census, taken on April 1, 1881, the area and
population of the several provinces are as under: —
Area, sq. miles. Population.
Ontario. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . & Io?,78o 1,923,228
Quebec. . . . . . . . . a s s a e e s e e I92,355 I,359,027
Nova Scotia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2I,73 440,572
New Brunswick. . . . . & © e º & tº 27,322 32I,233
Manitoba . . . . . tº e º is g º ºs & 4 & 9 I3,969 65,954
British Columbia . . . . . . . . . . 390,344 49,459
Newfoundland (1884) . . . . . . 40,2OO 161,389
Pr. Edwd. Isld. (1881). . . . . 2, I 73 Io8,891
*Totals (including North- amºssmºs-ms------> Rºº-ºº-ººmºmºmº,
western Provinces). . . . . 3,470,392 4,324,8 IO
In 1871 the Dominion had 2854 aniles of railway open,
1173 miles in preparation. In 1889 there were 12,701.66
miles completed, and 540 under construction. A line
(Canadian Pacific) connecting Lake Superior and the
Pacific (4633.5 miles) is now in operation.
Brazil is the largest state in South America, and en-
joys the greatest combination of natural advantages. It
is bounded on the south, west, and north, by La Plata,
Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colom-
bia, Venezuela, and Guiana. Embracing an area of
3, IOO,OOO English miles, it is nearly as large as Europe,
and is capable of supporting a much greater population.
Its climate is probably cooler and more salubrious than
that of any other extensive tropical country; and every
part of its soil is rich and fruitful, as its magnificent
forests and the exuberance and boundless variety of its
vegetable productions attest. Its commercial advan-
tages are admirable. No country in the new world has
the same facilities for carrying on intercourse with
Europe and with all its neighbors. The Amazon, with
its numerous branches, the Parana, the Tocantins, the
St. Francisco, and other streams, supply the most
remote parts of the interior with easy means of com-
munication with the sea. Brazil possesses iron, copper,
and probably all the other metals; but her mines of
gold and diamonds are remarkably rich. Her most
valuable productions for exportation are cotton, Sugar,
coffee, hides, tobacco, vanilla, dyewoods, aromatic
plants, timber, &c. Her commerce is much greater
than that of all the Spanish colonies put together. The
Brazilians are lively, irritable, hospitable, but ignorant,
superstitious, and rather inclined to indolence. Their
acquisition of independence in 1822, however, worked
like a charm, and produced an extraordinary change in
their industry, opinions, and modes of thinking. There
are numerous schools, but although the education is
gratuitous, they are not well attended. The advance
literature has made will be allowed to be great when it
is remembered that printing was unknown in the coun-
try in 1807. According to the constitution introduced
by Dom Pedro, the legislature consisted of a Senate of
52 members, who held their places for life, and a House
of Congress of 107, elected by the people for four years;
upon the acts of both of which bodies the emperor had
a negative. The members of the lower house were
chosen by elections of two stages. The householders
of a parish met and appointed one elector for every
thirty of their number, and the electors thus chosen met
in districts and chose the deputies. The members of
both houses received salaries. The executive power
was invested in the emperor, assisted by a ministry and
a council of state.
The population of Brazil amounted to 3,671,558,
according to returns published in 1818, and procured
probably for the purpose of taxation. This was exclu-
sive of the wandering Indians. In 1823 it was esti-
mated at 4,000,000 by Humboldt. M. Schoeffer carries
it to 5,700,000, and an estimate for 1867 makes it
9,858,000, comprising 8, 148,000 free persons, and
1,674,000 slaves. The census taken in 1872 gives a
population of 10,095,978, including 1,683,864 slaves. .
Brazil, after remaining a colony of Portugal until
1822, threw off the yoke of the mother country, and
became an independent empire, in which political con-
dition she remained till November, 1889, when the Em-
peror, Dom Pedro, abdicated and sailed for Portugal,
and a republic was proclaimed.
The portion of South America next to the isthmus
includes the states of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ec-
uador. From 1820 until 1831, when a separation took
place, it formed one state under the name of Colombia;
which name has recently been assumed by the republic
-* ----------- —T
e—s ºse —--ºr -º,--------
276 ty
A M E
long known as New Granada. The territories of these
three states are bounded on the south by Peru, on the
South-east and east by Brazil and Guiana, on the other
sides by the sea, and embrace an area of 1,020,000
square English miles. The soil is fruitful and the cli-
mate salubrious, except along the coast and in a few
other low situations. The eastern part consists chiefly
of the llanos or steppes of the Orinoco, which are very
hot; the western, of the mountain ridges of the Andes,
which support tracts of table-land where the blessings
of a temperate climate are enjoyed, and the cerealia of
Europe can be successfully cultivated. The tropical
vegetation extends to the height of 4000 feet; from
4000 to 9000 is the region where wheat, barley, and
leguminous plants thrive. Above the level of 90oo feet
the climate becomes severe; and at 15,700 feet vegeta-
tion ceases. The situation of Colombia is highly favor-
able for commerce. It has excellent ports on both
seas; and being mistress of the isthmus of Panama, it
has superior facilities for establishing a communication
from the one to the other. The Orinoco and the
Amazon afford the inmost districts of Venezuela and
Ecuador the advantages of water carriage to the ocean.
The Cassiquiari, an intermediate channel, by which the
Orinoco bifurcates or connects with the Amazon (a re-
markable hydrographical phenomenon), is within the
limits of Venezuela. The territory contains much gold
and silver—the former in alluvial deposits: it has mines
of copper and mercury also, with platinum, iron, and
coal. Its tropical productions are similar to those of
Brazil; but it has as yet cultivated few articles for for-
eign markets, and its exports are inconsiderable. The
civilized population of this country is chiefly located in
the districts near the coast, and in the high valleys or
table-land of the Andes. Its amount, according to the
.Statesman’s Year-Āook, is—
Venezuela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I,564,433
Colombia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,794,473
Ecuador. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I,300,000
5,658,906
It is always of importance to know in what propor-
tions the different races are blended, but on this subject
we have only approximate data. In Colombia the whites
form about half of the population, the Indians about
one-third, and the negroes about one-tenth, the remain-
der being of mixed blood. In Venezuela the whites
form about one-third, the Indians about one-thirtieth,
and Zamboes (from Indians and negroes) about one-half.
In Ecuador the proportions are, roughly — whites one-
sixth, Indians nearly one-half, negroes one-thirteenth.
All the three states are republican. See VENEZUELA,
COLOMBIA, and Ecuador.
The Argentine Republic, or La Plata, is, in point of
natural advantages, the second state of importance in
South America. It is bounded on the west by Chili;
on the north by Bolivia ; on the east by Paraguay, Bra-
zil, Uruguay, and the sea; and on the South by Patago-
nia. It embraces an area of 515,000 square miles if we
include Tucuman, Salta, Santiago del Estero, and Jujuy,
which scarcely acknowledge its authority. . Nearly the
whole territory of this republic consists of open plains
destitute of timber, called Žampas, extending from the
Atlantic and the river Paraguay to the Andes. The
eastern part of these plains exhibits a vigorous growth
of herbage, intermixed with a forest of gigantic plants,
9 or IO feet high, which have been called thistles, but
are now known to be artichokes; in the middle they are
covered with grass; and the western division, which
extends to the foot of the Andes, consists of barren
sandy plains, thinly sprinkled with shrubs and thorny
* ...-a sº-º-º-º-e
trees. The openness and dryness of the country, how-
ever, render it healthy; and by the Parama, the Para-
guay, and their branches, it possesses a great extent of
natural inland navigation. It has mines of gold, silver,
copper, lead, and probably iron, but its mineral riches,
have been greatly diminished by the separation of Potosi,
Cochabamba, La Paz, and other provinces now forming
part of Bolivia. The force of this republic lies almost
entirely in the wealth, intelligence, and commercial spirit
of its capital, Buenos Ayres, which contains 150,000.
Souls, including a large proportion of foreigners. A
Small number of estancias, or grazing farms, are spar-
ingly diffused over its boundless plains, the proprietors of
which keep multitudes of horses and mules, flocks of
sheep, and vast herds of cattle; the latter being chiefly
valued for their skins. These people are a bold, frank,
hardy, half-civilized race, who live isolated in the wilder-
ness, and Scarcely acknowledge any government. The
census of 1889 gives a total population of 2,03O,OOO-
See ARGENTINE REPUBLIC ; and for the two small"
states formed out of the north-eastern portion of its
territory, see PARAGUAY and URUGUAY. Entre Rios,
formerly a separate state, is now a province of La Plata.
Chili extends along the coast of the Pacific from 25°
to 44° of south latitude: its length is 1300 miles; its
breadth varies from 30 to 120; and its surface, exclusive
of Araucania and the district beyond the 44th parallel,
is estimated at 130,977 English square miles. The
country consists properly of the western slope or decliv-
ity of the Andes, for the branches of the mountains
running out in tortuous directions from the main trunk
reach to the sea-shore. It enjoys an excellent and
healthful climate; severe cold is unknown in the
inhabited parts, and the heat is seldom excessive. The
useful soil bears a small proportion to the entire surface
of the country, consisting merely of the bottom of the
valleys. It has rich mines of gold, silver, and copper
in the northern provinces; but very few of them can be
worked in consequence of the absolute sterility of the
adjacent country. . Its two northern provinces, occupy-
ing 450 miles of the coast, are nearly perſect deserts.
The soil continues extremely dry, and yields nothing
without irrigation, till we reach the latitude of 35°; and
it is believed that not one-fiftieth part of the country is
fit for cultivation. But south of the river Maule the
land is covered with fine timber, and bears crops of
wheat and other, grain without the aid of any other
moisture than what is supplied by the atmosphere.
This is in truth the fine and fruitful part of Chili; and
the project was once entertained of selecting its chief
town, Concepcion, for the seat of the government. Chili
has no manufactures, and is unfavorably situated for
commerce. It has no navigable rivers, while its mount-
ainous surface is an obstacle to the formation of roads;
but nevertheless it has now upwards of 500 miles of
railway opened. A representative constitution was
established in Chili in 1833. An enumeration dated
1889 makes the population, exclusive of Araucania.
(with 70,000 aborigines), 2, Io9,742. See CHILI.
Peru may be regarded as a continuation of Chili, con-
sisting of the western declivities of the Andes, from the
4th to the 22d degree of such latitude, with the addition
of a considerable tract on the east side of the mountains
between the 4th and 15th parallels. There are few coun-
tries in the world which have a more singular physical
character than the western part of Peru. It is a belt or
zone of sands, 1240 miles in length and from 70 to 6oo
in breadth, with inequalities of surface which might be
called mountains if they were not seen in connection
with the stupendous background of the Andes. This
long line of desert is intersected by rivers and streams,
which are seldom less, than 20, or, more than So miles,
A M E
277
apart, and on the sides of which narrow strips of pro-
ductive soil are created by means of irrigation. These
isolated valleys form the whole habitable country. Some
of the large rivers reach the sea; the smaller are either
consumed in irrigating the patches of cultivated land or
absorbed by the encompassing desert, where it never
rains, where neither beast nor bird lives, and a blade of
vegetation never grew. No stranger can travel from one
of these valleys to another without a guide, for the des-
ert is trackless; and the only indications of a route are
an occasional cluster of bones, the remains of beasts of
burden that have perished. Even experienced guides,
who regulate their course by the stars, the sun, or the
direction of the wind, sometimes lose their path, and
they almost inevitably perish. Of a party .# 300 sol-
diers thrown ashore by a shipwreck in 1823 on one of
these desert spaces, nearly a hundred expired before they
reached the nearest valley. Ignorance and wonder have
been busy with this singular region; legends are current,
which tell that descendants of the ancient Peruvians
have lived in some of these mysterious valleys, hid from
the knowledge of their merciless invaders, since the days
of the Incas. We have no reason to believe that more
than one acre in a hundred of maritime Peru will ever
be available for the sustenance of mankind. The coun-
try has two advantages — its mines of the precious
metals, and a temperate and delightful climate, in con-
sequence of the absence of rain and the fogs which inter-
cept the solar heat. It can never be rich in the proper
sense of the term, or make much progress in the improve-
ments which depend upon a dense population. Like
Chili, it has no navigable rivers—and nature has de-
prived it of the means of forming good roads. There
are indeed few countries in the world whose natural ad-
vantages have been so much overrated as Peru; and it
requires little sagacity to discover that its future career
cannot correspond with its past celebrity. The districts
east of the Andes, which have a hot climate accompanied
with a rich soil, will ultimately be the most valuable
part of the country; but their secluded situation and
want of communication with other countries must keep
them long in a backward state. The government is re-
publican. Peru comprehends a surface of 502,760
square miles; the capital, Lima, contained in 1882 a
population of I56.350. In that year a rough calculation
was made which gave 3,700,000 as the entire population
of the republic. It was also estimated that the propor-
tion of races were: —
Indians. • * * * * g e o e s e º e g º e tº gº º ſº º º .57 per Cent.
• Mixed races. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 23 & &
Spaniards, Negroes, Chinese, &c. .2O “
Bolivia, or Upper Peru, lies eastward of Lower Peru,
and is bounded on the south by the Argentine Republic,
and on the north and east by Brazil. It is of an irregu-
lar form, and comprehends a space of 473,300 square
miles. The climate is pleasant and healthful, the soil
is generally dry, and in the eastern parts, as well as the
elevated table-land, its aridity produces barrenness.
Nature, however, as a compensation for its other dis-
advantages, has bestowed upon it some of the richest
mines in the world. The country was erected into an
independent state only in 1826, and named Bolivia in
honor of its liberator Bolivar. It has a small strip of
barren territory on the shores of the Pacific Ocean,
between the 22d and 25th parallel; but it is, properly
speaking, entirely an inland country, and more deficient
in the means of communicating with foreign nations than
any other state in America. See BOLIVIA.
Guatemala or “Central America’’ originally occupied
all the narrow part of the continent from the 83d to the
494th degree of west longitude. extending 800 miles in
~s
length, and covering a space of 130,000 square miles.
The surface of the country is hilly, and in most parts,
mountainous; the climate warm and very moist. The
mineral wealth of the country is not great; but this is
compensated by the richness of its soil and its excellent
commercial position. It was a federal republic, but its
five provinces have now become independent states.
Humboldt estimated the population of the states at
I,600,000. According to a statement furnished to Mr.
Thomson, a former British envoy, by the government,
it was 2,000,000; while the most recent of the estimates
made by the resident officials give a total of 2,335,019,
VIZ : —
Guatemala (1889)......................... 1, 180,000
St. Salvador (1889)............. . . . . . . . . . . • 434,52O
Honduras . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250,000
Nicaragua. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * * * * * * * * * e e s e a tº 350, OOO
Costa Rica. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I2O,499
2,335, OI9
The proportions of the different races have been esti-
mated as follows:–
Humboldt. Thomson.
Whites and Creoles.........20 per cent. 20 per cent.
Mixed classes....... $ tº t e º & .28 “ 4o “
Indians . . . . . . * * * * * e ºs e e s e a e 52 “ 40 “
Mexico is the most populous and powerful of all the
new states erected in America since the commencement
of the present century. Previous to the war with the
United States it embraced an area of 1,600,000 square
miles, which was reduced to 1,030,442 by the cession of
the northern provinces in 1848. About three-fourths of
the surface consists either of mountains or table-land,
raised from 5000 to Io,000 feet above the sea. Owing
to this extraordinary elevation, even those parts of the
country which lie within the torrid zone (the low ground
on the coast excepted) enjoy a dry, cool, and salubrious
atmosphere; but this advantage is counterbalanced by
the insufficient supply of moisture and the rapid evapor-
ation resulting from the same cause, which render the
soil generally rather arid, and in many parts absolutely
barren; by the smallness of the rivers and the almost en-
tire absence of inland navigation; and by the obstacles
which the steep and rugged ascents from the coast pre-
sent to land-carriage. The republic is, besides, almost
destitute of ports on the Atlantic side. Mexico is
extremely rich in the precious metals; and there are few
regions upon which nature has lavished so great a variety
of vegetable productions, or where the plants fitted to the
coldest and the hottest climates may be seen so nearly in
juxtaposition. The low ground on the east coast is
admirably adapted for raising sugar; and no country is
more favorably situated for growing the other great arti-
cles of West India produce — coffee, cotton, cocoa, indi-
go, and tobacco. The raising of bread stuffs—as they
are termed by the Anglo-Americans — wheat, maize, and
barley, with potatoes, the cassava root, beans, pumpkins,
fruit, &c.—for domestic consumption, will necessarily
be the chief branch of industry on the table-lands. The
mines have never employed above 30,000 laborers; and
their superior productiveness depends chiefly on two cir-
cumstances— the great abundance of the ore, which is
only of poor quality, and the comparative facility with
which they can be worked owing to their being generally
situated in fertile districts, where provisions, wood, and
all materials can be easily procured.
Mexico has had her full share of the ignorance and
superstition which belonged to Spain; and these evils,
with her internal dissensions and her rapacious, immoral,
and intolerant clergy, are great obstacles to her improve,
ment. That excessive inequality of fortune which cor,
278
A M E
rupts both extremes of Society has been nowhere in the
world more prevalent than in Mexico. Individual pro-
prietors possessed immense tracts of land and boundless
wealth, while all the great towns swarmed with beggars,
and thousands fell a sacrifice to famine from time to
time. The Mexican constitution, which is federal and
almost a literal copy of that of the United States, was
established in 1824. The distinction of castes, which
was maintained in the greatest rigor under colonial sys-
tem, has now disappeared, and power and office are open,
not only legally but practically, to men of all colors.
The African blacks formed an extremely small proportion
of the Mexican population at all times; and since the
revolution slavery has ceased. The number of inhabit-
ants was estimated at 6,800,000 by Humbolt in 1823,
and classified as follows:–
Numbers. Proportions.
Whites............ 1,230,000 19 per cent.
Mixed races........ 1,860,000 27 C &
Indians....... . . . . . .3,710,000 54 “
Mr. Ward states that very few of the whites, so called,
are free from a mixture of Indian blood; and now when
the odious distinctions founded on complexion are abol-
ished, they readily acknowledge it. Mr. Ward estimated
the population at 8,000,000 in 1827. In 1889 that of
Mexico, with its present boundaries, was estimated to
be 12, IOO,OOO. See MEXICO.
Hayti, called formerly Hispaniola and St. Domingo,
was a colony belonging partly to France and partly to
Spain till 1791, when the blacks rose in arms, killed a
number of whites, and expelled the rest. The attempts
of England in 1793, and of France in 1801, to conquer
the island, both failed, and Hayti has at length been
acknowledged as an independent state by all the great
powers, including France. The island, which contains
about 28,000 square miles, is remarkably fertile; but
its climate, like that of the West Indies generally, is
rather unhealthy. The population, which before the
revolution was estimated at 600,000, is now said to
amount to 900,000 or 1,000,000, and it is almost
entirely composed of blacks and mulattoes. The island
formed one state till 1844, when the eastern or Spanish
portion revolted, and established its independence.
It is now, undergoing the horrors of internecine war-
fare. . The western portion, retaining the name of
Hayti, was formed into an empire tier Faustin I. ;
but in 1867 a republican constitution was proclaimed.
After long negotiations, the French government agreed
in 1838 to acknowledge the independence of Hayti on
condition of the latter paying 60,000,000 of francs by
small annual instalments continued for 30 years. The
money was destined chiefly to indemnify the French
proprietors who were chased from the island in 1791.
Nothing has been paid of late years.
The multifarious nature of the subject prevents us
from attempting any description of the West India
colonies, insular and continental. The islands have
been variously denominated, but the most convenient
division seems to us the following: — I. The Great
Antilles, comprehending Cuba, Hayti, Jamaica, and
Porto Rico; 2. The small Antilles extending in a semi-
circle from Porto Rico to the coast of Guiana; 3. The
Bahama Isles, about 500 in number, of which,
however, only a small number are inhabited.
The British colonies are 18 in number, viz., 16 insu-
Jar— Jamaica, Antigua, Barbadoes, Dominica, Gre-
nada, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St.
Vincent, Tobago, Tortola, Trinidad, Bahamas, Ber-
muda, Falkland Island; and 2 continental — British
Guiana and Honduras. The colonies contained a pop-
ulation of about 2,500,000 in 1889, of whom probably
four-fifths were persons of color.
*—
The Spanish colonies are Cuba and Porto Rico. Cuba.
has an area of 2058 square miles, and in 1889 the popu-
lation was I,4I4,508. Porto Rico has an area of 169
square miles, and in 1866 a population of 646,362 per-
sons. In 1867 there were upwards of 700,000 slaves in
these two colonies.
In August 1872 the Spanish government issued a de-
cree ordering that arrangements should be made for the
gradual emancipation of the slaves; and in December
1872 a bill was laid before the Spanish Cortes for the
abolition of slavery in Porto Rico in 1873; so that
slavery is now extinct throughout the whole of
America.
The French colonies in the West Indies include Mar-
tinique, Guadaloupe, and some smaller isles; and on
the continent, Guiana. According to a recent authority
the population of these colonies was 318,934.
The Dutch have Surinam on the continent, with the
islands of Curaçoa, St. Eustatius, and St. Martin.
In 1889 the population of the islands was 35,482, and
of Surinam 59,885, occupying an area of 2812 geograph-
ical square miles. Slavery has ceased since July 1863,
when the Dutch government compensated the owners.
for 44,645 slaves.
The Danes have the small islands of Santa Cruz and
St. John, containing a population of 24,698 in 1889, of
whom most are freed slaves, and St. Thomas, which
had in the same year a population of 13,463. St. Bar-
tholomew, another of the Lesser Antilles, belongs to
Sweden.
The problem of making a grand highway for travel
and traffic from the Atlantic to the Pacific, either across.
the breadth of the American continent or by taking
advantage of the narrow isthmus that joins its northern
to its southern portion, has been the subject of many
schemes since its western as well as its eastern shores.
have been inhabited by enterprising nations, skilled in
commerce and in mechanical arts. It is interesting to
remark that, whereas the hope of Sailing to India by a
westward route was the motive which guided the navi-
gators of the 15th century to the discovery of America,
the means of internal communication for this part of the
earth, and the geographical exploration of its remote
extremities, have been more recently advanced by the
desire of finding a path in this direction to the Asiatic
resorts of mercantile activity. Arctic voyagers were at first
invited to the icy seas of high latitudes by the dream of
a north-west passage to China and the East Indies. It
was a passage by sea from the Atlantic to the Pacific
which Sir John Franklin went to seek in his last expe-
dition in 1845, but which Captain Maclure effected in
1856, though by an opposite course from Behring's Strait
to Baffin's Bay. But it is scarcely possible that this
route along the north coasts of America should ever be
habitually frequented by mariners going to and fro be-
tween the two oceans. At the opposite extremity of
the continent arrangements have lately been made to
substitute a shorter way to the Pacific for that round
Cape Horn by improving the navigation of the Strait of
Magalhaens, which separates Tierra del Fuego from the
south portion of the mainland. The project of cutting
a canal through the central American isthmus has often
been discussed. There can be no doubt of the practica-
bility of a system of inland navigation from the Atlantic
coast by the river San Juan to Lake Nicaragua, and
thence by a canal to the neighboring Lake Managua, or
Leon, with a short artificial channel of exit to the Pacific.
A different route, of combined river and canal naviga-
tion, has more recently been proposed, which would cut
off the whole of the isthmus from the body of South
America—entering the uppermost part of that mainland
by the river Atrato from the Gulf of Darien, ascending
A. M. E. ge
279
this river 150 miles, then following up the course of the
Napipi or the Bajaya, tributaries of the Atrato — crossing
the coast range of hills by a canal with several locks,
and descending to the Pacific either in Limon Bay or in
the Gulf of Cupica. Work was commenced on one
such project under the plans of De Lesseps, but has
been discontinued; and Captain Eads' proposition of
a ship railway has so far been only a proposition. In
spite of the grand example of the Suez Canal, it seems
likely that, in a country tolerably productive of wealth
and capable of supporting population, the more profit-
able means for providing for through traffic will be
found in railroads, which serve also for the accommoda-
tion of intermediate districts. In this class of under-
takings North America has of late years displayed a
wonderful degree of active enterprise. The line of 6o
miles from Aspinwall, near Chagres, across the neck
of land, which is there so narrow, to Panama, on the
Pacific side, though situated in the territory of a Spanish
republic, was constructed by citizens of the United
States, expressly for the traffic between New York and
San Francisco. But since that first opening of a gate-
way of communication with California, Australia or
China, for the travellers and merchandise of the At-
lantic states or of Europe, the whole breadth of the
continent where it widens, in latitude between 359 and
45° N., all belonging to the United States, has been
traversed by a continuous railroad system. The middle
link of this system is the Union Pacific Railway 1,600
miles long, from Omaha, on the Missouri, in the state of
Nebraska, through Nebraska up to the course of the Platte
river, and through Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Nevada,
crossing the summits of three great mountain ranges
from 7,000 feet to 8,250 feet high, and meeting the
Central Pacific Railway of California. This line was
through a barren desert for several hundred miles,
in the arid uplands of Idaho and the salt plains of
Utah; but its construction has served to bring the com-
mercial cities of the Atlantic and of the Pacific within
six or seven days’ journey of each other. Three or four
rival projects of railways across the width of the United
States, or extensions of the existing railway system
westward from the Mississippi and Missouri, have been
taken up, and are now in a state of completion. The
one which offers the greatest advantages is that route
ascending the long and broad valley of the Arkansas
river, and to cross the Rocky Mountains with a south-
erly inclination into New Mexico, opening up the Rio
Grande and San Juan countly, which is said to be very
rich, and thence passing on to the Grand Cañon of the
Colorado, and to the Nevada mining district. Near the
northern frontier of the United States territory, where
it borders on the IBritish Dominions of Canada, another
continental line from east to west is in operation — that
is, from the western extremity of Lake Superior, through
Minnesota, Dakota and Washington, to Puget Sound,
just below Vancouver Island. Another work of this
kind that will be quite interesting to many of our readers
is that undertaken in 1871 by the government of the
Canadian Dominion. By the extension of the Dominion
beyond the Rocky Mountains to include British Colum-
bia, and the incorporation of the vast territories of the
IIudson Bay Company, nearly the whole of North
America above the 49th parallel is united in one grand
British colonial province, and the Canadian Pacific Rail-
way has done much to promote a compact union between
the widely-scattered communities of Her Majesty’s
subjects on this great continent. The line proceeds
from a point on the northern shore of Lake Su-
perior, westward to the Red River settlement near
Lake Winnipeg, now forming the province of Man-
itoba; and thence is conducted up the valley of
the river Saskatchewan to the foot of the Rocky
Mountains, which it crosses by the Yellowhead Pass,
to descend along the Thomson and Fraser rivers, its
British Columbia, till it finally reaches the coast of the
Pacific Ocean, connecting Vancouver Island with the
mainland by steamer transportation. In connection.
with the Grand Trunk and other railways of Canada,
supplemented by the Intercolonial Railway between.
Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, this
new western line affords the most direct and expeditious
means of transit across North America, and has be-
come the favorite route for mails and passengers and
light traffic from Europe to China. It opens a coun-
try which abounds in mineral wealth, especially of iron,
coal and copper; while the Saskatchewan valley, and
the belt of fertile soil lying at the base of the Rocky
Mountains (where the climate, as far north as Fort
Dunvegan, on the Peace river, is not more severe than
that of Toronto, though in latitudes beyond 56° N.,
nearly thirteen degrees above that place), are capable of
sustaining an agricultural population. The progress of
railroad construction in North America, stimulating
ańd assisting the development of industrial resources.
with amazing rapidity, is a feature of high importance
in the most recent phases of the world’s civilization.
Its average rate of advance in the United States alone,
during the five years preceding January, 1873, was nearly
6,000 miles annually of new railway; and the aggregate
length of railway lines in the Union, all completed and
in actual working, was then computed at 71,000 miles.
In 1889 it was over 156,000. British America, as we
have seen, will not be left deficient of similar appliances
for its internal improvement.
A great auriferous deposit was discovered in Upper
California in the end of 1847, just before its formal
cession to the United States. It is situated in the valley
of the Sacramento river, and its principal branch the
Joaquin, and is believed to extend over a range of
country 200 miles in length, or more. The gold is
found in its virgin state in small grains in three different
situations—first, in sand and gravel beds; second/1',
among decomposed or disintegrated granite; and thirdly,
intermixed with a friable talcose slate standing in ver-
tical strata, and containing white quartz, interlami-
nated or in veins. The largest pieces of gold are found
in and near the talcose slate rocks, over which the
streams flow ; but the finer particles and scales have
been carried down by the water to the lowest part of the
valleys. It was known before that gold existed in the
country; but the wonderful richness of the deposit was
only discovered in 1847, in making a mill-race on Amer-
ican Fork, a small branch of the Sacramento. It soon
became widely known, and attracted multitudes of per-
sons, first from the neighboring districts, and by and by
from all parts of the world. The population, which was
estimated at 15,000 in 1848, had increased to 92,000 in
1850; and in 1890 was found to be I,300,000.
More recently gold and silver have been discovered in.
Montana, Colorado, Dakota, Washington and Nevada,
the last named State surpassing all others in the produc-
tion of the precious metals.
Humboldt gives the following estimate of the entire
population of America in 1823:—
Number. Proportion.
Whites. . . . . . e is e º is a e º e s se e e I 3,47 I,OOO 38 per cent.
Indians. . . . . . . . & a e < t s s e s e 8,61O,OOO 25 “ “
* | Slaves, 5,000,000 r) ey $ 4 & 6
Negroes | Free, I,433, 6,433,000 I9
Mixed races. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,428,000 18 “ “.
34,942,OOO
28O º
A M E
Bollaert made the following estimate for 1863:—
Number. Proportion.
Whites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38,074,423 52 per cent.
Indians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I I, O.I.4,710 15 “ “
Negroes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 122,030 17 “ “
Mestizoes.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,031,000
Mulattoes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,037,440 I6 “ “
Zamboes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I,563,230
72,842,833
What will be the number of the inhabitants of the
new continent two or three centuries hence, and of what
races will it consist? Setting aside the negroes, to
simplify the question, and the Indians, who will gradu-
ally disappear, it is evident that the soil of America is
destined to be occupied by two races, who may be
designated as the Anglo-Saxon and the Spanish-Indian.
In the latter the Indian blood greatly predominates, for
the Creoles or pure progeny of the Spaniards probably
do not constitute more than 20 per cent. Of the popula-
tion, while the civilized Indians may amount to 50, and
the Mestizoes to 30.
The whites in the United States were in 1850, 19,500,000
The population of British America. . . . . . . . . 2,500,000
22,OOO,OOO
The population of Spanish and Portuguese
America, exclusive of slaves, was in round
numbers e e s e e º 'º e s e º º sº * * * * * * * * * * e = * * * *
The Anglo-Saxon population in America increases
at 3 per cent. annually, and double its numbers in 25
years.
Its amount in 1850 was . . . . . . . .
2O,OOO,000
. . 22,OOO,OOO
In 1880 it was . . . . . . . . . e - tº e s e 5O,OOO,OOO
In 1900 it will be . . . . . • * * * * * * * * * 88, Ooo, ooo
In 1925 . . . . . • e e s e e e º e = * * * * * * * * I76, OOO,OOO
A population of 176,000,000 spread over, the territo-
ries of the United States and Canada would only afford
an average of 40 persons to each square mile, about
1-7th part of the density which England now exhibits,
and could occasion no pressure. But let us suppose
the rate of increase after 1925 to fall to 2 per cent., the
period of doubling will then be 35 years.
In 1960 the number will be. . . . . . 352,000, OOO
In 1995 do. do. . . . . . . 704, OOO,OOO
Suppose the rate again to decline to 1% per cent.,
which scarcely exceeds that of England and Prussia,
the period of doubling will then be 50 years.
In 2045 the number will be. . . . 1,408,000,000
In 2095 do. do. . . . . . 2,816, OOO,OOO
Let us now compare with this the growth of the
Spanish-Indian population, doubling its numbers in 75
years.
Its amount in 1850 was . . . . . . . . . . 20, OOO,OOO
In 1925 it will be....... . . . . . . . . 4O,OOO,OOO
In 2000 do. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80,000,000
In 2075 do. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I6O,OOO,OOO
In 2095 (interval of 20 years). . . .200,000,000
It hence appears that, supposing both races to have
‘free space for expansion, the Anglo-Saxon population
in 220 years from the present time will amount to
28.16 millions, while the Spanish-Indian population will
only have multiplied to 200 millions, or one-fourteenth
zart of the other. It will be shown by and by, on
probable grounds, that the new continent, if fully
peopled, could support 3600 millions, and there would
consequently be room enough for both; but long before
this density is attained the two races will inevitably
come into collision. In new settlements, where the best
lands are invariably first occupied and the inferior
neglected, the population is always thinly diffused.
The Anglo-Saxons will therefore crowd to the richer
fields of the south, while millions of acres of their own
pooler lands are still untenanted; for we may rest
assured that before cultivation is extended to the third-
rate soils on the north side of the boundary, means will
be found to appropriate the first-rate soils on the south
side. These may be acquired by purchase like the
lands of Louisiana, or by conquest like those of New
Mexico and California, but in one way or another they
will be acquired. Nearly forty years ago M. de Tocque-
ville calculated that along the great space from the
Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian lakes the whites were
advancing over the wilderness at an average rate of 17
miles per annum, and that enlightened observer was
powerfully impressed by the grandeur and solemnity of
this deluge of men, forever swelling, and flowing
onward, to the west, the south, and the north, as
“driven by the hand of God.” Since he wrote the rate
of progress has perhaps doubled, and every year will
quicken its pace. If, then, we take a glance at the
state of America at any future period, say 220 years
hence (A.D 2095), we must take the ratio of increase of
the two civilised races as the prime element of our cal-
culation. We may assume that the whole continent,
from Behring's Straits and Hudson’s Bay to Cape Horn,
will be divided between the two races in some such pro-
polition as their rate of growth indicates — it may be
IO, 15, or 20 to 1. Supposing them to maintain a
separate existence, the weaker race will probably be
driven, like the Welsh before the English, into the
mountainous and inhospitable regions. On the other
hand, it is possible, and not improbable, that the smaller
population may be absorbed into the mass of the greater,
be incorporated with it, and adopt its language. The
result, like other things in the womb of time, may be
modified by causes yet unseen; but in whatever shape it
may plesent itself, there is little risk in predicting that
the Anglo-Saxon race is destined by its superior intelli-
gence and energy to rule the New World from end to
end. American statesmen now speak of the whole
continent as the heritage of our people.
Paradoxical as the fact may appear, we are satisfied
that the new continent, though less than half the size of
the old, contains at least an equal quantity of useful soil
and much more than an equal amount of productive
power. America is indebted for this advantage to its
comparatively small breadth, which brings nearly all its
interior within reach of the fertilising exhalations of the
ocean. In the old continent, owing to its great extent
from east to west, the central parts, deprived of moist-
ure, are almost everywhere deserts; and a belt round
the western, southern, and eastern shores, comprises
nearly all that contributes to the support of man. . How
much fruitful land, for instance, is there in continental
Asia? If we draw a line from the Gulf of Cutch (near
the Indus) to the head of the Yellow Sea, we cut off
India and China, with the intervening Birman empire
and the southern valleys of Thibet; and this space,
which comprises only about one-fifth of the surface of
Asia, embraces five-sixths of its productive power.
Arabia, Persia, Central Thibet, Western India, Chinese
and Independent Tartary are deserts, with scattered
patches of useful soil not amounting to the twentieth
part of their extent. , Siberia, or Northern Asia, is little
better, owing to aridity and cold together. Antilia,
Armenia, the Punjab, and a narrow strip along the
western shores of the Pacific Ocean, north as far as the
60th parallel, compose the only valuable agricultural
territory beyond India and China. , Europe, which is
merely the western margin of Asia, is all fruitful in the
A. M. E.
28 I
south; but on the north its fruitfulness terminates at the
60th or 62d parallel. Africa has simply a border of use-
ful soil round three-fourths of its sea-coast, with some
detached portions of tolerably good land in its interior.
Of the 31,000,000 of square miles which these three
continents occupy, we cannot find, after some calcula-
tion, that the productive soil cónstitutes so much as one-
third, and of that third a part is but poor.
Now, in estimating the useful soil in America we
reject — I. Most of the region north of the latitude of 53°,
amounting to 2,600,000 square miles; 2. A belt of barren
land about 300 miles broad by IOOO in length, or 300,-
OOO Square miles, lying on the east side of the Rocky
Mountains; 3. A belt of arid land of similar extent sit-
uated on the east side of the Andes, between 24° and
40° of south latitude; 4. The desert shore of Peru,
equal to 100,000 square miles; 5. An extent of 100,000
square miles for the arid country of Lower California
and Sonora; and 6. An extent of 500,000 square miles
for the summits of the Andes and the south extremity of
Patagonia. These make an aggregate of 3,900,000
Square miles; and this, deducted from 13,900,000, leaves
IO,OOO,OOO square miles as the quantity of useful soil in
the New World.
The productive powers of the soil depend on two cir-
cumstances, heat and moisture; and these increase as we
approach the equator. Now, it appears that the pro-
ductive or rather nutritive powers of the soil will be
correctly indicated by combining the ratios of the heat
and the moisture, expressing the former of these in de-
grees of the centigrade scale. Something, we know,
depends on the distribution of the heat through the dif-
ferent seasons; but as we do not aim at minute accuracy,
this may be overlooked.
Latitude. Inches of rain. Mean heat. Product. Ratio.
6O I6 7 II 2 4.
45 29 I4. 4O6 I5
O 96 28 2688 IOO
Thus, if the description of food were a matter of in-
difference, the same extent of ground which supports
four persons at the latitude of 60°, would support 15 at
the latitude of 45°, and IOO at the equator. But the
food preferred will not always be that which the land
yields in greatest abundance; and another most im-
portant qualifying circumstance must be considered —
it is labor which renders the ground fruitful, and the
power of the human frame to sustain labor is greatly
diminished in hot climates. We shall therefore consider
the capacity of the land to support population as propor-
tional to the third power of the cosine (or radius of gyra-
tion) of the latitude. It will therefore stand thus in
round numbers: —
Latitude,
Productiveness,
OO
IOO
15° 30° 450 600
90 65 35 12%
In England the density of population is about 389
persons per Square mile; but England is in some measure
the workshop of the world, and supports, by her foreign
trade, a greater population than her soil can nourish.
In France the density of the population is about 177; in
Germany it varies from IOO to 200. On these grounds,
we may assume that the number of persons which a
square mile can properly sustain without generating the
pressure of a redundant population is 150 at the latitude
of 50°, and 26 is the sum which expresses the productive-
ness of this parallel. Then taking, for the sake of sim-
plicity, 35 as the index of the productiveness of the useful
soil beyond 30° in America, and 85 as that of the country
within the parallel of 30° on each side of the equator,
we have about 4,000,000 square miles, each capable of
supporting 200 persons, and 5,700,000 square miles, each
capable of supporting 490 persons. It follows that if
the natural resources of America were fully developed it
would afford sustenance to 3,600,000,000 of inhabitants,
a number nearly five times as great as the entire mass of
human beings now existing upon the globe
I. —AMERICAN LITERATURE. –INTRODUCTORY.
The following is flom the pen of a distinguished Eng-
lishman, and as “a prophet is not without honor Save in
his own country,” we give his estimate of our literature:
The literature of the United States, while still half
our own, is pervaded, to a degree not easily estimated,
by a foreign element. The relationship between
Englishmen and Americans, making them ignorant of
their mutual ignorance, operates against the soundness
of their judgment on each other's work. Community
of speech, which ought to be a bond of union, is often
a medium of offence; for it dispenses with a study of
the language, and in studying a language we learn
something also of the habits and social histories which
are reflected in, and serve to interpret, distinctly alien
literatures. Facility of travel, making it easy to acquire
first impressions, is a temptation to such hasty estimates
as many of the most accomplished Americans have
formed of England, and many of the most accomplished
Englishmen have formed of America. The least satis-
factory works of some of their foremost writers, as Mr.
Hawthorne's Old Home and Mr. Emerson's Znglish
7"raits, are those associated with their transatlantic ex-
periences. But of the mistakes on both sides, ludi-
crous and grave, we have had perhaps the larger share.
Few Americans have ever so misconceived a British
statesman as we misconceived Mr. Lincoln, or gone so
far astray in regard to any crisis of our history as we
did in reference to the moving springs and results of
their Civil War. The source of this greater ignorance
lies not so much in greater indifference as in greater
difficulty. England is one, compact and stable. The
United States are many, vast, various, and in perpetual
motion. An old country is a study, but a new coun-
try is a problem. Antiquity is brought to our firesides
in the classics, till Athens and Rome
“To us are nothing novel, nothing strange.”
We are more familiar with the Acropolis than with the
Western Capitol—with Mt. Soracte than with the
Catskills. Our scholars know more about Babylon than
about Chicago. Dante immortalises for us the Middle
Age; Plantagenet England is revived in Chaucer; the
inner life of modern England has a voice in Tennyson
and the Brownings. Where is the poet who will reveal
to us “the secrets of a land,” in some respects indeed
like our own, but separated in other respects by differ-
ences which the distance of 3000 miles of ocean only
half represents; which, starting on another basis, has
developed itself with energies hitherto unknown in
directions hitherto unimagined? Who will become the
interpreter of a race which has in two centuries diffused
itself over a continent, the resources of which are not
more than half discovered, and which has to absorb
within itself and harmonise the discordant elements of
other races for whom the resources of the Old World
are well-nigh exhausted? Caret vate sacro; but it does
not want poetical aspirations as well as practical daring:
“This land o' ourn I tell ye’s got to be
A better country than man ever see;
I feel my sperit swellin' with a cry
That seems to say, ‘Break forth and prophesy.”
O strange New World, thet yet wast never young,
Whose youth from thee by gripin’ want was wrung,
Brown foundlin' o’ the woods, whose baby bed
Was prowled round by the Injun's cracklin' tread,
An' who grew'st strong thru'shifts an’ wants an’ pains,
Nursed by stern men with empires in their brains.”
282
A M E
II.-Cox DITIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF AMERICAN
I.ITERATURE.
The number of writers who have acquired some
amount of well-founded reputation in the United States
is startling. The mere roll of their names would ab-
sorb a great part of the space here available for an esti-
mate of the works which best represent them. Mr.
Griswold informs us that he has in his own library
more than 700 volumes of native novels and tales; his
list of “remarkable men º’ is like Homer’s catalogue of
ships. Almost every Yankee town has indeed its local
representatives of literature, reflecting in prose or verse
the impulses and tendencies of the time. But while
America has given birth to more than a fair proportion
of eminent theologians, jurists, economists, and natur-
alists, hardly any great modern country, excepting Rus-
sia, has in the same number of years produced fewer
works of general interest likely to become classical ;
and Bishop Berkeley’s prophecy of another golden age
of arts in the Empire of the West still awaits fulfill-
ment. This fact, mainly attributable to obvious history
causes, is frankly recognised by her own best authors,
one of whom has confessed — “From Washington,
proverbially the city of magnificent distances, through
all its cities, states, and territories, ours is a country of
beginnings, of projects, of designs, of expectations.”
The conditions under which the communities of the
New World were established, and the terms on which
they have hitherto existed, have been unfavorable to
Art. The religious and commercial enthusiasms of the
first adventurers to her shores, supplying themes for
the romancers of a later age, were themselves antag-
onistic to romance. The spirit which tore down the
aisles of St. Regulus, and was revived in England in a
reaction against music, painting, and poetry, the Pil-
grim Fathers bore with them in the “Mayflower,” and
planted across the seas. The life of the early colonists
left no leisure for refinement. They had to conquer
nature before admiring it, to feed and clothe before an-
alysing themselves. The ordinary cares of existence
beset them to the exclusion of its embellishments.
While Dryden, Pope, and Addison were polishing
stanzas and adding grace to English prose, they were
felling trees, navigating rivers, and fertilising valleys.
We had time, amid our wars, to form new measures, to
balance canons of criticism, to discuss systems of phil-
osophy; with them
* “The need that pressed sorest
Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest.”
The struggle for independence, absorbing the whole
energies of the nation, developed military genius, states-
manship, and oratory, but was hostile to what is called
olite literature. The people of the United States have
ad to act their Iliad, ...? they have not had time to
sing it. They have had to piece together the disſecta
membra of various races, sects, and parties, in a 7tavro-
Trºutov to Atrévôv. Their genius is an unwedded
Vulcan, melting down all the elements of civilisation in
a gigantic furnace. An enlightened people in a new
land, “where almost everyone has facilities elsewhere
unknown for making his fortune,” it is not to be won-
dered that the pursuit of wealth has been the leading
impulse ; nor is it perhaps to be regretted that much of
their originality has been expended upon inventing
machines instead of manufacturing verses, or that their
religion itself has taken a practical turn. One of their
Qwn authors confesses that the “common New England
life is still a lean impoverished life, in distinction from a
rich and suggestive one;” but it is there alone that the
speculative and artistic tendencies of recent years have
found room and occasion for development. Öur travel-
lers find a peculiar charm in the manly force and rough
adventurous spirit of the Far West, but the poetry of
the pioneer is unconscious. The attractive culture of
the South has been limited in extent and degree. The
hothouse fruit of wealth and leisure, it has never struck
its roots deeply into native soil. Since the Revolution
days, when Virginia was the nurse of statesmen, the few
thinkers of America born south of Mason and Dixon's
line — outnumbered by those belonging to the single
State of Massachusetts—have commonly migrated to
New York or Boston in search of a university training.
In the world of letters at least, the Southern States have
shown by reflected light; nor is it too much to say, that
mainly by their connection with the North the Carolinas
have been saved from sinking to the level of Mexico or
the Antilles. Whether we look to India or Louisiana, it
would seem that the tropical sun takes the poetic fire out
of Anglo-Saxon veins, and the indolence which is the
concomitant of despotism has the same benumbing
effect. Like the Spartan marshalling his helots, the
planter lounging among his slaves was made dead to
Art by a paralysing sense of his own superiority. All
the best transatlantic literature is inspired by the spirit
of confidence — often of over-confidence — in labor. It
has only flourished freely in a free soil; and for almost
all its vitality and aspirations, its comparatively scant
performance and large promise, we must turn to New
England. Its defects and merits are those of the
national character as developed in the Northern States,
and we must seek for an explanation of its peculiarities
in the physical and moral circumstances which surround
them.
When we remember that the Romans lived under the
sky of Italy, that the character of the modern Swiss is
like that of the modern Dutch, we shall be on our guard
against attributing too much to the influence of external
mature. Another race than the Anglo-Saxon would
doubtless have made another America ; but we cannot
avoid the belief that the climate and soil of America
have had something to do in moulding the Anglo-Saxon
race, in making its features approximate to those of the
Red Indian, and stamping it with a new character. An
electric atmosphere, and a temperature ranging at Some
seasons from 50° to IOO9 in twenty-four hours, have
contributed largely to engender that restlessness which
is so conspicuous “a note" of the people. A territory
which seems boundless as the ocean has been a material
agent in fostering an ambition unbridled by traditionary
restraints. When European poets and essayists write of
nature, it is to contrast her permanence with the muta-
bility of human life. We talk of the everlasting hills,
the perennial fountains, the ever-recurring seasons.
“Damma tamen celeres reparant coelestia lunae—nos ubi
decidimus”— In the same spirit Byron contemplates
the sea and Tennyson a running stream. In America,
on the other hand, it is the extent of mature that is dwelt
upon the infinity of space, rather than the infinity of
time, is opposed to the limited rather than to the tran-
sient existence of man. Nothing strikes a traveller in
that country so much as this feature of magnitude. The
rivers like rolling lakes, the lakes which are inland seas,
the forests, the plains, Niagara itself, with its world of
waters, owe their magnificence to their immensity ; and
by a transference, not unnatural although fallacious, the
Americans generally have modelled their ideas of art
after the same standard of size. Their wars, their
hotels, their language, are pitched on the huge scale of
their distances. “Orphaned of the solemn inspiration of
antiquity,” they gain in surface what they have lost in,
age; in hope, what they have lost in memory.
“ ——That untravelled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever wher: they move,”
A M E
283,
is all their own; and they have the arena and tire expect-
ations of a continent to set against the culture and the
ancestral voices of a thousand years. Where English-
men remember, Americans anticipate. In thought and
action they are ever rushing into empty spaces. Except
in a few of the older States, a family mansion is rarely
rooted to the same town or district; and the tie which
unites one generation with another being easily broken,
the want of continuity in life breeds a want of continuity
in ideas. The American mind delights in speculative and
practical, Social and political experiments, as Shakerism,
Mormonism, Pantagamy; and a host of authors, from
Emerson to Walt Whitman, have tried to glorify every
mode of human life from the transcendental to the brutish.
The habit of instability, fostered by the rapid vicissitudes
of their commercial life and the melting of one class into
another, drifts away all landmarks but that of a tempor-
ary public opinion; and where there is little time for ver-
ification and the study of details, men satisfy their curi-
osity with crude generalisations. The great literary fault
of the Americans thus comes to be impatience. The
majority of them have never learnt that “raw haste is
half-sister to delay;” that “works done least rapidly, art
most cherishes.” The makeshifts which were at first a
necessity with the Northern settlers have grown into a
custom. They adopt ten half measures instead of one
whole one; and, beginning bravely, like the grandilo-
quent preambles to their Constitutions, end sometimes in
the sublime, sometimes in the ridiculous.
Many of the artistic as well as many of the social
peculiarities of the United States may doubtless be
traced to their form of government. After the most
obvious wants of life are provided for, Democracy stim-
ulates the production of literature. When the heredi-
tary privileges of rank have ceased to be recognised, the
utility, if not the beauty, of knowledge becomes con-
spicuous. The intellectual world is spurred into activity:
there is a race in which the prize is to the swift. Every-
one tries to draw the eyes of others by innumerable
imperfect efforts with a large insignificant sum total.
Art is abundant and inferior: whitewashed wood and
brick pass for marble, and rhythmical spasms ſor poetry.
It is acknowledged that the prevailing defect of Aristo-
cratic literatures is formality; they are apt to be precise
and restricted. A Democratic literature runs the risk of
lawlessness, inaccuracy, and irreverence. From both
these extremes the Athenian, the Florentine, aid the
Elizabethan classes were preserved by the artistic inspi-
rations of a flexible tradition. The one is exemplified
in the so-called Augustan ages of letters, in the France of
Louis XIV. and the England of Queen Anne, when men
of genius, caring more to perfect their style than to
establish the truth, more to captivate the taste than to
stir the passions, moved with clipt wings in a charmed
circle of thought. The other has its best illustration in
the leaders of our own romantic schools, but its most
conspicuous development in America; a country which
is not only democratic but youthful without the medesty
of youth, unmellowed by the past and untrammeſſed by
authority, where the spirit of adventure is unrestrained
by feelings of personal loyalty—where order and regu-
larity of all kinds are apt to be misnamed subservience
—where vehemence, vigor, and wit are commen, good
taste, profundity, and imagination rare;— a ce-intry
whose untamed material infects the people, and diverts
them from the task of civilisation to the desire of con-
quest.
American literature is cramped on another side by
the spirit of imitation. It has been in great measure
an offshoot or prolongation of our own. As English
sculptors study at Rome and Naples, the most promi-
nent Western artists in every department have almost
invariably inaugurated their careers by travelling in
Europe, and writing descriptions of the foreign lands
where they have found their richest intellectual culture.
They have sought the sources, the themes, the rules,
and the sanction of their art in the Old World, and
their highest ambition, like that of all colonists, has
hitherto been to receive a favorable verdict, not from
the country of their birth, but from that of their ances-
tors. Even Franklin — in some respects an American.
of the Americans — was in philosophy a practical disci-
ple of Locke, as Jeſſerson was of the French Revolu-
tion. “The literary genius of Great Britain,” says De
Tocqueville, “still darts its rays into the recesses of
the West. The small number of men who
write are English in substance, and still more in form.”
Of the great number of men who have written in
America since the date of this criticism, only a few
have written much to confute it. Washington Irving,
who, in the course of four distinct visits, spent much
of his life in Europe, only escapes from the influence
of Addison in his Ánickerbocker and Dutch sketches.
On land at least, Cooper — though in many respects
an original writer — everywhere remembers Scott. As
in the works of the Scotch novelist, the semi-barbarous.
feudal spirit is represented in conflict with modern law,
in those of the American the enterprise of New Eng-
land is struggling against the ruggedness of nature and,
a savage life. The writers of the last thirty years have
been making strenuous, sometimes spasmodic, efforts
after originality, but they are still affected by transat-
lantic associations. In the style of Mr. Motley we
cannot help observing the stamp of Carlyle. The
Transcendental movement begun by Emerson is ad-
mitted to have derived its first impulse from Sartor
A'esartus, and among the eccentricities of its leading
followers none is more remarkable than their mania for
German and Oriental quotations. The tyranny which
five centuries’ load of classics in the same tongue exer-
cises over the mind of a nation not yet a century old, is
very much strengthened by the non-existence of am.
international copyright, which leads to the intellectual
market being glutted with stolen goods. As long as a.
publisher in Boston or New York can republish a good
book written in Edinburgh or London without paying
for it, he is likely to prefer an undertaking which in-
volves no risk and comparatively no outlay, to another
which involves both ; that is, the republication of the
English to the first publication of an American book;
for the English book has already attained its reputa.
tion, and its popularity in America is secured, while
the American book, for the copyright of which he has
to pay, has, except in the case of a few authors, still to
win its spurs. If the people of the United States had
spoken a language of their own, it is probable they
would have gained in originality; as it is, they are only
now beginning to sign their intellectual declaration of
independence,—a fact confessed among the latest words
of their own greatest prose artist: — “Bred in English
habits of thought as most of us are, we have not yet.
modified our instincts to the necessities of our new
modes of life. Our philosophers have not yet taught
us what is best, nor have our poets Sung to us what is.
most beautiful in the kind of life that we must lead, and
therefore we still read the old English wisdom, and,
harp upon the ancient strings.”
III. —EARLIER AMERICAN LITERATURE.
We may trace the influence of the foregoing control-
ling facts or tendencies, subject to various phases of per-
sonal power through the three great periods under which,
Anglo-American history obviously ſalls: — The Colonials.
the Revolutionary, and that of the 19th Century.
284
A. M. E.
I. Z'he Colonial Period.— Little of interest in the
world of letters has come down to us from the 17th
century in the West. Sandy's Oz'id, translated on the
banks of the James River, dedicated to Charles I., and
published 1626, is worthy of note as the first contribu-
tion to English literature from America.
same date the Welsh Puritan Vaughn sent home his
Golden A'leece from Newfoundland, and Captain Smith
gave to the world his descriptions of Virginia. But the
earliest verse that has a real claim to be regarded as
American is a doggerel list, by an anonymous author, of
New England's annoyances, which, if we remember the
date—a generation after Spenser had celebrated “the
Indian Peru. ” in his Faery Queen — will confirm our
view of the backwoodsman's want of leisure for “pol-
ishing his stanza : ”—
“The place where we live is a wilderness wood,
Where grass is much wanting that’s fruitful and good.
3& + + * +
If fresh meat be wanting to fill up our dish,
We have carrots and pumpkins, and turnips and fish;
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it was not for pumpkins we should be undone.”
A little later we have a Puritan version of the Psalms,
the worst of many bad; and about 1650 the poems of
Anne Bradstreet and Benjamin Thomson, worthy of
mention, but scarcely readable. In prose are relics of
the sermons and controversies of Roger Williams and
John Cotton and Eliot, the apostle of the Indians, with
the ponderous Magmalia and witch denunciations of
Cotton Mather. The main literary event of the cen-
tury was the foundation (1636) of Harvard University.
That of Yale followed at a long interval, and subse-
quently those of New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Prince-
tom. In all new countries industrial and commercial
interests are at first the strongest. The febrile activity
produced by fear of a sterile future leaves little room for
speculative imagination. But in the New World, col-
onised in part by adventurers, in part by religious refu-
gees and enthusiasts, another influence was from the
first at work. When her solitudes began to give place
to cities, the brains of her people were expended on the
farm or the exchange with a zeal materially modified by
the spirit and formulae of the faith which led the ſound-
ers of the Northern States across the sea, and continued
to infuse a religious element into their enterprises. This
element, which elevated the settlers of New England
above ordinary emigrants, adding to their strength and
giving a faster dye to their morality, was yet, in its orig-
inal form, no more favorable to freedom or variety of
thought than the industrialism by which it was sur-
rounded. But it begat and fostered the Puritan theo-
logical literature which was concentrated in the massive
yet incisive treatises and discussions of Jonathan
Edwards of Connecticut—(1703–1758) — who, if not,
as asserted by American panegyrists, “the first man of
the world during the second quarter of the 18th cen-
tury,” was yet, by the clear vigor of his thought and
the force of its expression, one of the foremost figures
of that era. An estimate of his rank as a theologian
belongs to a distinct branch of the history of American
iiterature. It is enough here to refer to the testimony
of all competent judges as to the singular lucidity of his
style, and to that of his contemporaries as to the fervor
of his eloquence and the modest simplicity of his life.
Passages of his occasional writings, as the description of
his future wife, evince a “sweetness and light” of tem-
per not always associated with the views of which he
was and remains the most salient English advocate. A
slightly junior contemporary of Edwards, the exponent
xcer' &#oxrïv of the other — that is, the secular side of
early American life—was destined to see the end of one
About the
*.
and play a prominent part in opening another era of his
country's history. Benjamin Franklin, as long as Utili-
tarian º, endures, will be a name to conjure
with. It is clarum et zºenerabile, though its owner was
endowed with as little as possible for a great man of the
“faculty divine.” Franklin's autobiography, the details
of which need not find place here, is as romantic as the
life of an unromantic person can be. The incidents of
the young candle-moulder — the printer’s apprentice—
the ballad-monger wisely discouraged by the wise pater-
nal criticism, “Versemakers are generally beggals” —
the runaway, eating rolls on the Philadelphia street—
his struggling life in London with Ralph of the Dunciad
—his return, “correcting the erratum ” of his infidelities
by marriage with his old Pennsylvania friend—his suc-
cess as a printer, economist, statesman, and diplomatist
—his triumphs in natural and political philosophy,
clenched in Turgot's line, adapted from Manilius—
“Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis” —
his examination before the House of Commons, result-
ing in the repeal of the Stamp Act, when Lord Chatham
spoke of him as one who was “an honor not to England.
only, but to human nature”— his signature of the Dec-
laration of Independence—his ministry in France and
popular triumph with Voltaire, who said, “Je n'ai pu
résister au désir de parler un moment la langue de Frank-
lin "– the acclamations of shouting multitudes on his
return home — Mirabeau’s announcement of his death
(in 1790, in his eighty-fourth year) to the assembly—
“the genius which has freed America, and poured a flood
of light over Europe, has returned to the bosom of the
divinity”—are elementary facts for schoolboy history.
They are the records of the successive stages of the great-
est success achieved in modern times by the genius of
common-sense, integrity, and industry indomitable.
Franklin's experiments and physical discoveries form a
chapter in the history of science; but half of his fame
even in this field is due to the precision and clearness of
the manner in which they are announced. “The most
profound observations,” says Lord Jeffrey, “are sug-
gested by him as if they were the most obvious and nat-
ural way of accounting for phenomena.” The same
literary merit characterises the financial pamphlets and
treatises which first brought him into celebrity. Both
are marked by the same spirit, the love of the Useful,
which was his passion through life. Franklin follows
Bacon to an extreme opposed to that of the Platonists,
in decrying abstractions. Archytas is said to have apolo-
gised for inventing the arch. Franklin is ashamed to
have wasted time over pure mathematics in his “magical
squares.” His aim is everywhere to bring down philo-
sophy, like the lightning, from heaven to earth, “il/us-
trans commoda cita.” His ethics — those of Confucius
or the Seven Sages, modified by the experience and the
circumstances of a later age—are embodied in the most
famous of popular annuals, Poor Richard’s Almanacé,
in which for twenty-six years he taught his readers (ris-
ing to the number of 10,000) “the way to be healthy
and wealthy and wise,” by following simple utilitarian
rules, set forth in plain incisive prose and rhyme, rend-
ered attractive by a vein of quaint humor and the homely
illustrations always acceptable to his countrymen. The
same train of thought appears in the “Whistle,” among
the letters from Passy, where his persistent deification of
thrift appears side by side with graceful compliments to
Mesdames Helvetius and Brillon, records of the after-
math oſ sentiment that often marks a green old age.
Franklin remains the most practical of philosophers in
perhaps the most practical of nations.
2. The A’evolution Period.—It has been often re-
marked that periods of political national crisis are more
A M E
285
favorable to the preparation than to the actual production
of literature. Wordsworth's assertion, that poetry is
the outcome of emotion recollected in tranquillity, applies
with slight modification also to artistic prose. The de-
mands for instant action on the reflective powers sinks into
abeyance, but a stormy season is the seed-time of a later
harvest. There is only one exercise of the imagination
that it directly stimulates — that of the orator; and the
conditions of his success, save in a few instances, make
a drain on his posthumous reputation. In reading even
the greatest speeches of the past, divested of the living
present which gave them color and force, we find it
difficult to account for the effect which they are known
to have produced. They are the ashes or the fossils
of genius. Little that is of permanent literary value is
left us of the harangues that were the trumpet-calls of
patriotism during the American Revolutionary War.
The triumphs of Patrick Henry, who “wielded at will
that young democracy,” are commemorated in the judi-
cious biography of Wirt, but few of his orations are ac-
curately preserved; and of the speeches of James Otis,
which were compared to “flames of fire,” we have
merely a tradition. His pamphlet (1762), entitled A
Vindication of the conduct of the House of Æepresenta-
tives, is considered to contain the germ of the Declara-
tion of Independence. Among the considerable efforts
of eloquence, those of Fisher Ames are worthy of note
as being directed in great measure against the excesses
of democracy. The master-minds of the era were the
statesmen and jurists, who fought for the free soil, sunk
the deep foundations, and reared the superstructure of
the new Commonwealth. The history of America is a
distinct theme. It must suffice here to mention, as
claiming recognition in the field of letters, Washington
himself, in his clear and incisive though seldom highly-
polished correspondence; his biographer John Marshall,
chief justice of the supreme court from 1801 to 1835,
one of the early pilots of the state, who left behind him
a noble and stainless name, and laid down the first
principles of that international code afterwards elabo-
rated by Wheaton, Madison, John Jay, the elder Adams,
and Alexander Hamilton, during the war Wash-
ington’s “most confidential aid,” afterwards the
presiding genius of the movement represented
by the Federalist, the organ for the anti-demo-
cratic party. To this he contributed three-fourths of
the material, marked, as are all his papers and speeches,
by originality of thought, breadth of view, and purity of
style. As secretary of the treasury, he became perhaps
the greatest of financiers. The general judgment of his
countrymen acquiesces in the terms of the tribute paid
to his memory by Guizot. “He must be classed among
the men who have best known the vital principles and
fundamental conditions of a government worthy of its
name and mission.” Of Hamilton’s numerous histori-
cal sketches, the most celebrated is his letter to Colonel
Laurens giving an account of the fate of Major André,
in which refinement of feeling and inflexible impartiality
of view are alike conspicuous. The great and unhap-
pily the bitter antagonist of the Federalists is one of the
most conspicuous figures in the history of American
thought. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), . President
from 1801 to 1809, is the representative in chief of the
revolutionary spirit of his age and country. While his
rival compeers stood firmly on the defensive against the
encroachments of an arbitrary government, his desire
was, in politics as in speculation, generally, to break
with the past. Inspired with patriotic zeal by Patrick
Henry’s denunciations of the Stamp Act, he came for-
ward prominently in 1769 as a member of the Colonial
Assembly of Virginia. In 1776 the main part of the
responsibility of drawing up the Declaration of Inde-
pendence fell upon him. In 1784 he was appointed
minister of the congress in Paris, where he spent the
greater part of six years, and brought back an admira-
tion for those phases of the French Revolution from
which the more temperate judgments of Hamilton and
Fisher Ames had recoiled. He threw himself heart
and soul into the arms of the Democratic party, and in
the constitutional struggle that ensued his keener sense
of the direction in which popular sympathies were tend-
ing, with the weight of his half physical energies, gave
him the ascendancy over the wider knowledge and
more far-seeing intellects of his adversaries. Jefferson
might be termed the Danton of the West, but his forte
lay not so much in oratory as in political management
and incisive vivacity. More perhaps than any other
great statesman of his age, he aspired to be an author,
to which title the best passages in his AVotes on Vir-
ginia, his Autobiography, and Correspondence, give him
a fair claim. His descriptions of scenery in the first are
always pleasing and generally graphic. His sketches
of Continental society are lively, and his occasional
flights of fancy, as the dialogue between the head and
heart, at least ingenious. His religion and ethics were
those of his friend Tom Paine and the Encyclopedie.
English philology and literature were during this period
represented by the famous Lindley Murray and Noah
Webster (1788–1805), the author of the best dictionary
of our language that has appeared since Johnson’s. In
natural science, the two Bertrams; Alexander Wilson,
the Ornithologist; and Audubon, the literary glory of
Louisiana, whose descriptions of animate nature rival
those of Buffon, are illustrious names.
IV. —THE LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CEN-
'TURY.
Prose Writings.
1. In a rapid estimate of the literature of this prolific
age we can only signalise its contributions to the several
branches of physical and mental science. The United
States have during the last two generations been justly
proud of the names of Morton and Schoolcraft in eth-
mology, of Bowditch in mathematics, of Sullivan and
Dana in chemistry and mineralogy. Their classical
scholarship, which hardly competes with that of Eng-
land, has yet been fairly maintained by Everett, Felton,
Woolsey, Anthon, and Robinson. Dr. Marsh is an ac-
complished English scholar, while Professor Whitney is
a learned and accurate philologist, whose researches in
Sanscrit are well known and appreciated by European
Orientalists. The metaphysical schools of Locke and
Reid are nowhere better represented than in America by
Dr. Bowen and Dr. N. Porter. The place of Marshall
as a jurist has been worthily filled by Chief-Justice Kent
and Judge Story; the latter of whom ranks, by virtue
of his essay on classical studies and his graceful descrip-
tions of natural scenery, among the most accomplished
of the numerous professional men who have in the New
World devoted their leisure hours to lighter literature.
The inhabitants of the United States have always been
noted for remarkable fluency, sometimes a Superfluency,
of speech. The early years of the century were illus-
trated by the fiery zeal of Rudolph and the practical
force and occasional impassioned eloquence of Henry
Clay. The great political controversies inherited from
the preceding age found their most conspicuous popular
exponents in two leading minds laying claim to diverse
kinds of greatness, and destined to be in almost incess-
ant antagonism. John C. Calhoun, the most illustrious
representative of the Southern States, of whose rights,
real or imaginary, he was during his life the foremost
champion, was by education and choice a professional
statesman. Secretary of War in 1817, and Vice-Presi-
.286
A M E
dent of the Commonwealth in 1824, he resigned the
latter office on occasion of the dispute about the tariff
law of that year, to become a leader of the Opposition;
and in vindicating the attitude of South Carolina was
the first to lay the strands of the future Secession war.
The most accomplished modern apologist for slavery, it
is probable that he only hastened the conflict between
Opposing principles which was sooner or later inevitable.
Calhoun’s eloquence, as attested by his auditors and the
numerous speeches and papers preserved in the six vol-
umes of his published works, was notable for its earnest-
ness and gravity, the terse polish of its manner, for
philosophic... generalisations and analytical dialectic.
His prevailing sincerity and candor have made his
memory respected by those farthest removed from him
in sentiment and opinion. Daniel Webster, on
the whole the grandest orator of the New World,
was during, the greater part of his career the
champion of Massachusetts and the asserter of her
policy. His defence of that State in the Senate (1830)
against General Hayne of Carolina, and his oratorical
duel with Calhoun (1838), resulting in the temporary over-
throw of the doctrine of nullification, are among the most
remarkable triumphs of debate in history. Some of
his pleadings on criminal trials have an almost terrible
power. But his literary genius and richness of illus-
tration found freer scope in his famous appeal for the
Greeks in 1823, his great speech (1820) on the second
centennial anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims,
or his address (1825) on laying the corner-stone of
Bunker Hill monument. Webster’s eloquence, every-
where solid, massive, and on great occasions glowing
with a lurid light, is not the mere record of half-for-
gotten strifes; it is “vital in every part,” and belongs
to the permanent literature of his country, in whose
political arena he was during his life perhaps the most
powerful actor. The art of making commemorative
speeches, technically called “orations,” has been culti-
vated in North America to excess. The great master
in this species of composition was Edward Everett,
distinguished by his early association with Lord Byron
in Greece, the high dignities—governor of Massa-
chusetts, minister to the court of St. James's, and presi-
dent of Harvard—to which he attained, and by the
variety of his accomplishments. Mr. Everett was for
ten years a useful member of Congress. In his literary
work he displayed an almost fatal fluency, having con-
tributed to the “North American Review,” of which he
was for some time editor, upwards of a hundred articles
in the space of a few years. These articles are inevi-
tably of unequal merit, but they everywhere evince the
ripe scholarship of a highly cultivated mind. The
volume by which he is best remembered—twenty-seven
Orations—published in 1836, is marked by the same.
characteristics. Discoursing on a wide range of sub-
jects —among which the refrains are America and
Greece, the “Mayflower,” the Progress of Discovery,
Patriotism, Reform, the Republic, Concord, Lexington,
and the inevitable Bunker Hill—these speeches are
always able, but seldom inspiring: carefully elaborated
and richly adorned, they are the production of the first
of rhetoricians rather than a genuine orator.
V.—SUMMARY.
The critics of one nation must, to a certain extent,
regard the works of another from an outside point of
view. Few are able to divest themselves wholly of the
influence of local standards; and this is pre-eminently
the case when the early efforts of a young country are
submitted to the judgment of an older country, strong
in its prescriptive rights, and intolerant of changes the
drifts of which it is unable or unwilling to appreciate.
English critics are apt to bear down on the writers and
thinkers of the New World with a sort of aristocratic
hauteur; they are perpetually reminding them of their
immaturity and their disregard of the golden mean.
Americans, on the other hand, are hard to please.
Ordinary men among them are as sensitive to foreign,
and above all to British, censure, as the irritabile genus
of other lands. Mr. Emerson is permitted to impress
home truths on his countrymen, as “Your American
eagle is very well; but beware of the American pea-
cock.” Such remarks are not permitted to Englishmen;
if they point to any flaws in transatlantic manners or
ways of thinking with an effort after politeness, it is
“the good-natured cynicism of well-to-do age;” if they
commend transatlantic institutions or achievements, it
is, according to Mr. Lowell, “with that pleasant Euro-
pean air of self-compliment in condescending to be
pleased by American merit which we find so conciliating.”
Now that the United States have reached their full major-
ity, it is time that England should cease to assume the
attitude of their guardian, and time that they should cease
to be on the alert to resent the assumption. Foremost
among the more attractive features of transatlantic litera-
tureisits freshness. The authority which is the guide of
old nations constantly threatens to become tyrannical:
they wear their traditions like a chain; and, in the canonisa-
tion of laws of taste, the creative powers are depressed.
Even in England we write under fixed conditions; with
the fear of critics before our eyes, we are all bound to
cast our ideas into similar moulds, and the name of “free-
thinker” has grown into a term of reproach. Bunyan’s
Jºi/grim’s Progress is perhaps the last English book
written without a thought of being reviewed. There is
a gain in the habit of self-restraint fostered by this state
of things; but there is a loss in the consequent lack of
spontaneity; and we may learn something from a litera-
ture which is ever ready for adventures. In America
the love of uniformity gives place to impetuous impulses;
the most extreme sentiments are made audible, the most
noxious “have their day, and cease to be;” and truth
being left to vindicate itself, the overthrow of error,
though more gradual, may at last prove more complete.
A New England poet can write with confidence of his
country as the land
“Where no one suffers loss or bleeds
For thoughts that men call heresies.”
Another feature of American literature is its comprehen-
sizeness: what it has lost in depth it has gained in
breadth. Addressing a vast audience, it appeals to uni-
versal sympathies. In the Northern States, where
comparatively few have leisure to write well, almost
every man, woman, and child can read and does read.
Books are to be found in every log-hut, and public ques-
tions are discussed by every scavenger. During the
war, when the Lowell factory girls were writing verses,
the “Biglow Papers” were being recited in every smithy.
The consequence is, that (setting aside the newspapers)
there is little that is sectional in the popular religion or
literature; it exalts and despises no class, and almost
wholly ignores the lines that in other countries divide
the upper ten thousand and the lower ten million.
Where manners make men the people are proud of their
peerage, but they blush for their boors. In the New
World there are no “Grand Seigniors,” and no human
vegetables; and if there are fewer giants, there are also
fewer mannikins. American poets recognize no essen-
tial distinction between the “Village Blacksmith ” and
the “caste of Vere de Vere.” Burns speaks for the one;
Byron and Tennyson for the other; Longfellow, to the
extent of his genius, for both. The same spirit which
glorifies labor denounces every form of despotism but
A M E — A M H
287
that of the multitude. American slavery, being an
anachronism based on the antipathies of race, was worse
than Athenian slavery. But there is no song of an
Athenian slave. When the ancients were unjust to their
inferiors, they were so without moral disquietude : the
lic had got into the soul. Christianity, which substi-
tuted the word “brother” for “barbarian,” first gave
meaning to the word “humanity.” But the feudalism
of the Middle Ages long contended successfully against
the higher precepts of the church: the teaching of Frois-
sart held its ground against that of Langland. The
hero-worship of our greatest living author is apt to de-
generate into a reassertion of the feudal spirit. The
aspirations of our descendants in the West point, on the
other hand, to a freedom which is in danger of being
corrupted by licence. But if the vulgarism of dema-
gogic excess is restrained and overcome by the good
taste and culture of her nobler minds, we may anticipate
for the literature of America, under the mellowing influ-
ences of time, an illustrious ſuture.
AMERICUS, a considerable town of Sumter County,
Ga. Its chief trade is in cotton and agricultural produce.
The town is the center of a rich agricultural country,
and the amount of business done in the distribution of
necessities and the collection and shipment of country
produce is considerable. It has banks, Schools, churches
railroad and telegraph connections, and is rapidly
putting on the appearance of a progressive city. It has
of late been especially thriving, and its population is
now about 6,000.
AMERIGO VESPUCCI. See VESPUCCI.
AMERSFOORT, a town of Holland, in the province
of Utrecht, situated 12 miles E.N.E. of the city of that
name, on the Eem, which here is navigable. Popula-
tion, I 3,200.
AMERSHAM, or AGMONDESHAM, an old market
town in Buckinghamshire, pleasantly situated in the
valley of the Misbourn, a small tributary of the Colne,
32 miles from Buckingham and 26 from London. Pop-
ulation of parish in 1871, 3259.
AMES, FISHER, an eminent American statesman and
political writer, son of Nathaniel Ames, a physician,
was born at Dedham, in Massachusetts, on 9th April
1758. He studied at Harvard college, where he grad-
uated in 1774. After practising the law for some little
time, he abandoned that profession for the more congen-
ial pursuit of politics, and in 1788 became a member
of the Massachusetts convention for ratifying the con-
stitution. He died on the 4th July, 1808.
AMES, Joseph, author of a valuable work on the
progress of printing in England, called Typograp/aica/
Antiquities (1749), which is often quoted by bibliogra-
phers. He was born in 1689, and died in 1759.
AMES, WILLIAM, D.D. He was born at Ipswich,
Suffolk, in 1576. He received an excellent education, at
the grammar school of Ipswich; and proceeded next to
the university of Cambridge, where he was entered at
Christ's college. From the outset, as to the latest, he
was an omnivorous student. Entering half-carelessly
into the church where the great master William Perkins
was the preacher, he was, under the sermon, roused and
alarmed in such fashion as was not rare under so burn-
ing and intense an orator as Perkins. Like another
Nicodemus he visited the venerable preacher, and was
taught and comforted so as never through life to forget
his interviews with the “old man eloquent.” Perkins
having died at a ripe old age, was succeeded by one of
kindred intellect and ſervor, Paul Bayne, and his friend-
ship also was gained by Ames. Nonconformity, admit-
tedly in lesser things, was regarded as excluding Ames
from the Church of England. He went to Holland,
where he married, and succeeded to the place of his
father-in-law. It was at this time he began his con-
troversy with Episcopius, who, in attacking the
Corozzis, railed against the author as having been “a
disturber of the public peace in his native country,
so that the English magistrates had banished him
thence; and now, by his late printed Coronis, he was
raising new disturbances in the peaceable Netherlands.”
It was a miserable libel. Mr. Goodyear being present
in the lecture-room when Episcopius vented his malice,
there and then rebutted his charge against his absent
friend. None the less did the controversy proceed.
Ultimately Ames reduced the Remonstrants to silence.
At Rotterdam, whither he had removed, he drew all hearts
to him by his eloquence and his irrepressible activity as
a pastor. Home-controversy engaged him again, and he
prepared his Fres/, Suit against Ceremonies. He did
not long survive his removal to Rotterdam. Having
caught a cold from a flood which drenched his house, he
died in November 1633, in his fifty-seventh year.
AMESBURY, a city of Essex county, Mass., is
situated on the Merrimac river, in Amesbury township,
thirty-six miles north of Boston. In the summer of
1886 a part of the village of Salisbury was annexed to
Amesbury, materially adding to its population and im-
portance. The city has direct communication with
Boston and neighboring cities by the Boston and
Maine railroad, and is extensively engaged in mercantile
and manufacturing enterprises. Among its productions
are carriages, horse-cars, bicycles, vehicle equipments,
including bodies, wheels, hubs, spokes, etc., sleighs,
machinery, wood and tile flooring, flour and lumber.
The city contains three banks, two weekly papers, ten
churches, schools and academies, a large number of
stores and public buildings. Population, 16,000.
AMESBURY, an old town in Wiltshire, on the Avon,
8 miles north of Salisbury, and 78 west of London.
AMETHYST, properly, is only a variety of quartz or
rock-crystal distinguished by its fine violet-blue or pur-
ple color. This tint seems to be caused by a minute
mixture of the peroxide either of iron or of manganese,
and is lost when the stone is exposed to the action of
fire. It then changes through yellow and green to col-
Orless; and in this condition is often sold for the aqua-
marine or topaz. Amethyst is generally found in thick
columnar masses, of short hexagonal prisms termina-
ting in pyramids. There were fine ones made in France
about the year 1690, which even imposed on connois-
seurs, but with the decrease in price there is now less
danger of such deceptions.
AMHERST, a district and city within the Tenas-
Serim division of British Burmah, and within the juris-
diction of the chief commissioner of that province. The
DISTRICT forms a narrow strip of land between the
Indian Ocean and the mountains which separate it from
the independent kingdom of Siam. -
AMHERST TOWN, situated in the district of the same
name, about 30 miles south of Maulmain. It was
founded by the English in 1826 on the restoration of
the town of Martaban to the Burmese, and named in
compliment to the Governor-General of India who pro-
jected it.
AMHERST, a post township of Hampshire county,
Massachusetts, United States. It is a picturesque vil-
lage intersected by two branches of the Connecticut
river. Its water power is utilised for manufactories of
machinery, edge tools, cotton goods, paper, &c.; but it
is principally known as the seat of Amherst college, a
valuable institution founded in 1821, mainly for the pur-
pose of educating poor and pious young men for the
ministry. . There is a large farm for experiment attached
to the school, which is esteemed one of the best in
America. Population of township about 4,000.
288
A M H — A M M
AMHERST, EARL (WILLIAM Pitt AMHERST),
born in 1773, was the nephew of Jeffery Amherst, who,
for his services in America, where he was commander-
in-chief at the time of the conquest of Canada, was
raised to the peerage as Baron Amherst in 1776. The
patent of nobility was renewed in 1788 with remainder
to the subject of this notice, who succeeded to the title
in 1797. In 1816 he was sent as ambassador extraor-
dinary to the court of China, with the view of establish-
ing more satisfactory commercial relations between that
country and Great Britain. The ship in which he re-
turned to England in 1817 having touched at St. Helena,
he had several interviews with the Emperor Napoleon.
On his return to England he lived in retirement till his
death in March 1857.
AMHURST, NICHOLAs, an English poet and politi-
cal writer of the 18th century, was born at Marden in
Kent, and entered (1716) at St. John's college, Oxford,
from which he was expelled, ostensibly for libertinism
and irregular conduct, but really, according to his own
statement, on account of the liberality of his opinions.
Amhurst’s party made no provision for him, however, on
their accession to power, and their neglect is supposed
to have hastened his death, which occurred at Twicken-
ham on the 27th April 1742.
AMIANTHUS (unstained, from a privative, and
Jutaív Go, to stain), the best known and most beautiful of
the asbestos class of substances. See ASBESTOS.
AMICI, GIov ANNI BATTIsta, a celebrated designer
and constructor of optical instruments, was born at
Modena in 1784. After holding for some time a profes-
sorship of mathematics in Modena, he was in 1831 ap-
pointed inspector general of studies in the duchy. A few
years later he was entrusted with the charge of the
observatory at Florence, where he also delivered lectures
as professor of mathematics at the museum of natural
history. He died in April 1863.
AMIENS, an ancient city of France, capital of the
department of Somme, and formerly of the old province
of Picardy, situated on the Somme, about 40 miles from
its mouth, and 71 miles N. of Paris. It was once a
place of great strength, and still possesses a citadel; but
the ramparts which surrounded it have been replaced by
beautiful boulevards.
tures, the chief being cotton velvets, kerseymeres, wool-
len and linen cloths, flax, beetroot sugar, soap, leather,
and paper. Amiens occupies the site of the ancient Sam-
aroðriza, capital of the Ambianſ, from whom it prob-
ably derives its name. After the dissolution of the em-
pire of the west it repeatedly changed owners, becoming
for the first time a dependency of the French crown in
1185, when Philip of Alsace ceded it to Philip Augustus;
and since that date it has more than once passed out of the
power of the French kings. Peter the Hermit was born
at Amiens about IoSO. Population (1872), 63,747.
AMIOT, PERE Joseph, a learned Jesuit missionary
to China, was born at Toulon in 1718. In 1750 he
arrived, along with two others of his order, at Macao,
from which, on a favorable answer to a petition being
received from the emperor Kien-Lung, he removed to
Peking in the autumn of the following year. His
Aictionnaire Tartarman/chou-Français (Paris, 1789),
was a work of great value, the language having been
previously quite unknown in Europe. His other writings
are to be found chiefly in the Mémoires concernant
Z’//istoire, les Sciences, et le Arts de Chinois (15 vols.
4to, Paris, 1776–91). The Vie de Confucius, which
occupies the twelfth volume of that collection, is very
complete and accurate.
AMLWCH, a town of Anglesey, North Wales,
situated on a rising ground on the north coast of the
island, 15 miles from Beaumaris.
It has many important manufac-
AMMAN, JOHANN CONRAD, a physician, and one
of the earliest writers on the instruction of deaf and
dumb, was born at Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, in 1669.
In 1687 he graduated at Basle, and commenced the
practice of his profession at Amsterdam, to which he
had to flee on account of his religious views. He first
called the attention of the public to his method of train-
ing the deaf and dumb in a paper which was inserted in
the Philosophica/ 7'ransactions, and which appeared
in a separate form in the year 1692, under the title
Szardus Zogueſts. The edition of Caelius Aurelianus,
which was undertaken by the Wetsteins in 1709, and
still ranks as one of the best editions of that author, was.
superintended by Amman. He died about 1730.
AMMAN, JOST, an artist celebrated chiefly for his
engravings on wood, was born at Zurich in June 1539.
Of his personal history little is known beyond the fact
that he removed in 1560 to Nuremberg, where he con-
tinued to reside until his death in March 1591. His
productiveness was very remarkable, as may be gathered
from the statement of one of his pupils, that the draw-
ings he made during a period of four years would have
filled a hay waggon. Paintings in oil and on glass are
attributed to him, but no specimen of these is known to
exist.
AMMAN, PAUL, a physician and botanist, was born
at Breslau on the 30th August 1634. In 1662 he received
the degree of doctor of physic from the university of
Leipsic, and in 1664 was admitted a member of the
society Naturae Curiosorum, under the name of Dryan-
der. He died on the 4th February 1691.
AMMANATI, BARTOLOMEO, a celebrated Florentine
architect and sculptor, was born in 151 I, and died in
1592. He studied under Bandinelli and Sansovius, and
closely imitated the style of Michael Angelo. He was
more distinguished in architecture than in sculpture.
Ammanati’s wife, daughter of Giov. Antonio Battiferri,
an elegant and accomplished woman, published a vol-
ume of poems of considerable merit.
AMMIAN US, MARCELLINUS, a Roman historian of
the 4th century, was born in the city of Antioch, in
Syria. In his youth he was enrolled among the pro-
ſectores domestici, or household guards, which proves.
him to have been of noble birth. In the year 350 he
entered the service of Constantius, the emperor of the
East, and, under the command of Ursicinus, a general
of the horse, he served during several expeditions.
Gibbon appears to give a correct estimate when he says.
that Ammianus is “an accurate and faithful guide, who
composed the history of his own times without indulg-
ing the prejudices and passions which usually affect the
mind of a contemporary.” . From the respectful manner
in which he speaks of pagan deities, and of the advan-
tage of heathen auguries in foretelling future events, it
is evident that Ammianus was a heathen. The work
of Ammianus has passed through several editions, of
which the best are the Leyden edition of 1693, by
Gronovius, and those of Leipsic, published in 1773
and 1808.
AMMIRATO, SCIPIO, an Italian historian, born at
Lecce, in the kingdom of Naples, on the 27th Septem-
ber 1531. In 1569 he went to Florenče, where he was
fortunate in securing the patronage and support of Duke
Cosmo I. It was at the suggestion of this prince that
he wrote the work by which he is best known, his
Astorie Fiorentine (1606). In 1595 he was made a canon
of the cathedral of Florence. He died in 1601.
AMMON, the name of an Egyptian deity, called by
the ancient Egyptians Amen or Amun, and one of the
chief gods of the country. His name meant the hidden
or concealed god, and in this respect was analogous to
Aa2; or Apis, which conveyed the same idea. He was
A M M
289
the local deity of Thebes or Diospolis, and supposed by
the Greeks to be the same as Zeus or Jupiter. His type
was that of a man wearing on his head the red crown
A.'s/ºr, emblem of dominion over the lower world or
hemisphere, surmounted by the sun’s disc to indicate his
s ) ar nature, flanked by two tail feathers of a hawk, also
symbolical of his relation to the gods of light. Ammon
was not one of the oldest deities of Egypt, for his form
a.d name do not appear till the eleventh or Diospolitan
dynasty, when the kings of that line assumed his name,
and built a sanctuary to him at Medinat Habu. From
this period the monarchs of Thebes introduced his name
into their titles, and the worship of Amen became the
predominant one of ancient Egypt; and the embellish-
ment of his shrine and enrichment of his treasury were
the chief objects of the policy of the Pharaohs. Victory
and conquest were the chief gifts he offered to his
adorers; and he is often seen leading up the conquered
nations of the north and south to the monarchs whom
he endows with power and victory. In this character
Amen is often represented holding the Egyptian scimitar
Á/leps/º. In his celestial character his flesh was colored
blue, that of the heaven. He is said to have been
called on Some monuments the son of Hapimaa (or the
Nile, but in the hymns addressed to him the title of self-
engendered is applied to him, and he was one of the
self-existent deities. His principal titles are —lord of
the heaven, king of the gods, substance of the world,
and resident on the thrones of the world, eternal ruler, .
—appellatives of his celestial and terrestrial functions.
He was also lord of heaven and earth, streams and hills,
and a demiurgos, the creator of beings. The hymns
addressed to him designate him as the sole or only god,
in terms applicable to one god who alone exists, who
moulds and governs the world. At one time an attempt
was made to identify him with the solar orb. Con-
sidered as the active, intelligent and pervading spirit of
the universe, he transfuses the breath of life into the mos-
trils of kings and other persons. On the conquest of
Egypt, Alexander the Great called himself the son of
Ammon, and his portraits wear the ram's horn. In this
he had only imitated the Pharaohs of the nineteenth
dynasty. Amen is only mentioned by the Hebrew
prophets in speaking of Diospolis as the city of No or
No Amon.
AMMON, CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON, a distin-
guished theological writer and preacher, was born at
Baireuth in January 1766, studied at Fºrlangen, held
various professorships in the philosophical and theolog-
ical faculties of Erlangen and Göttingen, succeeded
Rheinhard in 1813 as court preacher and counsellor at
Dresden, retired from these offices in 1849, and died
May 21, 1850.
AMMONIA (NH8), sometimes called the Volatile
a/#a/i, or A/Aaline air, was known to the alchemists in
aqueous solution. Priestley first separated it in the gase-
ous state in 1774. Scheele in 1777 discovered that it
contained nitrogen, and its true composition was ascer-
tained by Berthollet about 1785. Ammonia occurs in
the atmosphere as carbonate and nitrate, in sea-water,
and in many mineral springs. Its aqueous Solution is
used in medicine internally as a stimulant, and externally
as a vesicant; it is much used in the arts.and Sciences,
and is of special value in photographic operations.
AMMONIAC, SAL (NH,Cl), the earliest known salt
of ammonia, now named chloride of ammonium, for-
merly much used in dyeing and metallurgic operations.
The name Aſammoniacus sa/ occurs in Pliny, who
relates that it was applied to a kind of fossil salt found
below the sand, in a district of Cyrenaica. It was sim-
ilar in appearance to the alumen scissile, and had a
disagreeable taste, but was useful in medicine. The
general opinion is, that the sal-ammoniac of the ancients
was the same as that of the moderns; but the imperfect
description of Pliny is ſar from being sufficient to decide
the point.
Some derive the name sal-ammoniac from Jupiter
Ammon, near whose temple it is alleged to have been
found; others from a district of Cyrenaica called Am-
monia. Pliny’s derivation is from the sand in which it
occurred.
It is of especial value in medicine in chronic bronchitis,
or in any affection of the system in which it is desirable
to increase the bronchial secretion. A cough sirup of
ammonium chloride, 9% oz. in 6 oz. of sirup licorice,
with 2 drachms fluid extract cannabis indica, is an excel-
lent remedy for bronchial coughs and “common colds.”
Egypt is the country where sal-ammoniac was first
manufactured, and from which Europe for many years
was supplied with it. This commerce was first carried
on by the Venetians, and afterwards by the Dutch.
Nothing was known about the method employed by the
Egyptians till the year 1719.
The first attempt to manufacture sal-ammoniac in
Europe was made about the beginning of the 18th cen-
tury, by Mr. Godwin, a chemist of London, who ap-
pears to have used the mother ley of common Salt and
putrid urine as ingredients.
Chloride of ammonia is now manufactured in large
quantities from the crude carbonate of ammonia ob-
tained in gas-works, or from the destructive distillation
of animal matter.
Sal-ammoniac occurs usually in the form of a hard,
white cake, opaque, or slightly translucent. Its taste is
cooling, saline, and rather disagreeable.
See CHEMISTRY.
AMMONIACUM, or AMMONIAC, a gum-resinous
exudation from the stem of a perennial herb (ZXorema
ammoniacum) belonging to the natural order Umbelli-
ferae. The plant grows to the height of 8 or 9 feet, and
its whole stem is pervaded with a milky juice, which
oozes out of an incision being made at any part. This
juice quickly hardens into round tears, forming the “tear
ammoniacum ” of commerce. It may be used as a sub-
stitute for assafoetida, although containing a much
smaller proportion of volatile oil, its effect is less power-
ful. Internally it is used in conjunction with squills in
bronchial affections; and in asthma and chronic colds
it is found useful. It is, however, more used exter-
nally in the form of plasters, as a discutient or resolvent
application in indolent tumors, affections of the
joints, &c.
African ammoniacum is a totally different substance,
though often confounded with the real gum-resin,
which is produced only in the East. It is the product
of an unknown plant growing in North Africa, and
occasionally shipped to our markets from Marocco. It
is a dark-colored gum-resin, possessed of a very weak
odor and a persistent acrid taste.
AMMONITES, called also very frequently the
children of Ammon, a people allied by descent to the
Israelites, and living in their vicinity, sprung from Lot,
Abraham's nephew, by the younger of his daughters,
as the immediately adjoining people, the Moabites.
AMMONIUS, surnamed HERMLAE, or the son of
Hermias, studied at Alexandria, along with his brother
Heliodorus, under the neo-Platonist Proclus during the
latter part of the 5th century A. D. He was afterwards
the head of a school for philosophy; and among his
scholars were Asclepias, John Philoponus, Damascius,
and Simplicius. Although a neo-Platonist, Ammonius
appears to have devoted most of his attention to the
works of Aristotle. Commentaries on some of these
are all that remains of his reputedly numerous writ-
$9 A
29O
A M M — A M O
ings. Of the commentaries we have — 1. One on the
Asagoge of Porphyry, published at Venice, 1500, fol.;
2. One on the Categories, Venice, 1503, fol., the au-
thenticity of which is doubted by Brandis; 3. One on
the ZXe Interpretatione, Venice, 1503, fol.
AMMONIUS, surnamed SACCAS, or “The Sack
Carrier,”. from the fact of his having been obliged in
the early part of his life to gain his livelihood by acting
as a porter in the market, lived at Alexandria during
the 2d century, A. D., and died there 241 A. D. Ammo-
nius, after long study and meditation, opened a school
for philosophy in Alexandria. Among his pupils were
Herennius, the two Origens, Longinus, and, most dis-
tinguished of all, Plotinus, who in his search for true
wisdom found himself irresistibly attracted by Ammo-
nius, remained his close companion for eleven years,
and in all his later philosophy professed to be the mere
exponent of his great master. Ammonius himself de-
signedly wrote nothing, and the doctrines taught in his
school were, at least during his life, kept secret, after
the fashion of the old Pythagorean society. He un-
doubtedly originated the neo-Platonic movement, but it
cannot be determined to what extent that philosophy, as
known to us through Plotinus and Proclus, represents
his ideas.
AMMUNITION in its general sense comprises not
only the powder and projectiles employed in guns of all
<lasses, but also all stores directly connected with artillery
fire, such as friction-tubes, fuses, percussion-caps, and
rockets.
Gunpowder, as manufactured in England, consists of
75 parts of Saltpetre, 15 parts of charcoal and IO parts
of sulphur, reduced to a fine powder and mechanically
mixed together, pressed into a cake, and granulated to a
size varying according to the purpose which it is designed
to fulfil. In cannon, a large grain is necessary for regu-
lar and thorough burning, a fine powder choking up the
interstices, and so preventing the flame from finding its
way through the entire charge. On the other hand, a
large grain is blown out of a small piece before it is
burnt to the centre. For the very heavy guns recently
introduced into the military service powder formed into
“pellets” or “pebbles” has been adopted, by which
the pressure of the gas is kept up till the shell leaves the
muzzle, without being at any instant excessive and likely
to injure the gun. Modified forms of powder and gun-
cotton have been employed experimentally as the charges
of guns.
For heavy guns or cannon the charge is carefully
weighed and made up in a serge cartridge sewn with
worsted, which entirely consumes in firing — any residue
left ignited in the bore being liable to cause explosion
when the cartridge of the succeeding round is rammed
down on it, and so to blow off the arms of the gunner
using the sponge stave. The shell or other projectile
employed is forced home on the cartridge in muzzle-load-
ing guns. In breech-loaders the shell is introduced first,
and pressed into the shot chamber, beyond which it can
only pass by the “lands” of the rifling cutting into the
lead coat, which is effected by the explosion of the charge.
The cartridge is pressed forward against the base of the
projectile.
Rifled guns— that is, guns constructed to impart
rotation to the projectiles they discharge—have super
seded smooth-bored cannon in the armaments of all
civilised nations; elongated projectiles, which are im-
peded by the resistance of the air much less than spher-
ical ones, being in all cases employed. The following
kinds of projectiles are fired from rifled cannon in the
American service: Common shell, Shrapnel shell, Palli-
ser shell and shot, and case-shot. Light balls, car-
casses, and spherical shells are discharged from smooth-
bored mortars. The two last mentioned, as well as
spherical Shrapnel, round shot, grape, and case, are fired
from smooth-bored guns.
Common shell for rifled guns are simply hollow elon-
gated projectiles filled with powder, which is fired by
the action of a fuse, and bursts the shell with great vio-
lence, acting in walls or earth into which it has pene-
trated like a small mine, the largest shells, which are
twelve inches in diameter, containing nearly 37 lb. of
powder. Gun cotton, nitroglycerine, and other sub-
stances, have been tried for bursting purposes, but it
has been found very difficult to prevent premature ex-
plosion from the sudden shock of discharge of the gun.
Shrapnel shell are hollow projectiles containing bul-
lets and a very small bursting charge. The shell ſol.
lows the usual course of flight up to within about 100
yards of the object, when the time fuse, if properly set,
fires the bursting charge, and opens the shell by split-
ting it along certain grooves forming lines of least resist-
ance. The bullets and fragments then continue their
course in the form of a shower of missiles.
The Armstrong segment shell fulfills the same general
purpose,_ that is to say, it is designed to sweep down
bodies of troops, but it opens rather more suddenly,
segments of iron taking the place of lead and antimony
bullets.
Palliser shell and shot are projectiles made with spe-
cially hard and rigid heads, with the object of piercing
the sides of armor-clad vessels.
Dynamite must now be placed in the list of the various
kinds of ammunition. Lieut. Zalinsky, U. S. A., has
succeeded in so perfecting his pneumatic gun that several
new vessels of the United States navy are armed with
this formidable weapon. This gun throws a hollow shell
filled with dynamite, the projectile force used being com-
pressed air. The gun is built at a fixed angle with the keel
of the vessel, and aim is secured by maneuvering the ship.
The charge of dynamite used (500 pounds) is sufficient
to destroy the heaviest war vessel if it falls within a con-
siderable distance, thus rendering accuracy of aim of no
great moment, and making it almost impossible to fail
to injure an opponent.
Time fuses are those which open a shell at any given
time, whether in the air or during penetration. A per-
cussion fuse is one that acts on impact graze.
Friction tubes are copper tubes driven with mealed
powder, and pierced from end to end. A friction bar
in the head is rubbed against patches of detonating com-
position by pulling a lanyard, which hooks into a loop
at the end of it. The tube is entered in the vent of a
gun, which is thus fired by pulling the lanyard.
For mitrailleuses and breech-loading small arms, lead
bullets or lead and tin bullets, fixed in central-fire car-
tridges, are used. The cases are made of sheet brass,
with a thick base disc containing a cap chamber, cap,
and anvil.
Rockets are projectiles containing composition which,
as it burns, generates sufficient gas to drive forward the
rocket by an action resembling that of the recoil of a
UII] .
AMNESTY, an act of grace by which the supreme
power in a state restores those who may have been
guilty of any offense against it to the position of inno-
cent persons. It includes more than pardon, inasmuch
as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the offence.
It is chiefly exercised towards associations ºf political
criminals, and is sometimes granted absolutely, though
more frequently there are certain specified exceptions.
AMOL, or ÁMUL, a town of Persia, in the province
of Mazanderan, about 12 miles above the mouth of the
Heraz. Population in 1889, about 50,000.
AMONTONS, GUILLAUME, a celebrated French ex-
A M O — A M P
291
perimental philosopher, was the son of an advocate who
had left his native province of Normandy and established
himself at Paris, where the subject of this notice was
born on the 31st August 1663. One of the first objects
which engaged his attention was the discovery of the
perpetual motion,-- an attempt which, though necessa-
rily unsuccessful, was productive of greater advantage
to him than it has usually been to those who have pur-
sued that vain chimera. Amontons devoted himself
particularly to the improvement of instruments employed
in physical experiments, a subject which requires the
finest applications of mechanical principles, and which
till that time had not met with a due share of attention.
In 1687, before he had attained his 24th year, he pre-
sented to the Academy of Science an hygrometer of his
own invention, which was received with approbation
by that learned body. In 1695 he published the only
work which he has given to the world. It was dedicated
to the Academy, and entitled Remarques et Expériences
A hysiques sur la Construction d'un AVouvel Clepsydre,
sur les Baromětres, les. Thermometres et les Hygromētres.
In 1689 Amontons was admitted into the Academy of
Sciences, the Memoirs of which he enriched with many
important contributions. By his countrymen he is gen-
erally regarded as the inventor of the telegraph; and he
had the honor of exhibiting the methods by which he
proposed to accomplish the object in view before some
members of the royal family. Amontons died in 1705,
aged 42.
A MOOR, AMOUR, or AMUR, a large and important
river of eastern Asia, formed by the confluence of the
Argun and the Shilka, at a place called Ust Strelkoi.
Both these rivers come from the south-west. The
Amoor proper flows at first in a south-easterly direction
for about 8oo miles, it then turns to the north-east, and
after a total course of over 1600 miles discharges itself
into the Sea of Okhotsk, opposite to the island of Sagha-
lien. Its principal tributaries from the south are the
Songari, which the Chinese consider to be the true head
river of the Amoor, and the Ussuri; from the north it
receives the Zeya, the Bureia, the Gyrin, and the Omo-
gun. The climate of the valley of the Amoor varies
very much in different parts: in the upper portion of its
course there are long and cold winters and short sum-
mers; as the river descends into more southern latitudes
the rigor of the climate relaxes, and the heat becomes
almost tropical; the vegetation is rich and luxuriant,
and large forests of oaks, limes, and elms replace barren
larches and firs; while on the lower Amoor the cold
again to a certain extent prevails, and at the mouth the
river is ice-bound for more than half the year, a circum-
stance which greatly impairs its otherwise admirable
facilities for navigation.
A MORITES, a powerful people, widely spread
through the Promised Land before the settlement of the
Israelites, belonging to the Canaanitic stock, according to
Gen. x. 16, though some think they belong rather to the
pre-Canaanitic inhabitants of the Jordan basin. In all
probability there were incorporated among them the
remnants of the older tribe of the Rephaim. See
CANAANITES.
A MORPHISM, a term used in chemistry and miner-
alogy to denote the absence of regular structure in a
body.
A MOS (not the same as Amoz, the father of Isaiah)
was an inhabitant of the district of Tekoa, a fortified
town among the hills of the south of Judah, where a
breed of stunted sheep and goats, prized, however,
for their wool and hair, found a scanty pasturage.
The date of the first public appearance of Amos
cannot be ascertained. He flourished in the greatest
age of Hebrew prophecy. He seems to have been
younger than Joel, to whose prophecy he makes several
references, and more or less senior to Hosea and
Isaiah. This view is fully borne out by the gradual
emergence of the Assyrians on the prophetic horizon.
Altogether absent from Joel's prophecy, they are but
vaguely alluded to in Amos, and first mentioned by
name in Hosea and Isaiah.
The simplicity of his style is that of the highest art,
He delights in abrupt short clauses, but they are linked
together by the closest parallelism. And the supposed
rusticity of his dialect is deduced from the spelling of
only five words, analogies to which may be traced in the
great poem of Job. All that we can admit as probable
is, that the native force and talent for observation dis-
played by this prophet were derived from his early con-
verse with nature on the wild hills of Judah. His
imagery, in fact, from its freshness and appropriateness
almost reminds us of Dante, and entitles him to as high
a place in the history of literature as in that of theistic
religion.
AMOY, a city and seaport in the province of
Fo-kien, China, situated on the slope of a hill, on the
south coast of a small and barren island of the same
name. Amoy was captured by the British in 1841,
aſter a determined resistance, and is one of the five
ports that were opened to British commerce by the
treaty of 1842; it is now open to the ships of all
nations. The population of Amoy is estimated at
250,000.
AMPERE, ANDRé-MARIE, the founder of the science
of electro-dynamics, was born at Lyons in January I 775.
He took a passionate delight in the pursuit of knowledge
from his very infancy, and is reported to have worked
out lengthy arithmetical sums by means of pebbles and
biscuit-crumbs before he knew the figures. His father
began to teach him Latin, but left this off on discovering
the boy’s greater inclination and aptitude for mathe-
matical studies. The young Ampère, however, Soon
resumed his Latin lessons, to enable him to master the
works of Euler and Bernouilli. In later life he was
accustomed to say that he knew as much about mathe-
matics when he was eighteen as ever he knew; but his
reading embraced nearly the whole round of knowledge,
—history, travels, poetry, philosophy, and the natural
sciences. At this age he had read the whole of the
Ancyclopédie, and with such interest and attention that
he could repeat passages from it fifty years after. When
Lyons was taken by the army of the Convention in 1793,
the father of Ampère, who, holding the office of fuge
de pair, had stood out resolutely against the previous
revolutionary excesses, was at once thrown into prison,
and soon after perished on the scaffold. This event
produced such an impression on the susceptible mind of
Ampère, that he continued for more than a year in a
state little removed from idiocy. But Rousseau's letters
on botany falling into his hands, the subject engrossed
him, and roused him from his apathy. His passion for
knowledge returned. From botany he turned to the
study of the classic poets, and to the writing of verses
himself. His small treatise, Considerations sur la
Théorie Mathématigue du jeu (Lyons, 1802), in which
he successfully solved a problem that had occupied
Buffon, Pascal, and others, and demonstrated that the
chances of play are decidedly against the habitual gam-
bler, attracted considerable attention. On the II th of
September 1820 he heard of the discovery of Professor
Oersted of Copenhagen, that a magnetic needle may be
deflected by a voltaic current. On the 18th of the
same month he presented a paper to the Academy,
containing a far more complete exposition of the
phenomenon, which he had in the interval investigated
by experiment, and showing that magnetic defects can be
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A M P
produced, without magnets, by aid of electricity alone.
In particular he showed that two wires connecting the
opposite poles of a battery attract or repel each other
according as the currents pass in the same or in opposite
directions. According to the theory of magnetism which
Ampère's subsequent investigations led him to adopt,
every, molecule of magnetic matter is acted on by a
closed electric current, and magnetisation takes place in
proportion as the direction of these currents approaches
parallelism. The whole field thus opened up he explored
with characteristic industry and care. He anticipated
the invention of the electric telegraph, having suggested
in 1821 an apparatus of the kind with a separate wire
for each letter. Late in life he prepared a remarkable
work on the classification of the sciences, which was
published after his death. In addition to this and one
or two works of less importance, he wrote a great num-
ber of memoirs that appeared in scientific journals.
He died at Marseilles in June 1836.
AMPERE, JEAN-JACQUES-ANTOINE, the only child
of the preceding, was born at Lyons, August 12, 1800.
He showed an early preference for literary pursuits,
and this was strengthened by his intimate intercourse
with the brilliant circle to which his introduction to
Madame Récamier’s celebrated rºunions admitted him.
He began his literary career as a contributor to the
G/oče and A’ezzle Française, which Guizot conducted in
opposition to the government of Charles X. After
spending some time in travel, he commenced a course of
lectures at the Athenaeum of Marseilles in 1830, the first
of which, Z2e "Histoire de la Poésie, he published.
The revolution of July led to his return to Paris, where
he lectured at the Sorbonne, till, in 1833, he succeeded
Andrieux as professor of the history of French literature
in the college of France. His lectures here, which were
greatly admired, form the basis of several works, par-
ticularly of his Histoire Zitteraire de la France azam!
Ze 12me Siècle. Ampère was a constant contributor to
various periodical publications. He wrote for the
A'ezvite des Zeux Mondes sprightly accounts of his long
journeys in Egypt and North America, as well as in
various parts of Europe, which were afterward collected
under the title, Littérature et Voyages (2 vols., 1834).
His principal work is the Iſistoire Romaine & Rome
(4 vols., 1856–64), a series of papers, reprinted in part
from the A’evue des Deux Mondes, showing shrewd sense
and great and varied learning, particularly on archaeolog-
ical questions, and written in an attractive though
often discursive style. He died March 27, 1864.
AMPHIARA US, in Greek legend a son of Oicles
and Hypermnestra, descended on the paternal side
from the kingly seer Melampus, and, like his ancestor,
endowed with the prophetic gift; but at the same time
known for his valor in the great enterprises of his time
— the expedition of the Argonauts and the hunt of the
Calydonian boar. The expedition, however, on which
the chief events of his life hinge is that of the Seven
against Thebes, into which he was unwillingly driven
by the treachery of his wife, a sister of Adrastus, who
then ruled in Sicyon, and by whom the enterprise was
planned to restore Polynices to the throne of Thebes.
As prince of Argos, Amphiaraus was in a position to
assist greatly; but when called upon by Adrastus to
take a part, he declined, on the ground that the cause
was unholy, and would end fatally. His marriage with
Eriphyle, however, had not only been meant to heal
previous quarrels between him and Adrastus, but was
to be a bond of peace for the future in this way, that
she should always arbitrate between them. To secure
her favor, now, Polynices gave her the fatal necklace
which Cadmus had once given to Harmonia, and, though
warned of the consequences, Eriphyle accepted it and
decided against her husband. Knowing that he would
never return, Amphiaraus enjoined his son Alcmaeon,
then a boy, to avenge his death upon his mother; and
to his children generally he gave wise counsel. As he
stepped into his chariot to depart he turned with a look
of anger towards his wife, a scene which was repre-
sented on the chest of Cypselus. The assault of Thebes
was disastrous to the Seven; and Amphiaraus, pursued
by Periclymenus, would have fallen by his spear had
not Jupiter, at a critical moment, struck the earth with
a thunderbolt, and caused it to open and swallow him
with his horses, Thoas and Dias, his chariot, and his
charioteer, Baton.
AMPHIBIA. Linnaeus originally employed this
term to denote a class of the Animal Kingdom compris-
ing crocodiles, lizards and salamanders, snakes and Cae-
ci/ide, tortoises and turtles, and frogs; to which, in the
later editions of the Systema Matura, he added some
groups of fishes. In the 7ableau Elémentaire, pub-
lished in 1795, Cuvier adopts Linnaeus’s term in its ear-
lier sense, but uses the French word “Reptiles,” already
brought into use by Brisson, as the equivalent of Am-
A/libia. In addition, Cuvier accepts the Linnaean subdi-
visions of Amphibia-Ā’eptilia for the tortoises, lizards
(including crocodiles), salamanders, and frogs; and Azm-
A/hibia-Serpentes for the Snakes, apodal lizards, and
Carciſia.
In 1799 Brongniart pointed out the wide differences
which separate the frogs and salamanders (which he terms
Batrachia) from the other reptiles; and in 1804, Lat-
reille, rightly estimating the value of these differences,
though he was not an original worker in the field of ver-
tebrate zoology, proposed to separate Brongniart’s Ba-
trachia from the class of Reptilia proper, as a group
of equal value, for which he retained the Linnaean name
of Am?/hibia.
Cuvier went no further than Brongniart, and, in the
A’égne Animal, he dropped the term Amp/libia, and
substituted A’epti/ia for it. Meckel, on the other hand,
while equally accepting Brongniart's classification, re-
tained the term Amphibia in its earlier Linnaean sense;
and his example has been generally followed by German
writers; as, for instance, by Stamnius, in that remarkable
monument of accurate and extensive research, the Aſand-
&zech der Zootomie (Zweite Auflage, 1856).
In 1816, De Blainville, adopting Latreille's view,
divided the Linnaean Amphibia into Syzſawzāſāres and
AVudi/e//i/Ares, or Amphibiens; though he offered an
alternative arrangement, in which the class ſceptiles is
preserved and divided into two sub-classes, the Orzeż-
thoides and the Ichthyoides. The latter are Brongniart's
Aatrachia, plus the Caecilia, whose true affinities had,
in the meanwhile, been shown by Duméril; and, in this
arrangement, the name Amphzbiezes is restricted to
A roteus and Szrezz.
Merrem’s Pholidota and Batrachia (1820), Leuck-
art’s Monopnoa and Dipnoa (1821), Müller's Squamata
and AVuda (1832), are merely new names for De Blain-
ville’s Ornithoides and Ichthyoides, though Müller gave
far better anatomical characters of the two groups than
had previously been put forward. Moreover, following
the indications already given, by Von Bär in 1828.
Müller calls the attention of naturalists to the important
fact, that while all the Syntamata possess an amnion and
an allantois, these structures are absent in the embryos
of all the AVuda. Müller makes an appeal for observa-
tions on the development of the Carcilia, and of those
Amphibia which retain gills or gill-clefts, throughout
life, which has unfortunately yielded no fruits from that
time to this. .
In 1825, Latreille published a new classification of
the Vertebrata, which are primarily divided into Aſama.
A M P
293
therma, containing the three classes of Mammifera,
Monotremata, and Aves; and Haemacryma, also con-
taining three classes — Reptilia, Amphibia, and Pisces.
This division of the Vertebrata into hot and cold blooded
is a curiously retrograde step, only intelligible when we
reflect that the excellent entomologist had no real com-
prehension of vertebrate morphology; but he makes
some atonement for the blunder by steadily upholding
the class distinctness of the Amphibia. In this he was
followed by Dr. J. E. Gray; but Duméril and Bibron
in their great work, and Dr. Günther in his Catalogue,
in substance, adopt Brongniart's arrangement, the Ba-
trachia being simply one of the four orders of the class
Reptilia. Professor Huxley has adopted Latreille’s
view of the distinctness of the Amphibia, as a class of
the Vertebrata, co-ordinate with the Mammalia, Azes,
A'eptilia, and Pisces, and the same arrangement is ac-,
cepted by Gegenbaur and Haeckel. In the Hunterian
lectures delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons in
1863, Professor Huxley divided the Vertebrata into
Mammals, Sauroids, and Ichthyoids, the latter division
containing the Amphibia and Pisces. Subsequently he
proposed the names of Sauropsida and ſchthyopsida for
the Sauroids and Ichthyoids respectively. It is proper
to mention, finally, that Professor Owen, in his work on
The Anatomy of Vertebrates, follows Latreille in di-
viding the Vertebrata into //aematotherma and Hama-
focrya, and adopts Leuckart’s term of Dipnoa for the
Amphibia.
The Amphibia are distinguished from the Sauropsida
and Mammalia by very important and sharply-defined
characters. The visceral arches of the embryo develop
gills, which temporarily, or permanently, perform the
respiratory function. There is no trace of an amnion,
and it is still a question whether the urinary bladder,
which all Amphibia possess, answers to the ailantois of
the higher Vertebrata or not. At any rate, it plays no
part in the respiration of the embryo, nor is it an organ
by which nutriment is obtained from the parent. There
are two occipital condyles, and the basi-occipital region
of the skull is either very incompletely, or not at all,
ossified. There is no basi-sphenoidal ossification.
When young, the Amphibia are provided with, at fewest,
three, and usually four, cartilaginous, or more or less
ossified, branchial arches. From A^isces, on the other
hand, they are distinguishable only by the characters of
their locomotive apparatus. When they possess median
fins and limbs, these never present fin-rays; and the limbs
exhibit, in full development, the type of structure which
obtains among the Sauropsida and Mammalia, and
differ very widely from the fins of any fish at present
known. This difference obtains even among the long
extinct Amphibia of the Carboniferous epoch. In other
respects, the lower Amphibia approach the Chimaerae,
the Ganoidei, and the /Dipnoi very closely; while, in
their development, they present curious approximations
to the Marsipobranchii.
With respect to the primary subdivisions, or orders, of
the class Amphibia, no one can doubt the propriety of
the separation of the recent forms into what may be
broadly termed Newts (Urode/a); Frogs and Toads
(Anura); and Caecilia (Peromela) effected by Duméril;
while all that is known of the organisation of the extinct
Amphibia of the newer Palaeozoic, and older Mesozoic,
formations tends to show that they form a fourth natural
assemblage of equal value to each of the others.
The names of Urodela and Anura, given to the first
two of these divisions, are undoubtedly open to criti-
cism ; but if well-understood terms, which have ac-
quired a definite scientific connotation, are to be changed
whenever advancing knowledge renders them etymo-
logically inappropriate, the nomenclature of taxonomy
will before long become hopelessly burdened; and, to
set a good example, the names of Urodela, Anura, Per-
omela, and Zabyrinthodonta are adopted here for the
four orders of the Amphibia, even although it be true
that the Labyrinthodonta do not all possess the dental
structure on which the name was founded; though
there is reason to believe that some Labyrinthodonts
were devoid of limbs, or peromelous; that the Anzara
are not more tail-less than are the Peromela ; and that
the tails of the Urodela are not more conspicuous than
were those of the Labyrinthodonts.
The URODELA are Amphibia with elongated bodies
and relatively short limbs, devoid of scales or pectoral
plates, with numerous prae-caudal vertebrae, and with
amphicoelous, or opisthocoelous, vertebral centra. The
hyoidean arch remains connected with the suspensorium
throughout life, and its cornua are large in proportion
to its body. The mandible is dentigerous. There are
one or two pairs of limbs, the pectoral arch and limbs
being always present. The manus never possesses
more than four digits. The bones of the antebrachium
and of the crus remain distinct, and the tarsus is not
elongated. So far as the spermatozoa are known, they
are elongated filaments with a vibratile fringe. The
larva develops external gills only; and, except Sirenz,
none are known to possess, at any time, a horny masti-
catory apparatus.
The ANURA have relatively short and broad bodies,
and both pairs of limbs are constantly present, the
hinder being the longer and stronger. There are no
Scales, nor pectoral plates, but ossification sometimes
occurs in the dorsal integument. The vertebrae vary in
character, but are usually procoelous. The prae-sacral
vertebrae never exceed nine in number, and the caudal
portion of the vertebral column is represented by a
peculiar styliform coccyx. The hyoidean arch detaches
itself from the suspensorium, and almost always becomes
connected with the pro-otic region of the skull. The
cornua are usually slender, as compared with the broad
body of the hyoid. The mandible is almost always
devoid of teeth. The bones of the antebrachium and of
the crus early ankylose, and the astragalus and cal-
caneum are much elongated. The manus has a rudi-
mentary fifth digit. Except in Bombinator, the sperma-
tozoa have flagelliform appendages, like those of ordinary
Vertebrata. The larvae develop first external, and
afterwards internal, gills, and, so far as is known at
present, are provided with deciduous horny masticatory
plates. The gill apertures are closed by the growing
over them of an opercular membrane.
The PEROMELA have snake-like bodies, totally devoid
of limbs and limb arches. In most, the integument is
provided with transverse rows of imbedded cycloid
scales, but there are no pectoral plates. The vertebrae
of the trunk are very numerous, and are amphicoelous;
those of the caudal region are very few, and are free.
The hyoidean arch is attached neither to the suspenso-
rium, nor to the skull; its cornua are very slender, and
no distinct body is developed; it is followed by several
slender, hoop-like branchial arches. The mandible is
dentigerous. Nothing is known of the early stages of
development; but Müller discovered branchial clefts,
with rudimentary branchial filaments, in young Cacilia.
The LAByRINTHODONTA for the most part resembled
the Urode/a in the proportions of the tail and limbs to
the body, but some (as Ophiderøeton) were serpentiform,
and apparently apodal; no raniform Labyrinthodonts
have yet been discovered. The vertebrae are amphicoe-
lous. The mandible is dentigerous. The bones of the
antebrachium and crus remain distinct, and the tarsus is
not elongated. The manus and pes appear to have been
pentadactyle. Three sculptured pectoral plates and a
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A M P
peculiar dermal armor of small scales, confined to the
ventral face of the body, are present in many genera.
Nothing is known of the early stages of development,
but the young Archegosauria appear to have possessed
ossified branchial arches.
AMPHICTYONY, in Greek Antiquity, was an asso-
ciation of several tribes for the purpose of protecting
some temple common to them all, and for maintaining
worship within it. The members were called “the
dwellers around.” Out of the name the Athenians,
according to their habit, easily discovered the founder
of the Delphic Amphictyony, with which they were
connected; and hence in later times, by an inverse
process, the name was derived from Amphictyon, one
of the fabulous kings of Attica.
Similar religious confederations existed in Greece at
a very early period, and there is reason to believe that
at their stated assemblies they discussed questions of
international law and matters affecting their political
union as well as religious subjects. Gradually, how-
ever, the political influence of the Amphictyonies died
away. As states of great power stood on an equality
with insignificant tribes in the number of votes, they
naturally prevented the settlement of important political
matters in such an assembly. Accordingly, during the
flourishing period of Greek history the Amphictyonies
almost disappear. They are not mentioned in Thucyd-
ides, and Xenophon. But they appear again in vigor
in the time of Philip, and become engines by which
political parties, under pretence of religious zeal for the
interests of the gods, wreak their vengeance on their
rivals and antagonists.
This is especially true of the Amphictyony of Delphi,
the most important of all these associations. Though
we know better about this confederation than about any
other, yet many particulars are hidden in obscurity, and
considerable doubts gather around others of which we
know something. The Amphictyony existed in very
early times, and AEschines states that it arose when the
temple at Delphi was first built. It is more likely,
however, that it was originally connected with Ther-
mopylae and the temple of Demeter Amphictyonis
which was there. The Amphictyony consisted of a
union of twelve tribes, each of which had a right to
two votes. These tribes were for the most part Thes-
salian or bordering on Thessaly; and it is probable
that the others, as the Dorians and Ionians, gained
admission in consequence of colonies that came to them
from Thessaly.
There are nine lists of the tribes that constituted the
Delphic Amphictyony in the classical writers and in in-
scriptions. Of these only one is complete, and the rest
differ from each other in some particulars. The one
that is completed was found on a Delphic stone contain-
ing a decree of the Amphictyonic council in regard to
money due to the Delphic treasury. On this stone are
given the votes of each tribe, and the final decision of
the council in harmony with the majority of votes for
one of the opinions held. The list is as follows: —The
Delphians, two votes; Thessalians, two votes; Phocians,
two votes; Dorians from Metaopolis, one vote; the
Dorians from Peloponnesus, one vote; the Athenians,
One vote; the Euboeans, one vote; the Boeotians, two
votes; the Achaean Phthiots, two votes; the Malians,
one vote; , the CEteans, one vote; the Dolophians,
one vote; the Perrhaebians, one vote; the Magnetes,
two votes; the AEnianes, two votes; the Locri Hypoc-
nemidii, one vote; the Locri Hesperii, one vote. The
exact date of the decree recorded on the Delphic stone
is matter of dispute, but the most probable conjecture
laces it about the year 130 B. c. It is generally be-
j that no change took place in the tribes forming
the league till the time of the second sacred war, 345
B.C. Of these tribes Æschines gives us a list, with the
omission of one. They are the Thessalians, Boeotians,
Dorians, Ionians, Perrhaebians, Magnetes, Locri, CEte-
ans, Phthiots, Malians, Phocians; and there can be
little doubt that it is the Dolophians who have been by
some mistake omitted. The confusions in some of the
other lists have arisen probably from the ignorance of
transcribers, who did not know that the AEmianes and
CEteans lived close to each other, and were often com-
prehended under the same name, and who made two
tribes of the Achaean Phthiots, Achaeans and Phthiots.
AEschines says that all these tribes had equal right of
voting; but the inscription on the Delphic stone shows
that the two votes of one tribe might be divided among
two different portions of it. At the conclusion of the
Phocian war the Phocians were excluded, and the Mace-
donians received their votes; and the vote of the Lace-
daemonians was given to the other Doric tribes of
Peloponnesus. The Delphians also obtained votes,
either at this time or after the third sacred war, 338 B.C.,
by some of the smaller tribes that had two votes being
restricted to one. In the same way, and also by the ex-
clusion of the Locri Ozolae, the AEtolians secured a
place in the council in 338 B.C., and gradually took pos-
session of a great number of votes. The Phocians were
restored to their place in 279 B.C., on account of their
gallant resistance to the Gauls. Finally, the AEtolians
and Macedonians were excluded from the council, and
the constitution of the council as given in the Delphic
stone was formed. The last change mentioned in clas-
sical writers is detailed by Pausanias, but the passage
is evidently corrupt. Augustus wished to give votes to
Nicopolis, and for this purpose so altered the constitu-
tion of the council as to make the votes thirty in number.
The objects of the league are distinctly expressed in
the oath which the Amphictyons had to take, and which
is preserved in AEschines's oration “De Falso Lega-
tione.” This oath bound the Amphictyons not to de-
stroy any of the Amphictyonic towns, not to turn away
its running waters either in time of war or in time of
peace; and if any one should attempt to rob the temple
of Delphi (the common centre of the confederacy), to
employ their hands, feet, tongue, and their whole power
to bring him to punishment. The humanising influence
which this and other enactments of the confederacy
were intended to exercise, is perceptible in the part
relating to war. The framer of the law evidently
regarded war only as an unavoidable means of settling
disputes between two states; but it was to be carried on
only for the purpose of bringing the dispute to a decis-
ion, and not for destruction and devastation.
There is difficulty in determining how often the Am-
phictyons met. But the most likely inference from the
somewhat indefinite statements of ancient writers is,
that they went twice every year both to Delphi and
Thermopylae, in spring and autumn. There is also
some difficulty in determining the relative positions of
the two sets of officials named in connection with the
Amphictyony, the Hieromnemones and the Pylagoroi
or Pylagorai. But there can scarcely be a doubt that
the Hieromnemon was the principal official. There
were as many Hieromnemones as there were votes;
and the Hieromnemones were alone entitled to vote.
The assembly proper consisted therefore only of the
Hieromnemones. It is most likely that the Hieromne-
mones were elected annually by lot. In the case of
the smaller states it is probable that the right to elect
went round by turns, while the more important states
sent their representatives every year. There might
be several Pylagoroi from each state. AEschines
mentions that there were on one occasion three from
A M P
295
Athens. They were elected by vote. Their function
seems to have been to advise with the Hieromnemon,
to address the assembly when anything relating to their
own state was discussed, and to bring all their influence
to bear on the assembly on behalf of their own state.
The office of Hieromnemon remained in high honor
till a late period. When the Dionysiac theatre in
Athens was excavated in 1862, a chair of honor was
found, and as it is certain that dramatic exhibitions
took place in this theatre in the time of the Antonines,
the office of Hieromnemon must have existed at that
period.
The meetings, however, were attended not only by
the deputies, but by thousands of others who flocked to
D - phi or Thermopylae for religious and mercantile
purposes, or only for the sake of amusement. This
occasioned popular meetings distinct from those of the
regular deputies. But we cannot suppose that all the
Greeks indiscriminately were allowed to take part in
those popular assemblies, which must have consisted of
visitors from the states which were members of the
Amphictyony.
Wise and humane as were the objects of the Amphic-
tyons, yet wherever they actively interfered in the affairs
of Greece during the historical period, we find that they
were more powerful for evil than for good; and the holy
wars which were carried on by them in the defence of
the Delphic temple and the honor of its god, con-
tributed not a little to the demoralization of the Greeks.
The very first time that the Amphictyons inter-
fered in the affairs of Greece we find them acting in
direct opposition to the spirit of their institution. We
allude to the Crissaean or first sacred war, which broke
out in 594, and lasted till 585 B.C. The inhabitants of
Crissa (or Cirrha), on the Corinthian Gulf, were
charged with extortion and violence towards the
strangers who landed at their port, or passed through
their territory on their way to Delphi. The second
sacred war, which likewise lasted for ten years, from
355 to 346 B.C., was carried on with unparalleled exas-
peration for all that period, and nearly all the Greeks
took part in it. The Thebans had set their hearts upon
conquering Phocis, but screened their designs behind
a charge preferred against the Locrians, alleging that
they had robbed the temple of Delphi, because they had
taken into cultivation a tract of land belonging to the
Delphic temple. The war was carried on with unex-
ampled cruelty, for even the surrender of the dead for
burial was refused, and all Phocian captives were put
to death. This war also afforded Philip of Macedonia
an opportunity to interfere in the affairs of Greece.
Being invited by the Thessalians to co-operate with
them against the Phocians, Philip and his Macedonians
acted as the champions of the god, and defeated the
Phocians in a bloody battle near Magnesia. Three
thousand captive Phocians were put to death.
There were many other confederations of a similar
kind, some of which, however, do not bear the name of
Amphictyonies in the authorities from which we derive
our information regarding them. The following were
among the most noted:—
1. The Amphictyony of Calauria, an island near
Troezen, consisted of the seven states of Hermione,
Epidaurus, AEgina, Athens, Prasiae, Nauplia, and the
Minyan Orchomenos.
2. Amphictyony of Onehetos, in the territory of
Haliartus in Boeotia, was likewise connected with the
temple of Poseidon.
3. Amphictyony of Amarynthos, in Euboea, con-
nected with the temple of Artemis.
4. Amphictyony of Delos, connected with the temple
of Apollo, was a league formed among the inhabitants
of the Cyclades and the Ionians in the neighborhood.
Its institution was ascribed to Theseus.
AMPHION, in Greek Mythology, the son of Zenus
by Antiope, and the husband of Niobe, was a musician
of such wonderful power, that at the sounds of his lyre
the stones began to move, and formed themselves into
walls around Thebes, after his conquest of that city.
He was killed by Apollo for assaulting his temple; or,
as some report, he destroyed himself in despair at the
slaughter of his children by that god. The famous
Farmese bull, discovered in 1546, represents Amphion
punishing Dirce for her treatment of his mother. There
are four other mythical personages of this name.
AMPHIOXUS, a species of fish, differing widely
from all other known animals. See LANCELET.
AMPHIPOLIS, a city of Macedonia, situated on
the east bank of the river Strymon, about three miles
from the sea. It was originally a Thracian town, and
was colonised by the Athenians in 437 B.C., two previous
attempts (497 and 465 B.C.) having been unsuccessful.
In 424 B.C. it surrendered to the Lacedaemonians with-
out resistance, and the Athenians never afterwards
recovered possession of it.
AMPHISBAENA, a genus of animals, found only in
South America and the West Indies, which, though
they have the general appearance of snakes or worms,
belong to the order Zacer/ilia, or Lizards.
AMPHITHEATRE denotes a theatre in which the
spectators were placed “all round " the stage. Though
the word is of Greek formation, the thing itself is dis-
tinctively Roman, being designed, for those cruel shows
of gladiators and wild beasts in which that people took
great pleasure, and which in modern times are only
represented by the barbarous bull-fights still popular in
Spain.
In the present article we do not enter on the consid-
eration of the spectacles themselves, but shall confine
ourselves to the buildings, which were devised to allow
as large a number of spectators as possible to enjoy the
sight of the show. In a dramatic representation it is
necessary that the actors should be heard, and also that
their faces should be seen, and the audience has there-
fore to be arranged in a semicircle in front of them ;
but when men fought with other men or with beasts,
they could be seen equally well from all sides. &
In Italy, combats of gladiators at first took place in
the forums, where temporary wooden scaffoldings were
erected for the spectators; and Vitruvius gives this as
the reason why in that country the forums were in the
shape of a parallelogram instead of being squares as in
Greece. Wild beasts were also hunted in the circus.
But towards the end of the Roman republic, when the
shows increased both in frequency and in costliness as
the city grew in power, special buildings began to be
provided for them; and when the consolidation of peace
under the empire had secured great material prosperity
for the provinces, such as they had never enjoyed when
separated into small states and often at war with each
other, the example of the capital was followed by many
other towns in the West; so that nearly a hundred
ampitheatres have been identified, either, by the exist-
ence of their ruins or by being mentioned by old writers.
There were even a few in the East, although such cruel
games were quite alien to the elegance and refinement
of the Hellenic mind.
From their being so admirably adapted for enabling
the greatest possible number of people to behold, a
spectacle, it is natural to suppose that they would be
occasionally used for purposes different from those
usually intended by them; and accordingly, Suetonius
relates how Caligula had an impertinent poet burnt alive
in the amphitheatre, and how Titus ordered the inform-
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A M P
ers, after having been whipped in the forum, to be led
through the arena, apparently that they might be ex-
posed to the execrations of the people. Criminals were
also sometimes exposed in them to be devoured by wild
beasts, and many of the Christian martyrs died in this
Way.
#he first amphitheatre was that constructed, 59 B.C.,
by C. Scribonius Curio. The only author by whom it
is described is Pliny, whose account of it rather taxes our
credulity. He tells that Scribonius built two wooden
theatres, which were placed back to back, and that after
the dramatic representations were finished, they were
turned round, with all the spectators in them, so as to
make one circular theatre, in the centre of which the
gladiators fought. And this was repeated more than
once. Thirteen years later, Caesar built (also of wood)
the first regular amphitheatre, and exhibited wild beasts
in it; and sixteen years after, C. Statilius Tauris built
the first one of stone, which was burnt in the great fire
of Rome during the reign of Nero. Probably the out-
side walls only were of stone.
Several others were constructed under the early em-
perors, but they were entirely superseded and eclipsed
by that of Vespasian and Titus, the vast ruins of which
strike the traveller with awe. Set on fire by lightning
under the emperor Macrinus, it was restored by Alex-
ander Severus, the shows during the interval being held
(as of old) in the circus. The latest record of its being
used is in the 6th century, when Cassiodorus was present;
but Bede in the 8th century speaks of the edifice as still
entire. During the Middle Ages many of the stones
of this, as of many other ancient buildings, were carried
away for building purposes; and among the plunderers
we regret to have to reckon the great Michel Angelo,
who worked up a large number of its stones into a
palace for one of the Roman noble families. As, how-
ever, the Colosseum had been the scene of many of the
Christian martyrdoms, Benedict XIV., whose name
ought never to be mentioned without an expression of
admiration and gratitude for his enlightened patronage
and antiquities, took advantage of this to consecrate the
interior by the erection of crosses and oratories, thereby
preserving it from further depredations. Of late years
considerable excavations have been made to examine its
substructures. Its name is variously written, but on
the whole it would seem that the most correct orthog-
raphy is Colosseum (not Coliseum), and that it is
derived from its colossal size, which far surpassed any
former edifice of the sort. Many of its minor arrange-
ments are uncertain, but the main features and general
plan are sufficiently intelligible.
The external elevation of the Colosseum consisted of
four stages, each adorned with engaged columns of the
three orders of Greek architecture. The lowest three
were arcaded, having each eighty columns and as many
arches. Those of the basement story served as en-
trances; seventy-six being numbered and allotted to the
general body of spectators, while four, at the extremi-
ties of the axes of the ellipse, were the principal
entrances. The higher arcades had a low parapet with
(apparently) a statue in each arch, and gave light and
air to the passages which surrounded the building.
The openings of the arcades above the principal en-
trances were larger than the rest, and were adorned
with figures of chariots. The highest stage was much
more solid, being composed of a continuous wall of
masonry, only pierced by forty small square windows.
The object of this may have been to obtain the neces-
sary solidity and weight for steadying the poles which
supported the awning, and must have had to carry a
severe inward strain. The alternate arcades were
ornamented with metal shields. There were also a
series of brackets to support the poles on which the
awning was stretched.
The interior may be naturally divided into the arena
and the cazea, with their respective appendages.
The arena was the portion assigned to the com-
batants, and derived its name from the sand with which
it was strewn, to absorb the blood and prevent it from
becoming slippery. Some of the emperors showed their
prodigality by substituting precious powders, and even
gold dust, for sand. The are ua was generally of the
same shape as the amphitheatre itself, and was separated
from the spectators by a wall built perfectly smooth,
that the wild beasts might not by any possibility climb
it. At Rome it was faced inside with polished marble,
but at Pompeii it was simply painted. For further
security, it was surrounded by a metal railing or net-
work, and the arena was sometimes surrounded also by
a ditch (euripus), especially on account of the elephants.
Connected with the arena were the dens from which the
beasts came, and the rooms where the gladiators met
before the show began. In spite of the excavations
which have been made, it is not very easy to understand
how all the effects described by ancient authors were
produced; for after the regular shows were over, the
arena was sometimes filled with water, and sea-fights
were exhibited with ships.
The part assigned to the spectators was called cavea.
In the different amphitheatres whose ruins have been
examined, there are some differences in the arrangements,
but the general features are nearly the same in all. The
cavea was divided into several galleries, concentric with
the outer walls, and therefore, like them, of an elliptic
form. The place of honor was the lowest of these,
nearest to the arena, and called the podium. The
divisions in it were larger, so as to be able to contain
movable seats. At Rome it was here that the emperor
sat, his seat bearing the name of suggestum, the
Senators, principal magistrates, vestal virgins, the pro-
vider (editor) of the show, and other persons of note,
occupied the rest of the podium.
The height of the Colosseum is given as from 160 to
18o feet. The seats in the interior do not rise higher
than the level of the third order of the exterior, that is,
about half the entire height of the building; and this
apparent excess of height beyond what was made avail-
able, has led some to suppose that there were upper
seats and galleries, of which no trace now exists. The
height, however, appears to have been necessary for the
ventilation of the building. When such enormous
crowds were packed closely together for several hours at
a time on an Italian Summer day, with an awning drawn
over them, the atmosphere would have become quite
pestilential if there had not been a considerable space
overhead, and at least one range of open arcades, unen-
cumbered by any galleries to prevent the free circulation
of air. Scented liquids were at times squirted over the
spectators from concealed tubes; but no aroma would
have compensated for the want of air, which the arcade
all round the building, above the highest spectators,
would supply. There may also have been another series
of openings serving the same purpose between the top
of the wall and the edge of the awning, which was sup-
ported upon poles. It has been calculated that the Col-
osseum contained 87,000 places, and that besides these,
15,000 more spectators could be admitted. The greatest
length is about 612 feet, and the length of the shortest
axis of the ellipse about 515 feet. The dimensions of
the arena are variously stated by different writers, some
making it 247 feet by 150, and others 281 by 176.
AMPHITRITE, in Greek Mythology, the supreme
goddess of the sea, and as such the wife of Poseidon
(Neptune), but, unlike him, so entirely confined in her
A M P – A M R 297
&
authority to the sea and the creatures in it, that not only
was her name sometimes used as an equivalent for that
element, but she was never associated with her husband
either for purposes of worship or in works of art, except
when he was to be distinctly regarded as the god who
controlled the sea, though generally his functions ex-
tended to the whole watery element.
AMPHORA, a large vessel used by the ancient
Greeks and Romans for preserving wine, oil, fruits, &c.,
and so named from its usually having an ear or handle
on each side of the neck, whence it was also called
diota. The Attic amphora contained nearly nine gal-
lons, and the Roman amphora about six.
AMPLITUDE, in Astronomy, is the amount of de-
viation towards the north or south of a celestial object
from the true east at rising, and the true west at setting.
AM PTHILL, a small neatly-built market town in
Bedfordshire, England, situated about eight miles south
of Bedford. Population in 1889, 2,220.
AMPULLA, a Latin word denoting a small jar or
flask for holding liquids. In mediaeval church Latin it
usually signifies the vessels that contained the conse-
crated oils, of which the three principal -— for the cate-
chumens, for the sick, and for confirmation — were
allowed by the bishop on the Thursday before Easter.
AMRAOTI, a district and city of India, in the com.
missionership of East Berar, within the Haidarābād
assigned districts. It is bounded on the N. by the
Elichpur district; on the E. by the Wardhá river, sep-
arating it from the central provinces; on the S. by the
Bâsim and Wüm districts; and on the W. by Akolá
district. Population in 1889, 450,276.
AMRITSAR, a division, district, and city of British
India, under the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant-Governor
of the Punjáb. The Amritsar DIVISION comprises the
districts of Amritsar, Siálkot, and Gurdáspur.
AMRITsAR DISTRICT is bounded on the N. W. by the
river Rávi, on the S. E. by the river Biás, on the N. E.
by the district of Gurdáspur, and on the S. W. by the
district of Lahor. Amritsar district is a nearly level
plain, with a very slight slope from east to west. Total
population of Amritsar district, 832,750, divided into
the following classes:– Hindus, 138,027; Mahometans,
377, 135; Sikhs, 223,219; others, 94,369.
AMRITsAR CITY, the divisional headquarters and
capital of the district of the same name, lies at an equal
distance between the Biás and Rávi rivers, is about 8
miles in circumference, and forms at once the great trad-
ing centre of the Panjāb, and a celebrated seat of the
Sikh religion and learning.
Amritsar was the first mission station of the Church
of England in the Panjāb. The census of 1889 gives a
population within municipal limits of 61,274. The total
population, however, of the city and suburbs is returned
at 135,813, of whom 3477 are agriculturists, the rest
being engaged in trade or other non-agricultural pul-
suits.
AMRU-BEN-EL-ASS, or AMER, one of the most
famous of the first race of Saracen leaders, was
descended of Aasi, of the tribe of Koreish. In his
youth he wrote satirical verses against the person and
doctrine of Mahomet. His zeal in opposing the new
religion prompted him to undertake an embassy to the
king of Ethiopia, in order to stimulate him against the
converts whom he had taken under his protection, but
he returned a convert to the Mahometan faith, and, along
with Khaled, joined the fugitive prophet at Medina.
When Abu-Bekr resolved to make a new attack upon
Syria, he entrusted Amru with a high command. In
this he was so successful that he rose to the elevation of
chief in Irak, when Khaled requested the attendance of
all the Arabian generals before Damascus. Luring the
caliphate of Omar he also served in Palestine under
Abu-Obeidah, taking the command in the siege of Cae-
sarea, which yielded to him in July 638 A.D. After the
death of Obeidah, Amru assumed the chief command in
Syria, in which he was confirmed by the caliph, notwith-
standing the opposition of Othman. Soon afterwards
(639) he led an army of 4000 Arabs into Egypt. . To
Amru has generally been attributed the burning of the
famous Alexandrian library, by command of the Caliph
Omar. Amru died 663 A.D. In a pathetic oration to
his children on his death-bed he bitterly lamented his
youthful offence in satirising the prophet, although
Mahomet had forgiven him, and had frequently affirmed
that “there was no Mussulman more sincere and stead-
fast in the faith than Amru.” -
AMRU-EL-KAIS, an Arabian poet, contemporary
with Mahomet. He wrote one of the seven Moa//a/at
(Suspended), or poems, composed before the promulga-
tion of Mahometanism, which derived their mame from
the fact that they were suspended in the Kaaba at Mecca.
He was hostile to the claims of the prophet, and wrote
verses against him.
AMSANCTI (or AMPSANCTI) VALLIS, a valley
with a small sulphureous lake and cavern in the territory
of the Hirpini, or Principato Ultra (east of Naples),
about four miles from the town of Frigento (Cicero,
Pliny), or eight from Gesualdo. The spot can most
easily be visited by railway from Ariano, on the Naples
and Benevento line.
AMSDORF, NICOLAUs, a Protestant reformer of the
16th century, was born, Dec. 3, 1483, at Gross-Zschopa,
near Wurzen, on the Mulde. He was educated at Leip-
sic, and then at Wittenberg, where he was one of the
first who matriculated (1502) in the recently-founded
university. He soon obtained various academical
honors, and became professor of theology in 15 II. He
joined Luther at the very beginning of his great struggle
(1517); continued all along one of his most admiring
and determined supporters; was with him at the Leipsic
conference (1519), and the Diet of Worms (1521); and
was in the secret of his Wartburg seclusion. He
assisted the first efforts of the Reformation at Magde-
burg (1524), at Goslar (1531), and at Einbeck (1534);
took an active part in the debates at Schmalkald (1537),
where he defended the use of the sacrament by the un-
believing ; and (1539) spoke out strongly against the
bigamy of the Elector of Hesse. He urged the separa-
tion of the High Lutheran party from Melancthon
(1557), got the Saxon dukes to oppose the Frankfurt
Recess (1558), and continued to fight for the purity of
Lutheran doctrine. He died at Eisenach, May 14, 1565,
and was buried in the high church there, where his effigy
shows a well-knit frame and sharp-cut features.
AMSLER, SAMUEL, one of the most distinguished of
modern engravers, was born at Schinznach, in the canton
of Aargau, in 1791. Amsler’s principal engravings are
– “The Triumphal March of Alexander the Great,” and
a full-length “Christ,” after the sculptures of Thorwald-
sen and Dannecker; the “Burial of Christ,” and two
“Madonnas,” after the pictures of Raphael ; and the
“Triumph of Religion in the Arts,” after Overbeck, his
last work, on which he spent six years. He died May
I8, 1849.
AMSTERDAM, or AMSTELDAM, formerly called
Amste/redam, capital of the Netherlands, situated in the
province of North Holland, is built somewhat in the
form of a half-moon, on the Y or Ij, an arm of the
Zuyder Zee. The name Amsterdam means “the dam or
dyke of the Amstel,” from a river so called which passes
in a north-easterly direction through the city,+ the
“dam” referring to the extensive and costly system of
embankments, canals, and sluices necessary to Secure
298
A M S — A M U
this low lying city against the encroachments of the tide.
Towards the land Amsterdam was at one time surrounded
by a fosse or canal, and regularly fortified; but its ram-
parts have been demolished, and the twenty-eight bas-
tions that formed part of the defences are now used as
promenades, or covered with buildings. Within the
city four canals—the Prinsen Gracht, Keizer's Gracht,
Heeren Gracht, and the Singel—extend, in the form of
polygonal crescents, nearly parallel to each other and
to the former fosse; while numerous smaller canals inter-
sect the city in every direction, dividing it into about 90
islands, with nearly 290 bridges. Some of these are of
stone, but the majority are of iron and wood, and con-
structed so as to allow vessels for inland navigation to
pass through. The site of Amsterdam was originally a
peat bog, and all its buildings rest upon piles that are
driven some 40 or 50feet through a mass of loose sand and
mud until they reach a solid stratum of firm clay. This
foundation is perfectly secure as long as the piles remain
under water. In 1822, however, an overladen corn
magazine sank into the mud. The piles are liable to the
ravages of wood-worms that are supposed to have been
brought by vessels from foreign ports. The chief lite-
rary institutions of Amsterdam are the Athenaeum, the
Society called “Fe/ix. Alſeritis,” from the first words of
the inscription on their place of meeting; the society
“AWatura Artis Magistra,” to whom the zoological
gardens belong; the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and
the Seaman's Institute. The galleries of pictures in the
city are of great value. The museum in the Trippen-
huis contains over 400 works, chiefly of the Flemish and
Dutch schools, including the “Night Guard” of Rem-
brandt, whose statue may be seen on the Kaasplein,
opposite the house he occupied, and the “Banquet of
the Civic Guard,” by Van der Helst; besides nearly 4000
engravings, and a magnificent numismatic collection,
considered one of the finest in the world. Among the
other collections are those in the Museum Van der Hoop
and in the Fodor Museum, that belonging to the “Arti
et 4/licitize”. Society, as well as several private galleries.
The population (1889) is estimated at 300,000, of
whom about 60,000 are Roman Catholics, and 30,000
Jews, the rest being mostly Protestants of various
SectS.
The principal imports of Amsterdam are—coffee,
amounting in 1870 to I, 147,240 bags and 1499 casks;
tea, in the same year, 79,573 chests; sugar, in the same
year, 273,750,000 lb.; tobacco, rice, cotton, indigo,
timber, tin, hemp, and grain. The exports comprise
cheese, butter, madder, clover, rape, linseed oil, gin,
and other products of Holland, besides general goods
and manufactures from various European countries.
There is also a large export trade in the produce of the
East and West Indies. There are two lines of railway,
the one connecting Amsterdam with Haarlem, Leyden,
and Rotterdam ; and the other with Utrecht, Arnheim,
and Prussia. Amsterdam has sugar refineries; soap,
oil, glass, iron, dye, and chemical works; distilleries,
breweries, tanneries; tobacco and snuff factories. The
cutting of diamonds has long been extensively practised
in the city by the Jews. Although no longer the centre
of the banking transactions of the world, Amsterdam
is still a place of considerable importance in this respect.
The celebrated bank of Amsterdam, founded in 1609,
was dissolved in 1796; and the present bank of the
Netherlands was established on the model of the Bank
of England in 1814.
About the year 1200 Amsterdam was a small fishing
village, held in fief by the lords of Amstel, together with
the surrounding district, called Amstelland. Towards
the close of the 13th century it reverted, in consequence
of the complicity of Gysbrecht Van Amstel in the mur-
der of Count Floris V., to the counts of Holland, who
gave it a charter and other privileges. It was fortified
in 1482, and soon rose to be the most important com-
mercial city of the Netherlands. The early voyages to
India, and the union of the seven provinces in 1579,
added greatly to the prosperity of Amsterdam–so
much so, that it excited the cupidity of the earl of Leices-
ter, who made a futile attempt to surprise it in 1587;
and its position was still further improved by the peace
of Westphalia in 1648, which closed the navigation of
the Scheldt, and consequently ruined the trade of Ant-
werp. Two years later, the stadtholder William II.
intended to surprise it, but the bold attitude of the
inhabitants obliged him to give up his project. Amster-
dam suffered so severely from the war in the time of
Cromwell, that more that 4000 houses stood tenantless;
and the French occupation during the First Empire
inflicted a more permanent injury upon the city. Since
1813, however, much of its former commercial influ-
ence has returned.
AMSTERDAM, a thriving city situated in Mont—
gomery county, N. Y., is situated on the Mohawk river,
in Amsterdam township, thirty-three miles from Al-
bany, and sixty-two miles east by south from Utica. It
is a leading station on the New York Central and West
Shore railroads, a prominent shipping point and manu-
facturing center. The city contains four banks, three
daily and four weekly papers, also one monthly publi-
cation, eight churches, a complete and excellent school
system, stores, warehouses, public halls, hotels, etc.
The manufactures embrace knit goods, shirts, carpets,
needles, brushes, boilers, lumber, etc. Pop. 20,000.
AMSTERDAM, an uninhabited and almost inaccess-
ible island in the Indian Ocean, about 60 miles S. of
St. Paul’s Island, and nearly mid-way between the
Cape of Good Hope and Tasmania.
AMULET (in late Latin amuletum, probably from
the Arabic hamaleſ, a pendant), anything worn as a
charm, generally, but not invariably, hung from the
neck, to protect the wearer against witchcraft, sickness,
accidents, and other evils, or to deliver him from ills.
under which he labors. Amulets have been of many
different kinds, and formed of different substances,—
Stones, metals, and strips of parchment being the most
common, with or without characters or legends engraved
or written on them. Gems have often been employed
and greatly prized, serving for ornaments as well as
for charms. Certain herbs, too, and animal prepara-
tions have been used in the same way. In setting them
apart to their use as amulets, great precautions have
been taken that fitting times be selected, stellar and
other magic influences propitious, and everything
avoided that might be supposed to destroy or weaken
the force of the charm.
AMURATH or MURAD I. was born in 1326 A.D.
(726 A.H.), succeeded his father Orkhan as sultan of
the Ottoman Turks in 1360, and died in 1389. He is
entitled to notice as being the first who led the Turkish
arms into Europe, which he quickly overran as far as
the Balkan. He lost his life at the close of a great
battle at Kossova, which he had successfully fought
against Lazarus, despot of Servia, and was succeeded
by his son Bajazet.
AMURATH II., the tenth emporer of the Turks,
was born about 1404, and died February 9, 1451. He
succeeded Mohammed I. in 1422. At first he had to
contend against a pretender, the pseudo-Mustapha, who
was supported by the Greek emperor and others; but
through the assistance of an astute state prisoner,
Mohammed Bey (Michael Ogli), he obtained a blood-
less victory over him. He then turned his arms against
the Greek emperor himself, but failed in the seige of
A M U — A N A
299
Constantinople. Against his younger brother Mustapha
he was successful by bribes. In April 1429 he be-
seiged and took Saloniki (7%essalonica), which was
under Venetian rule, thus opening up the way for the
final subjugation of Greece. He continued almost with-
out any reverses of fortune till 1442, when Hunniades
defeated his forces in the battle of Vasag, and obliged
him to make peace with the Christian princes. The
treaty was hardly concluded when his son Ala-Eddin
died. In his grief he abdicated in favor of his son Mo-
hammed, a boy of fourteen, while he retired to Mag-
nesia in search of repose. But the Christian princes
took advantage of his abdication to renew their attacks,
and he was called to oppose them, which he did with
terrible success in the battle of Varna, Nov. Io, I444,
when the king of Hungary, Ladislaus, fell. Having
saved his country, he again gave up the reins to his
son, and returned to Magnesia. But the janissaries re-
volted, and his presence was demanded. Again on the
throne, he invaded Albania and Peloponnesus, but was
repulsed by George Castroit or Scanderbeg. He re-
treated, however, only to gain a great victory over his
former adversary Hunniades at Cassova (Oct. 17, 1448),
the battle lasting three days. He died at Adrianople,
Feb. II, I451, from a stroke of apoplexy, according to
the most probable account.
AMURATH III., sultan of the Turks, born about
1545, succeeded in 1574 his father Selim II. The first
words he addressed to his courtiers were — “I am hun-
gry: give me something to eat; ” and the evil omen
was fulfilled in the famines and disasters that marked
his reign. He was fond of dancing and music, and has
left a few literary trifles. He died Jan. 16, 1595.
AMURATH IV. was born about 16II, and suc-
ceeded his uncle Mustapha in . The chief event of
his reign was the recovery in 1638, after thirty days of
unremitting assault, of the city of Baghdad which had
fallen into the hands of the Persians. He died in 1640,
at the early age of twenty-nine.
AMWELL, a village of Hertfordshire, in the parish
of Great Amwell, on a hill overlooking the Lea, 3 miles
from Hertford and 20 from London.
AMYMONE(Auvuòjvim),in Greek Zegend, a daugh-
ter of Danaiis, by whom, with her sisters, she had been
sent to look for water, the district of Argus being then
parched through the anger of Neptune. Amymone at
the spring is represented on ancient engraved gems.
AMYOT, JACQUES, a famous French writer, was
born, of poor parents, at Melun, October 30, 1513;
found his way —a pale-faced, bare-footed, ill-clad boy—
to the “College de France” in Paris, and there picked
up a knowledge of the classical languages, serving some
of the richer students as valet and composer of Latin,
to enable him to continue his studies. He became M.
A. at Paris, and doctor of civil law at Bourges; obtained,
through Jacques Colure (or Colin), abbot of St. Am-
brose in the latter city, a tutorship in the family of a
secretary of state; by the secretary was recommended
to the duchess of Berry, only sister of Francis I. ; and,
through her influence, was made professor of Greek and
Latin at Bourges. Here he translated the 7% eagenes
and Charic/ea of Heliodorus (I547, fol.), for which he
was rewarded by Francis I. with the abbey of Bellozane,
and thereby enabled to go to Italy to study the Vatican
text of Plutarch, on whose Lives he had been some time
engaged. He died February 6, 1593, bequeathing, it is
said, 1200 crowns to the hospital at Orleans for the
twelve “deniers” he received there when “poor and
naked” on his way to Paris. His fame rests on his
vigorous and idiomatic version of Plutarch's Lives,
which was translated into English by North, and sup-
plied Shakespeare with materials for his Roman plays.
AMYRAUT, Moses, a pre-eminent French Protest-
ant theologian and metaphysician, was born at Bour-
gueil, in the valley of Anjou, in 1596. His family was
an ancient and illustrious one from Hagenau, Alsace.
They migrated to Orleans in the 13th or 14th century.
On his way home from the university he passed through
Saumur, and having visited Mons. Bouchereau, pastor
of the Protestant church there, he introduced him to the
renowned lord of Plessis-Mornay, governor of the city.
Both were struck with young Amyraut’s ability and cul-
ture, and both urged him to change from law to theology.
Plessis-Mornay, who was chary of laudations, pronounced
that “there was nothing above the grasp of his great
parts.” Returned home, his father, after considerable
hesitation, gave consent to the change from law to di-
vinity, with a proviso that he should revise his philological
and philosophical studies, and read over Mons. Calvin's
Anstitutiones, before finally determining. He did so,
and, as might have been anticipated, decided for theology.
He thereupon removed to Saumur —destined to be for
ever associated with his name — and “sat at the feet of
the great Cameron,” who ultimately regarded him as his
greatest scholar. He had a brilliant course, and was in
due time licensed as a minister of the French Protestant
Church. He was appointed to Saumur, and to the pro-
fessor's chair along with the pastorate. On the occasion
of his inauguration he maintained for thesis ZXe Sacerdo-
tio Christi. His co-professors were Lewis Capell and
Josua de la Place, who were also Cameron’s pupils.
Very beautiful was the life-long friendship of these three
remarkable men. They remain associated still as the
joint authors of a body of divinity entitled Z'heses Sa/-
mzerienses. Full of energy in every atom of him, Amy-
raut devoted himself to his labor of love with a fine
enthusiasm of love of labor. He very speedily gave
French Protestantism a potentiality it had never pos-
sessed before. In 1631 he published his Traité des
A'eligions, a book that still lives; and from this year on-
ward he was a foremost man in the church, especially at
the national and provincial synods. When the king
visited Saumur in 1651, Amyraut declined to close his
church on the Sunday, but preached a sermon that rang
through Europe on the text, “Fear God, honor the
king.” Amyraut remained to the end one of the most
prominent names of French Protestantism; and his
ZXe /'A/ēvation de Za Foi º ż de l’Abaissemzezzt de la A'al-
son enz /a Créance des Mystères de la A'eligzoza (1641)
gave him early a high place as a metaphysician, which
was sustained by after works. Exclusive of his contro-
versial writings, he left behind him a very voluminous
series of practical evangelical books, which remain the
fireside favorites of the peasantry of French Protestant-
ism still. His Etat des Fidºles après la Mort has com-
forted many mourners; his Sur l’Oraisozz /Xomlinicale is
striking and rich; his Du Mérite des CEuzºres and Zºraité
de Za justification, weighty and powerful; his Para-
phrases on Old Testament and New Testament books of
Holy Scripture, judicious and suggestive — sometimes
penetrative. His closing years were weakened by a
severe ſall he met with in 1657. He died on 18th Janu-
ary 1664.
ANA, a Latin plural termination appropriated to
various collections of the observations and criticisms of
eminent men, delivered in conversation and recorded by
their friends, or discovered among their papers after
their decease. Though the term Ana is of compara-
tively modern origin, the introduction of this species
of composition is not of recent date. It appears, from
D'Herbelot's Bibliothèque Orienza/e, that from the
earliest periods the Eastern nations were in the habit of
preserving the maxims of their sages. From them the
practice passed to the Greeks and Romans. Plato and
3OO
A N A
Xenophon treasured up and recorded the sayings of their
master Socrates; and Arrian, in the concluding books of
his Enchiridion, now lost, collected the casual observa-
tions of Epictetus. The numerous apophthegms scat-
tered in Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and other writers,
show that it was customary in Greece to preserve the
colloquially expressed ideas of illustrious men. It
appears that Julius Caesar compiled a book of apoph-
thegms, in which he related the bon mots of Cicero;
and Quintilian informs us that a freedman of that cele-
brated wit and Orator composed three books of a work
entitled De Jocis Ciceronis. We are told by Suetonius
that Caius Melissus, originally the slave but afterwards
the freedman and librarian of Maecenas, collected the
sayings of his master; and Aulus Gellius has filled his
AVoctes Attica, with anecdotes which he heard from the
eminent scholars and critics whose society he frequented
in Rome.
But though vestiges of Ana may be traced in the
classical ages, it is only in modern times that they have
come to be regarded as constituting a distinct species of
composition, comprising literary anecdotes, critical reflec-
tions, and historical incidents, mingled with the detail of
*one mots and ludicrous tales. The term Ana seems to
have been applied to such collections as far back as the
beginning of the 15th century.
The most remarkable collection of Ana in the
English language—and, indeed, in any language—is to
be found in a work which does not correspond to the
normal type either in name or form. In his Zife of
..Samezºel Johnson, ZZ. O., Boswell relates that to his
remark, apropos of French literature, “Their Ana are
good,” Johnson replied, “A few of them are good; but
we have one book of that kind better than any of them
—Selden’s 7 able-7"alk.” Boswell’s own work is incom-
parably superior to all. In worth as a book this has
been rated, on the high authority of Carlyle, beyond any
other product of the 18th century, and the value it has
depends mainly on its Ana. Its interest arises, not from
the details it furnishes of the events of Dr. Johnson's
career, still less from any attempt at a discriminating
estimate of his work and character, but from the
graphic representation it gives of his habitual manner of
life and speech. The innate greatness of Johnson
appears, more than in all his writings, in his portrait,
delineated with the exactness of a sharply defined photo-
graph, as he appeared to the eyes of his admiring
biographer in his daily dishabi/Ze.
ANA BAPTISTS (re-baptisers), a name sometimes
applied indiscriminately to all denominations of Chris-
tians that deny the validity of infant baptism, but re-
stricted in general usage to certain sects which became
prominent in Germany and elsewhere at the period of
the Reformation. In both cases the designation origin
ates with opponents, and is repudiated by the great
majority of those to whom it is applied. Believing, as
they do, that the baptism of infants is no baptism, they
naturally object to a name which implies that their bap-
tism of such persons as may have been baptised in in-
fancy is a second administration of the rite. It is
therefore desirable to avoid the use of the term as de-
scriptive of those who hold what are otherwise known as
antipaedobaptist views. In its more limited sense the
word has been too long in use, and is too well known to
be now discarded, though it is open to the further
objection, in addition to that already stated, that it de-
scribes a sect by one of the least important of its dis-
tinctive doctrines and practices. The Anabaptists of
Germany are historically noteworthy, not because they
insisted on re-baptism as the condition of admission to
their communion, but because the enthusiasm of the
Reformation manifested itself in them in a form and
manner altogether peculiar. Their views as to the true
constitution of the church and its relation to the state,
and the efforts they made to realize these views, furnish
a problem, partly theological, partly historical, of which
a satisfactory solution is not easy. There is an obvious
genetic, though not historical connection between the
the Anabaptists and those earlier sects (Novatians, Don-
atists, Albigenses, Waldenses) which did not practise in-
fant baptism. It is more important, however, to trace
the relation between the Anabaptists and the great body
of the Reformers. Anabaptism, as a system, may be
defined as the Reformation doctrine carried to its
utmost limit; the Anabaptists were the extreme left in
the army of the Reformers. The history of the Ana-
baptist movement in its outward development is brief
but eventful. In 1521 their first rising took place at
Zwickau, under the leadership of Thomas Münzer, the
Lutheran pastor of that place. (See MüNZER.) Com-
pelled to leave Zwickau, Münzer visited Bohemia, re-
sided two years at Altstadt and Thuringia, and in 1524
spent some time in Switzerland. During this period he
proclaimed his revolutionary doctrines in religion and
politics with growing vehemence, and, so far as the
lower orders were concerned, with growing success. .
The crisis came in the so-called Peasants' War in South
Germany, in 1525. In its origin a revolt against feudal
oppression, it became, under the leadership of Münzer, a
war against all constituted authorities, and an attempt
to establish by force his ideal Christian commonwealth,
with absolute equality and the community of goods.
The total defeat of the insurgents at Frankenhausen
(May 15, 1525), followed as it was by the execution of
Münzer and several other leaders, proved only a tem-
porary check to the Anabaptist movement. The Men-
monites, have been identified with the earlier Anabaptists,
on the ground that they included among their number
many of the ſamatics of Münster. But the continuity of
a sect is to be traced in its principles and not in its ad-
herents, and it must be remembered that Menno and his
followers expressly repudiated the distinctive doctrines
of the Münster Anabaptists. They have never aimed at
any social or political revolution, and have been as re-
markable for sobriety of conduct as the Münster sect
was for its fanaticism. (See MENNON ITES.) In En-
glish history frequent reference is made to the Ana-
baptists during the 16th and 17th centuries, but there is
no evidence that any considerable number of native En-
glishmen ever adopted the principles of the Münster
sect. Many of the followers of Münzer and Bockhold
seem to have fled from persecution in Germany and the
Netherlands to be subjected to a persecution scarcely
less severe in England. The mildest measure adopted
towards these refugees was banishment from the king-
dom, and a large number suffered at the stake. It has
already been explained that the application of the term
Anabaptist to those English sects that had nothing in
common with the German Anabaptists except the prac-
tice of adult baptism, is unjustifiable. (See BAPTISTS.)
ANABASIS, a march into the interior; the title
given by Xenophon to his narrative of the expedition of
Cyrus, the younger against his brother Artaxerxes of
Persia, 401 years B.C., and adopted by Arrian for his
history of the expedition of Alexander the Great.
ANACHARSIS, a Scythian philosopher, who lived
about 600 B.C. Instructed in the Greek language by
his mother, he prevailed upon the king to intrust him
with an embassy to Athens. On his arrival in that
renowned city he became acquainted with Solon, from
whom he rapidly acquired a knowledge of the wisdom
and learning of Greece. By the influence of Solon he
was introduced to the principal persons in Athens, and
was the first stranger who received the privileges of
A N A
3OI
citizenship. According to Herodotus, he was killed by
his brother Saulius while he was performing sacrifice to
the goddess Cybele. His simple and forcible mode of
expression has been called “Scythian eloquence.”
ANACHRONISM, a neglect or falsification, whether
wilful or undesigned, of chronological relation. Its
commonest use restricts it to the ante-dating of events,
circumstances, or customs; in other words, to the intro-
duction, especially in works of imagination that rest on
a historical basis, of details borrowed from a later age.
Anachronisms may be committed in many ways, origin-
ating, for instance, in disregard of the different modes
of life and thought that characterise different periods, or
in ignorance of the progress of the arts and sciences and
the other ascertained facts of history, and may vary
from glaring inconsistency to scarcely perceptible mis-
representation. Anachronisms abound in the works of
Raphael and Shakespeare, as well as in those of the
meanest daubers and playwrights of earlier times. The
safe and the just course here appears to be to “regard
the writer's end,” and not to hold an author responsible
for historical accuracy or verisimilitude who does not
profess to write history.
ANACOLUTHON is the lack of grammatical sym-
metry in a sentence, either through the consequent taking
an unexpected form or being altogether suppressed,
the writer or speaker desiring to present his thought in
another aspect, or feeling that he has already made his
meaning sufficiently plain. In the case of a man who
is full of his subject, or who is carried along by the
passion of the moment, such inconsequents are very apt
to OCCur.
ANACONDA, a gigantic snake of South America,
sometimes over 30 feet in length, called the water-
serpezzº, from frequenting swamps and rivers, and
preying on water animals.
ANACREON, an Ionian Greek, born at Teos, on the
coast of Asia Minor, probably about 562 B.C. His
reputation as a lyric poet stood very high both in his
own age and those that followed. “The charming”—
“the honey-tongued ”—“the swan of Teos”—“the glory
of Ionia,” are some of the epithets constantly given him
by ancient writers. “Sing us one of the songs of
Alcaeus or Anacreon,” cries one of the guests in a
comedy of Aristophanes. “When I hear the verses of
Sappho or Anacreon,” says the poet to his friends, in the
Symposium of Plato, “I set down my cup for very shame
of my own performances.” Of the poet's life little is
known beyond a few scattered notices, not in all cases
certainly authentic. He probably shared the voluntary
exile of the mass of his fellow-townsmen, who, when
Cyrus the Great was laying siege to the Greek cities of
Asia, took ship, and founded a colony at Abdera in
Thrace, rather than surrender their city to his general
Harpagus. From Thrace he soon removed to the
island of Samos, ruled at that time by Polycrates, one
of the grandest of those old “tyrants” who by no
means deserved the name in its worst sense. It is said
that he acted as Polycrates’s tutor; that he stood very
high in his confidence we learn from so good an
authority as Herodotus, who represents the poet as sit-
ting in the royal chamber when audience was given to
the Persian herald. In return for such favor and pro-
tection, he wrote many complimentary odes upon
Polycrates and his favorites. But if an anecdote found
in Stobaeus is true, he was no mercenary flatterer. On
one occasion the “tyrant” presented him with the sum
of five talents. He spent two wakeful nights in think-
ing of his money, and then returned it to the giver,
saying it “was not worth the care it cost him.” On the
death of Polycrates, Hipparchus, who was then in
power at Athens, and who inherited the literary tastes
of his father Pisistratus, sent a special embassy to fetch
the popular poet to Athens in a galley of fifty oars. He
must have fully enjoyed and contributed much to the
enjoyment of the brilliant circle with which Hipparchus
had surrounded himself, and there he made acquaintance,
amongst others, with the poet Simonides. When this
circle was broken up by the assassination of Hipparchus,
Anacreon seems to have returned to his native town of
Teos. There, according to a metrical epitaph ascribed
to his friend Simonides, he died and was buried. Lu-
cian mentions him amongst his instances of the longev-
ity of eminent men, as having completed eighty-five
years. Anacreon had a reputation as a composer of
hymns, as well as of those bacchanalian and amatory
lyrics which are commonly associated with his name.
Two short hymns to Diana and Bacchus, consisting of
eight and eleven lines respectively, stand first amongst
his few undisputed remains, as printed by recent editors.
But pagan hymns, especially when addressed to such
deities as Venus, Eros, and Bacchus, are not so very un-
like what we call “Anacreontic” poetry as to make the
contrast of style so great as the word might seem to
imply. The tone of Anacreon's lyric effusions has
probably led to an unjust estimate, both by ancients and
moderns, of the poet’s personal character. As Homer
was accused of bibulous propensities by some because
he makes frequent and kindly mention of “the purple
wine,” so Anacreon was held to be a thorough sensual-
ist because he sang so persistently of wine and love.
ANADYOMENE, an epithet of Aphrodite (Venus),
expressive of her having risen (i.e., been born) from the
foam of the sea. In works of ancient art — e.g., in:
many existing bronze statuettes— Venus was represented
under this title as if just emerged from the sea, and in
the act of wringing her tresses.
ANADY R, the name of a gulf and of a river in the
north-east of Siberia. The gulf extends from Cape St.
Thadeus, on the south, forming part of the Behring
Sea ; while the river, taking its rise from a lake in the
Stanovoi mountains, called Ivashki or Ivachno, flows
through the Tchutchee country, at first to the west and
then to the east, entering the gulſ of Anadyrskaia, a
branch of the gulf of Anadyr, after a course of about
6oo miles.
ANAESTHESIA (sensation), a term in medicine used
to describe a state of insensibility to external impres-
sions, either as the result of disease or as induced
artificially by the employment of certain substances
known as anaesthetics.
In diseases of the brain or spinal cord anaesthesia
is an occasional symptom, but in such cases it is usually
limited in extent, involving a limb or a definite area of
surface of the body. Complete anaesthesia has been
observed in persons who were in a state of catalepsy or
trance.
The artificial induction of anaesthesia by the use of
drugs or the inhalation of vapours is a subject of great
interest, both historically and from its practical appli-
cation to the relief of suffering and the treatment of
disease. Although it is mainly owing to the researches
of distinguished chemists and physicians of the present
century that the employment of anaesthesia has come
to occupy a foremost place among remedies, there is
abundant evidence to show that it is a practice of great
antiquity. Besides the mention by Homer of the
anaesthetic effects of nepenthe, and the reference by
Herodotus to the practice of the Scythians of inhaling
the vapors of a certain kind of hemp to produce
intoxication, the employment of anaesthetics in surgery
in the use of mandagora is particularly alluded to by
Dioscorides and Pliny. It also appears, from old
Chinese manuscript laid before the French Academy by
3O2
A N A
M. Julien, that a physician named Hoa-tho, who lived
in the 3d century, gave his patients a preparation of
hemp, whereby they were rendered insensible during the
performance of surgical operations. Mandragora was
extensively used as an anaesthetic by Hugo de Lucca,
who practised in the 13th century. The soporific effects
of mandrake are alluded to by Shakespeare, who also
makes frequent mention of anaesthetising draughts, the
composition of which is not specified.
As the result of investigations in this department of
scientific research, numerous other volatile organic
fluids have been found to possess anaesthetic properties.
Several of these have been used in surgical practice, but
as yet none of them have been found to possess such
superiority as would entitle them to supersede chloro-
form. #
There are many who prefer ether as being a safer
anaesthetic than chloroform, less apt to depress the cir-
culation, and less apt to excite vomiting; but any ad-
vantage it has in these respects appears, in the estima-
tion of surgeons, to be practically counterbalanced by
the greater efficiency and facility of application of the
latter substance. Ether, however, continues to be
largely used in America.
When introduced by inhalation into the system, anaes-
thetic vapors act upon the brain and sensory nerves in
such a manner as more or less completely to abolish
their natural sensibility. The degree in which they do
this can be in large measure regulated by the quantity
administered. Thus, taking the familiar instance of
chloroform, the effect of the inhalation of a small quan-
tity (say less than half a drachm) is a feeling of exhilar-
ation or semi-intoxication, accompanied with diminished
sensibility to pain, but without entire loss of conscious-
ness. By continuing the inhalation and increasing the
quantity, profound stupor, stertorous breathing, fixing
of the eyes, and muscular relaxation mark the occur-
rence of complete anaesthesia. In many cases it is
desirable to produce merely the former of these condi-
tions, viz., that of imperfect anaesthesia; and this is the
extent to which chloroform is usually applied in uncom-
plicated labor. On the other hand, in surgical opera-
tions requiring absolute stillness on the part of the
patient the inhalation must be carried to the extent of
producing total unconsciousness. The state of anaes-
thesia can be safely kept up for long periods by the
continuous application, with due caution, of the anaes-
thetic vapor.
The employment of local anaesthesia in surgery has
the obvious advantage of being free from risk to life.
Many means of accomplishing this have been suggested,
the best known of which is the method of Dr. Rich-
ardson, of the application of ether spray to the part of
the body which it is desired to render insensible. By
the rapid evaporation of the ether the tissues become
frozen, and insensibility of the part is produced. Since,
however, the anaesthesia merely affects the superficial
textures, this plan is only available in the minor opera-
tions of surgery. By inunction or subcutaneous injec-
tion of cocaine, more or less complete local anaesthesia
is produced.
ANAGNI, a town of Italy, in the province of Roma,
situated on a hill 37 miles E.S.E. of Rome.
ANAGRAM, the transposition of the letters of a
word or words, is derived from the Greek, which was
used in precisely the same sense. But the number of
different ways in which even a few letters can be arranged
being very great (with eight different letters, for
instance, it is I X 2 × 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 × 7 × 8 = 40,320),
the term anagram is generally restricted to such rear-
rangements of the letters as form other words, and these
ausually words which express a meaning. Camden
defines “Anagrammatisme” as “a dissolution of a
name truly written into his letters, as his elements, and
a new connection of it by artificial transposition, with-
out addition, subtraction, or change of any letter, into
different words, making some perfect sence applyable to
the person named.” Perhaps the only practical use to
which anagrams have been turned is to be ſound in the
transpositions in which some of the astronomers of the
17th century embodied their discoveries, with the design
apparently of avoiding the risk that, while they were
engaged in further verification, the credit of what they
had found out might be claimed by others.
ANAHUAC, the name of the great central plateau
of Mexico, lying at an elevation of from 6000 to 9000
feet above the sea. Anahuac comprises three-fourths of
the territory of Mexico, including the capital; and
although much of its surface is level, many lofty
mountains rise out of the table-land, the highest of
which is Popocatepetl (17,720 feet), an active volcano.
ANALOGY is the name in logic for a mode of real or
material inference, proceeding upon the resemblance be-
tween particulars: speaking generally, it is that process
whereby, from the known agreement of two or more
things in certain respects, we infer agreement in some
other point known to be present in one or more, but not
known to be present in the other or others. It was
signalised already by Aristotle under the different name
of Example, the word Analogy having with him the
special sense of mathematical proportion or resemblance
(equality) of ratios. The earliest use of the name in its
current logical sense is to be ſound apparently in Galen.
While, in popular language, the word has come to be
vaguely used as a synonym for resemblance, the logical
authorities, though having generally the same kind of
inference in view, are by no means agreed as to its exact
nature and ground. It has chiefly to be distinguished
from the related process of Induction, in their concep-
tion of which logicians are notoriously at variance. (See
INDUCTION.)
Aristotle, distinguishing Syllogism and Induction as
passing the one from whole to part (any part), and the
other from part (all the parts) to whole, notes under
each a loose or rhetorical form — Enthymeme under
Syllogism, and Paradigm, or Example, under Induction.
Thus, to give his own instance, it is an inference by way
of example—if a war to come of Athens against Thebes
is condemned because a past war of Thebes against
Phocis is known to have been disastrous. Here the
reasoning, which may be said to pass from part to part,
is resolved by Aristotle as compounded of an imperfect
induction and a syllogism ; the particular case of Thebes
against Phocis started from , being first inductively
widened into war between neighbors generally, and the
particular case of Athens against Thebes arrived at be-
ing then drawn out by regular syllogism from that
major. Example, or, to speak of it by its later name,
the inference from analogy, is thus presented by Aris-
totle as directly related to induction: it differs from an
imperfect induction — what is now often called real or
material induction from particulars incompletely enum-
erated— only in having its conclusion particular instead
of general, and its datum singular instead of plural.
Kant and his followers, while maintaining a relation
between induction and analogy, mark the difference
otherwise than Aristotle. By induction, it is said, we
seek to prove that some attribute belongs (or not) to all
the members of a class, because it belongs (or not) to
many of that class; by analogy, that all the attributes of
a thing belong (or not) to another thing, because many
of the attributes belong (or not) to this other.
The logician who has done most to elaborate the
theory of real or material induction, John Stuart Mill,
A N A
3O3
has also been able to give an interpretation of analogy,
which, without in the least severing its connection with
induction, leaves it as a process for which a distinct
name is necessary. According to him, the two kinds
of argument, while homogeneous in the type of their
inference, which holds for all reasoning from experience
— namely, that things agreeing with one another in cer-
tain respects agree also in certain other respects—
yet differ in respect of their degree of evidence. In
both the argument is from known points of agreement
to unknown ; but, whereas in induction the known
points of agreement are supposed by due comparison of
instances to have been ascertained as the material ones
for the case in hand or conclusion in view—in other
words, to be invariably connected by way of causation
with the inferred properties — it is otherwise in analogy,
where it is only supposed that there is no incompati-
bility between the inferred properties and the common
properties, or known points of resemblance, that are
taken as the ground of inference.
Analogy is so much resorted to in science in default of
induction, either provisionally till induction can be made,
or as its substitute where the appropriate evidence can-
not be obtained, -it is also much relied upon in practi-
cal life for the guidance of conduct, — that it becomes a
matter of great importance to determine its conditions.
Whether in science or in the affairs of life, the abuse of
the process, or what is technically called False Analogy,
is one of the most besetting Snares set for the human
mind.
The name analogy is so suggestive to English readers
of Bishop Butler’s famous treatise, that a word, in con-
clusion, seems called for on the nature and scope of the
particular application of the process made by him. His
work is entitled Z'he Analogy of A’eligion, AWatural and
A'ez'eaſed, to the Constitution and Course of AWature,
and consists in an attempt to convince deists that there
are no difficulties urged against revelation, or the system
of natural religion, which do not bear with equal force
against the order of nature as determined by Providence.
ANALOGY, in Comparative Anatomy, is equivalent
to “similarity of function.” SEE ANATOMY.
AN ALYSIS means literally, in the Greek, an
unloosening or , breaking-up, understood of anything
complex in which simpler constituents or elements may
thus be brought to view. It is this general sense that
must be supposed to have been present to the mind of
Aristotle when he gave the name of Analytica to the
great logical work in which he sought to break up into
its elements the complex process of reasoning; as,
accordingly, in the body of the work (A ma/. Prior.
i. 32), we find him once using the verb “analyse" of
arguments, when they are to be presented in “figure,” or
brought to the ultimate formal expression in which they
can best be tested or understood. Obviously any more
special sense that may be ascribed to the process of
analysis must vary with the kind of complex to be
resolved. Mental states, material substances, motions
of bodies, relations of figures, are but a few examples
of the complex things or subjects that fall to be
analysed, iſ there is to be any scientific comprehension
of them. Nor is it only that the analysis will be into
constituents differing from each other as much as the
complex subjects differ; for the same subject may be
analysed in different ways, and with very different
results, according to the particular aspect in which it is
considered. Hence it becomes impossible, or at least
very difficult, to describe the process in any terms
fitting equally all the variety of its applications. It is
from taking stand by some particular application, and
either overlooking all others, or trying to force them
within the frame of the one, that different writers have
given such discrepant accounts of the process—dis-
crepart often to the extent of being mutually exclusive.
The express object of the present article will, on the
contrary, be given an unprejudiced view of the different
applications of analysis in science, that one , being
first and most prominently, put forward which was
earliest recognised and practised, namely, mathematical
analysis. The other applications, selected for their
representative character, will, as they follow, naturally
suggest the consideration how far the difference of
matter in the various sciences tends to modify the nature
of the process which is called analysis in all.
By the side of Analysis, at the different stages,
we shall at the same time treat of the related process
called, after the Greek, Synthesis, which means putting
together or compounding. If analysis and synthesis
merely related to each other as mutually inverse pro-
cesses, expository convenience alone might be pleaded in
favor of the parallel treatment; but the two are in
practice often employed as strictly complementary pro-
cesses, in support of each other on the same occasion;
or, in other words, the composition in Synthesis may be
a direct re-composition of the principles or elements
then and there got out by analysis. As a matter of
course, therefore, the foregoing general remarks apply
also to synthesis, especially the remark as to the modi-
fying effect of difference in the subject-matter worked
with.
1. Mathematical Analysis and Synthesis.— In the
A/ements of Euclid, containing so many examples of
geometrical propositions variously established, there is
a scholion near the beginning of Book XIII. which dis-
tinguishes two general methods for the treatment of
particular questions, under the name of Analysis and
Synthesis. In analysis, it is said, the thing sought is
taken for granted, and consequences are deduced from
it which lead to some truth recognised; synthesis, on
the other hand, starts from that which is recognised,
and deduces consequences therefrom, till the thing
sought is arrived at.
Taking analysis and synthesis, thus defined, either as
distinct processes or as conjoined in one method, called
analytical, we have next to see how they were brought
to bear by the ancients in treating geometrical ques-
tions. Propositions such as those contained in the AE/e-
ments fall into two classes with respect to the form of
their enunciation, namely, theorems and problems. The
distinction was not marked by Euclid himself, nor is it
in any sense radical, for either kind of proposition may
easily be transformed into the expression of the other;
but, as commonly accepted, it amounts to this — that a
theorem is given out as an assertion to be accepted, and
has to be shown true; a problem is given out as an act
to be done, and has to be shown possible. In the case
of a theorem, Euclid accordingly, after enunciating the
proposition, proceeds generally to show, with more or
less of construction on a particular diagram, and work-
ing always with fixed definitions, that the assertion fol-
lows deductively from certain truths, either assumed as
evident (axioms), or formerly proved therefrom, and
seen to be applicable to the present case by inspection
of the figure as constructed. The grounding proposi-
tions are allowed by the reader as they are brought for-
ward, though he may for the moment have not the least
idea whither the author is tending, and at the end the
conclusion is accepted, because the successive premises,
being allowed, have been combined logically. In the
case of a problem, after an express construction for
which no reason is given, the object is to show that
what has been brought to pass really supplies what was
sought; but the procedure is not different from what it
was in the case of a theorem, because the object is
3O4.
A N A
attained by showing again that certain truths allowed,
in their particular application to the figure constructed,
involve as a conclusion some relation which the figure
is seen to exhibit. Now if this is Euclid's procedure in
general—there is an exception, afterwards to be noted,
where he proves his point indirectly — it is undeni-
ably synthetic, in any meaning that can be ascribed to
that term, the result being obtained by a massing or
combining of elements or conditions. But on Euclid's
part the process is one of demonstration, not of discov-
ery. Still less is the reader’s mind in the attitude of
discovery; he is led on to a result which is indeed indi-
cated, by a way which he does not know, and, as it
were, blindfold. There must, however, have been dis-
covery before there could be such demonstration; or
how should the proposition admit of definite enunciation
at the beginning? Thus there is, in the background,
an earlier question of procedure or method, and it is
this that the ancient geometricians had chiefly in view
when speaking of analysis and synthesis.
II. Chemical Azza/ysis and Synthesis. – After
mathematics, chemistry is the science in which applica-
tion has most expressly been made of processes termed
analysis and synthesis. In physics, regarded as the
Science of motion, whether abstractly taken or as mani-
fested actually in natural bodies, the application is uni-
versal; the resolution and composition of velocities,
motions, and forces being fundamental processes pervad-
ing the whole science under all variety of circumstances.
There is nothing, however, in such an employment of
analysis and synthesis that is not easily intelligible in the
light of the processes as practised either in the more gen-
eral science of mathematics, dealing with relations of
quantity in number and form, or in the more special
science of chemistry, which deals with those character-
istic qualities of actual bodies for which no definite
expression in terms of motion can be found.
The concrete substances in nature are found to be such
that some by no means in our power can be brought to
anything simpler, while others can be broken up into con-
stituents differing in character from the original sub-
stances and also among themselves. Hence a division is
made of bodies into elements and compounds; elements
being all such bodies, not farther reducible, as are either
actually found in nature, or, though not so found, have
emerged in the manipulation of actual bodies; com-
pounds, all such as, being actually found, are reducible
to two or more elements, or have by artificial combina-
tion been constituted. The process of reduction to ele-
ments is called analysis; the process of re-combination
or free combination is called synthesis. When the analy-
sis is carried out simply with the view of detecting what
elements are present in a substance, it is called qualita-
tive; and quantitative, if with the further view of deter-
mining the definite proportions (by weight) in which the
constituents are present in a definite quantity of the
substance. There are corresponding varieties of syn-
thesis.
III. Psychological Analysis and Synthesis.- Pass-
ing for the next signal application of analysis from the
world of matter to mind, we have here a subject which
more than any other calls for an exercise of the process
in order to be scientifically understood. Physical things
in their superficial relations lie to a great extent open to
direct apprehension, and, whatever deeper connections
there may be to be traced out among things the most
remote in their nature as apprehended, yet the fact of
their separation in space involved in our perception of
them is already something done, leaving the scientific
function (analytic and synthetic) to be exercised chiefly
in the attempt to comprehend them. Very different is
the state of affairs in mind, where everything, as it were,
runs or melts into everything else. Even to lay hold of
particular mental phenomena, with a view to the ex-
planation of them, implies already an express scientific
attitude, which must be called analytic.
Particular mental states being supposed to be got,
with such definiteness of apprehension (always more or
less imperfect) as the subject-matter admits of, the busi-
ness of the psychologist becomes substantially one with
that of the physical inquirer.
IV. Zogical Analysis and Synthesis.— To logic,
taken in its widest sense as the methodology of
all science, it belongs to appreciate the general im-
port of all such applications of analysis and synthesis
as have now been considered. There remains, how-
ever, a special variety which is itself entitled logical
analysis and synthesis, and which has the more carefully
to be distinguished from the other heads, because it
stands in an opposition to them all.
Logical analysis is the same process as that which is
otherwise called metaphysical division. (The process called
logical division is different. See LOGIC and DIVISION.)
Given, say, a concrete subject like man, this may be
divided physically into a number of parts in space, or
as a concept, metaphysically into a number of qualities or
attributes, -metaphysically, because none of these has
an independent subsistence or physical existence apart.
They are distinguished in the way of mental consideration
or, as it is technically called, abstraction ; and, this being
a thought-process or logical act, the "resolution of the
given complex into such conceptual elements gets
the name also of logical analysis. The corresponding
act of synthesis proceeds by the way that is technically
called determination; thus the general concept man, to
take the traditional example, has the attribute of rational
joined to the attributes of animal, or is determined by
that addition, and much else has to be added in a similar
way before the particular concrete can be determined.
To analysis and synthesis in the specially logical sense
is undoubtedly related the distinction that logicians have
made of analytic and synthetic method. Without step-
ping beyond the bounds of logic conceived as a formal
doctrine, a fourth department, under the name of Method
or Disposing, may be added to the three departments
regularly assigned — Conceiving (Simple Apprehension),
Judging, Reasoning; and this would consider how reason-
ings, when employed continuously upon any matter
whatever, should be set forth to produce their combined
effect upon the mind. The question is formal, being one
of mere exposition, and concerns the teacher in relation
to the learner. How should results, attained by contin-
uous reasoning, be set before the mind of a learner?
Upon a line representing the course by which they were
actually wrought out? Or always in the fixed order of
following from express principles to which preliminary
assent is required? If the latter, all teaching becomes
synthetic, and follows a progressive route from principles
to conclusions, even when discovery (supposing discovery
foregone) was made by analysis or regression to principles;
of which expository method no better illustration could
be given than the practice of Euclid in the demonstra-
tions of his A/ements.
ANALYTIC JUDGMENTS have been distinguished
under that name, in opposition to Synthetic, since the
time of Kant. It was necessary, for the purposes of his
critical inquiry into the principles of human knowledge,
that he should carefully determine the character of those
assertions which metaphysicians had so freely made
respecting the supernatural, and he found them to be
such that, while the predicate was added on to the sub-
ject, not involved in it, the connection was affirmed as
necessary and universal. He therefore called them, as
well as other assertions of like character in mathematics
A N A
3O5
and pure physics, synthetic judgments à priori, and the
aim of his critical inquiry came to be the determining of
the conditions under which such judgments were possible.
Now, as differing from these, he noted two classes of
judgments: (1), such as in the predicate added indeed to
the content of the subject, but only empirically, as, for
example, Bodies have weight, and these he called syn-
thetic & Aosteriori; (2), such as were indeed necessary
and universal, but added nothing to the content of the
Subject, as, for example, Bodies are extended, and these
he called analytic.
The general distinction of analytic and synthetic judg-
ments has a value apart from the specific character of
those (synthetic) judgments in which Kant was most
interested, and for the sake of which mainly it was fixed
by him. Trained in the metaphysics of the Leibnitzo-
Wolffian School, which marked off necessary judgments
from those of simple fact without considering the kinds
of necessity, Kant, when he came, by the route that can
be traced in his earlier works, to apprehend the differ-
ence between merely logical analysis and real synthesis
in thought, applied it almost exclusively to those judg-
ments for which a character of necessity was claimed.
He therefore noticed traces of the distinction in other
thinkers, as Locke, only in so far as there was a sugges-
tion also of this special reference. In truth, the gen-
eral distinction, under a variety of expressions, was
familiar to both Hume and Locke, and it had already
been drawn by the ancients. The old doctrine of the
Predicables, in distinguishing the essential predication of
genus, species, and difference from the non-essential
predication of property and accident, plainly involves it;
making besides, as between the last two predicables, a
distinction which is very closely related to that drawn
by Kant between the d priori and d posteriori synthetic.
From the nominalistic point of view it is expressed by
the difference of Verbal and Real propositions, as in
Mill’s Logic, and also often in Locke.
ANAM, or ANNAM, also called Cochi N CHINA, a
large empire of Asia, forming the eastern portion of the
Indo-Chinese peninsula. See Cochin CHINA.
ANASTASIUS I., Emperor of Constantinople, was
born at Dyrrhachium not later than 430 A.D. At the
time of the death of Zeno (491), Anastasius, though only
one of the guards in the palace, held a very high charac-
ter, and was raised to the throne of the Roman empire
of the East, mainly through the influence of Ariadne,
Zemo's widow, whom he married shortly after his acces-
sion. For the support he gave to the Eutychians, Anas-
tasius was amathematised by Pope Symmachus. The
latter years of his reign were troubled by revolts in Con-
stantinople, excited by his avarice and by his reputed
heretical tendencies. He died in 518.
ANASTASIUS II., Emperor, whose original name
was Artemius, was raised to the throne of Constantinople
by the voice of the senate and people in 713 A.D., on the
deposition of Philippicus, whom he had served in the
capacity of secretary. After a six months’ reign, Con-
stantinople was taken by Theodosius; and Anastasius,
who had fled to Nicaea, was compelled to submit to the
new emperor, and retiring to Thessalonica, became a
monk (716). In 721 he headed a revolt against Leo,
who succeeded Theodosius, and receiving a considerable
amount of support, laid siege to Constantinople; but the
enterprise failed, and Anastasius falling into Leo's hands,
was put to death by his orders.
ANATHEMA (lit. anything offered up) things con-
'secrated to the gods, and deposited in a temple. In the
New Testament it signifies separated from the church
and accursed, and it became the technical term for a
form of excommunication at an early date.
ANATOLIA (the east), a name first used under the
Byzantine empire for the country east of the Bosphorus.
In the form Amadoli, it denotes a modern Turkish divis-
ion almost coincident with ASIA MINOR, q.v.
ANATOMY ("Avazoum) means in its literal sense
the dissection or separation of parts by cutting, but in
its usual acceptation it is employed to denote the science
the province of which is to determine the construction,
the form, and the structure of organised bodies, i.e. of
bodies which either are or have been living. It is there-
fore a department of the science of BIOLOGY. It
resolves itself into two great divisions — ANIMAL
ANATOMY or ZootoMY, the object of which is to inves-
tigate the structure of animals; and VEGETABLE ANAT-
oMy or PHYToToMY, the object of which is to elucidate
the structure of plants. As Vegetable Anatomy will
be treated of in the article BOTANY, it does not require
to be considered here. ANIMAL ANATOMY, again, nat-
urally resolves itself into two divisions: one in which the
construction, form, and structure of two or more ani-
mals are compared with each other, so as to bring out
their features of resemblance or dissimilarity, - this is
called COMPARATIVE ANATOMY ; the other, in which
the construction, form, and structure of parts in a single
animal are considered, which is termed SPECIAL ANAT-
OMY. The special anatomy of an animal may be studied
from various points of view: (a) with reference to the
succession of forms which it exhibits at various periods
from its first appearance as an embryo to the assump-
tion of its adult characters; this is termed DEVELOP-
MENTAL or EMBRYOLOGICAL ANATOMY; (6) with ref-
erence either to its form and structure, or to the investi-
gation of the laws by which these are determined, termed
MoRPHOLOGICAL ANATOMY; (c) with reference to the
function, use or purpose performed by a part or struc-
ture in an animal, termed TELEOLOGICAI. or PHYSIO-
LoGICAL ANATOMY; (d) with reference merely to the
relative position of different parts or structures, termed
Topograph ICAL ANATOMY; (e) with reference to the
structure and general properties of the tissues or tex-
tures which enter into the construction of the parts or
organs of animals; to this branch of study have been
applied the terms GENERAL ANATOMY, ANATOMY OF
TÉxTURES, HISTOLOGY, and, from the microscope
being so largely employed in the examination of the tex-
tures, MICRoscoPIC or MINUTE ANATOMY; (f) with
reference to the changes induced by disease in the organs
or tissues, termed MORBID or PATHOLOGICAL ANAT-
OMY. From its manifold, aspects anatomy forms the
basis of the Biological Sciences. As a knowledge of the
laws of motion are essential, and must be constantly
recurred to at every step before any true progress can
be made in the investigation of the physical sciences, so
must the structure of animal bodies be constantly
appealed to by the zoologist in all attempts at classifica-
tion; by the physiologist in all inquiries into the func- .
tions performed by the organs and textures in a state of
health, and into the special adaptation of parts to par-
ticular uses; and by the physician in considering the
alterations or disturbance of the functions of parts in
the course of disease. To describe the anatomy of the
multitudinous forms of animal life from the different
points of view would require, not one, but several
voluminous treatises, and would much exceed the com-
pass of a iº article. Moreover, it is advisible that
the anatomy of the different classes of the animal king-
dom should be considered under their respective heads,
— e.g., that of the Crabs, under CRUSTACEA, that of
Reptiles under REPTILIA, &c. It is intended to devote
this article more particularly to the description of the
Special Anatomy of the Human Body in a state of
health; in other words, to make it a short treatise on
HUMAN ANATOMY or ANTHROPOTOMY, which, as
A 20
306
A N A
forming a department of the general science of Com-
parative Anatomy, is interesting not only to men of
science generally, but, from its intimate connection with
the several divisions of the art of healing, and with the
study of the functions of the human body, possesses the
highest importance to the physician, surgeon, and physi-
ologist.
Previous to entering on the consideration of the
Anatomy of the Human Body, it may be well to take a
historical view of the progress of the science from its
origin to the present time.
HISTORY OF ANATOMY.
In tracing the history of the origin of anatomy, it
may be justly said that more learning than judgment
has been displayed. Some writers claim for it the
highest antiquity, and pretend to find its first rudiments
alternately in the animal sacrifices of the shepherd
kings, the Jews, and other ancient nations, and in the
art of embālming as practised by the Egyptian priests.
Even the descriptions of wounds in the Iliad have been
supposed adequate to prove that in the time of Homer
mankind had distinct notions of the structure of the
human body. Of the first it may be said that the rude
information obtained by the slaughter of animals for
sacrifice does not imply profound anatomical knowledge;
and those who adduce the second as evidence are de-
ceived by the language of the poet of the Trojan war,
which, distinguishing certain parts by their ordinary
Greek epithets, as afterwards used by Hippocrates,
Galen, and all anatomists, has been rather too easily
supposed to prove that the poet had studied systemati-
cally the structure of the human frame.
With not much greater justice has the cultivation of
anatomical knowledge been ascribed to Hippocrates,
who, because he is universally allowed to be the father
of medicine, has also been thought to be the creator of
the science of anatomy. Of the seven individuals of the
family of the Heracleidae who bore this celebrated name,
the second, who was son of Heraclides and Phenarita,
and grandson of the first Hippocrates, was indeed dis-
tinguished as a physician of great observation and ex-
perience, and the first who appreciated the value of
studying accurately the phenomena, effects, and termi-
nations of disease. It does not appear, however, not-
withstanding the vague and general panegyrics of Rio-
lan, Barthlin, Le Clerc, and Portal, that the anatomical
knowledge of this illustrious person was either accurate
or profound. Of the works ascribed to Hippocrates,
five only are genuine. Most of them were written
either by subsequent authors of the same name, or by
one or other of the numerous impostors who took ad-
vantage of the zealous munificence of the Ptolemies, by
fabricating works under that illustrious name. Of the
few which are genuine, there is none expressly devoted
to anatomy; and of his knowledge on this subject the
only proofs are to be found in the exposition of physio-
logical opinions, and his medical or surgical instruc-
tions. From these it appears that Hippocrates had
some accurate notions on osteology, but that of the
structure of the human body in general his ideas were
at once superficial and erroneous. In his book on in-
juries of the head, and in that on fractures, he shows
that he knew the sutures of the craniune and the rel-
ative situation of the bones, and that he had some notion
of the shape of the bones in general, and of their mu-
tual connections. Of the muscles, of the soft parts in
general, and of the internal organs, his ideas are confused,
indistinct, and erroneous. He appears to have been
unaware of the existence of the nervous cords; and
the term nerve is used by him, as by Grecian authors
in general, to signify a sinew or tendon. On other
points his views are so much combined with peculiar
physiological doctrines, that it is impossible to assign
them the character of anatomical facts; and even the
works in which these doctrines are contained are with
little probability to be ascribed to the second Hippoc-
rates. If, however, we overlook this difficulty, and
admit what is contained in the genuine Hippocratic
writings to represent at least the sum of knowledge
possessed by Hippocrates and his immediate descend-
ants, we find that he represents the brain as a gland,
from which exudes a viscid fluid; that the heart is mus-
cular and of a pyramidal shape, and has two ventricles
separated by a partition, the fountains of life—and two
auricles, receptacles of air; that the lungs consist of five
ash-colored lobes, the substance of which is cellular and
spongy, naturally dry, but refreshed by the air; and
that the kidneys are glands, but possess an attractive
faculty, by virtue of which the moisture of the drink is
separated, and descends into the bladder. He distin-
guishes the bowels into colon and rectum.
The knowledge possessed by the second Hippocrates
was transmitted in various degrees of purity to the de-
scendants and pupils, chiefly of the family of the Heracle-
idae, who succeeded him. Several of these, with feelings
of grateful affection, appear to have studied to preserve
the written memory of his instructions, and in this man-
ner to have contributed to form part of that collection
of treatises which have long been known to the learned
world under the general name of the Hippocratic writ-
ings. Though composed, like the genuine remains of
the physician of Cos, in the Ionian dialect, all of them
differ from these in being more diffuse in style, more
elaborate in form, and in studying to invest their ana-
tomical and medical matter with the fanciful ornaments
of the Platonic philosophy. Hippocrates had the merit
of early recognising the value of facts apart from opin-
ions, and of those facts especially which lead to general
results; and in the few genuine writings which are now
extant it is easy to perceive that he has recourse to the
simplest language, expresses himself in terms which,
though short and pithy, are always precise and perspicu-
ous, and is averse to the introduction of philosophical
dogmas. Of the greater part of the writings collected
under his name, on the contrary, the general character
is verboseness, prolixity, and a great tendency to specu-
lative opinions.
Among those who aimed at this distinction, the most
fortunate in the preservation of his name is Polybus, the
son-in-law of the physician of Cos. This person, who
must not be confounded with the monarch of Corinth
immortalised by Sophocles in the tragic story of CEdipus,
is represented as a recluse, severed from the world and
its enjoyments, and devoting himself to the study of an-
atomy and physiology, and to the composition of works
on these subjects. To him has been ascribed the whole
of the book on the Nature of the Child and most of
that On Mazz; both physiological treatises interspersed
with anatomical sketches. His anatomical information,
with which we are specially concerned, appears to have
been rude and inaccurate, like that of his preceptor. He
represents the large vessels of the body as consisting of
four pairs; the first proceeding from the head by the
back of the neck and spinal cord to the hips, lower ex-
tremities, and outer ankle; the second, consisting of the
jugular vessels (ai 6¢ayirtö89), proceeding to the loins,
thighs, hams, and inner ankle; the third proceeding from
the temples by the neck to the scapula and lungs, and
thence by mutual intercrossings to the spleen and left
kidney, and the liver and right kidney, and finally to the
rectum; and the fourth from the forepart of the neck to
the upper extremities, the fore-part of the trunk, and
the organs of generation.
A N A
3O7
This specimen of the anatomical knowledge of one
of the most illustrious of the Hippocratic disciples differs
not essentially from that of Syennesis, the physician of
Cypres, and Diogenes, the philosopher of Apollonia,
two authors for the preservation of whose opinions we
are indebted to Aristotle. They may be admitted as
representing the state of anatomical knowledge among
the most enlightened men at that time, and they only
show how rude and erroneous were their ideas on the
structure of the animal body. It may indeed, without
injustice, be said that the anatomy of the Hippocratic
school is not only erroneous, but fanciful and imaginary,
in often substituting mere supposition and assertion for
what ought to be matter of fact. From this censure it
is impossible to exempt even the name of Plato himself,
for whom some notices in the 7'imzarus on the structure
of the animal body, as taught by Hippocrates and Poly-
bus, have procured a place in the history of the science.
Amidst the general obscurity in which the early history
of anatomy is involved, only two leading facts may be
admitted with certainty. The first is, that previous to
the time of Aristotle there was no accurate knowledge of
anatomy; and the second, that all that was known was
derived from the dissection of the lower animals only.
By the appearance of Aristotle this species of knowledge,
which was hitherto acquired in a desultory and irregular
manner, began to be cultivated systematically and with
a definite object; and among the services which the phil-
osopher of Stagira rendered to mankind, one of the
greatest and most substantial is, that he was the founder
of Comparative Anatomy, and was the first to apply its
facts to the elucidation of zoology. The works of this
ardent and original naturalist show that his zootomical
knowledge was extensive and often accurate; and from
several of his descriptions it is impossible to doubt that
they were derived from frequent personal dissection.
Aristotle, who was born 384 years before the Christian
era, or in the first year of the 99th Olympiad, was, at
the age of 39, requested by Philip to undertake the edu-
cation of his son Alexander. During this period it is said
he composed several works on anatomy, which, however,
are now lost. The military expedition of his royal pupil
into Asia, by laying open the animal stores of that vast
and little known continent, furnished Aristotle with the
means of extending his knowledge, not only of the ani-
mal tribes, but of their structure, and of communicating
more accurate and distinct notions than were yet acces-
sible to the world. A sum of 8oo talents, and the con-
current aid of numerous intelligent assistants in Greece
and Asia, were intended to facilitate his researches in
composing a system of zoological knowledge; but it has
been observed that the number of instances in which he
was thus compelled to trust to the testimony of other
observers led him to commit errors in description which
personal observation might have enabled him to avoid.
The first three books of the Aſistory of Animals, a
treatise consisting of ten books, and the four books on
the Parts of Animals, constitute the great monument
of the Aristole/ian Anatomy. From these we find that
Aristotle was the first who corrected the erroneous
statements of Polybus, Syennesis, and Diogenes regard-
ing the blood-vessels, which they made, as we have seen,
to arise from the head and brain. These he represents
to be two in number, placed before the spinal column,
the larger on the right, the smaller on the left, which,
he also remarks, is by some aorta, the first time we ob-
serve that this epithet occurs in the history. Both he
represents to arise from the heart, the larger from the
largest upper cavity, the smaller or aorta from the mid-
idle cavity, but in a different manner and forming a nar-
rower canal. He also distinguishes the thick, firm, and
more tendinous structure of the aorta from the thin and
Y.
membranous structure of vein. In describing the distri-
bution of the latter, however, he confounds the vezza
cava and pulmonary artery, and, as might be expected,
he confounds the ramifications of the former with those
of the arterial tubes in general. While he represents the
lung to be liberally supplied with blood, he describes the
brain as an organ almost destitute of this fluid. His
account of the distribution of the aorta is wonderfully
correct. Though he does not notice the coeliac, and re-
marks that the aorta sends no direct branches to “the
liver and spleen, he had observed the mesenteric, the
renal, and the common iliac arteries. It is nevertheless
singular that though he remarks particularly that the
renal branches of the aorta go to the substance and not
to the pe/vis of the kidney, he appears to mistake the
ureters for branches of the aorta. Of the nerves he ap-
pears to have the most confused notions.” Making them
arise from the heart, which he says has nerves (tendons)
in its largest cavity, he represents the aorta to be a nerv-
ous or tendinous vein. By and by, afterwards saying
that all the articulated bones are connected by nerves,
he makes them the same as ligaments.
He distinguishes the windpipe or air-holder from the
oesophagus, because it is placed before the latter, be-
cause food or drink passing into it causes distressing
cough and suffocation, and because there is no passage
from the lung to the stomach. He knew the situation
and use of the epiglottis, seems to have had some indis-
tinct notions of the larynx, represents the windpipe to
be necessary to convey the air to and from the lungs.
He repeatedly represents the heart, the shape and site
of which he describes accurately, to be the origin of
the blood-vessels, in opposition to those who made
them descend from the head; yet, though he represents
it as full of blood and the source and fountain of that
fluid, and even speaks of the blood flowing from the
heart to the veins, and thence to every part of the body,
he says nothing of the circular motion of the blood.
With the liver and spleen, and the whole alimentary
canal, he seems well acquainted. The several parts of
the quadruple stomach of the ruminating animals are
distinguished and named; and he even traces the rela-
tions between the teeth and several forms of stomach,
and the length or brevity, the simplicity or complica-
tion, of the intestinal tube. He distinguishes as
“partes similares” those structures, such as bone, car-
tilage, vessels, sinews, blood, lymph, fat, flesh, which,
not confined to one locality, but distributed throughout
the body generally, we now term the tissues or textures,
whilst he applies the term “partes dissimilares” to the
regions of the head, neck, trunk, and extremities.
Next to Aristotle occur the names of Diocles of
Carystus, and Praxagoras of Cos, the last of the fam-
ily of the Asclepiadae. The latter is remarkable for
being the first who distinguished the arteries from the
veins, and the author of the opinion that the former
were air-vessels.
Hitherto anatomical inquiry was confined to the
examination of the bodies of brute animals. We have,
indeed, no testimony of the human body being submitted
to examination previous to the time of Erasistratus and
Herophilus; and it is vain to look for authentic facts
on this point before the foundation of the Ptolemaic
dynasty of sovereigns in Egypt. This event, which, as
is generally known, succeeded the death of Alexander,
320 years before the Christian era, collected into one
spot the scattered embers of literature and science,
which are beginning to languish in Greece under a weak
and distracted government and an unsettled state of
society. The children of her divided states, whom
domestic discord and the uncertainties of war rendered
unhappy at home, wandered into Egypt, and found,
3O8
A N A
under the fostering hand of the Alexandrian monarchs,
the means of cultivating the sciences, and repaying with
interest to the country of Thoth and Osiris the benefits
which had been conferred on the infancy of Greece by
Thales and Pythagoras. Alexandria became in this
manner the repository of all the learning and knowledge
of the civilised world; and while other nations were
sinking under the effects of internal animosities and
mutual dissensions, or ravaging the earth with the evils
of war, the Egyptian Greeks kept alive the sacred flame
of science, and preserved mankind from relapsing into
their original barbarism. These happy effects are to be
ascribed in an eminent degree to the enlightened govern-
ment and liberal opinions of Ptolemy Soter, and his
immediate successors Philadelphus and Euergetes. The
two latter princes, whose authority was equalled only
by the zeal with which they patronised science and its
professors, were the first who enabled physicians to
dissect the human body, and prevented the prejudices of
ignorance and superstition from compromising the wel-
fare of the human race. To this happy circumstance
Herophilus and Erasistratus are indebted for the dis-
tinction of being known to posterity as the first anato-
mists who dissected and described the parts of the
human body. Both these physicians flourished under
Ptolemy Soter, and probably Ptolemy Philadelphus,
and were indeed the principal supports of what has been
named in medical history the Alexandrian School, to
which their reputation seems to have attracted numer-
ous pupils. But though the current testimony of
antiquity assigns to these physicians the merit of
dissecting the human body, time, which wages endless
war with the vanity and ambition of man, has dealt
hardly with the monuments of their labors. As the
works of neither have been preserved, great uncertainty
prevails as to the respective merits of these ancient
anatomists; and all that is now known of their anatom-
ical researches is obtained from the occasional notices of
Galen, Oribasius, and some other writers. From
these it appears that Erasistratus recognised the valves
of the heart, and distinguished them by the names of
tricuspid and sigmoid; that he studied particularly the
shape and structure of the brain, and its divisions, and
cavities, and membranes, and likened the convolutions
to the folds of the jejunum ; that he first formed a dis-
tinct idea of the nature of the nerves, which he made
issue from the brain; and that he discovered lymphatic
vessels in the mesentery, first in brute animals, and
afterwards, it is said, in man. He appears also to have
distinguished the nerves into those of sensation and
those of motion.
Of Herophilus it is said that he had extensive anatom-
ical knowledge, acquired by dissecting not only brutes
but human bodies. Of these he probably dissected more
than any of his predecessors or contemporaries. De-
voted to the assiduous cultivation of anatomy, he
appears to have studied with particular attention those
parts which were least understood. He recognized the
nature of the pulmonary artery, which he denominates
arterious zein; he knew the vessels of the mesentery,
and showed that they did not go to the vena porta, but
to certain glandular bodies; and he first applied the
name of twelve-inch or duodenum (6&687ta:6aºcrwłos)
to that part of the alimentary canal which is next to the
stomach. Like Erasistratus, he appears to have studied
carefully the configuration of the brain; and though,
like him, he distinguishes the nerves into those of sen-
sation and those of voluntary motion, he adds to them
the ligaments and tendons. A tolerable description of
the liver by this anatomist is preserved in the writings
of Galen. He first applied the name of cheroid or
vascular membrane to that which is found in the cere-
bral ventricles; he knew the straight venous senus which
still bears his name; and to him the linear ſurrow at the
bottom of the fourth ventricle is indebted for its name
of calamus scriptorius.
The celebrity of these two great anatomists appears
to have thrown into the shade for a long period the
names of all other inquirers; for, among their numerous
and rather celebrated successors in the Alexandrian
school, it is impossible to recognise a name which is
entitled to distinction in the history of anatomy. In a
chasm so wide it is not uninteresting to find, in one who
combined the characters of the greatest orator and phil-
osopher of Rome, the most distinct traces of attention
to anatomical knowledge. Cicero, in his treatise De
Matura Deorum, in a short sketch of physiology, such
as it was taught by Aristotle and his disciples, intro-
duces various anatomical notices, from which the classi-
cal reader may form some idea of the state of anatomy
at that time. The Roman orator appears to have
formed a pretty distinct idea of the shape and connec-
tions of the windpipe and lungs; and though he informs
his readers that he knows the alimentary canal, he omits
the details through motives of delicacy. In imitation of
Aristotle, he talks of the blood being conveyed by the
veins (zema), that is, blood-vessels, through the body at
large; and, like Praxagoras, of the air inhaled by the
lungs being conveyed through the arteries.
Aretaeus, though chiefly known as medical author,
makes some observation on the lung and the pleura,
maintains the glandular structure of the kidney, and
describes the anastomosis or communications of the
capillary extremities of the vena cava with those of the
portal vein.
The most valuable depository of the anatomical
knowledge of these times is the work of Celsus, one of
the most judicious medical authors of antiquity. He
left, indeed, no express anatomical treatise; but from
the introductions to the 4th and 8th books of his work,
Ae Medicina, with incidental remarks in the 7th, the
modern reader may form very just ideas of his anatomical
attainments. From these it appears that Celsus was
well acquainted with the windpipe and lungs and the
heart; with the difference between the windpipe and
oesophagus (stomachus), which leads to the stomach
(zentriculus); and with the shape, situation, and rela-
tions of diaphragm. . He enumerates also the principal
facts relating to the situation of the liver, the spleen, the
kidneys, and the stomach. ... He appears, however, to
have been unaware of the distinction of duodenum or
twelve-inch bowel, already admitted by Herophilus, and
represents the stomach as directly connected by means
of the pylorus with the jejunum or upper part of the
small intestine.
The 7th and 9th books, which are devoted to the
consideration of those diseases which are treated by
manual operation, contain Sundry anatomical notices
necessary to explain the nature of the diseases or mode
of treatment. Of these, indeed, the merit is unequal:
and 1t is not wonderful that the ignorance of the day
prevented Celsus from understanding rightly the mechan-
ism of the pathology of hernia. He appears, however,
to have formed a tolerably just idea of the mode of
cutting into the urinary bladder; and even his obstetrical
instructions show that his knowledge of uterus, vagina,
and appendages was not contemptible. It is in Osteology,
however, that the information of Celsus is chiefly con-
spicuous. He enumerates the sutures and several of the
holes of the cranium, and describes at great length the
superior and inferior maxillary bones and the teeth.
With a good deal of care he describes the vertebrae and
the ribs, and gives very briefly the situation and shape of
the scapula, humerus, radius, and ulna, and even of
A N A
309
the carpal and metacarpal bones, and then of the different
bones of the pelvis and lower extremities. He had
formed a just idea of the articular connections, and is
desirous to impress the fact that none is formed without
cartilage. From his mention of many minute holes
(multa et tenuia foramina), in the recess of the nasal
cavities, it is evident that he was acquainted with the
perforated plate of the ethmoid bone; and from saying
that the straight part of the auditory canal becomes
flexuous, and terminates in numerous minute cavities
(mzz/ta et tenuia foramina diducigur), it is inferred by
Portal that he knew the semicircular canals.
Though the writings of Celsus show that he culti-
vated anatomical knowledge, it does not appear that the
science was much studied by the Romans; and there is
reason to believe that, after the decay of the school of
Alexandria, it languished in neglect and obscurity. It
is at least certain that the appearance of Marinus dur-
ing the reign of Nero is mentioned by authors as an era
remarkable for anatomical inquiry, and that this person
is distinguished by Galen as the restorer of a branch of
knowledge which had been before him suffered to fall
into undeserved neglect. From Galen also we learn that
Marinus gave an accurate account of the muscles, that
he studied particularly the glands, and that he discovered
those of the mesentery. He fixed the number of nerves
at seven; he observed the palatine nerves, which he
rated at the fourth pair; and described as the fifth the
auditory and facial, which he regards as one pair, and
the hypoglossal as the sixth.
Not long after Marinus appeared Ruffus of Ephesus,
a Greek physician, who in the reign of Trajan was much
attached to physiology, and as a means of cultivating
this science studied Comparative Anatomy, and made
sundry experiments on living animals. Of the anatom-
ical writings of this author there remains only a list or
catalogue of names of different regions and parts of the
animal body. He appears, however, to have directed
attention particularly to the tortuous course of the uter-
ine vessels, and to have recognized, even at this early pe-
riod the Fallopian tube. He distinguishes the nerves
into those of sensation and those of motion. He knew
the recurrent nerve. His name is further associated
with the ancient experiment of compressing in the situ-
ation of the carotid arteries the pneumogastric nerve,
and thereby inducing insensibility and loss of voice.
Of all the authors of antiquity, however, none pos-
sesses so just a claim to the title of anatomist as
Claudius Galenus, the celebrated physician of Pergamus,
who was born about the 130th year of the Christian
era, and lived under the reigns of Hadrian, the Anton-
nines, Commodus, and Severus. He was trained by
his father Nicon (whose memory he embalms as an
eminent mathematician, architect, and astronomer) in all
the learning of the day, and initiated particularly into
the mysteries of the Aristotelian philosophy. In an
order somewhat whimsical he afterwards studied philo-
sophy successively in the schools of the Stoics, the
Academics, the Peripatetics, and the Epicureans.
When he was seventeen years of age, his father, he
informs us, was admonished by a dream to devote his
son to the study of medicine; but it was fully two years
aſter that Galen entered on this pursuit, under the
auspices of an instructor whose name he has thought
proper to conceal. Shortly after he betook himself to
the study of anatomy under Satyrus, a pupil of Quintus,
and of medicine under Stratonicus, a Hippocratic
physician, and AEschrion, an empiric. He had scarcely
attained the age of twenty when he had occasion to
deplore the loss of the first and most affectionate guide
of his studies; and soon after he proceeded to Smyrna
to obtain the anatomical instructions of Pelops, who,
though mystified by some of the errors of Hippocrates,
is commemorated by his pupil as a skilful anatomist.
After this he appears to have visited various cities dis-
tinguished for philosophical or medical teachers; and,
finally to have gone to Alexandria with the view of
cultivating more accurately and intimately the study of
anatomy under Heraclianus. Here he remained till his
twenty-eighth year, when he regarded himself as pos-
sessed of all the knowledge then attainable through the
medium of teachers. He now returned to Pergamus to
exercise the art which he had so anxiously studied, and
received, in his twenty-ninth year, an unequivocal testi-
mony of the confidence which his fellow-citizens reposed
in his skill, by being intrusted with the treatment of the
wounded gladiators; and in this capacity he is said to
have treated wounds with success which were fatal under
former treatment. A seditious tumult appears to have
caused him to form the resolution of quitting Per-
gamus and proceeding to Rome, at the age of thirty-two.
Here, however, he remained only five years; and return-
ing once more to Pergamus, after travelling for some
time, finally settled in Rome as physician to the
Emperor Commodus. The anatomical writings ascribed
to Galen, which are numerous, are to be viewed not
merely as the result of personal research, and informa-
tion, but as the common depository of the anatomical
knowledge of the day, and as combining all that he had
learnt from the several teachers under whom he succes-
sively studied with whatever personal investigation
enabled him to acquire. It is on this account not
always easy to distinguish what Galen had himself ascer-
tained by personal research from that which was known
by other anatomists. This, however, though of moment
to the history of Galen as an anatomist, is of little con-
sequence to the science itself; and from the anatomical
remains of this author a pretty just idea may be formed
both of the progress and of the actual state of the
science at that time.
The osteology of Galen is undoubtedly the most per-
fect of the departments of the anatomy of the ancients.
He names and distinguishes the bones and sutures of the
cranium nearly in the same manner as at present. Thus,
he notices the quadrilateral shape of the parietal bones;
he distinguishes the squamous, the styloid, the mastoid,
and the petrous portions of the temporal bones; and he
remarks the peculiar situation and shape of the sphenoid
bone. Of the ethmoid, which he omits at first, he after-
wards speaks more at large in another treatise. . The
malar he notices under the name of zygomatic bone;
and he describes at length the upper maxillary and nasal
bones, and the connection of the former with the
sphenoid. He gives the first clear account of the num-
ber and situation of the vertebrae, which he divides into
cerzical, dorsal, and Zumber, and distinguishes from the
sacrum and coccyx. Under the head Bones of the
Thorax, he enumerates the sternum, the ribs, and the
dorsal vertebrae, the connection of which with the for- .
mer he designates as a variety of diarthrosis. The
description of the bones of the extremities and their
articulations concludes the treatise.
Though in mythology Galen appears to less advantage
than in osteology, he nevertheless had carried this part
of anatomical knowledge to a greater perfection than
any of his predecessors. He describes a frontal muscle,
the six muscles of the eye, and a seventh proper to ani-
mals; a muscle to each ala nasi, four muscles of the
lips, the thin cutaneous muscle of the neck, which he
termed platysma myoides, or muscular expansion, two
muscles of the eyelids, and four pairs of muscles of the
lower jaw — the temporal to raise, the masseter to draw
to one side, and two depressors, corresponding to the
digastric and internal pterygoid muscles. After speak-
3IO
A N A
ing of the muscles which move the head and the scapula,
he adverts to those by which the windpipe is opened and
shut, and the intrinsic or proper muscles of the larynx
and hyoid bone. Then follow those of the tongue,
pharynx and neck, those of the upper extremities, the
trunk and the lower extremities successively; and in the
course of this description he swerves so little from the
actual facts that most of the names by which he distin-
guishes the principal muscles have been retained by the
best modern anatomists. It is chiefly in the minute
account of these organs, and especially to the minuter
muscles, that he appears inferior to the moderns.
The angiological knowledge of Galen, though vitiated
by the erroneous physiology of the times and ignorance
of the separate uses of the arteries and veins, exhibits,
nevertheless, some accurate facts which show the dili.
gence of the author in dissection. Though, in opposi-
tion to the opinions of Praxagoras and Erasistratus, he
proved that the arteries in the living animals contain
not air but blood, it does not appear to have occurred to
him to determine in what direction the blood flows, or
Whether it was movable or stationary. Representing
the left ventricle of the heart as the common origin of
all the arteries, though he is misled by the pulmonary
artery, he nevertheless traces the distribution of the
branches of the aorta with some accuracy. The vena
až!gos also, and the jugular veins, have contributed to
add to the confusion of his description, and to render
his angiology the most imperfect of his works.
In neurology we find him to be the author of the
dogma that the brain is the origin of the nerves of sen-
Şation, and the spinal cord of those of motion; and
he distinguishes the former from the latter by their
greater softness or less consistence. Though he admits
only seven cerebral pairs, he has the merit of distinguish-
ing, and tracing the distribution of the greater part of
both classes of nerves with great accuracy. His de-
scription of the brain is derived from dissection of the
lower animals, and his distinctions of the several parts
of the organ have been retained by modern anatomists.
His mode of demonstrating this organ, which indeed is
clearly described, consists of five different steps. In the
first the bisecting membrane—i. e. the falx and the
connecting blood-vessels are removed; and the dissector,
commencing at the anterior extremity of the great
fissure, separates the hemispheres gently as far as the
torcular, and exposes a smooth surface, the mesolobe of
the moderns, or the middle band. In the second he
exposes by successive sections the ventricles, the chorid
plexus, and the middle partition. The third exhibits
the pineal body or conarium, concealed by a membrane
with, numerous veins, meaning that part of the plexus
which is now known by the name of zélum interpošitum,
and a complete view of the ventricles. The fourth
unfolds the third ventricle, the communication between
the two lateral ones, the arch-like body formix, and the
passage from the third to the fourth ventricle. In the
fifth, he gives an accurate description of the relations
of the third and fourth ventricle, of the situation of the
two pairs of eminences, notes and tests, the scolecoid
or worm-like process, anterior and posterior, and lastly
the linear furrow, called by Herophilus calamus scrip.
torius.
In the account of the thoracic organs equal accuracy
may be recognized. He distinguishes the 2/eura by the
name of inclosing membrane (membrand succingens),
and remarks its similitude in structure to that of the
peritoneum, and the covering which it affords to all the
organs. The pericardium also he describes as a mem-
branous sac with a circular basis corresponding to the
base of the heart, and a conical apex; and after an ac-
count of the tunics of the arteries and veins, he speaks
shortly of the lung, and more at length of the heart,
which, however, he takes some pains to prove not to be
muscular, because it is harder, its fibres are differently
arranged, and its action incessant, whereas that of
muscle alternates with the state of rest; he gives a good
account of the valves and of the vessels; and notices es-
pecially the bony ring formed in the heart of the horse,
elephant, and other large animals.
The description of the abdominal organs, and of the
kidneys and urinary apparatus, is still more minute, and
in general accurate. Our limits, however, do not per-
mit us to give any abstract of them; and it is sufficient
in general to say that Galen gives correct views of the
arrangement of the peritoneum and omentum, and dis-
tinguishes accurately the several divisions of the alimen-
tary canal and its component tissues. In the liver,
which he allows to receive an envelope from the perito-
neum, he admits, in imitation of Erasistratus, a proper
substance or parenchyma, interposed between the ves-
sels, and capable of removal by suitable dissection.
His description of the organs of generation is rather
brief, and is, like most of his anatomical sketches, too
much blended with physiological dogmas.
This short sketch may communicate some idea of the
condition of anatomical knowledge in the days of Galen,
who indeed is justly entitled to the character of rectify-
ing and digesting, if not of creating, the Science of anat-
omy among the ancients. Though evidently confined,
perhaps entirely by the circumstances of the times, to
the dissection of brute animals, so indefatigable and
judicious was he in the mode of acquiring knowledge,
that many of his names and distinctions are still retained
with advantage in the writings of the moderns. Galen
was a practical anatomist, and not only describes the
organs of the animal body from actual dissection, but
gives ample instructions for the proper mode of exposi-
tion. His language is in general clear, his style as cor-
rect as in most of the authors of the same period, and
his manner is animated. Few passages in early science
are indeed so interesting as the description of the process
for demonstrating the brain and other internal organs
which is given by this patient and enthusiastic observer
of nature. To some it may appear absurd to speak of
anything like good anatomical description in an author
who writes in the Greek language, or anything like an
interesting and correct manner in a writer who flour-
ished at a period when taste was depraved or extinct and
literature corrupted,—when the philosophy of Antoni-
nus and the mild virtues of Aurelius could do little to
soften the iron sway of Lucius Verus and Commodus;
but the habit of faithful observation in Galen seems to
have been so powerful that, in the description of mate-
rial objects, his genius invariably rises above the circum-
stances of his age. Though not so directly connected
with this subject, it is nevertheless proper to mention
that he appears to have been the first anatomist who can
be said, on authentic grounds, to have attempted to dis-
cover the uses of organs by vivisection and experiments
on living animals. In this manner he ascertained the
position and demonstrated the action of the heart; and
he mentions two instances in which, in consequence of
disease or injury, he has an opportunity of observing
the motions of this organ in the human body. In short,
without eulogising an ancient author at the expense of
critical justice, or commending his anatomical descrip-
tions as superior to those of the moderns, it must be
admitted that the anatomical writings of the physicians
of Pergamus form a remarkable era in the history of the
science; and that by diligence in dissection and accuracy
in description he gave the science a degree of importance
and stability which it has retained through the lapse of
many centuries.
A N A
3 II
The death of Galen, which took place at Pergamus in
the ninetieth year of his age and the 193d of the Chris-
tian era, may be regarded as the downfall of anatomy in
ancient times. After this period we recognize only two
names of any celebrity in the history of the science—
those of Soramus and Oribasius, with the more obscure
ones of Meletius and Theophilus, the latter the chief of
the imperial guard of Heraclius.
Soranus, who was an Ephesian, and flourished under
the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, distinguished himself
by his rescarches on the female organs of generation.
He appears to have dissected the human subject; and
this perhaps is one reason why his descriptions of these
parts are more copious and more accurate than those of
Galen, who derived his knowledge from the bodies of
the lower animals. He denies the existence of the
hymen, but describes accurately the clitoris. Soranus
the anatomist must be distinguished from the physician
of that name, who was also a native of Ephesus.
Oribasius, who was born at Pergamus, is said to have
been at once the friend and physician of the Emperor
Julian, and to have contributed to the elevation of that
apostate to the imperial throne. For this he appears to
have suffered the punishment of a temporary exile under
Valens and Valentinian; but was soon recalled, and
lived in great honor till the period of his death. By Le
Clerc, Oribasius is regarded as a compiler; and indeed
his anatomical writings bear so close a correspondence
with those of Galen that the character is not altogether
groundless. In various points, nevertheless, he has
rendered the Galenian anatomy more accurate; and he
has distinguished himself by a good account of the Sali-
vary glands, which were overlooked by Galen.
To the same period generally is referred the Anatom-
ical Introduction of an anonymous author, first pub-
lished in 1618 by Lauremberg, and more recently by
Bernard. It is to be regarded as a compilation formed
on the model of Galen and Oribasius. The same char-
acter is applicable to the treatises of Meletius and The-
ophilus. -
The decline indicated by these languid efforts soon
sunk into a state of total inactivity; and the unsettled
state of society during the latter ages of the Roman
empire was extremely unfavorable to the successful cul-
tivation of science. The sanguinary conflicts in which
the southern countries of Europe were repeatedly en-
gaged with their northern neighbors, between the sec-
ond and eighth centuries, tended gradually to estrange
their minds from scientific pursuits; and the hordes of
barbarians by which the Roman empire was latterly
overrun, while they urged them to the necessity of
making hostile resistance, and adopting means of self-
defence, introduced such habits of ignorance and bar-
barism, that science was almost universally forgotten.
While the art of healing was professed only by some
few ecclesiastics or by itinerant practitioners, anatomy
was utterly neglected ; and no name of anatomical
celebrity occurs to diversify the long and uninter-
esting period commonly distinguished as the Dark
Ages.
ºnatomical learning, thus neglected by European na-
tions, is believed to have received a temporary cultiva-
tion from the Asiatics. Of these, several nomadic
tribes, known to Europeans under the general denom-
ination of Arabs and Saracens, had gradually coalesced
under various leaders; and by their habits of endur-
ance, as well as of enthusiastic valor in successive ex-
peditions against the eastern division of the Roman em-
pire, had acquired such military reputation as to render
them formidable wherever they appeared. After a
century and a half of foreign warfare or internal ani-
mosity, under the successive dynasties of the Ommiade
and Abbassides, in which the propagation of Islamism
was the pretext for the extinction of learning and civil-
isation, and the most remorseless system of rapine and
destruction, the Saracens began, under the latter dy-
nasty of princes, to recognise the value of Science, and
especially of that which prolongs life, heals disease,
and alleviates the pain of wounds and injuries. The
caliph Almansor combined with his official knowledge
of Moslem law the successful cultivation of astronomy;
but to his grandson Almamun, the seventh prince of
the line of the Abbassides, belongs the merit of under-
taking to render his subjects, philosophers, and physi-
cians. By the directions of this prince the works of
the Greek and Roman authors were translated into
Arabic; and the favor and munificence with which lit-
erature and its professors were patronised speedily
raised a succession of learned Arabians. The residue
of the rival family of the Ommiades, already settled in
Spain, was prompted by motives of rivalry or honora-
ble ambition to adopt the same course; and while the
academy, hospitals, and library of Baghdad bore testi-
mony to the zeal and liberality of the Abbassides, the
munificence of the Ommiades was not less conspicuous
in the literary institutions of Cordova, Seville, and
Toledo.
Notwithstanding the efforts of the Arabian princes,
however, and the diligence of the Arabian physicians,
little was done for anatomy, and the science made no
substantial acquisition. The Koran denounces as unclean
the person who touches a corpse; the rules of Islamism
forbid dissection ; and whatever their instructors taught
was borrowed from the Greeks. Abu-Bekr Al-Rasi,
Abu-Ali Ibn-Sina, Abul-Cassem, and Abu-Walid, Ibn-
Roshd, the Rhazes, Avicenna, Abulcasis, and Averrhoes
of European authors, are their most celebrated names
in medicine; yet to none of these can the historian with
justice ascribe any anatomical merit. Al-Rasi has indeed
left descriptions of the eye, of the ear and its meaſus, and
of the heart; and Ibn-Sina, Abul-Cassem, and Ibn-
Roshd give anatomical descriptions of the parts of the
human body. But of these the general character is, that
they are copies from Galen, sometimes not very just, and
in all instances mystified with a large proportion of the
fanciful and absurd imagery and inflated style of the
Arabian writers. The chief reason of their obtaining a
place in anatomical history is, that by the influence which
their medical authority enabled them to exercise in the
European schools, the momenclature which they employed
was adopted by European anatomists, and continued'
until the revival of ancient learning restored the original
nomenclature of the Greek physicians. Thus the cervix,
nape of the neck, is nucha : the oesophagus is meri, the
umbilical region is sumen or sumae, the abdomen is
myrach ; the peritoneum is sip/iac ; and the omentum,
zīrāzes.
From the general character now given justice requires
that we accept Abdallatif, the annalist of Egyptian af-
fairs. This author who maintains that it is impossible
to learn anatomy from books, and that the authority of
Galen must yield to personal inspection, informs us that
the Moslem doctors did not neglect opportunities of
studying the bones of the human body in cemeteries; and
that he himself, by once examining a collection of bones
in this manner, ascertained that the lower jaw is formed
of one piece; that the Sacrum, though sometimes com-
posed of several, is most generally of one; and that Ga-
len is mistaken when he asserts that these bones are not
single.
The era of Saracen learning extends to the 13th cen-
tury; and after this we begin to approach happier times.
The university of Bologna, which, as a school of literature
and law, was already celebrated in the twelfth century,
312
A N A
became, in the course of the following one, not less dis-
tinguished for its medical teachers. Though the mis-
government of the municipal rulers of Bologna had dis-
gusted both teachers and students, and given rise to the
foundation of similar institutions in Padua and Naples,
—and though the school of Salerno, in the territory of
the latter, was still in high repute, it appears from the
testimony of Sarti, that medicine was in the highest es-
teem in Bologna, and that it was in such perfection as to
require a division of its professors into physicians, sur-
geons, physicians for wounds, barber-surgeons, oculists,
and even some others. Notwithstanding these indica-
tions of refinement, however, anatomy was manifestly
cultivated rather as an appendage of surgery than a
branch of medical science; and, according to the testi-
mony of Guy de Chauliac, the cultivation of anatomical
knowledge was confined to Roger, Roland, Jamerio,
Bruno, and Lanfranc; and this they borrowed chiefly
from Galen.
In this state matters appear to have proceeded with
the medical school of Bologna till the commencement of
the fourteenth century, when the circumstance of pos-
sessing a teacher of originality enabled this university
to be the agent of as great an improvement in medical
science as she had already effected in jurisprudence.
This era, indeed, is distinguished for the appearance of
Mondino, under whose zealous cultivation the science
first began to rise from the ashes in which it had been
buried. This father of modern anatomy, who taught in
Bologna about the year 1315, quickly drew the curiosity
of the medical profession by well-ordered demonstra-
tions of the different parts of the human body. In 1315
he dissected and demonstrated the parts of the human
body in two female subjects; and in the course of the
following year he accomplished the same task on the
person of a single female. But while he seems to have
had sufficient original force of intellect to direct his own
route, Riolan accuses him of copying Galen ; and it is
certain that his descriptions are corrupted by the bar-
barous leaven of the Arabian Schools, and his Latin de-
faced by the exotic nomenclature of Ibn-Sina and Al-
Rasi. He died, according to Tiraboschi, in 1325.
Mondino divides the bodies into three cavities
(ventres), the upper containing the animal members, as
the head, the lower containing the natural members,
and the middle containing the spiritual members. He
first describes the anatomy of the lower cavity or the
abdomen, then proceeds to the middle or thoracic
organs, and concludes with the upper, comprising the
head and its contents aud appendages. His general
manner is to notice shortly the situation and shape or
distribution of textures or membranes, and then to men-
tion the disorders to which they are subject. The peri-
toneum he describes under the name of siphac, in imita-
tion of the Arabians, the omentum under that of zirbus,
and the mesentery or eucharus as distinct from both.
In speaking of the intestines he treats first of the rec-
tum, then the colon, the left or sigmoid flexure of
which, as well as the transverse arch and its connection
with the stomach, he particularly remarks; then the
caecum or monoculus, after this the small intestines in
general under the heads of ileum and jejunum, and
latterly the duodenum, making in all six bowels. The
liver and its vessels are minutely, if not accurately, ex-
amined; and the cava, under the name chilis, a corrup-
tion from the Greek coiàm, is treated at length, with the
emulgents and kidneys. His anatomy of the heart is
wonderfully accurate; and it is a remarkable fact,
which seems to be omitted by all subsequent authors,
that his description contains the rudiments of the circu-
lation of the blood. “Postea vero versus pulmonem
est aliud orificium venae arterialis, quae portat sanguinem
3.
ad pulmonem a corde; quia cum pulmo deserviat cordi
secundum modum dictum, ut ei recompenset, cor ei
transmittit sanguinem per hanc venam, quae vocatur
vena arterialis; est vena, quia portat sanguinem, et ar-
terialis, quia habet duas tunicas; et habet duas tunicas,
primo quia vadit ad membrum quod existit in continuo
motu, et secundo quia portat sanguinem valde subtilem
et cholericum.” The merit of these distinctions, how-
ever, he afterwards destroys by repeating the old asser-
tion that the left ventricle ought to contain spirit or air,
which it generates from the blood. His osteology of
the skull is erroneous. In his account of the cerebral
membranes, though short, he notices the principal char-
acters of the dura mater. He describes shortly the
lateral ventricles, with their anterior and posterior
cornua, and the choroid plexus as a blood-red sub-
stance like a long worm. He then speaks of the third
or middle ventricle, and one posterior, which seems to
correspond with the fourth; and describes the infundib-
alum under the names of lacuna and emboton. In the
base of the organ he remarks, first, two mammillary
caruncles, the optic nerves, which he reckons the first
pair; the oculomuscular, which he accounts the second ;
the third, which appears to be the sixth of the moderns;
the fourth; the fifth, evidently the seventh; a sixth, the
nervus vagus; and a seventh, which is the ninth of the
moderns. Notwithstanding the misrepresentations into
which this early anatomist was betrayed, his book is
valuable, and has been illustrated by the successive
commentaries of Achillini, Berenger, and Dryander.
Matthew de Gradibus, a native of Gradi, a town in
Friuli, near Milan, distinguished himself by compos-
ing a series of treatises on the anatomy of various parts
of the human body. He is the first who represents the
ovaries of the female in the correct light in which they
were subsequently regarded by Steno.
Objections similar to those already urged in speaking
of Mondino apply to another eminent anatomist of those
times. Gabriel de Zerbis, who flourished at Verona
towards the conclusion of the 15th century, is celebrated
as the author of a system in which he is obviously more
anxious to astonish his readers by the wonders of a ver-
bose and complicated style than to instruct by precise
and faithful description. In the vanity of his heart he
assumed the title of Medicus 7%.eoricus, but though,
like Mondino, he derived his information from the dis-
section of the human subject, he is not entitled to the
merit either of describing truly or of adding to the
knowledge previously acquired. He is superior to
Mondino, however, in knowing the olfactory nerves.
Eminent in the history of the science, and more dis-
tinguished than any of this age in the history of cere-
bral anatomy, Alexander Achillini of Bologna, the pupil
and commentator of Mondino, appeared at the close of
the 15th century. Though a follower of the Arabian
school, the assiduity with which he cultivated anatomy
has rescued his name from the inglorious obscurity in
which the Arabian doctors have in general slumbered.
He is known in the history of anatomical discovery as
the first who described the two tympanal bones, termed
malleus and incus. In 1503 he showed that the tarsus
consists of seven bones; he rediscovered the fornix and
the infundibulum; and he was fortunate enough to ob-
serve the course of the cerebral cavities into the infe-
rior cornua, and to remark peculiarities to which the
anatomists of a future age did not advert. He men-
tions the orifices of the ducts, afterwards described by
Wharton. He knew the ileo-caecal valve; and his
description of the duodenum, ileum, and colon shows
that he was better acquainted with the site and disposi-
tion of these bowels than any of his predecessors or
contemporaries.
A N A
3 I 3
Not long after, the science boasts of one of its most
distinguished founders. James Berenger of Carpi, in
the Modonese territory, flourished at Bologna at the be-
ginning of the 16th century. In the annals of medicine
his name will be remembered not only as the most zeal-
ous and eminent in cultivating the anatomy of the hu-
man body, but as the first physician who was fortunate
enough to calm the alarms of Europe, suffering under
the ravages of syphilis, then raging with uncontrollable
virulence. In the former character he surpassed both
predecessors and contemporaries; and it was long be-
fore the anatomists of the following age could boast of
equalling him. His assiduity was indefatigable; and he
declares that he dissected above one hundred human
bodies. He is the author of a compendium, of several
treatises which he names Introductions (Isagoga), and
of commentaries on the treatise of Mondino, in which
he not only rectifies the mistakes of that anatomist, but
gives minute and in general accurate anatomical descrip-
tionS.
He is the first who undertakes a systematic view of the
several textures of which the human body is composed;
and in a preliminary commentary he treats successively
of the anatomical characters and properties of fat, of
membrane in general (panniculus), of flesh, of nerve, of
svil/us or fibre (filum), of ligament, of sinew or tendon,
and of muscle in general. He then proceeds to describe
with considerable precision the muscles of the abdomen,
and illustrates their site and connections by woodcuts,
which, though rude, are spirited, and show that anatomi-
cal drawing was in that early age beginning to be under-
stood. In his account of the peritoneum he admits
only the intestinal division of that membrane, and is at
some pains to prove that Gentilis, who justly admits
the muscular division also, is in error. In his account
of the intestines he is the first who mentions the vermi-
form process of the caecum; he remarks the yellow tint
communicated to the duodenum by the gall-bladder; and
he recognises the opening of the common biliary duct
into the duodenum (7uidam porus portus choleram).
In the account of the stomach he describes the several
tissues of which that organ is composed, and which,
after Almansor, he represents to be three, and a fourth
from the peritoneum; and afterwards noticed the rugae
of its villous surface. He is at considerable pains to
explain the organs of generation in both sexes, and gives
a long account of the anatomy of the foetus. He was
the first who recognised the larger proportional size of
the chest in the male than in the female, and conversely
the greater capacity of the female than of the male pel-
vis. In the larynx he discovered the two arytenoid
cartilages. He gives the first good description of the
thymus; distinguishes the oblique situation of the heart;
describes the pericardium, and maintains the uniform
presence of pericardial liquor. He then describes the
cavities of the heart; but perplexes himself, as did all
the anatomists of that age, about the spirit supposed to
be contained. The aorta he properly makes to arise
from the left ventricle; but confuses himself with the
arteria zezialis, the pulmonary vein, and the vena arte-
zialis, the pulmonary artery. His account of the brain
is better. He gives a minute and clear account of the
ventricles, remarks the corpus striatum, and has the
sagacity to perceive that the choroid plexus consists of
veins and arteries; he then describes the middle or third
ventricle, the infundibulum or lacuna of Mondino, and
the pituitary gland; and lastly, the passage to the fourth
ventricle, the conarium, or pineal gland, and the fourth
or posterior ventricle itself, the relations of which he
had studied accurately. He rectifies the mistake of
Mondino as to the olfactory or first pair of nerves, gives
a good account of the optic and others, and is entitled
to the praise of originality in being the first observer
who contradicts the fiction of the wonderful net, and
indicates the principal divisions of the carotid arteries.
He enumerates the tunics and humors of the eye, and
gives an account of the internal ear, in which he notices
the malleus and incus. º
Italy long retained the distinction of giving birth to
the first eminent anatomists in Europe, and the glory
she acquired in the names of Mondino, Achillini, Carpi,
and Massa, was destined to become more conspicuous in
the labors of Columbus, Fallopius, and Eustachius.
While Italy, however, was thus advancing the progress
of science, the other nations of Europe were either in
profound ignorance or in the most Supine indifference to
the brilliant career of their zealous neighbors. The six-
teenth century had commenced before France began to
acquire anatomical distinction in the names of Dubois,
Fernel, and Etienne; and even these celebrated teachers
were less solicitous in the personal study of the animal
body than in the faithful explanation of the anatomical
writings of Galen. The infancy of the French school
had to contend with other difficulties. The small por-
tion of knowledge which had been hitherto diffused in
the country was so inadequate to eradicate the prejudices
of ignorance, that it was either difficult or absolutely
impossible to procure human bodies for the purposes of
science; and we are assured, on the testimony of Vesalius
and other competent authorities, that the practical part .
of anatomical instruction was obtained entirely from the
bodies of the lower animals. The works of the Italian
anatomists were unknown; and it is a proof of the tardy
communication of knowledge that, while the structure
of the human body had been taught in Italy for more
than a century by Mondino and his followers, these anat-
omists are never mentioned by Etienne, who flourished
long after.
Such was the aspect of the times at the appearance of
Jacques Dubois, who, under the Romanised name of
Jacobus Sylvius, according to the fashion of the day, has
been fortunate in acquiring a reputation to which his
researches do not entitle him. For the name of Jacques
Dubois the history of anatomy, it is said, is indebted to
his inordinate love of money. At the instance of his
brother Francis, who was professor of eloquence in the
college of Tournay at Paris, he devoted himself to the
study of the learned languages and mathematics; but
discovering that these elegant accomplishments do not
invariably reward their cultivators with the goods of
fortune, Dubois betook himself to medicine. After the
acquisition of a medical degree in the university of Mont-
pellier, at theripe age of fifty-one Dubois returned to Paris
to resume a course of anatomical instruction. Here he
taught anatomy to a numerous audience in the college
of Trinquet; and on the departure of Vidus Vidius for
Italy was appointed to succeed that physician as pro-
ſessor of surgery to the Royal College. His character
is easily estimated. With greater coarseness in his man-
ners and language than even the rude state of society in
his times can palliate, with much varied learning and con-
siderable eloquence, he was a blind, indiscriminate and
irrational admirer of Galen, and interpreted the anatomi-
cal and physiological writings of that author in prefer-
ence to giving demonstrations from the subject. With-
out talent for original research or discovery himself, his
envy and jealousy made him detest every, one who gave
proofs of either. We are assured by Vesalius, who was
some time his pupil, that his manner of teaching was
calculated neither to advance the science nor to rectify
the mistakes of his predecessors. A human body was
never seen in the theatre of Dubois; the carcases of
dogs and other animals were the materials from which
he taught; and so difficult even was it to obtain human
3I4.
A N A
bones, that unless Vesalius and his fellow-students had
collected assiduously from the Innocents and other ceme-
teries, they must have committed numerous errors in
acquiring the first principles. This assertion, however,
is contradicted by Riolan, and afterwards by Sprengel
and Lauth, the last of whom decidedly censures Vesalius
for this ungrateful treatment of his instructor. It is
certain that opportunities of inspecting the human
body were by no means so frequent as to facilitate the
study of the science. Though his mention of injections
has led some to suppose him the discoverer of §. art,
he appears to have made no substantial addition to the
information already acquired; and the first acknowl-
edged professor of anatomy to the university of Paris
appears in history as one who lived without true honor
and died without just celebrity. He must not be con-
founded with Franciscus Sylvius (De le Boe), who is
mentioned by Ruysch and Malacarne as the author of a
particular method of demonstrating the brain.
Almost coeval may be placed Charles Etienne, a
younger brother of the celebrated printers, and son to
Henry, who Hellenised the family name by the classical
appellation of Stephen. It is uncertain whether he
taught publicly. But his tranquillity was disturbed, and
his pursuits interrupted, by the oppressive persecutions
in which their religious opinions involved the family;
and Charles Etimme drew the last breath of his misera-
ble life in a dungeon in 1564. Etienne, though sprung
of a family whose classical taste has been their principal
glory, does not betray the same servile imitation of the
Galenian anatomy with which Dubois is charged. He
appears to have been the first to detect valves in the
orifice of the hepatic veins. He was ignorant, however,
of the researches of the Italian anatomist; and his
description of the brain is inſerior to that given sixty
years before by Achillini. His comparison of the cere-
bral cavities to the human ear has persuaded Portal that
he knew the inferior cornua, the hippocampus, and its
prolongations; but this is no reason for giving him that
honor to the detriment of the reputation of Achillini,
to whom, so far as historical testimony goes, the first
knowledge of this fact is due. The researches of
Etienne into the structure of the nervous system are,
however, neither useless nor inglorious; and the circum-
stance of demonstrating a canal through the entire
length of the spinal cord, which had neither been sus-
pected by contemporaries nor noticed by successors till
Senac made it known, is sufficient to place him high in
the rank of anatomical discoverers.
The French anatomy of the sixteenth century was dis-
tinguished by two circumstances unfavorable to the ad-
vancement of the Science, — extravagant admiration of
antiquity, with excessive confidence in the writings of
Galen, and the general practice of dissecting principally
the bodies of the lower animals. Both these errors were
much amended, if not entirely removed, by the exertions
of a young Fleming, whose appearance forms a con-
spicuous era in the history of anatomy. Andrew Ve-
Salius, a native of Brussels, after acquiring at Louvain
the ordinary classical attainments of the day, began at
the age of fourteen to study anatomy under the auspices
of Dubois. Though the originality of his mindsoon led
him to abandon the prejudices by which he was en-
vironed, and take the most direct course for attaining a
knowledge of the structure of the human frame, he
neither underrated the Galenian anatomy nor was indo-
lent in the dissection of brute animals. The difficulties,
however, with which the practical pursuit of human
anatomy was beset in France, and the dangers with
which he had to contend, made him look to Italy as a
suitable field for the cultivation of the science; and in
1536 we find him at Venice, at once pursuing the study
of human anatomy with the utmost zeal, and requested,
ere he had attained his twenty-second year, to demon-
strate publicly in the university of Padua. After re-
maining here about seven years, Vesalius went by ex-
press invitation to Bologna, and shortly afterwards to
Pisa; and thus professor in three universities, he ap-
pears to have carried on his anatomical investigations
and instructions alternately at Padua, Bologna, and
Pisa, in the course of the same winter. It is on this ac-
count that Vesalius, though a Fleming by birth and
trained originally in the French school, belongs, as an
amatomist, to the Italian, and may be viewed as the first
of an illustrious line of teachers by whom the anatomical
reputation of that country was in the course of the six-
teenth century raised to the greatest eminence.
Vesalius is known as the first author of a comprehen-
sive and systematic view of human anatomy. The
knowledge with which his dissections had furnished him
proved how many errors were daily taught and learned
under the broad mantle of Galenian authority; and he
perceived the necessity of a new system of anatomical
instruction, divested of the omissions of ignorance and
the misrepresentations of prejudice and fancy. The
early age at which he effected this object has been to his
biographers the theme of boundless commendation ; and
we are told that he began at the age of twenty-five to
arrange the materials he had collected, and accomplished
his task ere he had completed his 28th year.
Soon after this period we find him invited as imperial
physician to the court of Charles V., where he was oc-
cupied in the duties of practice, and answering the var-
ious charges that were unceasingly brought against him
by the disciples of Galen. After the abdication of
Charles he continued at court in great favor with his son
Philip II. To this he seems to have been led principally
by the troublesome controversies in which his anatom-
ical writings had involved him. It is painful to think,
however, that even imperial patronage bestowed on
eminent talents does not insure immunity from popular
prejudice; and the fate of Vesalius will be a lasting ex-
ample of the barbarism of the times, and of the pre-
carious tenure of the safety of even a great physician.
On the preliminary circumstances authors are not agreed;
but the most general account states that when Vesalius
was inspecting, with the consent of his kinsmen, the
body of a Spanish grandee, it was observed that the
heart still gave some feeble palpitations when divided by
the knife. The immediate effects of this outrage to
human feelings were the denunciation of the anatomist
to the Inquisition; and Vesalius escaped the severe treat-
ment of that tribunal only by the influence of the king,
and by promising to perform a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land. He forthwith proceeded to Venice, from which
he sailed with the Venetian fleet, under James Malatesta,
for Cyprus. When he reached Jerusalem, he received
from the Venetian senate a message requesting him again
to accept the Paduan professorship, which had become
vacant by the death of his friend and pupil Fallopius.
His destiny, however, which pursued him fast, suffered
him not again to breathe the Italian air. After strug-
gling for many days with adverse winds in the Ionian Sea,
he was wrecked on the island of Zante, where he quickly
breathed his last in such penury that unless a liberal
goldsmith had defrayed the funeral charges, his remains
must have been devoured by beasts of prey. At the
time of his death he was scarcely fifty years of age.
To form a correct estimate of the character and
merits of Vesalius, we must not compare him, in the
spirit of modern perfection, with the ariatomical authors
either of later times or of the present day. Whoever
would frame a just idea of this anatomist must imagine,
not a bold innovator without academical learning — not
A N A
3I 5
a genius coming from a foreign country, unused to the
forms and habits of Catholic Europe, nor a wild
reformer, blaming indiscriminately everything which
accorded not with his opinion; but a young student
scarcely emancipated from the authority of instructors,
and whose intellect was still influenced by the doctrines
with which it had been originally imbued,— a scholar
strictly trained in the opinions of the time, living amidst
men who venerated Galen as the oracle of anatomy and
the divinity of medicine,—exercising his reason to esti-
mate the soundness of the instructions then in use, and
proceeding, in the way least likely to offend authority
and wound prejudice, to rectify errors, and to establish
on the solid basis of observation the true elements of
anatomical Science. Vesalius has been denominated
the founder of human anatomy; and though we have
seen that in this career he was preceded with honor
by Mondino and Beringer, still the small proportion of
correct observation which their reverence for Galen and
Arabian doctrines allowed them to communicate, will
not in a material degree impair the original merits of
Vesalius. The errors which he rectified and the addi-
tions which he made are so numerous, that it is impos-
sible, in such a sketch as the present, to communicate a
just idea of them.
Besides the first good description of the sphenoid
bone, he showed that the sternum consists of three
portions and sacrum of five or six; and described accu-
rately the vestibule in the interior of the temporal
bone. He not only verified the observation of Etienne
on the valves of the hepatic veins, but described well
the vena azygos, and discovered the canal which passes
in the foetus between the umbilical vein and the
zerza cava, since named ductus zenosus. He described
the omentum, and its connections with the stomach,
the spleen, and the colon; gave the first correct views
of the structure of the pylorus; remarked the small
size of the caecal appendix in man; gave the first good
account of the mediastinum and pleura, and the fullest
description of the anatomy of the brain yet advanced.
He appears, however, not to have understood well the
inferior recesses; and his account of the nerves is con-
fused by regarding the optic as the first pair, the third
as the fifth, and the fifth as the seventh.
The labors of Vesalius were not limited to the im-
mediate effect produced by his own writings. His
instructions and example produced a multitude of ana-
tomical inquirers of different characters and varied celeb-
rity, by whom the science was extended and rectified.
Of these we cannot speak in detail; but historical jus-
tice requires us to notice shortly those to whose exertions
the Science of anatomy has been most indebted.
The first that claims attention on this account is
Bartholomeo Eustachi of San Severino, near Salerno,
who though greatly less fortunate in reputation than
Vesalius, divides with him the merit of creating the
science of human anatomy. He extended the knowl-
edge of the internal ear by rediscovering and describing
correctly the tube which bears his name ; and if we
admit that Ingrassias anticipated him in the knowledge
of the third bone of the tympanal cavity, the stapes, he
is still the first who described the internal and anterior
muscles of the malleus, as also the stapedius, and the
complicated figure of the cochlea. He is the first who
studied accurately the anatomy of the teeth, and the
phenomena of the first and second dentition. The work,
however, which demonstrates at once the great merit
and the unhappy fate of Eustachius is his Anatomica/
Azzgravings, which, though completed in 1552, nine
years after the impression of the work of Vesalius, the
author was unable to publish. First communicated to
the world in 1714 by Lancisi, afterwards in 1744 by
Cajetan Petrioli, again in 1744 by Albinus, and more
recently at Bonn in 1790, the engravings show that
Eustachius had dissected with the greatest care and dili-
gence, and taken the utmost pains to give just views of
the shape, size, and relative position of the organs of
the human body.
The first seven plates illustrate the history of the
kidneys, and some of the facts relating to the structure
of the ear. The eighth represents the heart, the rami-
fications of the vena azygos, and the valve of the vena
caza, named from the author. In the seven subsequent
plates is given a succession of different views of the
viscera of the chest and abdomen. The seventeenth
contains the brain and spinal cord; and the eighteenth
more accurate views of the origin, course, and distribu-
tion of the nerves than had been given before. Fourteen
plates are devoted to the muscles.
Eustachius did not confine his researches to the study
of relative anatomy. He investigated the intimate
structure of organs with assiduity and success. What
was too minute for unassisted vision he inspected by
means of glasses. Structure which could not be under-
stood in the recent state, he unfolded by maceration in
different fluids, or rendered more distinct by injection
and exsiccation. The facts unfolded in these figures are
so important that it is justly remarked by Lauth, that
if the author himself had been fortunate enough to
publish them, anatomy would have attained the perfec-
tion of the 18th century two centuries earlier at least.
Their seclusion for that period in the papal library has
given celebrity to many names which would have been
known only in the verification of the discoveries of
Eustachius.
Eustachius was the contemporary of Vesalius. Co-
lumbus and Fallopius were his pupils. Columbus, as
his immediate successor in Padua, and afterwards as
professor at Rome, distinguished himself by rectifying
and improving the anatomy of the bones ; by giving
correct accounts of the shape and cavities of the heart,
of the pulmonary artery and aorta and their valves,
and tracing the course of the blood from the right to
the left side of the heart; by a good description of the
brain and its vessels, and by correct understanding of
the internal ear, and the first good account of the ven-
tricles of the larynx.
Fallopius, who, after being professor at Pisa in 1548,
and at Padua in 1551, died at the age of forty, studied
the general anatomy of the bones; described better than
heretofore the internal ear, especially the tympanum
and its osseous ring, the two fenestra and their com-
munication with the vestibule and cochlea ; and gave
the first good account of the stylo-mastoid hole and
canal, or the ethmoid bone and cells, and of the lachrymal
passages. In myology he rectified several mistakes of .
Vesalius. He also devoted attention to the organs of .
generation in both sexes, and discovered the utero-
peritoneal canal which still bears his name. º
Osteology nearly at the same time found an assiduous
cultivator in John Philip Ingrassius, a learned Sicilian
physician, who, in a skilful commentary on the oste-
ology of Galen, corrected numerous mistakes. He gave
the first distinct account of the true configuration of the
sphenoid and ethmoid bones, and has the merit of first
describing the third bone of the tympanum, called stages,
though this is also claimed by Eustachius and Fallopius.
The anatomical descriptions of Vesalius underwent
the scrutiny of various inquirers. Those most dis-
tinguished by the importance and accuracy of their re-
searches, as well as the temperate tone of their observa-
tions, were Julius Caesar Aranzi, anatomical professor
for thirty-two years in the university of Bologna, and
Constantio Varoli, physician to Pope Gregory XIII-
316
A N A
To the former we are indebted for the first correct ac-
count of the anatomical peculiarities of the foetus, and
he was the first to show that the muscles of the eye do
not, as was falsely imagined, arise from the dura mater,
but from the margin of the optic hole. He also, after
considering the anatomical relations of the cavities of
the heart, the valves, and the great vessels, corroborates
the views of Columbus regarding the course which the
blood follows in passing from the right to the left side
of the heart. Aranzi is the first anatomist who describes
distinctly the inferior cornua of the ventricles of the
cerebrum, who recognizes the objects by which they are
distinguished, and who gives them the name by which
they are still known (hippocampus); and his account is
more minute and perspicuous than that of the authors of
the subsequent century. He speaks at large of the
choroid plexus, and gives a particular description of the
fourth ventricle, under the name of cistern of the cere-
&el/um, as a discovery of his own.
Italy, though rich in anatomical talent, has probably
few greater names than that of Constanti Varoli of
Bologna. Though he died at the early age of thirty-
two, he acquired a reputation not inferior to that of the
most eminent of his contemporaries. He is now known
chiefly as the author of an epistle, inscribed to Hierony-
mo Mercuriali, on the optic nerves, in which he de-
scribes a new method of dissecting the brain, and com-
municates many interesting particulars relating to the
anatomy of the organ. He observes the threefold di-
vision of the inferior surface or base, defines the limits
of the anterior, middle, and posterior eminences, as
marked by the compartments of the skull, and justly re-
marks that the cerebral cavities are capacious, communi-
cate with each other, extending first backward and then
forward, near the angle of the pyramidal portion of the
temporal bone, and that they are folded on themselves,
and finally lost above the middle and inferior eminence
of the brain. He appears to have been aware that at
this point they communicate with the exterior or convo-
luted surface. He recognised the impropriety of the
term corpus cal/osum, seems to have known the commu-
nication called afterwards foram enz Monroianum, and
describes the hippocampus more minutely than had been
previously done.
Among the anatomists of the Italian school, as a
pupil of Fallopius, Eustachius, and Aldrovandus, is gen-
erally enumerated Volcher Coiter of Groningen. He
distinguished himself by accurate researches on the car-
tilages, the bones, and the nerves, recognised the value
of morbid anatomy, and made experiment on living ani-
mals to ascertain the action of the heart and the influ-
ence of the brain.
The Fruteful/ and Necessary Briefe Worke of John
Halle (1565), and The AEnglishman's Zºreasure, by Mas-
ter Thomas Vicary (1586), English works published at
this time, are tolerable compilations from former au-
thors, much tinged by Galenian and Arabian distinctions.
A more valuable compendium than either is, however,
that of John Banister (1578), entitled The Historie of
Man, from the most approved Anathomistes in this
Aresent Age.
The celebrity of the anatomical school of Italy was
worthily maintained by Hieronymo Fabricio of Acqua-
pendente, who, in imitation of his master Fallopius,
labored to render anatomical knowledge more precise
by repeated dissections, and to illustrate the obscure by
researches on the structure of animals in general. In
this manner he investigated the formation of the foetus,
the structure of the Oesophagus, stomach, and bowels,
and the peculiarities of the eye, ear, and the larynx.
The discovery, however, on which his surest claims to
eminence rest is that of the membranous folds, which he
names valves, in the interior of veins. Several of these
folds had been observed by Fernel, Sylvius, and Vesa-
lius; and in 1547 Cannani observed those of the zena
azygos; but no one appears to have offered any rational
conjecture on their use, or to have traced them through
the venous system at large, until Fabricius in 1574,
upon this hypothesis, demonstrated the presence of
these valvular folds in all the veins of the extremities.
Fabricius, though succeeded by his pupil Julius
Casserius of Placenza, may be regarded as the last of
that illustrious line of anatomical teachers by whom the
science was so successfully studied and taught in the
universities of Italy. The discoveries which each made,
and the errors which their successive labors rectified,
tended gradually to give anatomy the character of a
useful as well as an accurate science, and to pave the
way for a discovery which, though not anatomical but
physiological, is so intimately connected with correct
knowledge of the shape and situation of parts, that it
exercised the most powerful influence on the future
progress of anatomical inquiry. This was the knowl-
edge of the circular motion of the blood, a fact which,
though obscurely conjectured by Aristotle, Nemesius,
Mondino, and Berenger, and partially taught by Serve-
tus, Columbus, Caesalpinus, and Fabricius, it was never-
theless reserved to William Harvey fully and satisfac-
torily to demonstrate.
Mondino believed that the blood proceeds from the
heart to the lungs through the vena arterialis or pul-
monary artery, and that the aorta conveys the spirit into
the blood through all parts of the body. This doctrine
was adopted with little modification by Berenger, who
further demonstrated the existence and operation of the
tricuspid valves in the right ventricle, and of the sigmoid
valves at the beginning of the pulmonary artery and
aorta, and that there were only two ventricles separated
by a solid impervious septum. These were afterwards
described in greater detail by Vesalius, who neverthe-
less appears not to have been aware of the important
use which might be made of this knowledge. It was
the Spaniard Michael Servet or Servetus (born in 1509;
burnt in 1553), who in his treatise De Zºrimitatis Er-
zoribus, published at Haguenau in 1531, first maintained
the imperviousness of the septum, and the transition of
the blood by what he terms an unknown route, namely,
from the right ventricle by the vena arteriosa (pulmo-
nary artery) to the lungs, and thence into the arteria
zenosa or pulmonary vein and left auricle and ventricle,
from which, he adds afterwards, it is conveyed by the
aorta to all parts of the body.
Though the leading outlines, not only of the pulmo-
nary or small but even of the great circulation, were
sketched thus early by one who, though a philosopher,
was attached to the church, it was only in his work De
Afe Anatomica, published at Venice in 1559, that Colum-
bus formally and distinctly announced the circular
course of the blood as a discovery of his own; and
maintained, in addition to the imperviousness of the
septum, the fact that the arteria zenalis (pulmonary vein)
contains, not air, but blood mixed with air brought
from the lungs to the left ventricle of the heart, to be
distributed through the body at large.
Soon after, views still more complete of the small or
pulmonary circulation were given by Andrew Caesal-
pinus of Arezzo, who not only maintained the analogy
between the structure of the arterious vein or pulmonary
artery and the aorta, and that between the venous
artery or pulmonary veins and veins in general, but was
the first to remark the swelling of veins below ligatures,
and to infer from it a refluent motion of blood in these
vessels. The discoveries of Aranzi and Eustachius in
the vessels of the foetus tended at first to perplex and
A N A
3 I?
afterwards to elucidate some of these notions. At
length it happened that, between the years 1598 and
1600, a young Englishman, William Harvey, pursuing
his anatomical studies at Padua under Fabricius of
Acquapendente, learnt from that anatomist the existence
of the valves in the veins of the extremities, and under-
took to ascertain the use of these valves by experimental
inquiry. It is uncertain whether he learnt from the
writings of Caesalpinus the fact observed by that author,
of the tumescence of a vein below the ligature; but he
could not fail to be aware, and indeed he shows that he
was aware, of the small circulation as taught by Servetus
and Columbus, Combining these facts already known,
he, by a series of well-executed experiments, demon.
strated clearly the existence, not only of the small, but
of a general circulation from the left side of the heart
by the aorta and its subdivisions, to the right side by the
veins. This memorable truth was first announced in
the year 1619.
It belongs not to this place either to consider the
arguments and facts by which Harvey defended his
theory, or to notice the numerous assaults to which he
was exposed, and the controversies in which his oppo-
nents wished to involve him. It is sufficient to say, that
after the temporary ebullitions of the spleen and envy
had subsided, the doctrine of the circular motion of the
blood was admitted by all enlightened and unprejudiced
persons, and finally was universally adopted as affording
the most satisfactory explanation of many facts in ana-
tomical structure which were either misunderstood or en-
tirely overlooked. . The inquiries to which the investiga-
tion of the doctrine gave rise produced numerous
researches on the shape and structure of the heart and its
divisions, of the lungs, and of the blood-vessels and their
distribution. Of this description were the researches of
Nicolas Steno on the structure of the heart, the classical
work of Richard Lower, the dissertation of Pechlin, the
treatise of Vieussens, the work of Malpighion the struct-
ure of the lungs, several sketches in the writings of
Mayow, and other treatises of less moment. Systematic
treatises of anatomy began to assume a more instructive
form, and to breathe a more philosophical spirit. The
great work of Adrian Spigelius, which appeared in 1627,
two years after the death of the author, contains indeed
no proof that he was aware of the valuable generalisation
of Harvey; but in the institutions of Casper Bartholin,
as republished and improved by his son Thomas in 1651,
the anatomical descriptions and explanations are given
with reference to the new doctrine. A still more un-
equivocal proof of the progress of correct anatomical
knowledge was given in the lectures delivered by Peter
Dionis, at the Jardin Royal of Paris, in 1673 and the
seven following years, in which that intelligent surgeon
gave most accurate demonstrations of all the parts com-
posing the human frame, and especially of the heart, its
auricles, ventricles, and valves, and the large vessels con-
nected with it and the lungs. These demonstrations,
first published in 1690, were so much esteemed that they
passed through seven editions in the space of thirty years,
and were translated into English.
The progress of anatomical discovery continued in
the meantime to advance. In the course of the 16th
century Eustachius, in studying minutely the structure
of the vena azygos had recognised in the horse a white
vessel full of watery fluid, connected with the internal
jugular vein, on the left side of the vertebral column,
corresponding accurately with the vessel since named
thoracic duct. Fallopius also described vessels belong-
ing to the liver distinct from arteries and veins; and
similar vessels appear to have been noticed by Nico-
laus Massa. The mature and properties of these ves-
sels were, however, entirely unknown. On the 23d
July 1622 Gaspar Asellius, professor of anatomy at
Pavia, while engaged in .demonstrating the recurrent
nerves in a living dog, first observed numerous white
delicate filaments crossing the mesentery in all direc-
tions; and though he took them at first for nerves, the
opaque white fluid which they shed quickly convinced
him that they were a new order of vessels. The repe-
tition of the experiment the following day showed that
these vessels were best seen in animals recently fed;
and as he traced them from the villous membrane of
the intestines, and observed the valves with which they
were liberally supplied, he inferred that they were gen-
uine chyliferous vessels. By confounding them with the
lymphatics, he made them proceed to the pancreas and
liver—a mistake which appears to have been first recti-
fied by Francis De le Boe. The discovery of Asellius
was announced in 1627; and the following year, by
means of the zealous efforts of Nicolas Peiresc, a liberal
senator of Aix, the vessels were seen in the person of a
felon who had eaten copiously before execution, and
whose body was inspected an hour and a half after. In
I629, they were publicly demonstrated at Copenhagen
by Simon Pauli, and the same year the thoracic duct
was observed by Mentel for the first time since it was
described by Eustachius. Five years after (1634), John
Wesling, professor of anatomy and surgery at Venice,
gave the first delineation of the lacteals from the human
subject, and evinced more accurate knowledge than his
predecessors of the thoracic duct and the lymphatics.
Highmore in 1637 demonstrated unequivocally the dif-
ference between the lacteals and the mesenteric veins;
and though some perplexity was occasioned by the dis-
covery of the pancreatic duct by Wirsung, this mistake
was corrected by Thomas Bartholin; and the discovery
by Pecquet in 1647 of the common trunk of the lacteals,
and lymphatics, and of the course which the chyle fol-
lows to reach the blood, may be regarded as the last of
the series of isolated facts by the generalisation of
which the extent, distribution, and uses of the most im-
portant organs of the animal body were at length
developed.
To complete the history of this part of anatomical
science one step yet remained,— the distinction between
the lacteals and lymphatics, and the discovery of the
termination of the latter order of vessels. The honor
of this discovery is divided between Jolyffe, an English
anatomist, and Olaus Rudbeck a young Swede. The
former, according to the testimony of Glisson and
Wharton, was aware of the distinct existence of the
lymphatics in 1650, and demonstrated them as such in
1652. It is nevertheless doubtful whether he knew them
much before the latter period; and it is certain that
Rudbeck observed the lymphatics of the large intestines,
and traced them to glands, on the 27th January 1581,
after he had, in the course of 1650, made various erro-
neous conjectures regarding them, and, like others,
attempted to trace them to the liver. The following
year he demonstrated them in presence of Queen Chris-
tina, and traced them to the thoracic duct, and the
latter to the subclavian vein. Their course and distri-
bution were still more fully investigated by Thomas
Bartholin, Wharton, Swammerdam, and Blaes, the
last two of whom recognised the existence of valves;
while Antony Nuck of Leyden, by rectifying various
errors of his predecessors, and adding several new and
valuable observations, rendered this part of anatomy
much more precise than formerly.
After this period anatomists began to study more
minutely the organs and textures. Francis Glisson
distinguished himself by a minute description of the
liver, and a clearer account of the stomach and intes-
times, than had yet been given. Thomas Wharton
318
A N A
investigated the structure of the glands with particular
care; and though rather prone to indulge in fanciful
generalisation, he developed some interesting views of
these organs; while Charleton, who appears to have
been a person of great genius, though addicted to
hypothesis, made Some good remarks on the communi-
cation of the arteries with the veins, the foetal circula-
tion, and the course of the lymphatics. But the
circumstances which chiefly distinguished the history of
anatomy at the beginning of the seventeenth century
was the appearance of Thomas Willis, who rendered
himself eminent not only by good researches on the
brain and nerves, but by many judicious observations on
the structure of the lungs, the intestines, the blood-
vessels, and the glands. His anatomy of the brain and
nerves is so minute and elaborate, and abounds so
much in new information, that the reader is struck by
the immense chasm between the vague and meagre
notices of his predecessors, and the ample and correct
description of Willis. This excellent work, however,
is not the result of his own personal and unaided exer-
tions; and the character of Willis derives additional
lustre from the candid avowal of his obligations to
Wren and Millington, and, above all, to the diligent
researches of his fellow-anatomist Richard Lower.
Willis was the first who numbered the cranial nerves
in the order in which they are now usually enumerated
by anatomists. His observation of the connection of
the eighth pair with the slender nerve which issues from
the beginning of the spinal chord is known to all. He
remarked the parallel lines of the mesolobe, afterwards
minutely described by Vicq d'Azyr. He seems to have
recognized the communication of the convoluted surface
of the brain and that between the lateral cavities be-
neath the fornix. He described the corpora striata and
optic thalami; the four orbicular eminences, with the
bridge, which he first named annular protuberance;
and the white mammillary eminences, behind the in-
fundibulum.
cent arrangement of the white and grey matter, and
gives a good account of the internal carotids, and the
communications which they make with the branches of
the basilar artery.
About the middle of the 17th century Rt. Hooke
and Nehemiah Grew employed the simple microscope in
the minute examination of plants and animals; and the
Dutch philosopher Leeuwenhoeck with great acuteness
examined microscopically the solids and fluids of the
body, recognized the presence of scales in the cuticle,
and discovered the corpuscles in the blood and milk, and
the spermatozoa in the seminal fluid. The researches of
Malpighi also tended to improve the knowledge of
minute structure. He gave the first distinct ideas on
the organization of the lung, and the mode in which the
bronchial tubes and vessels terminate in that organ.
By the microscope he traced the transition of the ar-
teries into the veins, and saw the movements of the
blood corpuscles in the capillaries. He endeavored to
unfold, by dissection and microscopic observation, the
minute structure of the brain. He studied the structure
of bone, he traced the formation and explained the
structure of the teeth; and his name is to this day asso-
ciated with the discovery of the deeper layer of the
cuticle and the Malpighian bodies in the spleen and
kidney., . In these difficult inquiries the observations of
Malpighi are in general faithful, and he may be re-
garded as the founder of histological anatomy.
Nicolas Steno described with accuracy the lachrymal
gland and passages, and rediscovered the parotid duct.
Bellini studied the structure of the kidneys, and described
the tongue and tonsils with some care; and Drelincourt
labored to investigate the changes effected on the uterus
In the cerebellum he remarks the arbores-
by impregnation, and to elucidate the formation of the
foetus. The science might have derived still greater
advantages from the genius of Regnier de Graaf, who
investigated with accuracy the structure of the pancreas
and of the organs of generation in both sexes, had he
not been cut off at the early age of thirty-two. Lastly,
Wepfer, though more devoted to morbid anatomy, made,
nevertheless, some just observations on the anatomical
disposition of the cerebral vessels, the glandular structure
of the liver, and the termination of the common duct in
the duodenum.
The appearance of Frederic Ruysch, who was born in
1638, and became professor of anatomy at Amsterdam in
I665, gave a new impulse to anatomical research, and
tended not only to give the science greater precision, but
to extend its limits in every direction. The talents of
Ruysch are said to have been developed by accident. To
repel the audacious and calumnious aspersions with which
De Bils attacked De le Boe and Van Horne, Ruysch
published his tract on the valves of the lymphatics, which
completely established his character as an anatomist of
originality and research. This, however, is the smallest
of his services to the science. The art of injecting, which
had been originally attempted by Eustachi and Varoli,
and was afterwards rudely practised by Glisson, Bellini,
and Willis, was at length carried to greater perfection by
De Graaf and Swammerdam, the former of whom in-
jected the spermatic vessels with mercury and variously-
colored liquors; while the latter, by employing melted
wax with other ingredients, made the first approach to
the refinements of modern anatomy. By improving this
idea of using substances which, though solid, may be
rendered fluid at the period of injecting, Ruysch carried
this art to the highest perfection.
By the application of this happy contrivance he was
enabled to demonstrate the arrangement of minute ves-
sels in the interior of organs which had escaped the
scrutiny of previous anatomists. Scarcely a part of the
human body eluded the penetration of his syringe; and
his discoveries were proportionally great. His account
of the valves of the lymphatics, of the vessels of the
lungs, and their minute structure; his researches on the
vascular structure of the skin, of the bones, and their
epiphyses, and their mode of growth and union ; his
observations on the spleen, the glans penis, the clitoris,
and the womb impregnated and unimpregnated, were
but a limited part of his anatomical labors. He studied
the minute structure of the brain; he demonstrated the
organisation of the choroid plexus ; he described the
state of the hair when affected with Polish plait; he
proved the vascular structure of the teeth; he injected
the dura mater, the pleura, the pericardium, and perito-
neum ; he unfolded the minute structure of the con-
glomerate glands; he investigated that of the synovial
apparatus placed in the interior of the joints; and he
discovered several curious particulars relating to the lac-
teals, the lymphatics, and the lymphatic glands.
Meanwhile, Meibomius rediscovered the palpebral
glands, which were known to Casserius; Swammerdam
studied the action of the lungs, described the structure
of the human uterus, and made numerous valuable
observations on the coeca and pancreatoid organs of
fishes; and Kerckringius laid the foundation of a knowl-
edge of the process of ossification. John Conrad Brun-
ner, in the course of experiments on the pancreas, dis-
covered the glands of the duodenum named after him,
and Conrad Peyer described the solitary and agnminated
glands of the intestinal canal. , Leonard Tassin, dis-
tinguished for original observation, rendered the ana-
tomical history of the brain more accurate than hereto-
fore, and gave particular accounts of the intestinal tube,
the pancreatic duct, and the hepatic ligaments.
A N A
3 IQ
That France might not be without participation in
the glory of advancing the progress of anatomical
knowledge, the names of Duverney and Vieussens are
commemorated with distinction. Duverney, born in
1648, and first introduced into public life in 1676 in the
Royal Academy of Sciences, decorated with the hono-
rary title of professor of anatomy to the Dauphin, and
appointed in 1679 professor of the Jardin Royal, dis-
tinguished himself by the first accurate account of the
organ of hearing, and by his dissections of several
animals at the academy, supplied valuable materials for
the anatomical details of the natural history of animals
published by that learned body. He appears to have
been the first who demonstrated the fact that the
cerebral sinuses open into the jugular veins, and to have
been aware that the former receive the veins of the
brain, and are the venous receptacles of the organ.
He understood the cerebral cavities and their mode of
communication; distinguishes the posterior pillars of
the vault from the pedes hippocampi; recognises the
two plates of the septum lucidum ; and, what is still
more remarkable, he first indicates distinctly the decus-
sation of the anterior pyramids of the medulla oblon-
gata—a fact afterwards verified by the researches of
Mistichelli, Petit, and Santorini. He studied the
ganglions attentively, and gives the first distinct account
of the formation, connections, and distribution of the
intercostal nerve. It is interesting to remark that his
statement that the veins or sinuses of the spinal cord
terminate in the vena azygos was verified by the more
recent researches of Dupuytren and Breschet, which
shows that the vertebral veins communicate by means of
the intercostal and superior lumbar veins with the
azygos and demi-azygos. His account of the structure
of bones, and of the progress of ossification, is valuable.
He recognised the vascular structure of the spleen, and
described the excretory ducts of the prostate gland,
the verumontanum, and the anteprostates.
One of the circumstances which at this time tended
considerably to the improvement of anatoºnical science
was the attention with which Comparative Anatomy was
beginning to be cultivated. In ancient times, and at
the revival of letters the dissection of the lower animals
was substituted for that of the human body; and the
descriptions of the organs of the latter were too often
derived from the former. The obloquy and contempt in
which this abuse involved the study of animal anatomy
caused it to be neglected, or pursued with indifference,
for more than two centuries, during which anatomists
confined their descriptions, at least very much, to the
parts of the human body. At this period, however, the
prejudice against Comparative Anatomy began to subside;
and animal dissection, though not substituted for that of
the human body, was employed, as it ought always to
have been, to illustrate obscurities, to determine doubts,
and to explain difficulties, and in short, to enlarge and
rectify the knowledge of the structure of animal bodies
generally.
For this revolution in its favor, Comparative Anat-
omy was in a great measure indebted to the learned
societies which were established about this time in the
different countries of Europe. Among these, the Royal
Society of London, embodied by charter by Charles II.
in 1663, and the Academy of Sciences of Paris, founded
in 1665 by Colbert, are undoubtedly entitled to the first
rank. Though later in establishment, the latter insti-
tution was distinguished by making the first great
efforts in favor of Comparative Anatomy; and Perrault,
Pecquet, Duverney, and Mery, by the dissections of rare
animals obtained from the royal menagerie, speedily
supplied valuable materials for the anatomical natural-
ist. In England, Nehemiah Grew, Edward Tyson, and
Samuel Collins cultivated the same department with dil-
igence and success. Grew has left an interesting
account of the anatomical peculiarities of the intestinal
canal in various animals; Tyson, in the dissection of a
porpoise, an Opossum, and an ourang outang, adduces
some valuable illustrations of the comparative differ.
ences between the structure of the human body and that
of the lower animals; Collins has the merit of conceiv-
ing, and executing on an enlarged plan, a comprehensive
system, embodying all the information then extant.
With the aid of Tyson and his own researches, which
were both extensive and accurate, he composed a system
of anatomical knowledge in which he not only gives
ample and accurate descriptions of the structure of the
human body, and the various morbid changes to which
the organs are liable, but illustrates the whole by accu-
rate and interesting sketches of the peculiarities of the
lower animals. The matter of this work is so excellent
that it can only be ascribed to ignorance that it has
received so little attention. Though regarded as a com-
pilation, and though indeed much of the human anatomy
is derived from Vesalius, it has the advantage of the
works published on the Continent at that time, that it
embodies most of the valuable facts derived from Mal-
pighi, Willis, and Vieussens. The Comparative Anat-
omy is almost all original, the result of personal research
and dissection; and the pathological observations, though
occasionally tinged with the spirit of the times, show the
author to have been endowed with the powers of obser-
vation and judicious reflection in no ordinary degree.
About this time also we recognise the first attempts
to study the minute constitution of the tissues, by the
combination of the microscope and the effects of chem.
ical agents. Bone furnished the first instance in which this
method was put in use; and though Gagliardi, who
undertook the inquiry, had fallen into some mistakes
which it required the observation of Malpighi to rectify,
this did not deter Clopton Havers and Nesbitt, in En-
gland, and Courtial, Du Hamel, and Delasone, and
afterwards Herissant, in France, from resuming the same
train of investigation. The mistakes into which these
anatomists fell belong to the imperfect method of inquiry.
The facts which they ascertained have been verified by
recent experiment, and constitute no unessential part of
our knoweldge of the structure of bone.
Ten years after the publication of the work of Col.
lins, Henry Ridley, another English anatomist, distin-
guished himself by a monograph on the brain, which,
though not free from errors, contains, nevertheless,
some valuable observations. Ridley is the first who dis-
tinguishes by name the restiform processes, or the pos-
terior pyramidal eminences. He recognised the figure
of the four eminences in the human subject; he remarked
the mammillary bodies; and he discovered the sinus
which passes under his name.
Raymond Vieussens, by publication of his great work
on neurography in 1684, threw new light on the con-
figuration and the structure of the brain, the spinal
cord, and the nerves; and gave a description of the
arrangement and distribution of the latter more precise
than heretofore. Of the formation and connections of
the sympathetic nerve especially he gave views which have
been generally adopted by subsequent anatomists. His
new arrangement of the vessels, published in 1705, con-
tains several curious opinions. His observations on the
structure of the heart, published in 1706, and enlarged
in 1715, exhibit the first correct views of the intimate
structure of an organ which afterwards was most fully
developed by the labors of Lancisi and Senac.
To the same period belong the rival publications of
Godfrey Bidloo and William Cowper, the latter of whom,
however, stained a reputation otherwise good by pub-
4- - - .* *- - à *-i- 4.
--ºs--------
* - - --
32O
A N A
lishing as his own the engravings of the former. Cow-
per further distinguished himself by a minute account of
the urethralglands, already know to Columbus and Mery;
a good description of the intestinal glands, discovered
by Brunner and Peyer; and by demonstrating the com-
munication of the arteries and veins of the mesentery.
The anatomical genius of Italy, which had slumbered
since the death of Malpighi, was destined once more to
revive in Lancisi, Valsalva, and his illustrious pupils
Santorini, and Morgagni. , Valsalva especially distin-
. guished himself by his description of the structure of the
ear, which, in possessing still greater precision and
minuteness than that of Duverney, is valuable in setting
the example of rendering anatomy altogether a science
of description. Santorini, who was professor at Venice,
was no unworthy friend of Valsalva and Morgagni. His
anatomical observations, which relate to the muscles of
the face, the brain, and several of the nerves, the ducts
of the lacrymal gland, the nose and its cavities, the
larynx, the viscera of the chest and belly, and the organs
of generation in the two sexes, furnish beautiful models
of essays, distinguished for perspicuity, precision, and
novelty, above, anything which had then appeared.
These observations, indeed which bear the impress of
accurate observation and clear conception, may be safely
compared with any anatomical writings which have
appeared since. Those on the brain are particularly
interesting. Morgagni, though chiefly known as a
pathological anatomist, did not neglect the healthy
structure. His Adversaria, which appeared between
1706 and 1719, and his Epistles, published in 1728,
contain a series of observations to rectify the mistakes
of previous anatomists, and to determine the characters
of the healthy structure of many parts of the human
body. Many parts he describes anew, and indicates
facts not previously observed. All his remarks show
well he knew what true anatomical description ought to
be. In this respect, indeed, the three anatomists now
mentioned may be said to have anticipated their con-
temporaries nearly a century; for, while other authors
were satisfied with giving loose and inaccurate or meagre
notices of parts, with much fanciful supposition, Val-
Salva, Santorini, and Morgagni labored to determine
with precision the anatomical characters of the parts
which they describe.
The same character is due to Winslow, a native of
Denmark, but, as pupil and successor of Duverney, as
well as a convert to Catholicism, naturalised in France,
and finally professor of anatomy at the Royal Gardens.
His exposition of the structure of the human body is
distinguished for being not only the first treatise of de-
scriptive anatomy, divested of physiological details and
hypothetical explanations foreign to the subject, but for
being a close description derived from actual objects,
without reference to the writings of previous anatomists.
About the same time Cheselden in London, the first
Monro in Edinburgh, and Albinus in Leyden, con-
tributed by their several treatises to render anatomy
still more precise as a descriptive science. The Osteo-
graphia of the first-mentioned was of much use in
directing attention to the study of the skeleton and the
morbid changes to which it is liable. This work, how-
ever, magnificent as it was, was excelled by that of
Albinus, who, in 1747, published engravings descriptive
of the bones and muscles, which perhaps will never be
surpassed either in accuracy of outline or beauty of exe-
cution. The several labors of this author, indeed, con-
stitute an important era in the history of the science.
He was the first who classified and exhibited the muscles
in a proper arrangement, and applied to them a momen-
clature which is still retained by the consent of the best
anatomists. He gives a luminous account of the arteries
tº -
and veins of the intestines, represents with singular
fidelity and beauty the bones of the foetus, inquires into
the structure of the skin and the cause of its color in
different races; represents the changes incident to the
womb in different periods of pregnancy, and describes
the relations of the thoracic duct and the vena azygos
with the contiguous parts. Besides these large and
magnificent works, illustrated by the most beautiful en-
gravings, six books of Academical Annotations were the
fruits of his long and assiduous cultivation of anatomy.
These contain valuable remarks on the sound structure
and morbid deviations of numerous parts of the human
body.
Minus found a worthy successor in his pupil Albert
Von Haller, who, with a mind imbued with every de-
partment of literature and science, directed his chief
attention, nevertheless, to the cultivation of anatomical
and physiological knowledge. Having undertaken at an
early age (twenty-one) to illustrate, with commentaries,
the physiological prelections of his preceptor Boerhaave,
he devoted himself assiduously to the perusal of every
work which could tend to facilitate his purpose; and as
he found numerous erroneous or imperfect statements,
and many deficiencies to supply, he undertook an exten-
sive course of dissection of human and animal bodies to
obtain the requisite information. During the seventeen
years he was professor at Göttingen, he dissected 4oo
bodies, and inspected their organs with the utmost care.
The result of these assiduous labors appeared at inter-
vals in the form of dissertations by himself, or under
the name of some one of his pupils, finally published in
a collécted shape between 1746 and 1751 (Disputationes
Anatomica: Selectiones), and in eight numbers of most
accurate and beautiful engravings, representing the most
important parts of the human body, e.g., the diaphragm,
the uterus, ovaries, and vagina, the arteries of the differ-
ent regions and organs, with learned and critical explan-
atory observations. He verified the observations that
in the foetus the testicles lie in the abdomen, and showed
that their descent into the scrotum may be complicated
with the formation of congenital hernia. Some years
after, when he had retired from his academical duties at
Göttingen, he published, between 1757 and 1765, the
large and elaborate work which, with singular modesty,
he styled Ælements of Physiology. This work, though
professedly devoted to physiology, rendered, neverthe-
less, the most essential services to anatomy. Haller,
drawing an accurate line of distinction between the two,
gave the most clear, precise and complete descriptions
of the situation, position, figure, component parts, and
minute structure of the different organs and their ap-
pendages. The results of previous and coeval inquiry,
obtained by extensive reading, he sedulously verified by
personal observation; and though he never rejected facts
stated on credible authorities, he in all cases labored to
ascertain their real value by experiment. The anatom-
ical descriptions are on this account not only the most
valuable part of his work, but the most valuable that
had then or for a long time after appeared. It is pain-
ful, nevertheless, to think that the very form in which
this work is composed, with copious and scrupulous
reference to authorities, made it be regarded as a com-
pilation only, and that the author was compelled to
show, by a list of his personal researches, that the most
learned work ever given to the physiologist was also the
most abundant in original information.
With the researches of Haller it is proper to notice
those of his contemporaries, John Frederick Meckel, J.
N. Lieberkühn, and his pupil John Godfrey Zinn. The
first, who was professor of anatomy at Berlin, described
the Casserian ganglion, the first pair of nerves and their
distribution, and that of the facial nerves generally, and
*A
A N A
32 I
.*
discovered the spheno-palatine ganglion. He made
Some original and judicious observations on the tissue of
the skin and the mucous met; and above all, he recog-
nized the connection of the lymphatic vessels with the
veins,— a doctrine which, after long neglect, was re-
vived by Fohmann and Lippi. He also collected sev-
eral valuable observations on the morbid states of the
heart and brain. Lieberkühn published in 1745 a dis-
sertation-on the villi and glands of the small intestines.
Zinn, who was professor of medicine at Göttingen, pub-
lished a classical treatise on the eye, which demonstrated
at once the defects of previous inquiries, and how much
it was possible to elucidate, by accurate research and
precise description, the structure of one of the most im-
portant organs of the human frame. It was published
after his death by Wrisberg. About the same time
Weitbrecht gave a copious and minute account of the
ligaments, and M. Lieutaud, who had already labored
to rectify many errors in anatomy, described with care
the structure and relations of the heart and its cavities,
and rendered the anatomy of the bladder very precise,
by describing the triangular space and the mammillary
eminence at its neck.
The study of the minute anatomy of the tissues, which
had originally been commenced by Leeuwenhoeck, Mal-
pighi, and Ruysch, began at this period to attract more
general attention. De Bergen had already demon-
strated the general distribution of cellular membrane,
and showed that it not only incloses every part of the
animal frame, but forms the basis of every organ, - a
doctrine which was adopted, and still more fully ex-
panded, by his friend Haller, in opposition to what was
asserted by Albinus, who maintains that each part has a
proper tissue. William Hunter at the same time gave
a clear and ingenious statement of the difference between
cellular membrane and adipose tissue, in which he main-
tained the general distribution of the former, and repre-
sented it as forming the serous membranes, and regulat-
ing their physiological and pathological properties,
doctrines which were afterwards confirmed by his
brother John Hunter. A few years after, the depart-
ment of general anatomy first assumed a substantial
form in the systematic view of the membranes and their
mutual connections traced by Andrew Bonn of Amster-
dam. In his inaugural dissertation /De Continuationi-
&us Membranarum, published at Leyden in 1763, this
author, after some preliminary observations on mem-
branes in general and their structure, and an exposition
of that of the skin, traces its transition into the mucous
membranes and their several divisions. He then ex-
plains the distribution of the cellular membrane, the
aponeurotic expansions, and the periosteum and peri-
chondrium, by either of which, he shows, every bone of
the skeleton is invested and connected. He finally
gives a very distinct view of the arrangement of the in-
termal membranes of cavities, those named serous and
fibro-serous, and the manner of their distribution over
the contained organs. This essay, which is a happy ex-
ample of generalisation, is remarkable for the interest-
ing general views of the structure of the animal body
which it exhibits; and to Bonn belongs the merit of
sketching the first outlines of that system which it was
reserved for the genius of Bichat to complete and em-
bellish. Lastly, Bordeu, in an elaborate essay on the
mucous tissue, or cellular organ, as he terms it, brought
forward some interesting views of the constitution, na-
ture, and extent of the cellular membrane.
Though anatomy washitherto cultivated with much suc-
cess as illustrating the natural history and morbid states of
the human body, yet little had been done for the elucida-
tion of local diseases, and the surgical means by which
they may be successfully treated. The idea of applying
}
anatomical knowledge directly to this purpose appears to
have originated with Benardin Genga, a Roman surgeon,
who published in 1672, at Rome, a work entitled Sur.
gical Anatomy, or the Anatomical History of the Bones
and Muscles of the Humzan Body, with the Description
of the Blood Vessels. This work, which reached a sec-
ond edition in 1687, is highly creditable to the author,
who appears to have studied intimately the mutual rela-
tions of the different parts. It is not improbable that
the example of Genga led Palſyn, a surgeon at Ghent, to .
undertake a similar task about thirty years after. For
this, however, he was by no means well qualified; and
the work of Palſyn, though bearing the name of Sur-
gical Anatomy, is a miserable compilation, meagre in
details, inaccurate in description, and altogether un-
worthy of the honor of being republished, as it after-
wards was by Antony Petit. *
While these two authors, however, were useſully em-
ployed in showing what was wanted for the surgeon,
others were occupied in the collection of new and more
accurate facts. Albinus, indeed, ever assiduous, had, in
his account of the operations of Rau, given some good
sketches of the relative anatomy of the bladder and
urethra; and Cheselden had already, in his mode of cut-
ting into the urinary bladder, shown the necessity of an
exact knowledge of the relations of contiguous parts.
The first decided application, however, of this species of
anatomical research was reserved for a Dutch anat-
omist of the 18th century to make. Peter Camper, pro-
fessor of anatomy at Amsterdam, published in 1760 and
1762 his anatomico-pathogical demonstrations of the
parts of the human arm and pelvis, of the diseases inci-
dent to them, and the mode of relieving them by oper-
ation, and explained with great clearness the situation of
the blood-vessels, nerves and important muscles. His
remarks on the lateral operation of lithotomy, which
contain all that was then known on the subject, are ex-
ceedingly interesting and valuable to the surgeon. It
appears further, that he was the first who examined
anatomically the mechanism of ruptures, his delineations
of which were published in 1801 by Sömmering. Cam-
per also wrote some important memoirs on Comparative
Anatomy, and he was the author of a well-known work
on the A’e/ations of Azzatomy to the A'izze Arts.
The attention of anatomists was now directed to the
elucidation of the most obscure and least explored parts
of the human frame—the lymphatic vessels and the
nerves. Although, since the first discovery of the
former by Asellius, Rudbeck, and Pecduet, much had
been done, especially by Ruysch, Nuck, Meckel, and
Haller, many points, notwithstanding, relating to their
origin and distribution in particular organs, and in the
several classes of animals, were imperfectly ascertained
or entirely unknown. William Hunter investigated
their arrangement, and proposed the doctrine that they
are absorbents; and John Hunter, who undertook to
demonstrate the truth of this hypothesis by experiment,
discovered, in 1758, lymphatics in the neck in birds. As
the doctrine required the existence of this order of ves-
sels, not only in quadrupeds and birds, but in reptiles
and fishes, the inquiry attracted attention among the
pupils of Hunter; and William Hewson at length com-
municated, in December 1768, to the Royal Society of
London, an account of the lacteals and lymphatics in
birds, fishes, and reptiles, as he had discovered and
demonstrated them. The subject was about the same
time investigated by the second Monro, who indeed
claimed the merit of discovering these vessels in the
classes of animals now mentioned. But whatever re-
searches this anatomist may have instituted, Hewson,
by communicating his observations to the Royal Society,
must be allowed to possess the strongest as well as the
2I A
322
A N A
clearest claim to discovery. The same author, in 1774,
gave the first complete account of the anatomical pecul-
iarities of the lymphatic system in man and other
animals, and thereby supplied an important gap in this
department. Hewson is the first who distinguishes the
lymphatics into two orders—the superficial and the deep
—both in the extremities and in the internal organs.
He also studied the structure of the intestinal villi, in
which he verified the observations of Lieberkühn ; and
he made many important observations on the corpuscles
of the lymph and blood. . He finally applied his anatom-
ical discoveries to explain many of the physiological
and pathological phenomena of the animal body. Ten
years after, John Sheldon, another pupil of Hunter,
gave a second history and description of the lymphatics,
which, though divested of the charm of novelty, con-
tains many interesting anatomical facts. He also
examined the structure of the villi.
Lastly, Cruikshank, in 1786, published a valuable
history of the anatomy of the lymphatic system, in
which he maintains the accuracy of the Hunterian doc-
trine, that the lymphatics are the only absorbents; gave
a more minute account than heretofore of these vessels,
of their coats and valves; and explained the structure of
the lymphatic glands. He also injected the villi, and
examined them microscopically, verifying most of the
observations of Lieberkühn. The origin of the lym-
phatics he maintains rather by inference than direct dem-
onstration. To these three works, though in other re-
spects very excellent, it is a considerable objection that
the anatomical descriptions are much mixed with hypo-
thetical speculation and reasonings on properties, and
that the facts are by no means always distinguished from
mere matters of opinion. At the same time Haase
published an account of the lymphatics of the skin and
intestines, and the plexiform nets of the pelvis.
To complete this sketch of the history of the anat-
omy of the lymphatic system, it may be added that Mas-
cagni, who had been engaged from the year 1777 to
1781 in the same train of investigation, first demon-
strated to his pupils several curious facts relating to the
anatomy of the lymphatic system. When at Florence
in 1782 he made several preparations, at the request of
Peter Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany; and when the
Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris announced the
anatomy of this system for their prize essay appointed
for March, 1784, Mascagni resolved on communicating
to the public the results of his researches—the first part
of his commentary, with four engravings. Anxiety,
however, to complete his preparations detained him at
Florence till the close of 1785; and from these causes
his work did not appear till 1787. These delays, how-
ever, unfavorable as they were to his claims of priority
to Sheldon and Cruikshank, were on the whole advan-
tageous to the perfection of his work, which is not only
the most magnificent, but also the most complete that
ever was published on the lymphatics. In his account
of the vessels and their valves he confirms some of Hew-
son's observations, and rectifies others. Their origin
he proves by inference much in the same manner as
Cruikshank; but he anticipates this author in the ac-
count of the glands, and he gives the most minute de-
scription of the superficial and deep lymphatics, both in
the members and in the internal organs.
General accounts of the nerves had been given with
various degrees of accuracy by Willis, Vieussens, Wins-
low, and the first Monro; and the subject had been
much rectified and improved by the indefatigable Haller.
The first example of minute descriptive neurography was
given in 1748 by John Frederick Meckel, whose account
of the fifth pair, and of the nerves of the face, will long
remain a lasting proof of accuracy and research. The
same subject was investigated in 1765 by Hirsch, and in
1777 by Wrisberg. In 1766 Metzger examined the
origin, distribution, and termination of the first pair,
—a point which was afterwards very minutely treated
by Scarpa in his anatomical disquisitions, published in
1780; and the internal nerves of the nostrils were
examined in 1791 by Haase. The optic nerve, which
had been studied originally by Varoli, and afterwards by
Mery, Duverney, Henkel, Moeller, Hein, and Klad-
Schmid, was examined with extreme accuracy, with the
other nerves of the organ of vision, by Zinn, in his
elaborate treatise. The phrenic nerves and the oesopha-
geal branches of the eighth pair were studied by Haase;
the phrenic, the abdominal, and the pharyngeal nerves,
by Wrisberg; those of the heart most minutely by
Andersch; and the origin, formation, and distribution
of the intercostal nerve, by Iwanoff, Ludwig, and
Girardi. The labors of these anatomists, however,
were eclipsed by the splendid works of Walter on the
nerves of the chest and belly; and those of Scarpa on
the distribution of the eighth pair, and splanchnic nerves
in general. In minuteness of description and in beauty
of engraving these works have not yet been equalled,
and will never perhaps be surpassed. About the same
time, Scarpa, so distinguished in every branch of
anatomical research, investigated the minute structure
of the ganglions and plexuses. The anatomy of the
brain itself was also studied with great attention by the
second Monro, Malacarne, and Vicq d'Azyr.
Lastly, the anatomy of the gravid uterus, which had
been originally studied by Albinus, Roederer, and
Smellie, was again illustrated most completely by Will-
iam Hunter, whose engravings will remain a lasting
memorial of scientific zeal and artistic talent.
The perfection which anatomical science attained in
the last ten years of the eighteenth and during the pres-
ent century is evinced not only in the improved char-
acter of the systems published by anatomists, but in the
enormous advance which has taken place in the knowl-
edge of the minute structure of the animal tissues, of the
development of the tissues and organs, and of the
modifications in form and structure exhibited by various
groups of animals.
The first who gave a good modern system was
Sabatier; but his work was speedily eclipsed by the
superior merits of the treatises of Sömmering, Bichat,
and Portal. The excellent work by Samuel Thomas
Sömmering, originally published in the German lan-
guage, between the years 1791 and I796; then in the
Latin language between the years 1794 and 1800; and
in a second edition in the German language in 18oo and
1801, maintaining the high character which it possessed
for clear arrangement, accurate description, and gen-
eral precision, was, between the years 1841 and 1844,
republished in eight volumes at Leipsic by Bischoff,
Henle, Huschke, Theile, Valentin, Vogel, and Wag-
ner, with suitable additions, and a large amount of new
and accurate information. In this addition Rudolph
Wagner gives, in the first division of the first volume,
the life, correspondence, and literary writings of Söm-
mering; and in the second volume the anatomy of the
bones and ligaments. The third volume contains the
anatomy of the muscles and the vascular system by
Thiele. Valentin devotes one volume, the fourth, to
the minute anatomy of the nervous system and its
parts, as disclosed by careful examination by the
microscope; and it must be allowed that the author has
been at great pains to present just views of the true
anatomy of the brain, the spinal cord, the nervous
branches, and the ganglia. In the fifth volume, Huschke
of Jena gives the anatomical history of the viscera
and the organs of the senses, a department which had
A N A *
323
been left in some degree incomplete in the original, but
for one division of which the author had left useful
materials in his large figures already mentioned. In the
sixth volume an entire and complete system of general
anatomy, deduced from personal observation and that
of other careful observers, the materials being in gen-
eral new, and in all instances confirmed and rectified, is
given by Prof. Henle. The seventh volume contains the
history of the process of development in mammalia and
man, by Th. L. W. Bischoff. The eighth volume treats
of the pathological anatomy of the human body, by Julius
Vogel, but contains only the first division, relating to
the generalities of the subject. This, which is probably
the most accurate as it is the most elaborate system of
anatomical knowlege up to the date of its publication
in 1844, was translated into the French language by
Jourdan, and published in 1846 under the name of
Ancyclopédie Anatomique. The eighth volume was
translated into English in the year 1847.
The Anatomie Générale of Bichat is a monument of
his philosophical genius which will last as long as the
structure and functions of the human body are objects
of interest. His Anatomie Descriptize is distinguished
by clear and natural arrangement, precise and accurate
description, and the general ingenuity with which the
subject is treated. The physiological observations are
in general correct, often novel, and always highly inter-
esting. It is unfortunate, however, that the ingenious
author was cut off prematurely during the preparation
df the third volume. The later volumes are, however,
pervaded with the general spirit by which the others are
impressed, and are highly creditable to the learning, the
judgment, and the diligence of MM. Roux and Buisson.
The system of Portal is a valuable and correct digest
of anatomical and pathological knowledge, which, in
exact literary information, is worthy of the author of
the Histoire de l’Amatomie et de la Chirurgie, and, in
accuracy of descriptive details, shows that M. Portal
trusts not to the labors of his predecessors only. Boyer
published in 1803 a complete treatise on Descriptive
Anatomy. Cloquet formed, on the model of the Amat-
omie ZXescriptize of Bichat, a system in which he avails
himself of the literature and precision of Sömmering
and the details of Portal. An English translation of
this work was prepared by Dr. Knox. Cruveilhier pub-
dished in 1834–35 a good treatise on Descriptive Amat-
•omy, which was translated into English, and published
as a part of The Ziórary of Medicine. Cruveilhier’s
treatise has passed through several editions. About the
same time Blandin published an elementary work on
Descriptive Anatomy, and a useful treatise on Topo-
graphical Anatomy. But the most elaborate system
of human anatomy which has proceeded from the French
school is the great treatise of Bourgery, illustrated by
numerous large and beautifully-colored plates of the
parts and organs. It consists of two divisions, one on
Medical and Physiological Anatomy; the other on Sur-
gical Anatomy.
J. F. Meckel published between 1815 and 1820 a
manual of Descriptive Anatomy which combines the
philosophical generalisations of Bichat with the precise
description and pathological knowledge of Portal.
During the succeeding thirty years excellent systematic
treatises in the German language were prepared by
Rosenmüller, C. F. P. Krause, Frederick Hildebrand
(the 4th edition of which was edited in 1830 by the
eminent anatomist E. H. Weber), and Fred. Arnold.
In 1846 Joseph Hyrtl published a system of Human
Anatomy, and in the following year a manual of Topo-
graphical and Surgical Anatomy, both of which, but
more especially the latter, have gone through several
editions. Luschka, the professor of anatomy in Tübin-
gen, has prepared a valuable treatise on Regional Anat-
omy, in which attention is particularly directed to the
relations of the parts which are of interest to the phy-
sician and surgeon. The text-book by Hermann Meyer
of Zurich is also worthy of mention as a work in which
the mechanical construction and uses of parts are de-,
scribed with great care. Henle’s treatise on Human
Anatomy, the publication of which was commenced in
1855, though the last volume was not completed until
1873, is, however, the most complete work on the sub-
ject which has as yet issued from the German press dur-
ing the latter half of the present century. It is re-
markable not only for the elaborate description of the
organs and tissues of the body, and the ample refer-
ences to the labors of other observers, but for the
number and beauty of the wood engravings.
In Great Britain systematic treatises on Human
Anatomy were published in the earlier part of the
present century by Andrew Fyfe, John Bell, the third
Monro, and John Gordon, all of whom were teachers
in the Edinburgh school. In London, John Quinn
prepared an excellent text-book, which, under a suc-
cession of editors, who have kept each new edition on a
level with the advancing tide of anatomical knowledge,
has been much esteemed not only for the clearness of
its descriptions, but for the soundness of its information
on the various branches of Systematic Anatomy. The
7th edition, under the editorial superintendence of
Professors Sharpey, Allen, Thompson, and Cleland,
appeared between 1864 and 1867. The passing of the
Anatomy Act in 1832, by affording facilities for the
pursuit of practical anatomy, gave a great stimulus to
its study in this country, and to facilitate the acquisi-
tion of a knowledge of the subject many text-books
have been published. The most important are Harri-
son's Dub/in Z)issector, and the well-known /Demon-
strations of Anatomy by Prof. Ellis. The increased
importance attached by surgeons to a precise acquaint-
ance with the knowledge of those regions in which
operations have most frequently to be performed, has
led to the production of valuable special works on their
anatomy. The treatise of Allen Burns on the head
and neck, those of Sir Astley Cooper and Sir W. Law-
rence on hernia, Morton’s Anatomy of the Surgical
Aegions, the excellent plates on Surgical Anatomy by
Joseph Maclise, and the beautiful drawings by Ford
from the dissections by Prof. Ellis, with descriptive
letterpress, are highly creditable to British anatomists;
whilst the treatise on hernia by Scarpa, and Cloquet's
and Hesselbach’s works on the same subject, reflect
great credit on the Italian, French and German schools.
But special treatises have also been written on other
departments of human descriptive anatomy. Innes,
Sandifort, and Barclay published works on the muscles
generally; and Sir Charles Bell, in his classical treatise
on the Anatomy of Expression, described with care
the attachments and actions of the muscles of the
face. Of late years the variations in the usually de-
scribed arrangements in the muscular system in man
have been carefully inquired into, and numerous
memoirs have been written, more especially by
M’Whinnie, Hallett, W. Gruber, John Wood, W.
Turner, and M'Alister. F. O. Ward published a work
on Human Osteology which is characterised by the
minuteness and accuracy of its description ; G. M.
Humphrey, a treatise in which the physical, physiological,
and pathological aspects of the skeleton are dwelt
upon; and Luther Holden, a profusely-illustrated work
on the same subject, in which the surfaces for muscular
attachments are carefully delineated. Sir Charles Bell’s
engravings of the arteries, Tiedemann’s more elaborate
plates, and Harrison's admirable description of these
$
324.
A N A
vessels, all deserve notice. But the most complete
work on the Anatomy of the Arteries which has yet
appeared is that of Richard Quain, which consists of
eighty-seven large plates, with 543 pages of descriptive
letterpress. It will long continue a standard work on
the subject.
Numerous treatises, on the anatomy of the nervous
system have been published. In Germany the brothers
Wenzel, Reil, Tiedemann, Galland Spurzheim, Arnold,
and Reichert have prepared works on the descriptive
anatomy of the great nerve centres, not only in man but
in various animals; and by Tiedemann, Reichert, and
Ecker, the development of the brain has been especially
studied. In Italy the memoirs of Rolando on the
anatomy of the brain, and of Bellingeri on the spinal
cord and its nerves, are of importance. From the
French school the writings of Serres, of Foville, of
Leuret and Gratiolet, have thrown much new light on
the structure of the brain. In Great Britain, Sir Charles
Bell, in his great work on the nervous system, developed
and established the truth of the separate nature of the
nerves of sensation and motion. In 1836, and again in
I847, Samuel Solly published an instructive treatise on
the anatomy of the brain. Between 1830 and 1834
oseph Swan published a valuable series of engravings
in illustration of the distribution of the nerves, and
Robert Lee has especially investigated the arrangement
and distribution of the nerves of the heart and uterus.
In the Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, under
the editorial superintendence of Dr. Robert B. Todd,
original memoirs, not only on human but comparative
anatomy, by eminent writers, have appeared, and have
done much to diffuse a knowledge of anatomical science.
The improvement which has been effected in the con-
struction of the compound microscope during the fifty
years subsequent to 1822, has contributed in no small
degree to enable anatomists to obtain more correct inform-
ation on the intimate structure of different organs and
tissues of the animal body. For the first twenty years
of the nineteenth century, opticians and instrument-
makers had at intervals endeavored to render the com-
pound microscope at once an instrument of greater
power and more free from sources of error and optical
illusion than it had hitherto been possible to obtain.
Two defects, however, still adhered to the compound
microscope. The instrument was not achromatic; and
a considerable degree of spherical aberration uncorrected
rendered the image indistinct.
Between 1812 and 1815 Professor Amici of Modena
had attempted to construct an achromatic object-glass
of one single lens, but ſound that this was impracticable.
M. Selligues of Paris, in 1823, after various trials, found
that this could be done by making the object-glass con-
sist of four achromatic compound lenses, each of which
was composed of two single lenses. This method was
carried out into practice and improved by the two MM.
Chevalier of Paris. About the same time Dr. Goring in
London, with the aid of Mr. Tulley and Mr. Pritchard,
tºucted compound microscopes upon a similar prin-
ciple.
By the labors of these practical opticians, and the
suggestions of various scientific persons, as Sir John
Herschel, Sir Richard Airy, Mr. Barlow, one great
defect of the compound microscope was obviated. The
effects of spherical aberration were in the next place
overcome in a very simple manner by the experiments of
Mr. Joseph Jackson Lister, who had early observed
that the combined achromatic object-glasses devised by
Selligues were fixed in their cells with the convex side
foremost, a most improper position, as it renders the
spherical errors very great. This gentleman found, after
various trials, that by placing three or more achromatic
\
glasses with their plane surfaces directed foremost, it
was possible to correct completely all spherical aber-
ration.
This fact was made known in the beginning of the
year 1830; and by its application the compound micro-
scope was brought to a high degree of perſection as an
achromatic instrument in 1831 and 1832, and became
the means of affording valuable assistance in anatomical
inquiries. . The use of the microscope in anatomy,
which had in the times of Malphighi, Leeuwenhoeck,
William Cowper, Baker, Fontana, Hewson, and the
Second Monro, been much cultivated, but had after-
wards, from the imperfection of the instrument and the
illusions to which it not infrequently gave rise, been
neglected, now became so general and so necessary, that
since the year 1832 minute structural anatomy has been,
if not created anew, at least, most thoroughly revised.
The amount of knowledge has been enormously in-
creased; that which was already possessed has been
rendered greatly more accurate and precise.
It is impossible in this place to name the authors of all
the valuable monographs which have appeared during the
past forty years, but those who have especially advanced
the progress of our knowledge of the minute structure of
the tissues and organs may be referred to. Johannes.
Müller in 1830 published an elaborate commentary on
the minute structure of the glands, the first work in.
which the anatomy of these organs was examined and
elucidated in a comprehensive and systematic manner.
Ehrenberg explained the structure of numerous infusoria,
and disclosed the peculiarities of many other structures,
animal, vegetable, and mineral, which had previously
eluded the most skilful researches. Francis Kiernan, in
1833, gave the first correct account of the minute anat-
omy of the liver. Schleiden in 1818, and Schwann in
1839, published most important generalisations on the
cellular structure of the vegetable and animal organisms.
Martin Barry communicated new facts on the structure
of the ovum and on the structure of cells generally. John
Goodsir laid great emphasis on the office of the nucleus.
in the nutrition, growth, and reproduction of cells, and
on the arrangement of the cells within an organism into
departments or territories. Virchow, by his researches,
into the connective tissues, has still further developed
the idea of the cellular structure of the animal organism,
and the importance of cells in the performance of physi-
ological and pathological processes. Lionel Beale at-
tributed both to the nucleus and to the substance of the
cell immediately surrounding it important functional
properties. Max Schultze showed the identity in nature
between the sarcode substance of the lower animal or-
ganisms and the contents of the cells in the higher ani-
mals, and applied to these substances the common term
protoplasm, which had previously been introduced by
Hugo von Mohl to designate a similar material in the
vegetable cell.
The minute structure and development of bone have
been carefully investigated by J. Goodsir, W. Sharpey,
H. Müller, C. Gegenbaur, and A. Kölliker; that of
muscle made by Bowman, Kölliker, and Sharpey; of
nerve by Schwann, Remak, Stilling, Gerlach, Lockhart
Clarke, and Deiters; of cartilage by Schwann and
Schultze; of the blood and blood-vessels by Henle, Gul.
liver, Quekett, Paget, and Wharton Jones; of the mu:
cous membranes by Bowman; of the serous membranes.
by Henle, Recklinghausen, Ludwig, and Klein ; of the
teeth by Retzius, A. Nasmyth, J. Goodsir, J. Tomes,
R. Owen, Czermak, Huxley, and Waldeyer. ...The
stucture of the lungs has been investigated by Addison,
Rainey, and Rossignol; of the kidney by Bowman, Henle,
and Schweiggerseidel; of the liver by Beale and Hering;
of the spleen by Sanders, Gray, Billroth, and W. Mül-
A N A
325
ſer; of the testicle by A. Cooper, Kölliker, and Henle;
of the ovary by Pflüger and Waldeyer; of the thymus by
A. Cooper and Simon; of the stomach and intestines by
Köllker, Brinton, and Frey; of the placenta by Esch-
richt, Reid, Sharpey, Goodsir, Van der Kolk, Virchow,
Farre, Priestley, Rolleston, Ercolani, and Turner ; of
the organs of sense by Henle, Bowman, His, H. Müller,
Schultze, Corti, Reissner, and Deiters.
The general results of the labors of these and other
investigators have been from time to time incorporated
into systematic treatises on microscopic anatomy, of
which reference may more especially be made to those
prepared by J. Berres, F. Gerber, A. Hill Hassall, A.
Kölliker, W. Sharpey, W. Bowman, F. Leydig, Frey,
and S. Strickler. Side by side with these inquiries into
the structure and development of the tissues, the evolu-
tion of the embryo out of the fertilised ovum has been
carried on. Purkinje, Von Baer, Coste, Wharton Jones,
Valentin, R. Wagner, Rathke, J. Müller, Prevost and
Dumas, Martin Barry, Reichert Bischoff, Kölliker,
Vogt, Allen Thomas, Owen, Von Siebold, Dujardin,
Milne-Edwards, Claparède, Agassiz, Huxley, Kitchen
Parker, and Kowalevsky have all contributed important
memoirs on various branches of embryology.
Comparative Anatomy, which during the 18th century
was diligently cultivated by Daubenton, Pallas, Haller,
Buffon, John Hunter, and the second Monro, has be-
come during the present century a subject of increased
interest, from its intimate connection with the sciences
of zoology, physiology, and geology. It has conse-
quently been studied with great zeal and assiduity, and
multitudes of monographs, as well as numerous system-
atic treatises on the anatomy both of the vertebrata and
invertebrata, have been published.
To name even a tithe of the workers and authors who
have added to our knowledge of the facts of compara-
tive anatomy would occupy considerable space. It may
suffice to refer to those whose writings have contributed
most materially to the advance of the science. In
France, Cuvier, Dumeril, the Saint-Hilaires, Blanchard,
De Blainville, H. and Alphonse Milne-Edwards, Ger-
vais, and Gratiolet; in Germany, Meckel, Tiedemann,
Vom Baer, Spix, Martius, Bojanus, Otto, Carus, J.
Müller, Leuckart, Gegenbaur, and Haeckel; in Sweden
and Denmark, Retzius and Eschricht; in Holland and
Belgium, Van der Kolk, Vrolik, and Van Beneden; in
Holland and Belgium, Van der Kolk, Vrolik, and Van
Beneden; in America, Agassiz, Wyman, and Burmeister;
in Great Britain, E. Home, A. Carlisle, R. Grant,
Richard Owen, J. Barclay, R. Knox, J. Goodsir, G.
Busk, Rymer Jones, W. B. Carpenter, T. H. Huxley,
G. J. Allman, W. H. Flower, St. George Mivart, and
J. Murie are mames identified with one or more branches
of the subject. -
The investigations into the form and structure of
animals have led anatomists to search for parts in one
animal which correspond with parts in other animals in
their mode of development and arrangement, and to
evolve from their researches general doctrines of organic
forms. The conception entertained by Goethe of the
presence of a pre-maxillary element in the human upper
jaw because it exists, in other vertebrates, and the an-
nouncement of the theory of the vertebrate nature of the
skull by Goethe and Oken, directed anatomists into a
line of inquiry which has been productive of fruitful re-
sults, and has exercised a great influence on the progress
and direction of biological science. Geoffrey St. Hilaire
and C. Martins in France; Spix, Carus, Gegenbaur, and
Haeckel in Germany; and Owen, Goodsir, Humphry,
Huxley, Parker, and Cleland in Great Britain, have all
published important memoirs in this department of an-
atomical research.
The formation of anatomical museums in connection
with universities, and elsewhere, by enabling specimens
to be accumulated for observation and comparison, has
contributed in no small degree to the progress of an-
atomical science. Pre-eminent amongst these is the col-
lection originally formed by the genius, energy, and self-
devotedness of John Hunter, which, under the fostering
care of the council of the Royal College of Surgeons of
England, has been materially augmented in all its depart-
ments by a succession of curators—Clift, Owen, Que-
kett, and Flower. The aid which has been afforded to
anatomists in the publication of their researches, more
especially in providing plates and other expensive means
of illustration, by the learned societies of Europe, and
the circulation which has been given to their memoirs
through the 7-ansactions and Proceedings of these
societies, and through the journa/s devoted to anatomi-
cal and physiological science, have materially contributed
to the diffusion of a knowledge of discoveries, and to the
general advance of the science.
ANAXAGORAS, according to the most probable
calculations, was born about the year 500 B.C. At his
native town of Claromenae, in Asia Minor, he had, it
appears, some amount of property and prospects of po-
litical influence, both of which he surrendered, from a
fear that they would interfere with his search after the
knowledge of nature. In early manhood he went to
Athens, which was rapidly becoming the headquarters
of Greek culture; and in that city he is said to have
continued for thirty years. Here Pericles learnt to love
and admire him and the poet Euripides derived from
him an enthusiasm for science and humanity. His in-
fluence was due partly to his astronomical and mathe-
matical eminence, but still more to the ascetic dignity of
his nature, and his superiority to ordinary weaknesses—
traits which legend has embalmed. His observations of
the celestial bodies led him to form new theories of the
universal order, and brought him into collision with the
popular faith which found the objects of its worship in
the heavens. Anaxagoras had tried to reduce eclipses
to the operation of known causes: he had removed the
halo of deity from the sun, and profanely turned Apollo
into a mass of blazing metal, larger than Peloponnesus;
and he was even reported to have brought the pheno-
mena of meteoric stones within the limits of predictable
events. The dominant polytheism, and the ignorance
of the multitude, could not tolerate such explanation;
and the enemies of Pericles used the superstitions of their
countrymen as a means of attacking the ideas of that
statesman in the person of his friend. Anaxagoras was
arrested on a charge of contravening the established
dogmas of religion; and it required all the eloquence of
Pericles to rescue him from the persecutors. Even then
Athens could no longer be the sphere of his activity.
He was forced to retire to Lampsacus, where he died
about 428 B.C.
Anaxagoras proceeded to give some account of the
stages in process from original chaos to present arrange-
ments. The division into cold mistand warm ether first
broke the spell of confusion. With increasing cold, the
former gave rise to water, earth, and stones. The
seeds of life which continued floating in the air were car-
ried down with the rains, and produced vegetation. An-
imals, including man, sprang from the moist and warm
clav.
Kawagons marks a turning-point in the history of
philosophy. With him speculation passed from the
colonies of Greece to settle at Athens. By the theory
of minute constituents of things, and his emphasis on
mechanical processes in the formation of order, he paved
the way for the Atomic theory. By his enunciation of
the order that comes from Reason, on the other hand,
326
\ A N A — A N C
he suggested the theory that nature is the work of
3Design. But the features of this Reason he described in
a vague and analogical way.
ANAXARCHUS, a Grecian philosopher of the Ele-
atic school, was born in Abdera, and flourished about
340 B.C. He was the companion of Alexander in his
expedition into Asia, and seems, from anecdotes that
have been preserved, to have enjoyed his intimate friend-
ship. He checked the vainglory of Alexander, when,
elated with pride, he aspired to the honors of divinity,
by pointing to his wounded finger, saying, “See the
blood of a mortal, not of a god.”
ANAXILAUS of Larissa, a physician and Pythago-
rean philosopher, was banished from Rome by Augustus,
B.C. 28, on the charge of practising the magic art.
ANAXIMANDER, the second of the physical
philosophers of Ionia, belonged, like his predecessor
Thales, to the city of Miletus. His biography is a
blank. The computations of Apollodorus have fixed
the year of his birth at 611, and of his death a short
while after 547 B.C. Tradition, probably correct in its
general estimate, represents him as a successful student
of astronomy and geography, and as one of the pioneers
of exact science among the Greeks.
ANAXIMENES of Miletus may have been a younger
contemporary of Anaximander, whose pupil or friend
the ordinary tradition represents him to have been. To
him it seemed that the air, with all its variety of con-
tents, its universal presence, and all the vagueness
which it has for the popular fancy as the apparent
source of life and growth, was what maintained the
universe, even as breath, which is our life and soul,
sustains us. *
ANAXIMENES, a Greek historian and rhetorician,
was born at Lampsacus, in Asia Minor, in the 4th
century B.C. He accompanied Alexander, whom he is
said to have instructed in rhetoric, on his expedition
against Persia.
ANCELOT, JACQUES ARSèNE FRANÇOIS POLY-
CARPE, a French dramatist and littérateur, was born at
Havre, 9th Feb. 1794, and died 7th Sept. 1854. He
completed his studies at Paris, where he made his
literary début in 1819, with Louis ZX., a five-act
tragedy, of which three editions were speedily exhausted.
It had a run of fifty representations, and brought him
a pension of 2000 francs from the king, Louis XVIII.
ANCHISES, in Greek Zegend, son of Capys and
grandson of Assaracus, his mother being Themis, a
daughter of Ilus, the founder of Ilium or Troy, to the
ruling family of which, at the time of the Trojan war,
he was also, on the paternal side, related, since Assara-
cus had been a brother of Ilus. From the Assyrian
character of the name Assaracus, from the intercourse
between the Phoenicians and the early inhabitants of
the Troad, and from the connection of Venus, the pro-
tecting goddess of the Phoenicians, with Anchises, it
has been inferred that the family of the latter had
originally come from someyhere near the centre of
Assyrian influence. He was the father of AEneas.
ANCHOR, in Navigation, a crook or hook, an in-
strument of iron or other heavy material used for hold-
ing ships in any situation in which they may be re-
quired to lie, and preventing them from drifting by the
winds or tides, by the currents of rivers, or any other
cause. This is done by the anchor, after it is let down
from the ship by means of the cable, fixing itself into
the ground, and there holding the vessel fast. The
anchor is thus obviously an implement of the first im-
portance in navigation, and one on which too much
attention cannot be bestowed in its manufacture and
proper construction, seeing that on it depends the safety
of the vessel in storms. The invention of so necessary
f
an instrument is to be referred, as may be supposed, to
the remotest antiquity. The most ancient anchors con-
sisted merely of large stones, baskets full of stones,
º filled with sand, or logs of wood loaded with
€aCl.
Up to the commencement of the present century what
was termed the “old plan long-shanked” anchor seems
to have been generally used. It was made of wrought
iron, but the appliances of the anchor smith were so.
crude that little dependence could be placed upon it.
The size of anchors for various ships has been deter-
mined by practice, but is based upon the theory that as
the anchor is required to withstand the force brought
upon the ship by the wind and tide, which would other-
wise cause her to drift, its strength must be nearly pro-
portional to her resistance.
A large ironclad carries 8 anchors, 2 bower, 2 sheet,
I stream, I stern, and 2 kedge.
Mooring anchors are those which are placed in
harbors, &c., for the convenience of vessels frequenting.
them. A large buoy is attached to the end of the moor-
ing cable, and the ship is made fast to a ring-bolt fitted:
on the buoy. Mooring anchors are not limited by con-
siderations of weight, &c., as other anchors are, the only
requirements being that they have sufficient holding
power, and do not project above the ground, as any pro-
jection in the shallow waters in which they are usually
placed would render ships liable to injury from ground-
ing on them, and be dangerous to fishing-nets, &c.
A good anchorage is where there are from IO to 20
fathoms of water, and the ground is not rocky or loose
sand. Where there are more than about 20 fathoms
the cable bears too nearly perpendicular, and is liable to
trip the anchor. For anchoring in ordinary weather
the length of cable veered out is about three times the
depth of water. -
ANCHOVY (Engraulis, Cuv.), a family of small
fishes akin to the shad and the sprat, all three being of
the Clupeidae, or Herring tribe. There are six or seven.
species of anchovy found in the seas of Europe, of trop-
ical America, and of India. Of these the most impor-
tant and the largest is the common anchovy, AEngraulis.
encrasicholus, so called from the bitter taste of its
head, and the ancient belief that its bile was in that part.
From the days of the Greeks and Romans it has been
esteemed for its delicate and unique flavor.
ANCHYLOSIS, or ANKYLos Is (from bent, crooked),
stiffness of a joint, the result of injury or disease. The
rigidity may be complete or only partial, and may be due
to disease of the tendinous or muscular structures out-
side the joint, or to disease of the joint itself.
ANCILLON, CHARLEs, son of David Ancillon, and
one of a distinguished family of French Protestants,
was born 28th July 1659, at Metz, and died, 5th July
1715, at Berlin. He studied law at Marburg, Geneva,
and Paris, where he was called to the bar. At the
request of the Huguenots of his native place, he pleaded
their cause at the court of Louis XIV., urging that they
should be excepted in the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes.
ANCILLON, I)AviD, an eminent French Protestant.
divine, father of the preceding, was born, I7th March.
1617, at Metz, and died, 3d September 1692, at Berlin.
ANCILLON, JOHANN PETER FRIEDERICH, a his-
torian and Prussian statesman, one of the family of
French Protestant refugees noticed above, was born at
Berlin, 30th April 1766, and died there, 19th April 1837.
Descended from a family of divines, he early selected.
the ecclesiastical profession, and studied theology first at
Berlin and then at Geneva. Ancillon took rank among
the most famous historians of his day by his work.
A Picture of Political Revolutions in Aurope since the
A N C — A N D
327
15th Century, which gained him the eulogium of the
Institute of France, and admission to the Royal
Academy of Berlin. Soon after the revolution of July
1830, he was made minister of foreign affairs, with the
entire control of the whole department; and he retained
the title of minister of state till his death.
ANCONA, a province of the kingdom of Italy,
bounded on the N. by the Adriatic Sea and the province
of Pesaro-Urbino, on the W. by Pesaro-Urbino and
Umbria, on the S. by Macerata, and on the E. by the
Adriatic. It forms part of the old district of the
Marches, which passed from the dominion of the Pope
to that of Victor Emmanuel in 1860. The Marches
comprise the March of Ancona on the north and the
March of Fermo on the south, although the whole ter-
ritory is sometimes called the March of Ancona.
ANCONA, a city of Italy, and capital of the province
of the same name, is pleasantly situated on the Adriatic,
132 miles N.E. of Rome, in a sort of amphitheatre be-
tween two hills. The manufacture of silk is important.
The Pºlatiºn is estimated at 50,000. -
ANCUS, MARCIUs, the fourth king of the Romans,
succeeded Tullus Hostilius about 638 B.C., and reigned
until 614.
ANCYRA. See ANGORA.
ANDALUSIA, or ANDALUCIA, an extensive region
in the south of Spain, bounded on the N. by New Cas-
tile and Estremadura, on the W. by Portugal, on the S.
by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and on the E. by
the Mediterranean and Murcia. Although no longer
officially recognised, yet, like the other ancient divisions
of Spain, it is probably better known and oftener re-
ferred to, at least in popular language, than the modern
plovinces which have been formed out of it. The name
Andalusia is said to be a corruption of Vandalusia,
from the Vandals, who overran this part of Spain after
the downſall of the Roman Empire; other authorities,
however, consider that the Moors, who occupied the
country after the Vandals, gave it its present name
from their term Azzda/osh, “land of the West.” Anda-
lusia has an area of about 33,000 square miles, and in
1867 had a population of 3,200,944. . The principal
river of Andalusia is the Guadalquivir, the Roman
Adetis, which rises in the mountains of Jaen, and flows
in a south-westerly direction to the Mediterranean at
San Lucar.
AN DAMAN ISLANDS. These islands lie in the
Bay of Bengal, 590 geographical miles from the Hoogly
mouth of the Ganges, 160 miles from Cape Negrais in
British Burma, the nearest point of the mainland, and
about 340 from the north extremity of Sumatra. Be-
tween the Andamans and Cape Negrais intervene two
small groups, Preparis and Cocos; between the Anda-
mans and Sumatra intervene the Nicobar Islands, all
seeming to indicate a submarine range stretching in a
curve, to which the meridian forms a tangent, between
Cape Negrais and Sumatra; and though this curved line
measures 700 miles, the widest sea-space is less than 90.
The main part of the group is a band of four islands, so
closely adjoining, end to end, but slightly overlapping,
that they have long been known as one, viz., “the
Great Andaman.” The axis of this band is 156 statute
miles long Population of the group, I5,OOO.
ANDELYS (LEs), a town in the department of Eure,
France, formed by the union of Le Grand and Le Petit
Andely, which are situated, the latter on the eastern
bank of the Seine, and the former nearly half a mile
from the river, at a distance of about 20 miles north-east
of Evreux. ſº
ANDENNE, a town of Belgium, in the province of
Namur, situated on the right bank of the Meuse, Io
miles east of Namur. - *
Aº-c
ANDERNACH, a small town of Rhenish Prussia,
situated on the left bank of the Rhine, Io miles north-
west of Coblenz. It is the Antum macum of the Rom-
ans, and in the Middle Ages was a fortified town of con-
siderable importance, but at the present day the walls
only add to its picturesque appearance.
ANDERSON, ADAM, a Scottish economist, was
born in 1692, and died in London on the Ioth of Jan-
uary 1765.
ANDERSON, ALEXANDER, an eminent mathemati-
ciam, was born at Aberdeen, Scotland, about 1582.
The works of Anderson amount to six thin 4to vol-
umes, which are now very scarce. As the last of them
was published in 1649, it is probable that the author
died soon after that year, but the precise date is
unknown.
ANDERSON, SIR EDMUND, a younger son of an
ancient Scottish family settled in Lincolnshire, was
born at Broughton or Flixborough about 1540, and
died in 1605.
ANDERSON, JAMEs, LL.D., was born at the vil-
lage of Hermiston, in the county of Edinburgh, in the
year 1739. Dr. Anderson, aſter a general decline,
partly occasioned by excessive mental exertion, died in
18O8.
ANDERSON, JAMES, a learned and industrious
antiquary of Edinburgh, was born August 5, 1662, and
educated to the legal profession, in which he became a
writer to the Signet. His reputation as a historian
stood so high, that just before the Union the Scottish
parliament commissioned him to prepare for publica-
tion what remained of the public records of the king-
dom, and in their last session voted a sum of 4, 1940
sterling to defray his expenses. At this work he la-
bored for several years with great judgment and per-
severance; but it was not completed at his death in
I728.
'sperson, John, natural philosopher, was born
at Roseneath in Dumbartonshire in 1726. In 1756 he
became professor of Oriental languages in University of
Glasgow, where he had finished his education. He
opened a class for the instruction of mechanics in the
principles of their arts, in which his familiar extempore
discourses were illustrated by appropriate experiments.
He is thus to be regarded as the father of those
Mechanics’ Institutions which have since become so
common. His anxiety for the improvement of artisans
was not confined to his personal exertions. Shortly
before his death in 1796, he bequeathed the whole of his
property to eighty-one trustees, for the purpose of
founding an institution for educational purposes in
Glasgow.
ANDERSON, RoberT, an author and critic of con-
siderable note in his own day, was born at Carnwath,
Lanarkshire, Scotland, on January 7, 1750, and died in
182O.
*NDERSON, capital of Madison county, Indiana,
and a leading industrial and railroad center, is situated
on the White river, also on the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati
and St. Louis; C., C., C. and I.; the Midland, and the
Wabash and Michigan railroads. It has three banks,
two daily and three weekly papers, five churches, and a
well-organized and liberally-maintained school system.
Its population in 1890 was Io,759.
ANDERSON VILLE, a hamlet in Sumter county,
Ga., the site of a large Confederate prison for Union
Soldiers during the Civil war. It has good rail-
way facilities, and contains two churches, schools,
stores, etc. . Near the village is a large National cem-
etery in which lie the prisoners who died in confinement.
ANDES. The Andes form a mountain chain second
328
A N ID
only to the Himalayas in the vastness of its proportions,
and possessing many remarkable peculiarities. The
origin of the name appears to be unknown, although
numerous meanings have been authoritatively assigned to
it. Humboldt believes its meaning has been lost.
The Andes form a continuous belt of mountainous
highland along the western margin of South America,
and have been considered by many writers as the south-
ern continuation of the Rocky Mountains, which form
a similar belt along the west side of North America.
There are many objections against this view, and in favor
of that which makes the Andes and Rocky Mountains
two distinct ranges. In New Granada, or Colombia, as
it is now called, the eastern range of the Andes termi-
nates on the western side of the Gulf of Maracaybo,
near 72° W. long. South of the gulf a branch range is
thrown off, which traverses Venezuela. The central
range dies out in the low lands south of the junction of
the Cauca and Magdalena rivers. The western range
also lowers and spreads in breadth in advancing north-
wards, and is lost in the low flats along the south margin
of the Gulf of Darien. At the neck of the Panama
isthmus, the Naipi and Cupica valleys stretch from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and are nowhere more
than a few hundred feet above the level of the sea.
North of the Atrato a serpentine ridge of mountains
occurs, which terminates in Cape Tiburon. It is crossed
by a pass called Tanela, which is about 5 miles in length,
and 130 feet above the sea. Most of the isthmus
between 89 and 9° N. lat. is below the level of this pass.
Here the Isthmus of Panama curves round westwardly;
and west of Panama there is another broad low tract
stretching right across. This district cannot be regarded
as belonging in any way to the Andes. In Central
America the mountains form numerous isolated ranges.
In Mexico there are two high sierras. The eastern
sierra does not reach the Rio Branco. The western
sierra terminates at its north end in the Sierra Madre de
Durango, which dies out in the northern part of Chihua-
hua and in Sonora, without being in any way connected
with the Rocky Mountains.
The Rocky Mountains commence in about IOOP W.
long. at their south end, and terminate in about 145°
W. at the north end, and have a general north-westerly
direction. The Andes, on the other hand, commence
near 54° S. lat. and 70° W. long. The southern por-
tions form a gentle curve, bending round to 73° W.
in Patagonia, and reaching 70° again in the South of
Chili. It continues on this line to Coquimbo, where it
bends easterly, and after a slight double curve it cuts the
meridian of 70° again south of Lake Titicaca. There
is then a sharp bend, corresponding to that in the coast.
which carries the range nearly to 80° W. in Ecuador,
beyond which it again has an easterly bend, so as to
cause it to terminate between 72° and 76° W. The
north and south ends are consequently nearly in the
same meridian. There are other dissimilarities between
the Andes and the Rocky Mountains. -
The formation of the Andes is due to several causes
operating at distinct intervals of time. They consist
mainly of stratified material which has been more or less
altered. This material was deposited at the bottom of
a sea, so that at some former time the highest portions
were submerged, probably in consequence, to a certain
extent, of subsidence of the sea bottom. Since the
latest deposits there have been upheaval and denudation.
The range, then, has resulted from the accumulation of
sediment on a subsiding area; from the subsequent
upheaval of such deposits, which have been increased
in height by the ejection of volcanic products; and from
the operation of denuding agents.
As far as our present knowledge goes, it appears to
descend almost to the sea-level.
be probable that the Andes mark an area on which
sedimentary deposits have been accumulated to a greater
thickness than on any other portions of South America.
It is further demonstrable that these deposits belong to
several geographical periods, the elevation having oc-
curred at different periods, while their axes extend in
different directions.
The range may be considered as commencing on the
South with Cape Horn, although for several degrees it is
much broken up by arms and straits of the sea. The first
portion of any extent commences between Cape Good Suc-
cess and Cape San Paulo, and stretches across Tierra del
Fuego, by Mount Darwin and Mount Sarmiento, and the
range of hills on either side of Admiralty Sound. The
mountains named are from 6600 to 68oofeet high. The
Strait of Magellan also cuts through and across the range,
isolating the mountainous islands of Clarence and Santa
Ines. Otway Water cuts through the range, and pene-
trates to the plain of Patagonia. North of this are
several snowy eminences, and in some places glaciers
At Last Hope Inlet,
or a little north of 52° S., we have the commencement
of the Andes as a continuous range, Disappointment
Bay being the most northern place where the Pacific
reaches the plains to the east of the Andes. , South of
this, and for several degrees to the north, the islands
which fringe the coast have a mountainous character,
and ". to belong essentially to the Andes range,
with which there is reason to believe they were once
connected. Along this space the Andes encroach upon
the ocean, and have no western slope proper. Many of
the sea channels are very narrow and ravine-like in
character; they appear to represent a valley between
two ridges of mountains,—a feature which is most con-
spicuous farther north. The highest part or crest of the
range is close to the sea, and consequently the streams
which fall into the Pacific are all small. Towards the
south the width is about 20 miles; and in the latitude of
Mount Stokes, which is 64OO feet high, it is 40 miles.
North of this the range is in places more than 40 miles
across. From 46° to 42° S., the mountains become
somewhat higher, the loftier peaks ranging from 4000 to
8ooo feet. Among the more conspicuous are Mount
Yanteles, 8o30 feet; Mount Melimoyu, 7500 feet;
Mount Corcovado, 7510 feet; and Mount Minchinma-
diva, 74O6 feet above the sea-level. At about 30° S.
the mountainous system becomes more complicated,
owing to the appearance of several ranges which rise
out of the plains towards the north-west corner of the
Argentine Conſederation, some of which run north and
join the lofty, highlands of the Bolivian Andes. It is
doubtful whether all strictly belong to the Andes.
The highest peak is the Nevado de Sorata, close to
Lake Titicaca, and estimated at 21,286 feet high ; next
to it comes the twin peaked Illimani, a little further
south, which rises to 21, 181 feet. The passes crossing
the valley have summits averaging I4,OOO feet, but the
one which skirts the Nevado de Sorata rises to nearly
16,000 feet above the sea. From about 18° the Andes,
like the coast, runs northwest, so that whereas in
about 18° S. the crest of the western Cordillera
is in 70° W. long., at 14° S., it has reached a
little beyond 75°. Here there is another change
of direction, this portion of the western Cordil-
lera stretching from about 14° S. to 6° S., the south end
being near 75° W., and the north near 80° W., the
westing being rather more than half a degree per degree
of latitude. The northern end of the eastern Cordillera
is near 720 W. Returning again, to , the Peruvian
Andes, we find some lofty peaks which rival, and it may
be surpass, those of Bolivia. Thus Sehama is re-
puted to be 22,000 feet; Chungara somewhat less;
A N D
329
Chipicani, 18,898 feet; Arequipa, 18,373; Chuquibamba,
21,000 feet. The two Cordilleras āre again united in
the north by the mountain knot of Los Pastos, on the
borders of Ecuador and Colombia. The valley plains
are about 40 miles wide. On the south is the valley of
Cuenca, which is about 50 miles long, and about 7800
feet above the sea. From it the way into the central
valley plain, that of Ambato, is across the transverse
ridge by the pass of Assuay, which rises to 15,520 feet.
It is about 130 miles long, and about 8000 feet above
the sea. The mountain fringe comprises several im-
portant volcanoes, viz., Sangay, Tungurgua, and Coto-
paxi in the eastern Cordillera; and the volcano Cargui-
razo in the western Cordillera, which also includes the
lofty Chimborazo, estimated to reach 21,424 feet above
the sea. Then crossing over the low transverse ridge
of the Alto de Chisinche, we descend into the valley-
plain of Quito, which is bordered by one of the most in-
tensely volcanic areas on the globe. To the east are
Sinchulagua, Antisana, and Cayambe; the last is now
extinct, stands on the equator, and is 19,534 feet above
the sea. It is the highest point on the equator in the
globe, and is the only one along that line where perpet-
ual, snow exists. In the western Cordillera the promi-
nent eminences are Pichincha and Imbabura. The
valley-plain is about 9500 feet above the sea. Chimbo-
razo is the most conspicuous feature in this part of the
Andes, and from one point its outline resembles that of
a lion at rest. Cotopaxi is the most symmetrical active
volcano on the globe. Its apical angle is 122° 30' ; and
the slope is a little over 30° on the south, west, and east
sides, and nearly 27° on the north side. Its summit
was attained for the first time on November 27, 1872, by
Drs. Reiss and Stübel. The height was found to be
about 19,500 feet. Beyond the mountain knot of Los
Pastos two Cordilleras run in a north-easterly direction
to about 2° N. The western Cordillera is broken by
the valley of the Patia, which has its source on the
slopes of the valley between the mountain knot of Los
Pastos and the transverse ridge south of Popayan. The
eastern Cordillera is continued into the Paramo de
Guanacas, from which basis the Andes spread out ſan-
like into three Cordilleras. This paramo, like the cross
range between Iliniza and Cotopaxi, forms part of the
main watershed between the rivers draining into the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. North of the paramo this
watershed runs along the western Cordillera for some
distance, and then crosses several minor ranges of hills
with their intervening valleys. The low watersheds at
the head of the Atrato basin coincide with it; and north
of Cupica Bay it suddenly bends, passing from within a
few miles of the Pacific to within a few miles of the
Atlantic Ocean. Having commenced this general ac-
count of the Andes with a notice of the mountain ranges
of Colombia, and of the lowlands of the Isthmus of
Panama, we thus come round to our starting-point. In
the article AMERICA there is a brief account of the chain
from a geological point of view, as well as of the trans-
verse chains of South America; and under the heads of
the various countries through which these pass further
particulars are given.
ANDOCIDES, a Greek orator and diplomatist, was
born at Athens in 467, and died about 391 B.C. After
holding a command for a time in the Athenian fleet, he
was engaged in various embassies to foreign states. In
415 he was implicated with Alcibiades, in the charge of
mutilating the busts of Hermes, suspicion being speci-
ally roused against him from a large bust near his house
having been almost the only one that was left entire.
ANDORRE, or ANDoRRA, a small semi-independ-
ent state on the south side of the Pyrenees, between the
Spanish province of Lerida and the French department
of Ariège. It is surrounded by mountains, and con
sists of one main valley, which is watered by the Balira,
a tributary of the Segre, which itself flows into the
Ebro, and of several smaller valleys, the most impor-
tant of which are those of the Ordino and the Os. It has
an area of about 600 square miles, and is divided into
six parishes, Andorra la Viéja (the capital), San Julian
de Loria, Canillo, Encamp, Ordino, Massana. The
population is 700. The territory was once densely
wooded, whence probably its name, from the Arabic
Aldarra, “a place thick with trees; ” but the forests
have been almost entirely destroyed for fuel. The
pasturage is extensive and excellent; the mountains
contain iron and lead mines; rye, potatoes, fruits, and
tobacco, are grown on the lower grounds; game and
trout are abundant.
ANDOVER, an ancient market-town in the north-
west of Hampshire, situated near the left bank of the
river Anton, 63 miles from London, and 12 from Win-
chester.
church—erected about forty years ago on the site of
the old one, which existed in the time of William the
Conqueror—several dissenting places of worship, various
elementary schools, and a spacious town hall.
ANDOVER, a post township of Essex county,
Massachusetts, U. S., pleasantly situated on the south-
ern bank of the Merrimac river, 21 miles north of Bos-
ton. It contains one of the most celebrated theological
seminaries in the United States. It takes its name from
Andover, England, from which place most of its settlers
came. Its population in 1889 was 6,000.
ANDRADA, DIEGO PAYDA D’ (born at Coimbra in
1528, died 1575), a learned Portuguese theologian,
who distinguished himself at the Council of Trent, to
which he was sent by king Sebastian.
ANDRADA E SYLVA, BONIFACIO Jozé D’, a dis-
tinguished Brazilian statesman and naturalist, was born
at Villa de Santos, near Rio Janerio, 1765, and died at
Nictheroy, 1838.
ANDRE, John, an accomplished soldier, who has
gained a place in history by his unfortunate end, was
born in London, in 1751, of Genevese parents. Acci-
dent brought him in 1769 to Litchfield, where, in the
literary circle of Miss Anna Seward, he met Miss Honora
Sneyd. A strong attachment sprung up between the
two ; but their marriage was disapproved of by Miss
Sneyd's family, and André was sent to cool his love in
his father's counting-house in London. Business was,
however, too tame an occupation for his ambitious
spirit, and in March 1771 he obtained a commission in a
regiment destined for America, the theatre at that time
of the war of independence. Here his conduct and
acquirements gained him rapid promotion, and he be-
came in a few years aide-de-camp to the commander-in-
chief of the British forces, Sir Henry Clinton, who had
so high an opinion of him, that in 1780 he raised him to
the post of major and adjutant-general of the forces.
While André was in this situation, the American general,
Arnold, who had displayed much energy in the cause of
the colonies, conceiving himself injuriously treated by
his colleagues, made a proposition to the British to be-
tray to them the important fortress of West-Point, on
the Hudson River, the key of the American position.
This seemed a favorable opportunity of concluding the
war, and Major André was appointed to negotiate with
Arnold. For this purpose he landed from a vessel bear-
ing a flag of truce, and had an interview with Arnold ;
but before the negotiations were finished, an American
fort had fired on the vessel, and forced her to drop
down the river. André, therefore, could not return by
the way he came, and it was necessary to pass the night
within the American lines at the house of his guide,
It is well built, and contains a large parish
Art
33O
A N D
Smith, and set out next day by land for New York.
Both were provided by Arnold with passports, and suc-
ceeded in passing the American outposts undetected.
Next day, however, just when all danger seemed to be
over, and Smith had left André in sight of the English
lines, André was stopped by three militiamen of the
enemy, and carried back a prisoner. Washington sent
him before a court-martial, and notwithstanding a
spirited defence, and the remonstrances of the British
general, who did all he could to save him, Major André
was executed at Tappan as a spy on the 2d October,
1780—a sentence perhaps justified by the extreme rigor
of martial law, as he had been in disguise within the
lines of the enemy; but the traitor Arnold, through
the address of poor André, escaped by timely flight the
punishment he justly merited. Besides courage, and
distinguished military talents, Major André possessed a
well-cultivated mind. He was a proficient in drawing
and in music, and showed considerable poetic talent in
his humorous Cow-chase, a kind of parody on Chezy-
chase, which appeared in three successive parts at New
York, the last on the very day of his capture. One of
his last, letters gives an affecting incident relating to his
first love. When stripped of everything by those who
seized him, he contrived to retain the portrait of Miss
Sneyd, which he always carried on his person, by con-
cealing it in his mouth. He was not aware that this
lady had breathed her last some months before. His
unhappy fate excited universal sympathy both in
America and all over Europe, and the whole British
army went into mourning for him. A mural sculptured
monument to the memory of Major André was erected
in Westminster Abbey by the British Government
in 1821, and a movement was recently inaugurated to erect
a monument to his memory on the scene of his capture.
ANDREA, GIOVANNI, the most famous Italian can-
onist of the 14th century, was born at Mugello, near
Florence, about 1275. He studied canon law at
Bologna, where he distinguished himself in this subject
so much that he obtained a professorship of law, first at
Padua, then at Pisa, and lastly at Bologna, rapidly
acquiring a high reputation for his learning and his
moral character, Andrea wrote the following works:
Gloss on the Sixth Book of the Decretals; Glosses on
the Clementimes; Commentary on the Aºuſes of Sextus.
ANDREANI, ANDREA, a celebrated engraver on
wood, in chiaroscuro, was born at Mantua about 1540,
and died at Rome in 1623. His engravings are scarce
and valuable, and are chiefly copies of Mantegna, Dürer,
and Titian.
AND REASBERG, a town of Prussia, in the former
kingdom of Hanover, situated in the Hartz mountains,
at an elevation of nearly 2000 feet above the level of
the sea, and at a distance of about Io miles S. E. from
Clausthal.
ANDREEVA, or ENDERI, a town of Russia, in the
district of the caucusus, situated on the Aktash, 45
miles south of Kizliar.
AND REOSSI, ANTOINE-FRANÇois, CoMTE D', a
very distinguished French officer, was born at Castel-
naudary in Languedoc, 6th March 1761, and died at
Montauban, September 1828. He was of Italian
extraction, and his grandfather, François Andreossi, had
taken part with Riquet in the construction of the
Languedoc canal in 1669. At the age of twenty he
became a lieutenant of artillery, and he early joined the
republican party. He accompanied Bonaparte to
Egypt as a chef de brigade, serving with great distinc-
tion, and was selected as one of Napoleon's companions
on his unexpected return to Europe. After the battle
of Waterloo he finally quitted the scene of political
life, relieving the tedium of retirement by writing sev-
e
lows, Barking, London.
eral scientific memoirs. He was a man of solid and
extensive acquirements.
ANDRES, JUAN (1740–1817), an erudite Jesuit, born
in Valencia, and some time professor of literature in
the university of Gandia. He is the author of a great
number of treatises on science, music, the art of teach-
ing the deaf and dumb, &c.
ANDREW, St., the apostle, born at Bethsaida in
Galilee, brother to Simon Peter. He had been a dis-
ciple of John the Baptist, and followed Jesus upon the
testimony given of Him by the Baptist.
ANDREWES, LANCELot, D.D., Bishop of Win-
chester, one of the most illustrious of the prelates of
England, was born in 1555 in Thames Street, Allhal-
In 1574–5 he took his degree
of B. A.; in 1576 he was chosen to a fellowship at his.
college; in 1578 he proceeded M.A.; in 1580 he was
ordained, and in the same year his name appears as
junior treasurer; in 1581 he was senior treasurer, and
on July II was incorporated M.A. at Oxford. In 1588
he succeeded Crowley in the vicarage of St. Giles, Crip-
plegate. Here he delivered his most penetrative and
striking sermons on the Z emptation in the Wilderness,
and the Zord’s Prayer — the former published in 1592,
the latter in 1611. In a great sermon on April 16, in
Easter week 1588, he most effectively, and with burning
eloquence, vindicated the Protestantism of the Church
of England against the Romanists. On July 4, 16or,
he was appointed dean of Westminster, and his sedu-
lousness over the renowned school is magnified by Bishop
Hacket in his Ziſe of Archbishop Wi//iams. On July
25, 1603, Andrewes assisted at the coronation of James I.
In 1604 he took part in the Hampton Court Conference,
and, better service, was one of the committee to whom.
we owe our authorised version of Holy Scripture.
ANDREWS, JAMES PETTIt, an English historian
and miscellaneous writer, was the younger son of Joseph
Andrews, of Shaw-house, near Newbury, Berks, where he
was born in 1737. Andrews was the author of several
miscellaneous works, but his most extensive undertaking
was his Aſſistory of Great Britain, connected with 4/ke
Chronology of Æurope, with AVotes, &c., of which,
however, he lived to complete but two volumes. He
died at Brompton 6th August 1797.
ANDREW, JAMES O., Bishop of the Methodist
Church, was born late in the last century. The fact that
he was a slave-holder, was the cause of the separation
of the American Methodist Church, in 1844, into two.
bodies, and was an important factor, among others, in
preparing the way for the American civil war.
ANDRIEU, BERTRAND, a celebrated engraver of
medals, born, 24th November 1761, at Bordeaux.
Many of his medals are figured in the Medallic Aſistory
of A/apoleon. He died at Paris 6th December 1822.
ANDRISCUS, a man of mean extraction, who, pre-
tending to be the natural son of Perseus, last king of
Macedonia, assumed the name of A/hi/ip, for which
reason he was called Pseudo-Philippus, the false Philip.
Andricus was put to death by order of the senate.
AND ROCLUS, a Roman slave who used to lead
about the streets a lion that had forborne to injure him.
when turned loose upon him in the circus.
AND ROMACHE, in Greek legend, was the wife of
Hector (//iad, vi. 395), and daughter of Eétion, prince
of Thebe in Mysia.
ANDROM EDA, in Greek legend, the daughter of
Cepheus and Cassiopea, or Cassiepea, king and queen of
the AEthiopians.
ANDRONICUS I. (CoMNENUS), Emperor of Con-
stantinople, son of Isaac, and grandson of Alexis I.
Comnenus, was born about the beginning of the 12th
century. He was endowed by nature with the most
A N D
33 I
remarkable gifts both of mind and body. He was hand-
some and eloquent, but licentious ; and at the same time
active, hardy, courageous, and an excellent soldier. His
early years were spent in alternate pleasure and military
service. In 1141 he was taken captive by the Turks-
Seljuks, and remained in their hands for a year. On
being ransomed he went to Constantinople, where was
held the court of his cousin, the emperor Manuel, with
whom he was a great favorite. Here the charms of his
niece, the princess Eudoxia, attracted him. She became
his mistress, while her sister Theodora stood in a similar
relation to the emperor Manuel. In 1152, accompanied
by Eudoxia, he set out for an important command in
Cilicia. Failing in his principal enterprise, an attack
upon Mopsuestia, he returned, but was again appointed
to the command of a province. This second post he
seems also to have left after a short interval, for he
appeared again in Constantinople, and narrowly escaped
death at the hands of the brothers of Eudoxia. About
this time (II.53), a conspiracy against the emperor, in
which Andronicus participated, was discovered, and he
was thrown into prison. There he remained for about
twelve years, during which time he made repeated but
unsuccessful attempts to escape. At last, in I 165, he
was successful; and, after passing through many dan-
gers, reached the court of Jaroslav, grand duke of Rus-
sia, at Kiev. While under the protection of the grand
duke, Andronicus brought about an alliance between
him and the emperor Manuel, and so restored himself to
the emperor's favor. With a Russian army he joined
Manuel in the invasion of Hungary, and assisted at the
siege of Semlin. After a successful campaign, they
returned together to Constantinople; but a year after
(1167) Andronicus refused to take the oath of allegiance
to the prince of Hungary, whom Manuel desired to
become his successor. He was removed from court, but
received the province of Cilicia. Being still under the
displeasure of the emperor, Andronicus fled to the court
of Raymond, prince of Antioch. While residing here
he captivated and seduced the beautiful daughter of the
prince, Philippa, sister of the empress Maria. The
anger of the emperor was again aroused by this dis-
honor, and Andronicus was compelled to fly. He took
refuge with Amaury, king of Jerusalem, whose favor
he gained, and who invested him with the town of
Berytus, now Beirout. In Jerusalem he saw Theodora,
the beautiful widow of the late king Baldwin, and niece
of the emperor Manuel. Although Andronicus was
at that time fifty-six years old, age had not diminished his
charms, and Theodora became the next victim of his art-
ful seduction. To avoid the vengeance of the emperor,
she fled with him to the court of the Sultan of Damascus,
but not deeming themselves safe there, they continued
their perilous journey through Persia and Turkestan,
round the Caspian Sea and across Mount Caucasus, un-
til at length they settled among the Turks on the bor-
ders of Trebizond. Into that province Andronicus,
with a body of adventurers, made frequent and success-
ful incursions. While he was absent upon one of them,
his castle was surprised by the governor of Trebizond,
and Theodora with her two children were captured and
sent to Constantinople. To obtain their release Andron-
icus made abject submission to the emperor; and ap-
pearing in chains before him, implored pardon. This
he obtained, and was allowed to retire with Theodora
into banishment into the little town of CEnoe, on the
shores of the Black Sea. In I 180 the emperor Manuel
died, and was succeeded by his son Alexis II., a youth of
twelve or fourteen years, who was under the guardian-
ship of the empress Maria. Her conduct excited popu-
lar indignation; and the consequent disorders, amount-
ing almost to civil war, gave an opportunity to the
ambition of Andronicus. He left his retirement, se--
cured the support*of an army, and marched upon Con-
stantinople. Alexis was compelled to acknowledge him.
as a colleague in the empire. The empress was put to.
death, and her son soon shared the same fate. His dead.
body is said to have been insulted by Andronicus, but
the authorities for this and similar stories are in all prob-
ability prejudiced. Andronicus, now (1 183) sole em-
peror, married Agnes, widow of Alexis II., a child eleven,
years of age. His short reign was characterized by
strong and wise measures. He resolved to check many.
abuses, but , above all things to limit the power of
the nobles. The people who felt the severity of
his laws, at the same time acknowledged their justice,
and found themselves protected from the rapacity of
their superiors. The aristocrats, however, were infuria-
ted against him, and summoned to their aid William of
Sicily. The prince landed in Epirus with a strong force
and marched as far as Thessalonica, which he took and,
destroyed; but he was shortly afterward defeated, and
compelled to return to Sicily. Andronicus seems them.
to have resolved to exterminate the aristocracy, and his.
plans were nearly crowned with success. But in 1185,
during his absence from the capital, his lieutenant or—
dered the arrest and execution of Isaac Angelus, a de-
scendant of the first Alexis. Isaac escaped, and took
refuge in the church of St. Sophia. He appealed to the
populace, and a tumult arose which spread rapidly over
the whole city. When Andronicus arrived he found
that his power was overthrown, and that Isaac had been:
proclaimed emperor. His offers of a general pardon,.
and "even of abdication in favor of his son, were re-
jected; and after an unsuccessful attempt at escape, he
was seized and dragged before the new emperor. Isaac.
delivered him over to his enemies, and for three days he
was exposed to their ful y and resentment. At last they
hung him up by the feet between two pillars. His dy-
ing agonies were shortened by an Italian soldier, who
mercifully plunged a sword into his body. He died on
the 12th September 1185.
ANDRONICUS II. (PALAEOLOGUS), Emperor, was,
born 1260. He was the elder son of Michael Palaeolo-
gus, whom he succeeded in 1283. During his reign the
Turks under Osman conquered nearly the whole of Bithy-
nia; and to resist them the emperor called in the aid
of Roger de Flor, who commanded a body of adventur-
ers. The Turks were defeated, but Roger was found to
be nearly as formidable an enemy to the imperial power.
He was assassinated in 1308. His adventurers declared.
war upon Andronicus, and after devastating Thrace and
Macedonia, settled in the southern part of Greece.
From 1320 onwards the emperor was engaged in war
with his grandson, Andronicus, in whose favor he was:
compelled to abdicate, 1328. He retired to a convent,
and died about 1334.
ANDRONICUS III., grandson of the preceding,
was born about 1296. His conduct during youth was:
so violent, that his grandfather resolved to deprive him.
of his right to the crown. Andronicus rebelled, and in
1328 compelled his grandfather to abdicate in his favor.
During his reign he was engaged in constant war, chiefly
with the Turks, who greatly extended their conquests.
He died in 1341. .*
ANDRONICUS OF CYRRHUS, a Greek astronomer,
about B.C. Ioo, built at Athens an octagonal tower, with:
figures carved on each side, representing the eight prin-
cipal winds. A brazen Triton at the summit, with a rod
in his hand, turned round by the wind, pointed to the
quarter from which it blew. From this model is derived.
the custom of placing weathercocks on steeples. A
considerable portion of this tower still exists.
ANDRONICUS of RHODEs, the eleventh scholarch
332 A N ID
— A N G
of the Peripatetics, lived about B. c. 70. His chief work
was the arrangement of the writings of Aristotle, the
materials for which had been supplied to him by Tyran-
Ill OIl. -
ANDROS, or ANDRO, the ancient Andros, an island
of the Grecian Archipelago. It is nearly 25 miles long,
and its greatest breadth is Io miles. Its surface is for
the most part mountainous, with many fruitful and well-
watered valleys, which produce vines, grain, olives,
pomegranates, lemons, figs, and oranges, and supply
food for cattle, silk-worms, and bees. At Andros, the
capital, a town on the east coast, containing about 5000
inhabitants, there are silk and carpet manufactures. The
island is supposed to contain about 15,000 inhabitants,
the bulk of whom belong to the Greek Church.
ANDUJAR, a town of Spain, in the province of
Jaen, Andalusia, situated near the Guadalquivir. It is
a dull, unhealthy place, possessing few buildings of any
architectural beauty; but there is a road leading to an
old bridge over the Guadalquivir which is lined with fine
trees. Population, I4, C96.
ANDUZE, a town of France, in the department of
Gard, situate on the Gardon d’Anduze, about 6 miles
S.W. of Alais. It possesses considerable manufac-
tures of Serges, stockings, hats, silk, and leather, and
has 5303 inhabitants, many of whom are Protestants.
ANECDOTE, means originally something not pub-
lished. It has two distinct significations. First, the
primary one is something not published, in which sense
it has been used to denote either secret histories,— Pro-
copius, e.g., gives this as one of the titles of his secret
history of Justinian’s court,-- or portions of ancient
writers which have remained long in manuscript and are
edited for the first time.
ANEL, DOMINQUE, an eminent French surgeon,
born at Toulouse in 1679. He is celebrated for his suc-
cessful treatment of aneurism and fistula Zachrymalis,
and was the inventor of the probe and syringe still
known by his name. -
ANEMOMETER, or wind-measurer, a contrivance
for indicating the rate and direction of the wind.
Among meteorological phenomena, none deserve more
attention than the elements of the wind ; and none have
received more. The error which, from the days of
Hooke, in the middle of the 17th century, to within a
comparatively recent period, misdirected the efforts of
inventors, was the idea that the elements to be deter-
mined in the case of the wind are its direction and
Aressure, whereas practically they are its direction and
zelocity. If the currents of air were anything like uni-
form, it would be a comparatively simple matter to
deduce the velocity from the pressure; but their varia-
bility is so very great, that the relations between the
velocity and the pressure become unworkably complex.
The essentials of every anemometer are two : (1), a
ºvăzzd-zyazze, to show changes of direction; and (2), a
zväzed-gauge, to show changes of velocity, or of force.
There is also a distinction which we may have in every
kind of meter. They may be either non-recording, as
merely exhibiting the variations to the eye; or, record-
27, g, or marking them permanently on paper.
The wind-vane, or weather-cock, is simply a flat sheet
of thin metal, or two sheets in the shape of a thin
wedge, at the end of a metal rod, the whole turning
freely on a vertical axle. Besides serving to show the
direction of the wind itself, the vane is often used to
turn the gauge, so as to present the pressure-surface
with its face always direct to the wind.
ANET, a town of France, in the department of Eure-
et-Loire. It contains the ruins of a magnificent castle,
touilt by Henry II. for Diana of Poitiers, and near it is
the plain of Ivry, where Henry IV. defeated the armies
of the League in 1590. It has 1418 inhabitants, who
carry on a small trade in corn, wood, and fodder.
ANEURISM, a cavity, which contains blood, either
fluid or coagulated, and which communicates with an
artery; the walls of the cavity are formed either of the
dilated artery or of the tissues around the vessel. This
affection, a malady of middle life and old age, may arise
in consequence of injury or disease of the blood-vessels.
ANGARA, UPPER and Lower, two rivers of Asiatic
Russia, in the government of Irkutsk. The former
rises in the mountains to the east of Lake Baikal, and
falls into the head of the lake after a course of nearly
300 miles. The latter, which is sometimes called the
Upper Tungonska, flows out of Lake Baikal, near its
southern extremity, and passing the town of Irkutsk,
falls into the Yenisei, after a course of about 1 Ioo miles.
The scenery on its banks is frequently extremely beauti-
ful.
ANGARIA, a sort of government postal system
adopted by the Romans under the empire, borrowed
from the ancient Persians, among whom, according to
Xenophon, it was established by Cyrus. Couriers on
horseback were posted at certain stages along the chief
roads of the empire, for the transmission of royal des-
patches by night and day in all weathers. The supply
of horses and their maintenance were compulsory, con-
stituting under the Romans a burden from which the
emperor alone could grant exemption. Hence the word
came to mean generally compulsory service in the des-
patch of royal messages.
ANGEL, a messenger, but in signification corre-
sponds to the special theological sense which the latter
word assumed among the Hellenistic Jews, by being
adopted as the translation of the Hebrew Mal'akh.
Thus both name and notion of angel go back to the
Old Testament.
The first side of the belief in angels is expressed in
the word Mal'akh, a messenger or ambassador, more
fully, messenger of Şehoza/, messenger of God. The
whole Old Testament revelation moves in the paradox
that God is invisible and inaccessible to man, and yet
approaches man in unmistakable self-manifestation.
This manifestation takes place in various ways, in the
priestly oracle, in prophecy, in the glory of God within
the sanctuary [shekhina]. But in particular the early
history represents God as manifesting himself by his
messenger.
The Biblical doctrine of angels must be studied with
the aid of the best books on Biblical theology (Schulz,
Oehler, Ewald, Weiss, &c.), and of the commentaries
on special passages. The literature of the subject,
theological and theosophic, is immense. .
ANGEL, a gold coin, first used in France in 1340,
and introduced into England by Edward IV. in 1465.
It varied in value between that period and the times of
Charles I. from 6s. 8d. to Ios. The name was derived
from the representation it bore of St. Michael and the
dragon.
ANGELICA, a genus of plants of the natural order
of Umbelliferae. The name Angelica is popularly given
to a plant of an allied genus, the tender shoots of which
are used in making certain kinds of aromatic sweetmeats.
ANGELO, MichEL. See MICHEL ANGELO BUON-
AROTTI.
ANGELUS, SILESIUS, a German philosophical
poet, was born in 1624 at Breslau or Glatz, and died at
Breslau in 1677. His family name was Johann Scheffler,
but he is generally known under the assumed name which
marks the country of his birth. Brought up a Protest-
ant, and at first physician to the duke of Würtemberg,
he embraced, in 1653, the Roman Catholic religion, and
took orders as a priest. His peculiar religious faith is a
A N G
333
mystical pantheism founded on sentiment. The essence
of God he held to be love. God and man are therefore
essentially one. A selection of hymns, which are very
F." in Germany, was published in 1820 by Varn-
nagen Von Ense.
ANGERMANN, a river of Sweden, which rises
among the mountains that separate Sweden from Nor-
way, and flows in a southeasterly direction entering the
Gulf of Bothnia near Hernosand, after a course of
about 250 miles. It is navigable for upwards of 50
miles from the sea, and the scenery on its banks is
sometimes very beautiful.
ANGERMUNDE, a town of Prussia, capital of a
circle of the same name in the province of Branden-
burg, situated on Lake Münde, 43 miles from Berlin.
It contains about 6,400 inhabitants, who are chiefly
employed in the manufacture of woollen and linen
goods.
ANGERS, an ancient city of France, capital of the
department of Maine-et-Loire, and formerly of the
old province of Anjou, situated on the Maine, and 161
miles S.W. of Paris. The chief manufactures at Angers
are sail cloths, ropes, linen goods, hosiery, Sugar,
leather, wax, and oil; there is also a considerable trade
in corn, wine, and fruits, and in the neighborhood there
are extensive slate quarries, which give employment to
about 3OOO workmen. Population, 58,464. It was
captured by Odacer in 464 A.D., and by Clovis in 486;
it suffered severely from the invasions of the Northmen
in 845 and the succeeding years, and of the English in
the 12th and 15th centuries; The Huguenots took it in
I585, and the Vendean royalists were repulsed mear it
in 1793.
ANGERSTEIN, JOHN JULIUS, an opulent London
merchant, and a distinguished patron of the fine arts,
was born at St. Petersburg in 1735, and settled in Lon-
dom about 1749. His collection of paintings, consist-
ing of about forty of the most exquisite specimens of
the art, purchased by the English Government, on his
death in 1822, for £60,000, formed the nucleus of the
National Gallery.
ANGHIARI, a small town of Italy, in the province
of Arezzo. Population of the commune, 6900.
ANGILBERT, St., the most distinguished poet of
his age, was the secretary and friend of Charlemagne.
After filling the nighest offices under that monarch, and
receiving the hand of his daughter Bertha in marriage,
he retired in 790 to the monastery of Centule, or Saint
Riquier, of which in 794 he was made abbot. He left
this retreat from time to time when the king required
his services, and in 800 assisted at Rome at his corona-
tion. He died in 814. Angilbert was called by Charle-
magne the Homer of his time.
ANGINA PECTORIS, a term applied to a violent
paroxysm of painful sensations in the chest, arising for
the most part in connection with some form of heart
disease. An attack of angina pectoris usually comes
on with a sudden seizure of pain, felt at first over the
region of the heart, but radiating through the chest in
various directions, and frequently extending down the
left arm. A feeling of constriction and of Suffocation
accompanies the pain, although there is seldom actual
difficulty in breathing. When the attack comes on, as
it often does in the course of some bodily exertion, the
sufferer is at once brought to rest, and during the con-
tinuance of the paroxysm experiences the most intense
agony. The countenance becomes pale, the surface of
the body cold, the pulse feeble, and death appears to be
imminent, when suddenly the attack subsides, and
complete relief is obtained. . The duration of a par-
oxysm rarely exceeds two or three minutes, but it may
last for a longer period. The attacks are apt to recur
on slight exertion, and even in aggravated cases without
any such exciting cause. Occasionally the first seizure,
proves fatal; but more commonly death takes place as
the result of repeated attacks. Angina pectoris is
extremely rare under middle life, and is much more
common in males than in females. It must always be
regarded as a disorder of a very serious nature. In the
treatment of paroxysm much relief is obtained by
opiates, and by the inhalation, under proper precau-
tions, of anaesthetic vapors, such as ether, chloroform,
and nitrite of amyl.
ANGLE, a term employed in different senses, the
most common and simplest use of it—to which all the
rest may be referred, and by which they may be ex-
plained—being to indicate the inclination of two straight
lines to each other. See GEOMETRY and TRIGONoM-
ETRY.
ANGLES. According to the usual account, which
rests on the authority of Bede, the angles were one of
three tribes who passed over from the Continent in the
5th and 6th centuries, and taking possession of different
parts of England, formed the main and dominant ele-
ment in its subsequent population. The Saxons, he
tells us, and he is followed by the authors of the Saxon
chronicles, were situated in what is now Holstein; the
Angles occupied the district to the north, probably ex-
tending across the peninsula, and beyond the Angles
were the Jutes, in (approximately) the modern Jutland.
Hypothetically they are identified with the Angli of
Tacitus, who were seated on the Lower Elbe; and cer-
tainly they belonged to the Low German race.
ANGLESEA or ANGLESEY, an insular county of
North Wales, separated from the mainland of England
by the Menai Strait. The island contains 193,511 acres.
The exports consist of barley, oats, cattle, sheep, and
hogs; and a considerable trade is carried on in butter,
cheese, hides, tallow, wax and honey. It contains valu-
able minerals, and furnishes copper, lead, silver, marble,
asbestos, limestone, marl, and coal. Anglesea was
anciently famous as the seat of the Druidical pontiff, and
a Druidical college; and a number of (so-called) Druidi-
cal remains—such as the cromlechs at Plas Newydd-
are still to be seen. In 61 A. D. Suetonius Paulinus.
attacked the Druids in this their safest retreat, and they
were utterly subdued by Agricola in 78. The number
of inhabitants is 35,127.
ANGLESEA, ARTHUR ANNESLEY, EARL OF, lord
privy seal in the reign of King Charles II., the son of
Sir Francis Annesley, Lord Mount-Norris, and Viscount
Valentia, in Ireland, was born at Dublin Ioth July.
1614. He was president of the council of state after the
death of Cromwell, and was principally concerned in
bringing about the Restoration. He succeeded to his
father's titles in 1660, and in 1661 was enrolled in the
English peerage as Lord Annesley of Newport-Pagnell,
Bucks, and Earl of Anglesea. Annesley was a person of
great abilities and of very extensive learning, and was
well acquainted with the constitution and laws of
England. He died in April 1686.
ANGLESEY, HENRY WILLIAM PAGET, FIRST
MARQUIs of, one of the most distinguished British gen-
erals of the 19th century, was born on 17th of May.
1768. He was the eldest son of Henry, Lord Paget,
first Earl of Uxbridge, of whose family of twelve sons.
and daughters he was the last survivor, Quitting the
Oxford University in 1790, he entered parliament the
same year, as member for the Carnarvon group of
boroughs, for which he sat six years. But to his high-
spirited and impetuous nature the soldier's life was most
attractive ; and during the excitement which was occa-
sioned by the outbreak of the wars of the French
Revolution, Lord Paget raised on his father's estate the
334
A N G
regiment known at first as the Staffordshire Volunteers,
and afterwards as the 80th Foot in the regular army.
40f this regiment he was named lieutenant-colonel. Pro-
amoted colonel in 1796, he was transferred in April 1797
to the command of the 7th Light Dragoons, and then
began to apply himself strenuously to the improvement
of discipline, and the introduction of a new system of
cavalry evolutions. In 1799 he took part in the cam-
paign, brief and disastrous, to the Duke of York in
Holland. , Devoting himself through the following eight
years, with zeal equal to his abilities, to the discharge of
his regimental duties, and to the perfecting of the reforms
which he had previously introduced, he attained the
rank of major-general in April 1802, and that of lieuten-
ant-general in April 1808. At the close of this year the
great war with the French in the Peninsula began, and
Lord Paget was sent, with two brigades of cavalry, to
join the division of the army under Sir David Baird, who
was then marching to join Sir John Moore in his ad-
vance on Salamanca. He especially distinguished him-
self by brilliant and successful encounters with the
French at Sahagun, Mayorga, and Benevente. At the
battle of Coruña, fought on the 16th January 1809, and
mournfully memorable for the fall of the brave Sir John
Moore, Lord Paget had the command of the reserve;
and while the dying commander was being carried from
the field, his lordship, by a swift, courageous movement,
repulsed a superior force of the enemy, thus
deciding the fate of the day and securing the safe
embarkation of the British army. With this action
his services in the Peninsular war terminated, and in the
autumn he returned to England, where he applied him-
self to his parliamentary duties as member for Milbourne
Port. In the spring of 1815 all Europe was startled by
the news of the escape of Napoleon I. from his island
prison, Elba, of his reappearance in France at the head
of an army, and of his reassumption of the imperial dig-
nity. Without delay the armies of the allies were sent
again into the field, the English under the Duke of Well-
ington as commander-in-chief, and the English cavalry
under the command of the Earl of Uxbridge. At the
<lecisive battle of Waterloo (18th June), after twice lead-
ing the guards to the charge, he placed himself at the
head of the heavy brigade, and, by a third rapid and ter-
rific charge, completely overwhelmed the trusted French
£uards, led by Count D'Erlom, making 3Ooo prisoners,
and killing most of the rest. In the confusion which
followed, Napoleon, from a low rising ground, directed
the fire of four guns, and by one of their discharges,
almost the last shot that was fired, the earl was struck on
the knee, and amputation of the limb was found to be
necessary. Five days after the battle the services of the
earl were rewarded by the dignity of Marquis of Angle-
sey, conferred on him by the Prince Regent; and he was
soon after nominated Knight Grand Cross of the Bath.
He was sent to Ireland as lord-lieutenant in 1828. He
pleaded for Catholic emancipation in parliament, and
on the formation of Earl Grey's administration, in
November 1830, he became viceroy of Ireland. The
times were changed; the great act of emancipation had
been accomplished, and the task of the viceroy in his
second tenure of office was to resist the agitation com-
menced and carried on by O’Connell. He felt it his
duty now to demand Coercion Acts for the security of
the public peace; his popularity was diminished, differ-
‘ences appeared in the cabinet on the difficult subject, and
in July 1833 the ministry resigned, the viceroy retiring
at the same time. To the Marquis of Anglesey Ireland
is indebted for the Board of Education, the origination
of which may perhaps be reckoned as the most memorable
act of his viceroyalty. Seldom have bravery, gentleness,
and generosity been combined in such noble proportions.
In his character there was not a fold, it was all open as
the day. £:
ANGLING. The art of angling, or of catching fish
by a rod and line, is of very ancient derivation. The
earliest writer upon it in England was the Dame
Juliana Berners, who wrote a treatise on it in the Aoo/,
of St. Albans, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496.
Between that time and the present there have been
nearly a thousand books, or parts of books, written and
published upon this subject.
Lake-trout fishing is conducted either from a boat or
from the shore. The best depth of water in which to
fish for trout varies from 6 or S to 12 or 14 feet, and
between these depths the best sport is obtained; and the
angler should therefore fish over them from choice,
though occasionally fish may be caught in both deeper
and shallower water. In lake fishing it is always desir-
able to have a good ruffling breeze, as the fish do not
rise or take well in a calm. The best places are in shelt-
ered bays by rocky points or islands, or where burns
flow in; drifting along by these, and casting ahead and
shorewards, the angler watches every break in the water.
While drifting along in his boat, it may happen that,
the wind being high, he drifts too fast to fish thoroughly
and properly over the ground. To obviate this a stone
or an anchor is cast over and allowed to drag along the
bottom, so as to check the way of the boat, and to give
time to the angler to fish. A good boatman and nets-
man is here a great desideratum, and much of the chance
of sport depends upon him. The great fault of most
boatmen is that they go too quickly over the casts; and
it requires a man with a knowledge of the lake, as well
as experience in managing the boat, so to conduct mat-
ters that the angler has the best chance of sport. When
roving to his ground, or from point to point, the angler
should always put out the spinning minnow, and thus
he may take one or two of the best fish. As fish do not
always lie in the same places, wind and weather have to
be sedulously consulted. In fishing from the shore the
angler seldom gets the best sport, and often has to wade
to reach fishable water, while the best casts are often
beyond his reach; and therefore, whenever a boat can
be employed, it is to be preferred for lakes.
Salmon Fishing.
The salmon is the noblest and strongest fish on which
the angler essays his art, and fish from 40 to 50 lb in
weight, and sometimes of even more, are occasionally
taken by the rod and line; though for the ordinary pur-
poses of sport, fish from 7 or 8 lb up to 20 are far more
generally taken. When a salmon in good condition is
first hooked he makes a strong and violent resistance,
dashing through the water frequently for a distance of
60 or 70 yards or more at a time, and compelling the
angler to let so much line off the reel; springing out of
the water, often to a height of several feet, several
times during the struggle; and finding that force is un-
availing to break the line or withdraw the hook, he will
often have recourse to cunning, and cut the line or rub
the hook out of his nose against some rock; or, hiding
himself at the bottom behind big stones and boulders,
he will sulk and remain immovable for a long time.
Occasionally he will run up or down rapids or falls in
his terror and rage. To control all these vagaries, to
combat his cunning, the angler, with his bending rod
and practised skill, lets him take out line when his
struggles are dangerous, cautiously winding it back
again when he is able to do so safely, and thus keeping
a certain strain upon the fish he gradually tires him out
and wears his strength down, and at last, when unable
to resist any longer, he is led in towards the shore,
where upon some convenient rock or strand the attend-
A N G
335
ant gaffsman stands or crouches, with a sharp-pointed
steel hook attached to a short ashen staff called a gaff,
waiting his opportunity. As a salmon is led past or
near him, almost on the surface of the water, the hook
is extended beyond the fish, the gaffsman makes a short
sharp stroke with it, and digging the hook into the side
of the salmon, with a sudden and instantaneous pull
drags it out of the water to the land; a rap on the skull
from a stick or stone terminates the poor salmon’s life,
and henceforth he becomes mere provender. The most
favorite plan of fishing for salmon is with the fly,
though in many places they will also take both worm
and minnow freely, and are thus fished for. The
salmon-fly is a most wonderful conglomeration of feath-
ers, silks, and tinsels, and oftentimes is as brilliant as
the most glittering humming-bird.
Sea-Trout Fishing.
Next to the salmon ranks in value for sport the sea-
trout. Of these there are two kinds: 1st, The sal-
mon trout; and 2d, The bull or grey trout. The for-
mer is, much the better fish for sport and for the
table, the latter being coarser ſor the table and rather
shy of the angler's lures. The salmon-trout usu-
ally average below 4 lb each, perhaps from 1 to 2 ft)
being the prevailing size, though now and then much
larger fish are taken. The bull-trout often runs up to a
far greater size, and fish above 20, and even up to 3o Tb,
are not very uncommon. In lakes they frequently abound
in profusion, and a hundredweight of them, and some-
times more, are or have been often taken in one day.
The tackle, of course, is lighter than that used for sal-
mom, and somewhat heavier than is used for the common
trout. The flies are also of a size between those used
for the other two. At times sea-trout rise very badly,
and the angler will get a number of rises, but succeed
only in hooking a very few fish; but when the fish are
taking well, few branches of the sport show better
amusement than a day's sea-trout fishing. They also,
unlike the salmon, take a spinning bait well while still
in the salt water.
7%e Chaab.
The chub is perhaps the least valuable fresh-water fish
for table purposes. It is a fair sporting fish, however.
In addition to his taking all kinds of baits in bottom
fishing, he will take both natural and artificial insects on
the surface boldly, and many are taken by dressing a
cockchafer, humble bee, or small frog, or by casting
imitations of the same, artificially prepared, under the
boughs where the chub lies waiting.
7%e Aºe/.
The eel is scarcely an angler's fish, but it is often
taken in angling, and it is a most excellent and luscious
table fish. It takes various baits, as worms, small dead
fish, which are the best for it, and takes them better
when they are still than when moving. Thus, night-
lines are the best way of capturing the eel. Occa-
sionally float tackle is used for the purpose, when the
roughest tackle, with a float-hook and worm, suffices.
Sniggling for eels is an amusing way of taking them.
A stout needle, lashed to a long string, is concealed in
a worm ; the point of the needle is stuck lightly in the
end of a long stick. This is then introduced into the
mouth of a hole in which an eel is supposed to shelter.
As soon as the eel sees it he secures it, pulls it from the
'stick, and devours it. The string is lashed to the
middle of the needle, so that when the angler pulls at
it the needle turns crosswise in his gullet. The angler
pulls with a steady strain at the line, until at last the
eel, unable to resist longer, comes out and is caught.
*Clotting for eels, by means of a big bunch of worms
strung upon worsted and gathered up into festoons, is
another way. The eels entangle their teeth in the
worsted, and are liſted out and dropped into a pail. A
hundred weight in a night has been caught in this way.
Hooks any size that is suitable—from 4 to 8.
7%e Gudgeone.
The gudgeon frequently forms the angler's first
quarry. No ground-bait is required to attract them,
but the bottom being disturbed and harrowed by a
heavy iron rake, the fish flock to the spot to search for
food in the débris, and they will continue to bite for
some time, when another rake renews their avidity. A
light cork float and a small IO or I I hook, with a frag-
ment of red worm, is all that is needed ; for so eager
are the little fellows, that they pull the float down with
a dash, so that the angler rarely misses his prey. A
dish of gudgeons, gently fried, crisp and brown, is by
no means to be despised.
The P.A.e.
The various methods for fishing for pike —spinning,
live baiting, paternostering, the live and dead gorge,
being the principal, though the pike will take a fly at
times made of peacock feathers and other showy mat-
ters. Pike grow to a very large size, where the water
is favorable even to 7o or 8o ſh.
7%e Aerc/.
The perch has also been partially dealt with, pater-
nostering being about the best way of taking perch,
though at times a float and worm will take better still,
and even the ledger will take them. In big rivers perch
in the winter get into the eddies and stiller waters, out
of the floods, in shoals, and here, as the water begins to
clear, they may be taken to the number of several
dozen ; often two or three at a time. They are excellent
fish for the table. They run up to 4 lb. weight, though
heavier ones are sometimes taken. Hooks, 4, 5, and 6.
The simplest form of trout-fly is the hackle, or
palmer-fly. Having whipped the gut on to the hook
with strong but fine silk, finishing at the bend of the
hook, take two or three strands from the peacock's tail,
known as harls, lay the ends together at the bend of the
hook and whip them on with the silk, wind the silk on
two-thirds up the hook, and then tie on the tip of a
cock’s hackle. Should it be desired, however, to run
the hackle all over the body, it may be tied on along
with the peacock’s harls. *
The method of tying a salmon-fly is rather more
complicated than that used in the trout-fly. Take a
short piece of twisted gut or gimp, double it and lash it
on so as to leave an eye at the head, then take a short
fragment of tinsel or twist, and tie it on as shown;
wind this round the bend of the hook two or three
times; over this tie on the tail, composed of fibres or a
topping, &c., then tie in the silk or wool, or whatever
the body is made with, also the tinsel, if needed; hav-
ing tied it in, carry the silk on until the spot where the
hackle is to commence is reached, then tie that in, and
work the silk on to the shoulder. Then wind on the
silk or wool body evenly until it reaches the shoulder,
when fasten it off; next, wind on the tinsel in even spi-
rals, and fasten that off in the same way, next, the
hackle, which may be stripped on one side, if it be
required, thinly, or prepared by pressing the fibres
together, so as to make them point as far as possible in
the same direction. Then having carefully left a bit of
the hook for the purpose, tie on the wing, which is com-
posed of fibres or strips of feathers laid together. This
is a nice operation, and requires a delicate but firm
hand. After this, if it be needed, a head can be wound
on over the stump of the wing, and for that purpose a
/
336
A N G
fragment of chenille is the best substance. A few turns
of the silk fixes the loop and finishes off, and a touch of
varnish secures it.
ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. See ENGLISH
LITERATURE.
ANGLO-SAXONS. See ENGLAND.
ANGOLA, a name that is employed to designate at
least three different, although partly coincident, portions
of the west coast of Africa. The Portuguese consider
that the entire country lying between the Zaire or
Congo, and stretching for a considerable but somewhat
indefinite distance into the interior, ought to be called
Angola; the name is by most British geographers and
travellers applied to that part of the preceding territory
which lies between 8° 20' and 9° 30' S., and which
nearly corresponds to the Portuguese sub-government
of Angola. The natives, whose practice seems to har-
monise with the third of these applications of the word,
also call the country Dongo. With the exception of a
flat, sandy, barren plain, that extends from the coast
for a considerable distance inland, Angola, using the
word in its most restricted sense, is mountainous and
well-watered. Its chief rivers are the Coanza, which
bounds it on the north, the Danda, which bounds it on
the south, and the Benga. Most of the country is very
fertile, producing palms, citrons, oranges, lemons, ba-
nanas, tamarinds, mangroves, and sugar canes in great
abundance. Nor is the fauna less extensive; all the
animals common in inter-tropical Africa are found in
Angola, as well as some peculiar to the district; while
the sheep, the cow, and the horse have been imported
from Europe. Of its mineral productions, lead, sul-
phur, petroleum, and iron are plentiful; and gold, silver,
and copper are said to exist in the interior. Gum, wax,
and ivory, are now the most important articles of trade;
but formerly the principal traffic was in slaves. The
heat is usually moderate, and the climate comparatively
mild and salubrious. The population of Angola is
estimated at about 250,000, of whom about 2000 are
Europeans. Angola was discovered by the Portuguese
under Diego Cam in 1484; and since that time, with
the exception of a short period, from 1640 to 1648, dur-
ing which the Dutch attempted to expel them, they
have maintained their possession of the country undis-
turbed by other European powers.
ANGORA, or ENGURI, a city of Turkey in Asia,
capital of the vilayet of the same name, about 220 miles
E.S.E. of Constantinople. Angora has long been cele-
brated for its goats, whose soft silky hair, about 8 inches
long, forms the chief article of export from the town.
The fineness of the hair may perhaps be ascribed to
some peculiarity in the atmosphere, for it is remarkable
that the cats, dogs, and other animals of the country
are to a certain extent affected in the same way as the
goats, and that they all lose much of their distinctive
beauty when taken from their native districts. The
other exports are goat and cat skins, gum, wax, honey,
yellow berries, and madder root, while the import of
British and other European goods is considerable, al-
though the trade is almost entirely in the hands of Armen-
ians. The population is variously estimated at from
20,000 to 60,000. Angora was the seat of one of the
earliest Christian churches, founded probably by the
apostle Paul, and councils were held in the town in 314
and 358 A.D.
ANGORNO, or NCORNU, a town of Bornu, in Cen-
tral Africa, near the south-west shore of Lake Chad.
It is said to have a population of 30,000, which is much
increased during the markets, when a large traffic is car-
ried on in cotton, amber, metals, corals, and slaves.
ANGOSTURA, also called CIUDAD BOLIVAR, and
SAN TOMAS DE LA NUEVA GUAYANA, a town of Vene-
zuela, capital of the province of Guyana, situated on the
right bank of the Orinoco, about 240 miles from its
mouth. The Orinoco is navigable for vessels of 300.
tons, and a considerable trade is carried on in cocoa,
sugar, cotton, jerked meat, and hides, as well as in the
bark that takes its name from the city. In 1819 a con-
gress met at Angostura, which resulted in the union of
Venezuela and New Granada into one government under
the name of the republic of Colombia; and in the same
year the town began to be called Ciudad Bolivar, in
honor of Simon Bolivar, who freed the country from the
yoke of Spain, Population about 8ooo. "
ANGOULEME, a city of France, capital of the
department of Charente, and formerly of the province
of Angoumois, situated on the left bank of the Cha-
rente, upon an elevated plateau, 221 feet above the river.
Angoulême is an important manufacturing city; its
paper-mills produce large quantities of paper that is
highly esteemed throughout France; and there are also
distilleries, potteries, a cannon foundry, a powder mill,
linen and serge factories, as well as a considerable trade
in grain, fruit, and salt. Population 25,928.
ANGOULEME, CHARLES DE VALOIs, DUKE OF,
the natural son of Charles IX. of France and Marie
Touchet, was born 28th April 1573, at the castle of
Fayet in Dauphiné. His father, dying in the following
year, commended him to the care and favor of his
brother and successor, Henri III., who faithfully ful-
filled the charge. His mother married François de Bal-
zac, marquis d’Entragues, and one of her daughters,
Henrietta, marchioness of Verneuil, afterwards became
the mistress of Henry IV. Charles of Valois was care-
fully educated, and was destined for the order of Malta.
At the early age of sixteen he attained one of the
highest dignities of the order, being made grand prior
of France. Shortly after he came into possession of
large estates left by Catherine de Medicis, from one of
which lie took his title of count of Auvergne. In 1591
he obtained a dispensation from the vows of the order
of Malta, and married Charlotte, daughter of Henri,
marshal d’Amville, afterwards duke of Montmorenci.
In 1589 Henri III. was assassinated, but on his death-
bed he commended Charles to the good-will of his suc-
cessor Henri IV. By that monarch he was made colonel
of horse, and in that capacity served in the campaigns
during the early part of the reign. But the connection
between the king and the marchioness of Verneuil
appears to have been very displeasing to Auvergne, and
in 1601 he engaged in the conspiracy formed by the
dukes of Savoy, Biron, and Bouillon, one of the objects
of which was to force Henri to repudiate his wife and
marry the marchioness. The conspiracy was discovered;
Biron and Auvergne were arrested, and Biron was exe-
cuted. Auvergne after a few months' imprisonment was
released, chiefly through the influence of his half-sister,
his aunt, the duchess d’Angoulême, and his father-in-
law. He then entered into fresh intrigues with the
court of Spain, acting in concert with the marchioness
of Verneuil and her father d’Entragues. In 1604
d’Entragues and he were arrested and condemned to
death ; at the same time the marchioness was condemned
to perpetual imprisonment in a convent. She easily
obtained pardon, and the sentence of death against
the other two was commuted into perpetual imprison-
ment. Auvergne remained in Bastile for eleven years,
from 1605 to 1616. In 1606 a decree of Parliament,
obtained by Marguerite de Valois, deprived him of
nearly all of his possessions, including Auvergne, though
he still retained the title. In 1616 he was released,
was restored to his rank of colonel-general of horse, and
despatched against one of the disaffected nobles, the
duke of Longueville, who had taken Peronne. Next
A N G – A N I
337
year he commanded the forces collected in the Isle de
France, and obtained some successes. In 1619 he
received by bequest, ratified in 162O by royal grant, the
duchy of Angoulême. Soon after he was engaged on
an important embassy to Germany, the result of which
was the treaty of Ulm, signed July 162o. In 1627 he
commanded the large forces assembled at the siege of
La Rochelle; and some years after, in 1635, during the
Thirty Years' War, he was general of the French army
in Lorraine. In 1636 he was made lieutenant-general of
the army. He appears to have retired from public life
shortly after the death of Richelieu in 1643. His first
wife died in 1636, and in 1644 he married Françoise de
Nargonne, daughter of Charles, baron of Mareuil. She
had no children, and survived her husband many years.
Angoulême himself died in 1650, in his seventy-sixth year.
ANGOUMOIS, an old province of France, nearly
corresponding to the department of Charente. Its
capital was Angoulême.
ANGRA, a city on the south coast of Terceira, one
of the Azores, the capital of the island and one of the
three civil districts into which the Azores are divided,
as well as the residence of the military governor of the
whole group, and of the Roman Catholic bishops.
Population, II,281.
ANGRI, a town of Italy, in the province of Salerno,
situated 11% miles N.W. of the town of Salerno, in a
country which produces large quantities of grapes,
cotton, and tobacco. Narses defeated Teias, the last
king of the Goths, not far from Angri in 553 A.D.
Population, IO,332.
ANGUIER, FRANCOIS (born 1604, died 1669), and
MICHAEL (born 1612, died 1686), two brothers, natives
of Normandy, were distinguished sculptors in the time
of Louis XIV. A marble group of the Mativity in the
church of Val de Grâce, was reckoned his masterpiece.
ANGUILLA, or SNAKE ISLAND, a small British
West Indian island, one of the Lesser Antilles, situ-
ated 8 miles north of the island of St. Martin.
ANG USSOLA, or ANGOSCIOLA, SOPHONISBA, one
of the best portrait painters of the latter half of the
I6th century, was born at Cremona in 1533, and died at
Genoa in 1620. -
ANHALT, a duchy of Germany, comprising an area
of about 896 square miles. Except for a short distance
on the west, and for a longer distance on the north-east,
where it is bounded respectively by Brunswick and the
Prussian province of Brandenburg, Anhalt is entirely
surrounded by Prussian Saxony, which also intersects
it, breaking it up into two large and several small
portions. The Hartz mountains extend into the west-
ern of the large divisions, but the rest of the country
is very flat, and even in the mountainous part no eleva-
tions rise to any great height. The chief manufactures
of Anhalt are linen, cotton, and woollen goods, metallic
and earthen wares, beer, brandy, and sugar; but the
principal export trade is in the raw products. Inter-
nally, Anhalt is governed by a constitutional and
hereditary monarchy, the legislative body being a diet
of 36 members, of whom IO represent the nobility; I4,
the principal towns; Io, the rural districts; and 2 are
nominated by the duke, who has the entire executive
power in his own hands; while, as a member of the
German empire, the duchy has one vote in the Bundes-
rath, or Federal Council, and two in the Reichstag.
Anhalt contained 203,354 inhabitants in 1871, most of
whom are Protestants. Its capital is Dessau, and the
other chief towns are Bernburg, Köthen, and Zerbst.
Railways connect these towns with one another, and
*also with Berlin and the principal cities of Germany.
Leopold I., of Anhalt Dessau, was one of the most
distinguished soldiers of his time.
ANICHINI, LUIGI, an engraver of seals and Inedals,
a native of Ferrara, lived at Venice about 1550. Michek
Angelo pronounced his “Interview of Alexander the
Great with the high-priest at Jerusalem,” “the perfec-
tion of the art.” His medals of Henry II. of France
and Pope Paul III. are greatly valued.
ANIELLO, TOMMASO. See MASANIELLO.
ANILINE, or PHENYLAMINE, is one of the very
numerous products of the distillation of coal tar. The
substance has been known to chemists since the year
1826, when M. Unverdorben, by the destructive distilla-
tion of indigo, produced a liquid of an oily consistence,
which he termed crystal/ine. . In the year 1835, Runge,
a German chemist, isolated from the oil of coal tar a
substance which, having the property of producing a
beautiful blue color on treatment with chloride of
lime, he named Ayaſzoł. In 1840, another investigator
showed that by treating indigo with caustic potash it
yields an oil, and he gave to his product the name
Azzi/ine, from the specific name of one of the indigo
yielding plants, Zaza'igofera an iſ. About the same
time it was discovered that on treating nitrobenzol with
a reducing agent, an organic base is formed, to which
the observer of this reaction gave the name benzzidam.
Professor Hofmann, while a student in the laboratory
of Baron Liebig, investigated these variously prepared
substances, and found them to be identical in composi-
tion and action, and thenceforth they took their place
as one body, under the name Aztilize or Pheny/azmine.
Pure aniline is a basic substance of an oily consistence,
colorless, boiling at a temperature of 182°C. Dropped
on paper aniline produces a greasy stain, which, owing
to its volatilising at an ordinary atmospheric tempera-
ture, quickly disappears. On exposure to air it absorbs
oxygen rapidly, and becomes a deep brown color; and
it ignites readily, burning with a large Smoky flame. It
is possessed of a somewhat pleasant vinous odor, and
a burning aromatic taste. It is a highly acrid poison,
and Dr. Letheby has pointed out that the poisonous
action of nitrobenzol is due to a change of that sub-
stance into aniline taking place within the stomach.
At the present time every color, and all tints and
shades of colors, are produced from aniline; and,
while the processes employed and the combinations
formed are very numerous, the names under which the
dye-stuffs are sold must be said to be endless.
One of the products of aniline manufacture is anti-
pyrene, a valuable medicine for reducing fevers and
exercising a depressing influence on the circulation, but,
in the hands of unskilled persons, a dangerous º:
The greater proportion of aniline dyes manufactured:
are now produced directly or indirectly from another
basic body, termed rosaniline. About the time of the
French-Austrian war in 1859, a second coal-tar dye
was introduced into commerce, which became popularly
known as aniline red or Magenta, from the battle
fought at the period of its introduction.
Aniline colors are employed in the industrial arts.
for numerous other purposes besides their great use as:
dyeing materials. Violet ink and other fancy colored
inks are prepared from them. They are used by paper
manufacturers for tinting pulps, and for the superficial
staining of finished paper. They are likewise used by
paper stainers in the printing of wall papers, in the
preparation of lithographic inks, and to some extent for
water colors. They are largely employed as coloring
materials in perfumery, fancy soaps, and cosmetics,
besides having many other minor applications.
ANIMALS, CLASSIFICATION OF. The object of clas-
sification is to bring together those things which are
like, and to separate those which are unlike. Each
Science has its own classification of the objects with which
A 22
338
A N I
it deals, the kinds of likeness and unlikeness according to
which these objects are grouped varying in relation to
the special qualities or properties of matter with which
the science is concerned. Thus, the physicist classifies
bodies according to their mechanical, electrical, thermic,
•or other physical properties; the chemist, regards their
composition: while the zoologist and the botanist group
them according to their likeness and unlikeness of struc-
ture, function, and distribution.
As soon as the labors of anatomists had extended over
a sufficiently great variety of animals, it was found that
they could be grouped into separate assemblages, the
members of each of which, while varying more or less
in minor respects, had certain structural features in
common, and these common morphological characters
became the definition of the group thus formed. The
smallest group thus constituted is a MORPHOLOGICAL
SPECIES. A certain number of species having charac-
ters in common, by which they resemble one another
and differ from all other species, constitute a GENUS; a
group of genera, similarly associated, constitutes a FAM-
ILY; a group of families, an ORDER; a group of orders,
a CLASS; a group of classes, a SUBKINGI)OM; while the
latter, agreeing with one another only in the characters
in which all animals agree, and in which they differ
from all plants, make up the ANIMAL KINGDOM.
The formation of a morphological classification is
therefore a logical process, the purpose of which is to
throw the facts of structure into the smallest possible
number of general propositions, which propositions con-
stitute the definitions of the respective groups. A per-
fect classification will fulfil this end, and, in order to
form it, two conditions are necessary: Firstly, we must
have a full knowledge of the adult structure of every
animal, recent and extinct; secondly, we must know all
the modifications of structure through which it has
passed, in order to attain the adult condition, or in
other words, the mode of development of the animal.
For it is the sum of all the structural conditions of an
animal which constitutes the totality of its structure;
and if two animals, similar in their adult state, were un-
like in their development, it is clear that the latter cir-
cumstance would have to be taken into account in
determining their position in a classification.
Linnaeus, living at a time when neither comparative
anatomy nor embryology can be said to have existed,
based his classification of animals upon such broad
resemblances of adult structure and habit as his remark-
able sagacity and wide knowledge enabled him to detect.
Cuvier and his school devoted themselves to the work-
ing out of adult structure, and the Zerozes d’Aztałomie
Compare and the Règne Animal are wonderful embod-
iments of the results of such investigations. But the
Cuvierian system ignores development; and it was
reserved for Von Baer to show the importance of
developmental studies, and to inaugurate the marvellous
series of researches which, in the course of the last fifty
years, have made us acquainted with the manner of
development of every important group of animals.
The splendid researches of Cuvier gave birth to scien-
ſtific palaeontology, and demonstrated that, in some
cases, at any rate, extinct forms of life present charac-
ters intermediate between those of groups which are at
Tresent widely different. The investigations of Agassiz
Tupon fossil fishes tended in the same direction, and
further showed that, in some cases, the older forms pre-
serve, as permanent features, structural characters which
are embryonic and transitory in their living congeners.
TMoreover, Darwin, Owen, and Wallace proved that, in
any great area of geographical distribution, the later
tertiary extinct forms are clearly related to those which
now exist in the area. As Taxonomic investigations
increased in accuracy, and in extent, the careful examina-
tion of large suites of specimens revealed an unexpected
amount of variability in species; and Darwin's investi-
gation of the phenomena presented by animals under
domestication proved that forms, morphologically as
distinct as admitted natural genera, could be produced
by selective breeding from a common stock.
Upon the foundation thus furnished, the doctrine of
Evolution, first scientifically formulated by Lamarck,
has been solidly built up by Darwin; and is now, with
various modifications and qualifications, widely accepted.’
But the acceptance of this doctrine introduced a new
element into Taxonomy. If all existing animals are the
last terms of a long series of developmental stages, rep-
resented by the animals of earlier ages of the earth’s
history, the starting point of which has been a primord-
ial form of the extremest simplicity consistent with
animal life, then every animal has an “ancestral” as
well as what might be termed a “personal” embryology;
and the same considerations which oblige the Taxono-
mist to take account of the latter phenomena, compel
his attention to the former stages of development.
Two animals belong to the same group, when they are
similar in structure, personal development, and ancestral
development, and not otherwise. Hence it follows that
a perfect and final zoological classification cannot be
made until we know all that is important concerning—
I, the adult structure; 2, the personal development; and
3, the ancestral development of animals. It is hardly
necessary to observe that our present knowledge, as
regards, even the first and second heads, is very imper-
fect, while, as respects the third, it is utterly frag-
mentary.
The only germs of animals of which we possess a sat-
isfactory, though still not quite complete, ancestral his-
tory, is the genus Equus, the development of which in
the course of the Tertiary epoch from an Anchitherioid
ancestor, through the form of Hiſparion, appears to
admit of no doubt. And all the facts of geology and
palaeontology not only tend to show that the knowledge
of ancestral development is likely long to remain frag-
mentary, but lead us to doubt, whether even such
fragments as may be vouchsafed to us by the extension
of geological inquiry will ever be sufficiently old, in re-
lation to the whole duration of life on the earth, to give
us positive evidence of the nature of the earliest forms
of animals.
While holding the doctrine of evolution to its fullest
extent, and having no doubt that Taxonomy ought to
be the expression of ancestral development, or
A/ylogeny, as well as embryogeny and adult structure,
and while conceiving that the attempts at founding a
scientific phylogeny, which have been made by Haeckel
and others, are of much interest and importance as
guides to and suggestors of investigation, the present
writer looks upon all such attempts as provisional
hypotheses; and he conceives that, at any rate for the
present, it is a mistake to introduce considerations of
this purely hypothetical kind into classification, which
should be based on verifiable data.
In the case of an existing animal, it is possible to
determine its adult structure and its development, and
therefore to assign its place relatively to Öther animals,
the structure and development of which are also known ;
and, in the case of an extinct animal, it is possible to
ascertain certain facts of its structure, and sometimes
certain facts of its development, which will justify a
more or less positive assignment of its place relatively to
existing animals. So far, Taxonomy is objective, capa-
ble of proof and disproof, and it should leave specula-
tion aside, until speculation has converted itself into
demonstration. " -
A N I
339
In the present rapidly shifting condition of our
knowledge of the facts of animal structure and develop-
ment, however, it is no easy matter to group these facts
into general propositions which shall express neither
more nor less than is contained in the facts; and no one
can be more conscious of the manifold imperfections of
the following attempt at such a classification than the
author of it.
In certain of the lower animals, the substance of the
body is not differentiated into histogenetic elements;
that is, into cells which, by their metamorphoses, give
rise to tissues. In all other animals, on the other hand,
the protoplasmic mass, which constitutes the primitive
body, is converted into a multitude of cells, which be-
.come metamorphosed into the tissues of the body.
For the first of these divisions the old name of
PROTOZOA may be retained; for the second, the title of
METAZOA, recently proposed by Haeckel, may be con-
veniently employed.
ANIME, a resinous exudation from the courbari/
tree, which grows in the West Indies and in South
America. When imported in the natural state it is
infested with vast numbers of insects, and hence the
name. It is of a pale brown color, transparent, brittle,
and in consequence of its agreeable odor is much used
for fumigation and in perfumery. Its specific gravity
varies from I o28 to I -oj4. It melts readily over the
fire, and softens even with the heat of the mouth, but
is insoluble in water. It is dissolved by alcohol, but
not completely, unless the spirit be boiling. It is allied
to copal in its nature and appearance, and is much used
by varnish-makers.
ANIMISM, a term formerly employed in Biology to
denote the theory of which Stahl is the chief expositor;
the theory of the soul (anima) as the vital principle,
cause of the normal phenomena of life, or of the abnor-
mal phenomena of disease. It is now current in the
wider anthropological sense given to it by Dr. E. B.
Tylor, Primitive Culture, as including the genera/
doctrinze of souls and other spiritual beings. This appli-
Cation is not only appropriate, but is even rendered
indispensable by the absence of any other suitable word;
for spiritualism, though occasionally used in a general
sense, has become associated with a particular modern
development of animistic doctrine ; anthropomorphism,
if less objectionable, is also to some degree inadequate;
while the term theology cannot be extended to include
the lower forms of the doctrine of spiritual beings, and
indeed many of its higher developments, except by an
ill-considered departure from ordinary usage, which
raises in many minds a prejudice against the most
reliable results of anthropological inquiry.
An animistic philosophy, explaining the more strange
or striking phenomena of nature by the hypothesis of
spiritual agency, is universally prevalent among Savage
races; and unless the wide-spread animistic beliefs of
Savages are to be regarded as but degenerate or cor-
rupted relics of those possessed by more cultured
peoples, a theory which can scarcely be held to
account for the essential and native appropriateness of
animism as it flourishes among races of low culture,
and its less appropriate and apparently derivative
character as it survives in higher civilisations,—there
seems tenable ground for the inference, that an animis-
tic philosophy must have been that which was earliest
developed among the prehistoric societies of mankind.
In accordance with this view, animism may be described
as the distinctive philosophy of primitive culture. It
is manifestly the outcome and development of that
earliest analogical reasoning, which concludes external
objects to be animated with a life essentially similar to
tour own; it is the expression and application of our
first general theory of natural causes, Ha theory rude
and inadequate, yet marvellously self-consistent and
serviceable; and its history appears primarily to be
that of a dominant and pervading philosophy, applied ,
to explain all the phenomena of nature and life, save
only those ordinary sequences which the uncivilised
man regards as needing no explanation; afterwards,
in the progress of culture, that of a system of thought
always more or less modified and restricted by the
increase of positive knowledge, and surviving only in
greatly refined or greatly enfeebled forms, or only
reviving at intervals of time.
Of the origin of animism perhaps no perfect account
has yet been given. It can hardly be said to be obvious
why, in uncultured races or individuals, there should
arise that invariable tendency to represent natural forces
as conscious and anthropomorphic. There is reason to
believe, however, that the type of all the forms in which
the tendency manifests itself, is to be discovered in the
conception of the human soul. Evidently the notion
of an animating, separable, and surviving soul com-
mends itself as the ready explanation of many familiar
phenomena, and the appropriate instrument of a philoso-
phy which ascribes animation to nature at large ; so that
thus, according to the account given by Dr. Tylor,
primitive animism may be considered to have arisen
simply from the evidence of men's senses, interpreted
by the crude and childlike science of the prehistoric
world. From the sight of life and death it was, he
conceives, naturally inferred that every man has a life,
or vital principle, the departure of which from his body
causes death,<-this idea being confirmed by apparent
temporary departures, such as Swoons and sleep.
From the appearance of men seen in dreams and visions,
it was not less cogently argued that every man has
also a phantom likeness of his body, separable from it
so as to appear to others at any distance, and continu-
ing to exist and appear after the bodily death of its
proper owner. Accordingly, the definition of the soul
in primitive religion would, as in the lower existing re-
ligions it actually does, combine these leading qualities
in the conception of an “apparitional soul,” which is a
thin, unsubstantial, human image, the cause of life and
thought in the individual it animates, capable of quitting
his body for a time or altogether, and so leaving him-
self insensible or dead, and when thus absent from the
body appearing to other persons asleep or awake.
From this conception, then, animism may reasonably
be supposed to have had its origin, especially as other
animistic doctrines exhibit such a distinct affinity and
relationship to this of the apparitional soul, as almost
amounts to a proof of direct derivation from it. . The
hypothesis being correct, it would, for instance, follow
that the lower animals ought to be considered as having
Souls similar to human souls, inasmuch as they have
life, and their phantoms are likewise seen.
The final decay of many forms of animistic belief,
much more readily than the process of their develop-
ment, admits of being traced with the aid of historical
evidence. Indeed, the history of each of the sciences is
a record of the progressive substitution of matter for
spirit and law for spontaneity; and we can still witness
the process of decay in various stages; for while certain
sciences—like astronomy, since the time when Kepler
imagined minds in the planets—have wholly extermi-
nated the animism within their borders, there are others
that have scarcely yet advanced so far—biology, for ex-
ample, which is still familiar with “vital force” and final
causes. Nor is the process commonly a rapid one: in
many cases, as a world of illustration has been adduced
to prove, a declining spiritual conception may persist for
a length of time, refined and modified into a “principle”
34O
A N I — A N N
or “essence,” whose action, though still automatic like
a spirit's, is also regular like that of a natural law.
Among all civilised races, however, animism has long
ceased to be known as the universal philosophy or expla:
nation of nature, and its remaining manifestations are in
a great measure reduced to a secondary or rudimentary
form... Thus animism survives in the imperfect theories
of childhood; it survives also, as we have seen, in the
superstitions of the uneducated; and as, in primitive so-
cieties, language and imagination fostered the develop-
ment of spiritual myth, so animism, embodied in meta-
phor, remains in later civilisations as an important ele-
ment, if not in truth the very substance of imaginative
literature.
Reviewing the conclusions countenanced by what evi-
dence we possess touching the nature and history of the
doctrine of spiritual beings, we find that while it is pos-
sible, and even necessary, to regard animism as a system
of primitive philosophy extending through various forms
into the higher civilisations, yet this view being for the
most part unsupported by direct historical evidence, and
depending largely on the inference of a close analogy
between primitive and savage thought, is in great meas.
ure confessedly theoretical, leaving much room for dis-
pute, both as to the extent to which animistic beliefs
have been transmitted and modified by a regular, con-
tinuous, and uninterrupted process, and as to the condi-
tions which, in special instances, have let to their forma-
tion and development, or disappearance and decay. A
theory, that represents, not only the extravagances of
mythology and superstition, but indeed all that we call
spiritual, nay, all that we name divine, as but the fruit
of a natural anthropomorphic tendency, much more ap-
propriate to savage than to civilised life, is, it is mani-
fest, in thorough inconsistency with many widely ac-
cepted doctrines of philosophy and theology. Regard-
ing the importance of the inquiry there is, however, no
dispute. Spiritual philosophy has influenced every prov-
ince of human thought; and the history of animism,
once clearly traced, would record the development, not
of religion only, but of philosophy, science, and liter-
ature.
ANIMUCCIA, GIOVANNI, musical composer, was
born at Florence in the last years of the 15th century.
At the request of St. Filippo Neri he composed a num-
ber of Zaudi, or hymns of praise, to be sung after ser-
mon, which are noteworthy as furnishing the rudiment-
ary form out of which the Oratorio was developed.
ANIO, or ANIEN, the modern Zezeronze, a river of
Italy which rises in the Apennines, and, flowing first
N.W. and then S. W., joins the Tiber a little above
Rome. See AQUEDUCT and Tivol.I.
ANISE, Pimpinella Amisum, is an umbelliferous
plant found in Egypt and the Levant, and cultivated on
the Continent of Europe. It is used medicinally as an
agreeable aromatic. The officinal part of the plant is
the fruit, which consists of two united carpels, called a
Cremocarp. It is known by the name of aniseed, and
has a strong aromatic taste and a powerful odor. By
distillation the fruit yields a volatile, oily matter known
as oil of anise. It is used as a carminative, and is also
employed in the manufacture of liqueurs.
ANJAR, a fortified town of Hindustán, and the capi-
tal of a district of the same name in the native state of
Cutch.
ANJENGO, once a British factory and fortress, now
a small sea-port town of India, in Travancore, nearly
encircled by a deep and broad river, at the mouth of
which it is situated.
ANJER, a sea-port town of the Dutch East Indian
island of Java, situated on the Strait of Sunda, 18 miles
W. of Batavia.
ANJOU, one of the thirty-six ancient provinces of
France, approximately equivalent to the modern depart-
ment of Maine and Loire. It was, as Mr. Freeman has
remarked, altogether lacking in geographical individual-
ity, and owed its somewhat prominent position in his-
tory to the character and fortune of its counts and
dukes. In 1328 the son of Charles of Valois became
king of France, as Philip VI, and united the duchy of
Anjou to the crown. , King John in 1356 bestowed it on
his son Louis. The Anjou line ended in the unfortu-
nate Réné (noticed below), who was deprived of his
duchy by Louis XI. of France, or, more strictly, in his
brother Charles, who died in 1481. Meanwhile old
Réné’s daughter Margaret, who was made of sterner
stuff than her father, was battling with more than a
woman’s valor for the rights of her son in England.
From this time onward the title of duke of Anjou has
been borne, without implying any territorial sovereignty,
by Charles VIII. of France, by each of the four sons of
Henry II., by the second son of Henry IV., by the two
sons of Louis XIV., by his grandson (Philip V. of
Spain), and by his great-grandson (Louis XV.) Charles,
a nephew of Charles of Naples, obtained the throne of
Hungary in 1308, and was succeeded by his son Louis
the Great, who also became king of Poland; but the
same fatality of failure in the male line also befell this
branch of the house of Anjou.
ANJOU, RENE, DUKE OF, was the second son of
Duke Louis II., and succeeded his brother Duke Louis
III. He was born at Angers in 1408, and brought up
by his uncle, Louis of Bar, who, in 1419, contracted a
marriage between him and Isabella, heiress of Lorraine,
and, in 1430, left him in possession of his duchy. On
the death of Charles of Lorraine in 1431, Réné was
acknowledged as his successor, but he had soon to defend
himself against the claims of the count of Vandemont,
who was supported by Philip of Burgundy. The battle
of Bouligneville decided in favor of the count, and Réné
was taken prisoner to Dijon by Philip. He died at Aix
in 1480, followed by the regret of his subjects, who
afterwards held him in remembrance as “The Good
King Réné.” e tº se
ANKARSTROM, JoHAN JAKOB, the assassin of
Gustavus III., king of Sweden, was descended from an
honorable family, and was born in 1759.
ANKLAM, or ANCLAM, a town of Prussia, in the
province of Pomerania, situated on the Peene, 6 miles
from its mouth in the Kleine Haff, and 47 N.W. of
Stettin, with which it is connected by railway.
ANKOBAR, or ANKOBER, the capital of the king-
dom of Shoa in Abyssinia, on a mountain about 82OO
feet above the level of the sea.
ANNA, ANA, or ANAH, a town of Turkey in Asia,
situated on the right bank of the Euphrates, about 160
miles N.W. of Baghdad.
ANNA CARLOVNA, who for a few months held
the position of regent in Russia, during the minority of
her son Ivan, was the daughter of Catherine, sister of
the Empress Anna Ivanovna, and was born in 1718.
ANNA COMNENA, daughter of the emperor Alex-
ius Comnenus I., was born 1st December 1803. She
was her father's favorite, and was carefully trained in
the study of poetry, science, and Greek philosophy.
With a mind superior to the effeminacy and voluptu-
ousness of the court in which she was educated, she cul-
tivated literature and sought the acquaintance of the
more eminent philosophers of the period. . But wise and
studious as she was, she was also intriguing and ambi-
tious. Excluded by her base conduct from the enjoy-
ments of court, she employed her solitude in writing
the Alexiad — a history, in Greek, of her father's life
and reign.
A N N
34 I
ANNA IVANOVNA, Empress of Russia, daughter
of Ivan, brother of Peter the Great, was born in 1693,
and married in 17 Io to the duke of Courland, who died
the following year. After the death of Peter II., in
1730, the imperial council offered the vacant throne to
Anna on the following conditions:— She was to govern
according to the decisions of the supreme council, and
she was not allowed, without its consent, either to de-
clare war or to conclude peace, to impose new taxes,
to grant any important office of the state, to dispose of
crown lands, to contract a matrimonial alliance, or to
nominate a successor to the throne. She was also not
to punish any noble, or to confiscate any one’s property
without a legal sentence. Anna signed these conditions
without any demur; but after her arrival at Moscow, a
numerous party, jealous of the authority which this con-
stitution, imitated from that of Sweden, gave to the
supreme council, or rather to the families of the Princes
Dolgorouki and Galitzin, of whose members it was
chiefly composed, petitioned the empress to assume the
autocracy of her predecessors. Anna immediately com-
plied with this request, and the framers of the constitu-
tion either were banished to Siberia, or perished on the
scaffold. Russia was governed in the most tyrannical
and oppressive manner during the whole reign of Anna
by her favorite Biren, who was made by her influence
duke of Courland. Anna died in 1740. Her reign is
considered as a period of transition from the old Mus-
covite semi-barbarian manner to the polish, though not
the civilisation, of the West.
ANNA, BALDASARRE D’, a painter of some repute,
who flourished during part of the 16th and 17th cen-
turies. He was born at Venice, probably about 1560,
and is said to have been of Flemish descent. The date
of his death is uncertain, but he seems to have been
alive in 1639.
ANNABERG, a town of Saxony, situated in the
Erzgebirge, about 1830 feet above the level of the sea,
and at a distance of 18 miles south from Chemnitz, with
which it is connected by railway. Population, 13,000.
ANNALS (Annales, from amnus, a year), a concise
historical record in which events are arranged chrono-
logically, year by year.
ANNAMABOE, or ANAMABOE, a British fort and
town on the Gold Coast of Africa, about IO miles
E.N.E. of Cape Coast Castle.
ANNAN, a royal and parliamentary burgh of Scot-
land, in the county of Dumfries, situated on the river
Annan, nearly two miles from the Solway Firth, and
about fifteen from Dumfries.
ANNAN, a river rising near the source of the Tweed,
in the range of hills that lies on the confines of the
contiguous counties of Dumfries, Lanark, Peebles, and
Selkirk.
ANNAPOLIS, the capital of Maryland, situated about
two miles from Chesapeake Bay, and about twenty-five
from Washington, with which it is connected by railway.
The city was settled in 1649, and chartered in 1708.
is handsomely laid out and well built, containing the
State capitol building, the governor's mansion, court-
house, seven churches, two banks, two daily and four
weekly newspapers, and a number of schools and acad-
emies. It is also the location of the United States
Naval School, established in 1845, and of St. John’s
College, founded in 1789, containing, in addition, to
these, a convent and house of the Redemptionists. Glass
works, ship building, and other industries are carried on,
and the trade in canned fruits and oysters is annually
increasing. The population of the city in 1890 is given
aS IO,OOO.
ANNAPOLIS, a town of Nova Scotia, capital of
Annapolis county, and up to 1750 of the whole penin-
It
sula, situated on an arm of the Bay of Fundy, at the
mouth of a river also called Annapolis, 95 miles west of
Halifax. Population, 2,OOO.
ANN ARBOR, a town of the United States, the
capital of Washtenaw county, Michigan, situated upon
Huron river, about forty miles west of Detroit, with
which it is connected by the Michigan Central railway.
It is the seat of the University of Michigan, a liberally-
endowed institution, founded in 1837, and at present
containing three subsidiary colleges devoted to law,
medicine, and literature respectively, with a total at-
tendance, in 1890, of I,500 students. The city main-
tains a school system of unsurpassed excellence, and
contains a number of churches, three banks, six weekly
papers, one tri-weekly and four monthly periodicals, a
number of hotels, and public halls with a capacity of
7,000, with other advantages and improvements. The
manufacturing industries embrace pianos, organs, car-
riages, lumber and lumber products, iron hollow ware,
notions, and other lines, employing large investments of
capital and many operatives. Gas and electric lights
are successfully utilized, facilities for communication
with all parts of the city are available, and the depart-
ments of fire, police, etc., are ample. Population in
1890, 9,509.
ANNATES. As early as the 6th century it began to
be customary for those who were ordained to ecclesias-
tical offices to pay a fee or tax to the ordaining authori-
ties; and this tax at length amounted to a half or the
whole of a year's income. This tax was called annates,
and was paid to various superiors.
Ağ. Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, was
born on the 6th of February 1664. She was the second
daughter of James Duke of York, afterwards James II.
She was only seven years old when her mother, Anne
Hyde, died, having previously professed adherence to
the Church of Rome, a step which was immediately
imitated by her husband. The duke, however, had to
allow his daughters, the princesses Mary and Anne, to
be brought up as Protestants; and Anne always con-
tinued to be attached, zealously and even bigotedly, to
the Church of England. In her twentieth year she was
married to Prince George, the brother of the King of
Denmark.
On the 8th of March 1702, Anne became queen of
England by the death of William, being then thirty-
eight years of age. Into her short reign there were
crowded events possessing vast importance, both for the
British Empire and for the whole of Europe; and her
name is customarily associated with one of the most
characteristic epochs in the history of English literature.
She was seized with apoplexy, and died on the 1st of
August 1714. Jacobite schemes were not ready for
execution ; and, by the prompt activity of a few patriotic
statesmen, the accession of George I. was immediately
and peaceably secured.
ANNEALING is the process of removing the brittle-
ness peculiar to glass vessels and metal castings imme-
diately after manufacture. Newly-blown glass is so
fragile as to be altogether unfit for use; and the com-
mon occurrence of the breaking of a lamp-glass on
lighting the lamp, or of a tumbler in pouring in hot
water, shows the want of proper annealing.
The process consists generally in heating the vessels
up to a red or white heat in a close oven, and allowing
them to cool gradually over a space of several hours or
even days.
The large sheets of plate glass, now used for shop
windows require to be very carefully annealed before
being ground and polished, otherwise they would be un-
able to stand the scratching of the surface. Imperfec-
tion in this respect is often revealed by the spreading in
342
A N N
every direction of a crack once begun. Those plates
require as long as a fortnight to complete the annealing;
and smaller articles from six to sixty hours, according to
their thickness and weight.
In the manufacture and working of the various metals,
annealing is frequently employed to reduce the brittle-
ness usually resulting from a rapid or important change
of molecular structure, such as is produced by hammer-
ing, long-continued vibration, rolling, and sudden cool.
ing. The coppersmith who hammers a flat sheet of
copper into a vessel of any description he pleases, must
leave off hammering at intervals, and anneal the piece of
metal to prevent it going to pieces under his blows.
The extreme degree of tenuity to which gold is reduced
by heating, is attainable only by very frequent and care-
ful heating and slow cooling at each stage of the pro-
cesses of forging, rolling and beating.
Wheels and axles of railway carriages, from the con-
stant vibration to which they are subjected, become, in
course of time, dangerously brittle; and they require to
be re-worked and annealed anew to restore the requisite
toughness to the material. So also in the processes of
metal rolling and wire-drawing, frequent annealing is
necessary to allow the cohesive force to produce the
most stable arrangement of the particles. The soft
metals, such as lead, tin, and zinc, are annealed by
immersion in water, which is made to boil and then cool
slowly. Sudden changes of temperature have the effect,
almost invariably, of rendering metals brittle. And, as
sudden cooling is required to give to steel its peculiar
and invaluable hardness, so unfortunately it renders it at
the same time brittle as unannealed glass, from the unnat-
ural strain which the inner substance of the metal
possesses. Annealing must, therefore, be employed to
reduce this molecular strain, and to give the steel a
workable flexibility. This is done by raising it to a red
heat within a close vessel, and then allowing it gradually
to cool. Heating in an open fire is very injudicious,
because the carbon which enters the steel as an element
combines with the oxygen of the air to the detriment of
the quality of the steel. Usually steel goods are heated
in an iron oven with charcoal powder, or placed in the
heart of hot cinders, so as to exclude all air and oxy-
gen. Large castings, such as are used in the manufac-
ture of cannon, are kept covered with hot cinders and
allowed to cool down sometimes over, a space of about
three months.
Annealing may be said to be the inverse process of
tempering, which is the fixing of the molecular condi-
tion of steel by more or less sudden cooling from a par-
ticular temperature.
ANNECY, a town of France, in the department of
Haute Savoie, situated at the foot of the lake of Annecy,
22 miles south of Geneva. Population, 17,500.
ANNELIDA, a class of the sub-kingdom Annulosa,
the title being derived from Lamarck's term Annélides
(Annellus, a little ring), given to Cuvier’s red-blooded
worms. The latter was included by Linnaeus under his
Vermes, along with intestinal worms, molluscs, zoo-
phytes, and sponges. The labors of Pallas, Baster,
Otho. Fabricius, and especially O. F. Müller, enabled
Gmelin, in the 13th edition of the Systema Aſatura of
the great Swede, to make some improvements and many
additions. Cuvier ranged the Annelida under his Artic-
ulata, giving them the chief position on account of their
red blood; but they are now generally classified as a
separate type below the latter. It would be out of place
to enumerate all the advances that have occurred since
Cuvier’s time, but among those whose names stand
prominently forward in this respect are Lamarck, De
Blainville, Bosc, Audouin, Milne-Edwards, Dugès,
Moquin-Tandon, and De Quatrefages in France; Van
passed by any invertebrate class.
Beneden, Morren, and D'Udekem in Belgium; Grui.
thuisen, Oken, H. Rathke, Grube, Max Schultze, Hoff.
meister, Hering, Kölliker, Schmarda, Keferstein, Ehlers,
and Ratzel in Germany; Claparède in Switzerland;
Malmgren, Metschnikoff, and Kowalevsky in Russia;
Sars in Norway; Kinberg and Lovén in Sweden; Delle
Chiaje in Italy; Stimpson, Leidy, A. Agassiz, and Ver-
rill in North America; and Montagu, Dalyell, G. John-
ston, J. R. Johnson, Williams, Huxley, Baird, and Ray
Lankester in England.
The Annelida may be described as bilaterally symmet-
rical animals, with flattened or cylindrical bodies, com-
posed of rings, or without such. The locomotive ap-
pendages (generally furnished with bristles) are not
articulated. Nervous system consisting of a cephalic
ganglion or pair of ganglia, connected on each side of
the Oesophagus with a chain of ganglia running along
the ventral aspect. Mouth ventral; alimentary canal
with an anus. Circulatory system with distinct vessels.
The majority are small animals, but some reach the
length of 6 feet and upwards, and are as thick as a
finger.
In regard to beauty of form and color, complex struc-
ture and wonderful habits the Polychaeta are not sur-
The splendid bristles
of the Aphroditidae, constantly glistening with all the
hues of a permanent rainbow, the brilliant tints of the
Phyllodocidae, Hesionidae and Nereidae, and the gorgeous
branchial plumes of the Terebellidae, Sabellidae, and
Serpulidae, can only be compared with the most beauti-
ful types of butterflies and birds. -
The class Annelida has been divided into the sections
Branchiafa and Abrazachiata, the former comprehending
the Polychaeta, the latter the other groups; but this
does not always hold good, since many Polychaeta have
no branchise. The latter, again, have been separated
into the Dorisbranchs and Cephalobranchs, the former
corresponding to the Maricola, Errantia, or Nereidae of
others, the latter to the Tubicola or Sedentaria. Grube's
divisions, Rapacia and Limivora, are based on the
nature of their food. In the present state of the de-
partment it will suffice to indicate the following families
(after Malmgren) under which the Annelida Polychaeta
have been ranged, and to refer for further information
to the Annéſides of De Quatrefages, the Familieze of
Grube, the Chatopoda of Ehlers, the A72724/ides Chéto-
zodes of Claparède, the British Museum Catalogue by
Johnston and Baird, and the various works of Kinberg
and . Malmgren : — EUPHROSYNIDAE, AMPHINOMIDAE,
APHRODITIDAE, POLYNOIDAE, ACCETIDAE, SIGALIONIDAE,
NEPHTHYDIDAE, PHYLLODOCIDAE, HESIONIDAE, ALCIO-
PIDAE, TOMOPTERIDAE (provisionally), SYLLIDAE,
NEREIDAE, STAUROCEPHALIDAE, LUMBRINCONEREIDAE,
EUNICIDAE, ONUPHIDIDAE, GONIADIDAE, GLYCERIDAE,
ARICIIDAE, OPHELIIDAE, SCALIBREGMIDAE, TELETHU-
SIDAE, SPHAERODORIDAE, CHLORAEMIDAE, STERNASPIDAE,
CH.ETOPTERIDAE, SPIONIDAE, CIRRATULIDAE, CAPITEL-
LIDAE, MALDANIDAE, AMMOCHARIDAE, HERMELLIDAE,
AMPHICTENIDAE, AMPHARETIDAE, TEREBELLIDAE,
SABELLIDAE, ERIOGRAPHIDAE, and SERPULIDAE.
The A. OLIGOCHAETA are annelids without tentacles,
cirri, or specialised branchial processes. Bristles, variº
ously grouped, from two to eight and upwards in each
transverse series. They are hermaphrodite, and the
young undergo no metamorphosis. is g
The body is enveloped in a delicate cuticle resembling
that of the Polychaeta, and pierced by many pores.
Underneath is a cellulo-granular hypoderm, with numer-
ous glands. The setae are simple, bifid, or hair-like,
The muscular layers are an external circular, and an
internal longitudinal, marked by the bristle sacs. The
foregoing tissues enclose a perivisceral space, with the
A N N
343
usual septa and the characteristic corpuscles in a coagu-
lable lymph, which performs important functions in the
economy.
ANNESLEY, ARTHUR. See ANGLESEA, Earl of
ANNI, or ANI, the ancient Abnicum, a ruined city
of Turkey in Asia, in Armenia, situated about 25 miles
E.S.E. of Kars, in a rocky ravine, past which the Arpa-
Chai, a tributary of the Aras or Araxes, flows. Anni
was the capital of the Pakradian or Bagratian dynasty
of Armenian kings, and under their rule reached the
height of its greatness.
ANNISTON, a town of Calhoun county, Alabama,
is located at the foot of the Blue Mountains, on the
East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia; Anniston and
Atlantic; and Georgia Pacific railroads. It is the
center , and distributing point for the richest agri-
cultural and mineral territory of Alabama, and is de-
scribed as the “model city of the South.” It contains
three banks, two daily papers, several churches, schools,
hotels, etc., many stores, an opera house, and handsome
public and private edifices. The growth of the city has
been phenomenal and substantial. It is now one of the
leading manufacturing points south of the Ohio river,
its productive industries embracing foundries, nail works,
machine shops, etc. It is lighted by gas and electric
lights, and enjoys other facilities for future growth and
development of unrivaled and exceptional character.
Population, IO,OOO.
ANNA BOM, or ANNABONA, a small island off the
west coast of Africa, 190 miles west of Cape Lopez. Its
length is about four miles, its breadth two; and, rising
in some parts to a height of nearly 3,000 feet above the
sea, it presents a succession of beautiful valleys and steep
mountains, that are covered with rich woods and luxuri-
ant vegetation.
ANNONAY, a town of France, in the department of
Ardèche, irregularly but picturesquely built on several
small hills at the confluence of the rivers Canse and
Deóme, 37 miles south of Lyons. Population, 22,OOO.
ANNUITIES. By an annuity is meant a periodical
payment, made annually, or at more frequent intervals,
either for a fixed term of years, or during the continu-
ance of a given life, or a combination of lives, as will be
more fully explained further on. . In technical language
an annuity is said to be payable for an assigned status,
this being a general word chosen in preference to such
words as “time,” “term,” or “period,” because it
may include more readily either a term of years certain,
or a life or a combination of lives. The magnitude of
the annuity is the sum to be paid (and received) in the
course of each year. Thus, if $100 is to be received
each year by a person, he is said to have an annuity of
$10O. If the payments are made half-yearly, it is
sometimes said that he has “a half-yearly annuity of
$100; ” but to avoid ambiguity, it is more commonly
said he has an annuity of $100, payable by half-yearly
instalments. . The former expression, if clearly under-
stood, is preferable on account of its brevity. So we
may have quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily annuities,
when the annuity is payable by quarterly, monthly,
weekly, or daily instalments. An annuity is considered
as accruing during each instant of the status for which it
is enjoyed, although it is only payable at fixed intervals.
If an annuity is payable for a term of years independ-
ent of any contingency, it is called an annuity certain;
if it is to continue for ever, it is called a perpetuity; and
if in the latter case it is not to commence until after a
term of years, it is called a deferred perpetuity. An
annuity depending on the continuance of an assigned
life or lives, is sometimes called a life annuity; but
more commonly the simple term “annuity” is under-
stood to mean a life annuity, unless the contrary is
stated. A life annuity, to cease in any event after a
certain term of years, is called a temporary annuity.
The holder of an annuity is called an annuitant, and the
person on whose life the annuity depends is called the
In OIIllſlee.
If not otherwise stated, it is always understood that
an annuity is payable yearly, and that the annual pay-
ment (or rent, as it is sometimes called) is A. I. Of late
years, however, it has become customary to consider
the annual payment to be, not A 1, but simply 1, the
reader supplying whatever monetary unit he pleases,
whether pound, dollar, franc, thaler, &c. It is much to
be desired that this course should be followed in any
tables that may be published in the future.
The annuity, it will be observed, is the totahty of the
payments to be made (and received), and is so under-
stood by all writers on the subject; but some have also
used the word to denote an individual payment (or
rent), speaking, for instance, of the first or second
year’s annuity,+ a practice which is calculated to intro-
duce confusion, and should therefore be carefully
avoided.
The theory of annuities certain is a simple application
of algebra to the fundamental idea of compound inter-
est. According to this idea, any sum of money invested,
or put out at interest, is increased at the end of a year
by the addition to it of interest at a certain rate; and
at the end of a second year, the intercst of the first
year, as well as the original sum, is increased in the
same proportion, and so on to the end of the last
year, - the interest being, in technical language, con-
verted into principal yearly. Thus, if the rate of
interest is 5 per cent., $5 improved at interest will
amount at the end of a year to $5.25, or, in conformity
with a previous remark, I will at the end of a year
amount to I.O.5. At the end of a second year this will
be increased in the same ratio, and them amount to
(I.O5)2. In the same way, at the end of a third year, it
will amount to (1.05)3, and so on. *
We pass on now to the consideration of the theory of
life annuities. This is based upon a knowledge of the
rate of mortality among mankind in general, or among
the particular class of persons on whose lives the annui-
ties depend. If a simple mathematical law could be
discovered which the mortality followed, then a mathe-
matical formula could be given for the value of a liſe
annuity, in the same way as we give above the formula.
for the value of an annuity certain. In the early stage
of the science, Demoivre propounded the very simple
law of mortality which bears his name, and which is to
the effect, that out of 86 children born alive I will die
every year until the last dies between the ages of 85 and
86. The mortality, as determined by this law, agreed
sufficiently well at the middle ages of life with the mor-
tality deduced from the best observations of his time;
but, as observations became more exact, the approxi-
mation was found to be not sufficiently close. This was
particularly the case when it was desired to obtain value
of joint life, contingent, or other complicated benefits.
No simple formula, however, has yet been discovered
that will represent the rate of mortality with sufficient
accuracy; and those which satisfy this condition are too
complicated for general use. -
ANNUNCIATOR, an electrical appliance or device
consisting of a gong and indicators, with numbers at-
tached, and so constructed that when a button, opening
or closing the circuit in a distant part of a hotel or pub-
lic building, is touched, the gong is made to ring, and
the indicator is deflected from its normal position, show-
ing, by its number, the point at which the button was
touched. Its principal use is to summon attendants or
to give an alarm. It is also part of a TELEPHONE, (q.v.).
344
A N N — A N S
ANNUNCIATION, the announcement made by the
angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary of the incarnation of
Christ (Luke i. 26–28).
ANODYNE denotes etymologically anything which
relieves pain. The common usage of the word restricts
it, however, to medicines which lessen the sensibility of
the brain or nervous system, without acting directly on
the cause of pain. The term is, however, loosely ap-
plied by medical practitioners to medicines which ease
pain, regardless of the manner of their action, whether
this action be directly upon the nervous system or indi-
rectly upon it by means of their primary action upon the
heart and vascular system. Some of the narcotics and
acro-narcotics are not anodynes in the restricted
Se]].SČ. - &
ANOINTING, the practice of pouring an aromatic
oil upon the head or over the whole body, has been in
use from the earliest times among Oriental nations,
from whom it passed, chiefly in its ceremonial applica-
tion, to the nations of the west. It served three dis-
tinct purposes, being regarded as a means of health and
comfort, as a token of honor, or as a symbol of conse-
cration. Reasoning from analogy, it seems probable
that anointing was practiced for Sanative reasons be-
fore it became a religious ceremonial, but it is impos-
sible to determine this with certainty. Its adoption as
a sanative agent was dictated chiefly by the conditions
of climate in the East. Used as it generally was in
conjunction with the bath, it closed the pores, repressed
undue perspiration, and 'so prevented loss of strength.
ANOKA, the county seat of Anoka county, Minn.,
is handsomely and accessibly situated on the Missis-
sippi river near the mouth of what is known as Rum
river, fifteen miles north of Minneapolis, and in the
center of one of the richest agricultural districts in the
State. The water-power obtainable here is of great
value, not only on account of its efficiency, but because
of its economy, and its employment both for manu-
facturing and other purposes in general. The railway
facilities available embrace the St. Paul, Minneapolis
and Manitoba and the Northern Pacific systems, by
which the city is placed in close communication with
the Pacific coast and the Northwest, also with the
East, affording an outlet in all directions for the grain
and other agricultural products raised in the surround-
ing country, as also for the flour, lumber and other
articles of general manufacture. The city contains a
court-house and the requisite county buildings, sub-
stantially built and well appointed; one bank, three
weekly papers, several hotels, an opera house, and a
large number of stores and other depots of commercial
importance. A thoroughly equipped and liberally sus-
tained school system is provided, and the means of ob-
taining a practical or advanced education are unsur-
Tassed. Nearly every religious denomination is repre-
sented in the city, and many of them have erected
church edifices commodious and handsomely appointed.
The lines of manufacture are both numerous and
yaried, including starch, these works being among the
largest and most productive in the Northwest; lumber,
boots and shoes, flour, meal, etc., sash, doors and
blinds; there are also foundries and machine shops, car-
riage and wagon works, furniture and cigar factories,
brick works, etc. The city is supplied with street rail-
ways and all modern improved facilities for rapid growth
and development, and offers inducements for the in-
vestment of capital, for residence or business purposes,
substantial and invaluable. Population, 6,000.
ANOUKIS, or ANAKA, the name of an Egyptian
goddess, one of the contemplar or companion goddesses
of Khnum or Chnoumis. Her name meant “the
Clasper” or “Embracer.” e
ANQUETIL, LOUIS PIERRE, a French historian,
was born at Paris, 21st Jan. 1723. He was for some
time director of the academy at Rheims, and published
in I757 three volumes of a history of that city. In
I759 he was appointed prior of de la Roe, and soon
after director of Senlis. He died December 6, 1808.
ANQUETIL DU PERRON, ABRAHAM HyA-
CINTHE, an eminent Oriental scholar, brother of the
subject of the preceding article, was born at Paris 7th
Dec. I 731. . He was a distinguished student at the
university of that city, and at first intended to enter the
church; but his taste for Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and
other languages of the East, developed into a passion,
and he discontinued his theological course to devote him-
self entirely to them. His diligent attendance at the
Royal Library, and his ardor in the prosecution of his
favorite studies, attracted the attention of the keeper of
the manuscripts, the Abbé Sallier, whose influence pro-
cured for him a small salary as student of the Oriental
languages. . He had scarcely received this appointment,
when, lighting on some manuscripts in the Zend, he
formed the project of a voyage to India, with the view
of discovering the works of Zoroaster. In 1763 he was
elected an associate of the Academy of the Belles Let-
ters; and began to arrange for the publication of the
materials he had collected during his Eastern travels.
In 1771 he published in three vols. 4to, the Zend-Azesta,
containing collections from the sacred writings of the
Persians, a life of Zoroaster, and fragments of works
ascribed to that sage. The work was a very important
accession to our stores of Oriental literature. He died
at Paris 17th January 1805.
ANSBACH, or ANSPACH, originally ONOLZBACH, a
town of Bavaria, capital of the circle of Middle Fran-
conia, and formerly of the margraviate of Ansbach, sit-
uated on the Rezat, 25 miles S.W. of Nuremberg, and
90 N. of Munich. Population, 13,500.
ANSELM, Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in
IO33, at or near Aosta, in Piedmont. His family was
accounted noble, and was possessed of considerable
property. At the early age of fifteen he desired to de-
vote himself to the service of God by entering a con-
vent. He left home, and with only one attendant
crossed the Alps, and wandered through Burgundy and
France. Attracted by the ſame of his countryman, Lan-
franc, then prior of Bec, he entered Normandy, and,
after spending some time in Avranches, settled at the
monastery of Bec. There, at the age of twenty-seven,
he became a monk; three years later, when Lanfranc
was promoted to the abbacy of Caen, he was elected
prior. This office he held for fifteen years, and then, in
Io'78, on the death of Herluin, the warrior-monk who
had founded the monastery, he was made abbot. Under
his rule Bec became the first seat of learning in Europe,
a result due not more to his intellectual powers than to
the great moral influence of his noble character, and his
loving, kindly discipline. It was during these quiet
years at Bec that Anselm wrote his first philosophical
and religious works, the dialogues on Truth and Free-
will, and the two celebrated treatises, the Monologion.
and Prosſogion. Meanwhile the convent had been
growing in wealth, as well as in reputation, and among
other properties, had acquired considerable possessions
in England. Anselm paid frequent visits to that coun-
try in connection with the convent lands, and by his
mildness of temper and unswerving rectitude, Sc en-
deared himself to the English that he was looked upon
and desired as the natural successor to Lanfranc, then
archbishop of Canterbury. But on the death of that
great man, the ruling sovereign, William Rufus, seized
the possessions and revenues of the see, and made no
new appointment. About four years after, in Io92,
A N S — A N T
345
Anselm crossed to England. He was detained by bus-
iness for nearly four months, and when about to return,
was refused permission by the king. In the following
year William fell ill, and thought his death was at hand.
Eager to make atonement for his sin with regard to the
archbishopric, he nominated Anselm to the vacant see,
and, after a great struggle, compelled him to accept the
pastoral staff of office. After obtaining dispensation
from his duties in Normandy, Anselm was consecrated
in Io93. He demanded of the king that he should give
up all the possessions of the see, accept his spiritual
counsel, and acknowledge Urban as pope, in opposition
to the anti-pope, Clement. He only obtained a partial
consent to the first of these, and the last involved him
in a serious difficulty with the king. It was a rule of the
church that the consecrations of metropolitans could not
be completed without their receiving from the hands of
the Pope the Pallium, or robe. Anselm, accordingly,
insisted that he must proceed to Rome to receive the
pall. But William would not permit this; he had not
acknowledged Urban, and he maintained his right to
prevent any Pope being acknowledged by an English
subject without his permission. A great council of
churchmen and nobles, held to settle the matter,
advised Anselm to submit to the king, but failed to
overcome his mild and patient firmness. The matter
was postponed, and William meanwhile privately sent
messengers to Rome, who acknowledged Urban,
and prevailed upon him to send a legate to the king,
bearing the archiepiscopal pall. A partial reconcilia-
tion was then effected, and the matter of the pall
was compromised. It was not given by the king, but
was laid on the altar at Canterbury, whence Anselm
took it. Little more than a year after, fresh trouble
arose with the king, and Anselm resolved to proceed
to Rome and seek the counsel of his spiritual father.
With great difficulty he obtained a reluctant permission
to leave, and in October 1097 he set out for Rome.
William immediately seized on the revenues of the see,
and retained them to his death. Anselm was received
with high honor by Urban, and at a great council
held at Baria, he was put forward to defend the Latin
doctrine of the Holy Ghost against the objections of
the Greek church. But Urban was too politic to em-
broil himself with the king of England, and Anselm
found that he could obtain no substantial result. He
withdrew from Rome, and spent some time at the little
village of Schlavia. Here he finished his treatise on
the atonement, Cur Deus homo, and then retired to
Lyons. In I IOO William was killed, and Henry, his
successor, at once recalled Anselm. But Henry de-
manded that he should again receive from him in person
investiture in his office of archbishop, thus making the
dignity entirely dependent on the royal authority.
Now, the Papal rule in the matter was plain; all
homage and investiture were strictly prohibited. Anselm
represented this to the king; but Henry would not
relinquish a privilege possessed by his predecessors, and
proposed that the matter should be laid before the Holy
See. The answer of the Pope reaffirmed the law as to
investiture. A second embassy was sent, with a similar
result. Henry, however, remained firm, and at last, in
I 103, Anselm and an envoy from the king set out for
Rome. The Pope, Paschal, reaffirmed strongly the
rule of investiture, and passed sentence of excommunica-
tion against all who had infringed the law, except
Henry. Practically this left matters as they were, and
Anselm, who had received a message forbidding him to
return to England, unless on the kings' terms, withdrew
to Lyons, where he waited to see if Paschal would not
take stronger measures. At last, in I IOS, he resolved
himself to excommunicate Henry. His intention was
made known to the king through his sister, and it
seriously alarmed him, for it was a critical period in his
affairs. A meeting was arranged, and a reconciliation
between them effected. In 11of the king relinquished
his right of investiture, and two years later Anselm died.
ANSELM, of LAON, a famous theologian, was born
of very humble parents at Laon before the middle of
the 11th century. He is said to have studied under St.
Anselm at Bec. About Io?6 he taught at Paris with
great success, but not long afterward removed to his
native place, where his school for theology rapidly be-
came the most famous in Europe. He died 1117.
ANSON, GEORGE, LORD, the ſamous circumnaviga-
tor, was born at Shuckborough Manor, Staffordshire,
on the 22d of April, 1697. In 1757 he became first lord
of the Admiralty, and in 1761 admiral of the fleet, in
which rank he continued, with a very short interval,
until his death; and the last service he performed was
to convey Queen Charlotte to England. He died 6th
June, 1762. No book ever met with a more favorable
reception than Zord Anson’s Voyage Round the World.
ANSONIA, a town of New Haven county, Conn.,
is situated on the Naugatuck river and on the New
York, New Haven and Hartford road, being also the
terminus of the New Haven and Derby railroad. Two
i. are published here, and the city contains two
anks, many stores, public buildings, etc., besides ex-
tensive manufactories of brass and copper goods, clocks
and clock equipments, movements, etc., electrical sup-
plies, flour, lumber and lumber products, foundries and
machine shops, etc. Population (1890), 8,000.
ANSTEY, CHRISTOPHER, poet, was son of the Rev.
Christopher Anstey, rector of Brinkley, Cambridgeshire,
where he was born in 1724–5. His poetical works were
collected in 1808 (2 vols.) by the author's son John, him-
self author of ZThe Pleader’s Guide, in the same vein
with the AVew Bath Guide. He died on 3d August
1805.
KsstruthER-EASTER, a royal and parlia-
mentary burgh of Scotland, in the county of Fife, situ-
ated on the Firth of Forth, 9 miles S. of St. Andrews.
ANSTRUTHER-WESTER, also a royal and parlia-
mentary burgh in Fifeshire, close to Anstruther-Easter,
from which it is separated by a small stream called the
Dreal Burn.
ANT. The insects included under this name are
divisible into two distinct groups, which exhibit impor-
tant differences not only in structure but also in habits.
The familiar ant (Pormica), found in Britain and
Europe generally, belongs to an order of insects known
as the Aymenoptera, of which division the bees, wasps,
hornets, are also well-known examples. But the 7'er-
wzites, or white ants—insects which also live in Social
communities, and which inhabit tropical regions—belong
to a different order, and exhibit differences in several
important respects from the ordinary ants.
The Hymenopterous insects are distinguished by the
possession of four membraneous wings, although in cer-
tain exceptional instances—as among certain members
of the ant community— the wings may be wanting.
The organs of the mouth are partly fitted for mastication
by the development of jaws, and partly for suctorial
purposes by the possession of a proboscis or “antlia.”
The females of this order generally possess a terminal
abdominal appendage, forming a “sting” (aculeus), or
which may be used in the deposition of the eggs, when
it is termed an ovipositor. The Hymenoptera, besides,
undergo a “complete " metamorphosis, - that is, in
their passage from the egg towards adult or mature ex-
istence they appear first as grubs, or Zarza, then are en-
closed in a pupa-case, and finally appear as the perfect,
and generally winged insect, or “imago.” The Hymen-
346
A N T
*
optera exhibit, perhaps, the most remarkable develop-
ment among insects of the faculty of instinct, and con-
stitute excellent examples of so-called “social" insects,
living in communities regulated by definite laws, each
member of the Society bearing a separate and well-defined
part in the organisation and arrangement of the colony
at large.
A brief description of the Termites, or white ants,
may appropriately conclude the present article. These
forms have already been stated to be entirely different
from the familiar and true ants, and to belong to the
Neuropterous insects, whereas the true ants are classed
with the Aymenoptera. They resemble the true ants in
living in highly organised social communities, and in be-
ing endowed with as high and as specialised instincts.
But they differ from them, first, in the fact that they do
not undergo a complete metamorphosis, that is, the
Termite larvae and pupae resemble the perfect insect,
and do not pass through the defined stages of change
and development characteristic of the true ants, bees,
and other insects. The young Termite, in fact, differs
from the ordinary adult only in the non-possession of
eyes, and from the sexual form in the non-development
of wings. The white ants inhabit the tropical regions
of the world generally, but are found in the greatest
abundance in tropical South America. Their nests form
characteristic structures, rising sometimes to a height of
5 or 6 feet, and constructed of earthy particles worked
into a mass as hard and durable asstone. Many species
of Termites are known, but they resemble one another
in essential structure and habits. As indicated by their
popular name, they are of a whitish color and are soft-
bodied. The Termite community consists, as in the
true ants, of males, females, and workers or neuters. In
the true ants the latter are undeveloped females, whereas
in the Termites the sex of the neuters is wholly un-
determinable; and in addition the workers are invariably
divided into two distinct classes: the “soldiers,” with
largely-developed jaws, whose sole office is to defend
the community; and the ordinary “workers,” on whom
devolves the entire labor of the nest. Both classes of
neuters are blind; and from a close examination of the
eggs, the distinctions, not only between males and
females, but also between the soldiers and workers, may
be easily seen. The difference in food, so powerful in
the development of sex and characteristics in other in-
sects, does not therefore operate in the case of the Ter-
mites. The entire white ant colony and species also
exhibit a division into subordinate groups and classes,
the recognition and characters of which are very difficult
of determination. And on this, as well as upon other
grounds, the organisation of the white ant community
is generally to be regarded as of a higher type than that
of the familiar and true ants.
The nest of the Termites is known as a termitarium,
the essential internal arrangement of which consists of
a large number and series of chambers, connected by
galleries and passages. Entrance to the nest is afforded
by concealed roads, and subterranean passages. A large
hillock may be a compound termitarium,..formed by and
inhabited by different species; and certain kinds of Ter-
mites build their nests of smaller size, sometimes of the
consistence of paper. Their structures may be attached
to the branches of trees, or they may be entirely sub-
terranean, or concealed under the bark or within the
stems of trees. The latter species are those which
destroy timber, furniture, and household objects.
ANTAEUS, in Greek Mythology, a giant of Lybia,
the son of Poseidon and Ge (Terra). He compelled all
strangers passing through the country to wrestle with
him, and as, when thrown, he derived fresh strength
from each successive contact with his mother earth, he
proved invincible. With the skulls of those whom he
had slain he built a temple to his father. Hercules, in
combat with him, discovered the source of his strength,
and lifting him up from the earth crushed him to death.
The struggle between Antaeus and Hercules is a favor-
ite subject in ancient sculpture.
ANTALCIDAS, a Spartan politician, who rendered
conspicuous service to his native state at one of the
turning-points in Greek history. He comes first into
notice as ambassador from Sparta to Tiribazus, the
Persian Satrap of Ionia, to sue for peace (393-2 B.C.)
Upon hearing of this the Athenians, becoming anxious
lest they should lose their growing ascendency, also sent
an embassy, at the head of which was Conon, to coun-
teract the efforts of the Spartans. Tiribazus favored
the cause of Sparta, and secretly supplied Antalcidas
with the means of carrying on war against Athens.
Artaxerxes, however, disapproving the conduct of his
satrap, recalled him, and appointed Struthas, whose
sympathies were on the side of Athens, in his place.
But this check to the policy of Antalcidas was only tem-
porary. In a few years circumstances became even more
favorable than at first to a successful negotiation, Tiri-
bazus having been restored to his satrapy, and accord-
ingly, in 388-7, Antalcidas was again sent upon an em-
bassy to Asia. By skillful diplomacy he succeeded in
securing the active assistance of the Persian power
against Athens. Appointed on his return admiral of the
Spartan fleet, he carried on a naval warfare in a man-
ner so vigorous, that the Athenians were glad to accept
peace on the terms Artaxerxes chose to dictate. These
were made known by Tiribazus to a congress of deputies
from Sparta, Argos, and Athens, and formed the basis
of “the peace of Antalcidas,” so called from its being
arranged in accordance with the views of the Spartan
ambassador. Antalcidas seems to have been engaged
in another mission to Persia in 371 ; but the latter inci-
dents of his career are involved in uncertainty. Plu-
tarch states that he committed suicide on the failure of
his last mission, but there seems no proof of this.
ANTALO, a town of Tigré, in Abyssinia, capital of
the district of Enderta, situated in lat. 13° 17' N., and
long. 39°28' E., on a plateau about 8000 feet above the
level of the sea, out of which a steep hill rises on the
north of the town, while beneath it a wide plain stretches
southward. *
ANTARA, or, as he is usually called, ANTAR, an
early Arabian warrior and poet, famous as the author of
one of the poems hung up in the Kaaba at Mecca, and
as the hero of a romance which bears somewhat the
same relation to Arabic literature which the Arthurian
legend bears to our own. He was the son of Shedad-el-
Absi, a warrior in the army of Zoheir, by Zabuba, a
negro slave who had been captured in some plundering
exhibition; and, if we can trust the Arabian romancist,
he bore strong evidence of his negro origin. He spent
his youth in servitude and neglect, but soon became
known for his strength and high-handedness. Before
long, while yet a slave, he fell in love with his cousin,
the beautiful Abla, whose praises are still preserved at
Mecca, but at the same time had the misfortune to incur
the hate of his father's wife, Shameeah. A number,
however, of happy opportunities presenting themselves,
he showed such extraordinary prowess against Some
hostile tribes, that his father was constrained to join in
the public appreciation of his services, and to recognise
him as his son. He now gradually rose in favor, and
held for long a position of the greatest influence among
his people, filling the surrounding country with the fame
equally of his song and his sword. In a great war
between two rival tribes, which lasted forty years, he is
said to have played a very prominent part. The time
ANTELOPE -
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A N T
347
and manner of his death are a matter of dispute,_
Ibn Doreida making him slain by Wasr-ben-Jaber, while,
according to Abu Obeida, he died a natural death when
well stricken in years. ...Wherever the Arabic language
is known his fame is still green; and frequent references
are made to Chuò/z Azatar, Zstabli Antar, Antar’s
house and Antar’s stable.
ANTARCTIC, OCEAN, a name that should, strictly
speaking, be applied only to the ice-bound sea to the
south of the antarctic circle; in practice, however, it is
usually vaguely extended so as to include more or less
of the cold regions round the south pole, without refer-
ence to the circle. See POLAR REGIONS.
ANTELOPE. The term antelope is applied to
denote a genus of Mazzmalia, included in the Ongulate
or Aooſed order of that large class. Of the ungulate
or hoofed mammals, the Ruminants, or those that
“chew the cud,” form a chief subdivision; and the ante-
lopes, sheep, oxen, and goats, are included and j
together in this division as the family Caznicornia, or
“hollow-horned” ruminants. The chief character by
which the Cavicornia are distinguished from other fami-
lies of the Ruminantia consists in the peculiar and char-
acteristic type of structure of the horns. These append-
ages are essential processes of the frontal or forehead
bone of the skull, and so far from being deciduous, -
that is, being shed at stated periods, -as the deer, the
horns in the Cavicornia are permanent and persistent
throughout life. The process arising from the frontal
bone constitutes the inner shaft, or “core” of the horn;
and this bony core is covered by a horny sheath. The
horny sheath is purely epidermic in its origin and nature;
that is, it consists of a special development of the outer
skin or epidermal tissue. When these structures are
contrasted with the horns of the deer, — with which
group, it may be remarked, the antelopes are frequently
confused, but from which they are essentially distinct,
they are at once seen to be different in every particular.
The horns or “antlers ” of the deer are solid, and con-
sist entirely of bony tissue; and they are, furthermore,
shed annually.
The antelopes, with the other Cavicornia, participate
in the following characters, in addition to those fur-
nished by the structure of the horns. Both sexes are
generally provided with horns. The dental formula or
arrangement of the teeth exhibits a want of incisor
teeth in the upper, and six incisors in the lower jaw;
canines totally wanting in the upper jaw, and two in
the lower jaw; and twelve molars in each jaw.
The antelope family (Anti/opidae), including a great
number of different species, is generally distinguished
from the allied families of the sheep, oxen, and goats,
by the light, graceful, and deer-like form of its mem-
bers. The horns, are chiefly cylindrical in shape, but
may be twisted in an annular or spiral manner. The
beard, or “dew-lap,” characteristic of the deer tribe,
is generally absent in the antelopes; and of all the Cavi-
cornia, they constitute the only family in which the
curious “tear-pits” or “lachrymal sinuses” of the eyes
are found. These latter organs are small sacs situated
below the eyes, and devoted to the secretion of a yellow
substance of a sebaceous or waxy nature.
The American continent possesses but two representa-
tives of the antelope family. These are the so-called
Rocky Mountain sheep or goat —a true antelope—
and the prongbuck or cabrit of North American
regions. The Rocky Mountain sheep or goat (A/ap/o-
cerus Zamiger), possessing a coat of long woolly hair, is
closely related to the chamois of Europe; and in this
form, as well as in the prongbuck, the connection
between the antelopes and goats may be traced.
ANTEMNAE, a small Latin town, of great an-
tiquity, built on the top of a hill that rose above the
alluvial plain at the meeting of the Anio and Tiber.
ANTENOR, a Trojan elder of great prudence, who
advised his fellow-townsmen to send Helen back to her
husband, and in various ways showed himself not
unfriendly to the Greeks.
ANTENOR, son of Euphranor, the native sculptor
to whom the Athenians were indebted for the bronze
statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton, which, after
adorning the Ceramicus, were carried off to Susa by
Xerxes, and restored, it is probable, by Alexander.
ANTEQUERA, an ancient city of the province of
Malaga, in Spain, supposed to be the Roman Azzłżgua-
ria or Azzzicaria, beautifully situated in a fertile valley
on the south of the river Guadaljorce, 28 miles N. of
Malaga, and 45 W. of Granada. Population 27,2OI.
ANTHEM is derived from the Greek, through the
Saxon Azazeſzz, and originally had the same meaning as
antiphony. (See ANTIPHONY.) It is now, however,
generally restricted to a form of musical composition
peculiar to the service of the Church of England, and
appointed by rubrics to follow the third collect at both
morning and evening prayer, “in choirs and places where
they sing.”
AN Tii EMIUS, a Greek mathematician and architect
of great genius, who produced, under the patronage of
Justinian (531 A.D.) the original and daring plans for
the church of St. Sophia, in Constantinople, which
strikingly displayed at once his knowledge and his ignor-
2.11CC.
ANTHESTERIA, an Athenian festival held an-
nually in the month of Anthesterion, corresponding
nearly to our February, at which time the wine stored
at the previous vintage was considered fit for use. The
object of the festival was to celebrate the arrival of that
season, and the beginning of spring. It lasted three
days, from the 11th to the 13th of the month.
ANTHOLOGY.. The term anthology, literally de-
noting a collection of flowers, is figuratively applied to
any selection of literary beauties, and especially to that
great body of fugitive poetry, comprehending about
4500 pieces, by upwards of 300 writers, which is com-
monly known as the GREEK ANTHOLOGY.
Ziterary Aistory of the Greek Anthology.—The art
of occasional poetry had been cultivated in Greece from
an early period, less, however, as the vehicle of per-
sonal feeling, than as the recognized commemoration of
remarkable individuals or events, or the accompaniment
of votive offerings. Such compositions were termed
epigrams, i.e., inscriptions. The modern use of the
word is a departure from the original sense, which
simply indicated that the composition was intended to
be engraved or inscribed. About 91 B.C., the sophist
and poet, Meleager of Gadara, undertook to combine
the choicest effusions of his predecessors into a single
body of fugitive poetry. Collections of monumental
inscriptions, or of poems on particular subjects, had
previously been formed by Polemon the grammarian,
Alcetas, and others; but Meleager first gave the prin-
ciple a comprehensive application. His selection, com-
piled from forty-six of his predecessors, from Sappho
downward, and including numerous contributions of
his own, was entitled ZThe Garland; and in an intro-
ductory poem each poet is compared to some flower,
fancifully deemed appropriate to his genius. The ar-
rangement of the collection was alphabetical, according
to the initial letter of each epigram.
In the age of Tiberius (rather than of Trajan, as
commonly stated) the work of Meleager was continued
by another epigrammatist, Philip of Thessalonica, who
first employed the term anthology. His collection in-
cluded the compositions of thirteen writers subsequent
348 *
A N T
to Meleager. No further collection from various
sources is recorded until the time of Justinian, when
epigrammatic writing, especially in its amatory depart-
ment, experienced a great revival at the hands of
Agathias, the historian, Paulus Silentiarius, and their
circle. Their ingenius but mannered productions were
collected by Agathias into a new anthology, entitled
The Circle ; the first to be divided into books, and
arranged with reference to the subjects of the pieces.
Five Greek anthologies, accordingly, existed at the
commencement of the Middle Ages. The partial incor-
poration of these into a single body was the work of a cer-
tain Constantinus Cephalas, whose name alone is pre-
served in the single MS. of his compilation extant, but
who probably lived during the temporary revival of let-
ters under Constantine Porphyrogenitus, at the begin-
ning of the Ioth century. He appears to have merely
made excerpts from the existing anthologies, with the
addition of selections from Lucillius, Palladas, and other
epigrammatists, whose compositions had been published
separately. His arrangement, to which we shall have to
recur, is founded on a principle of classification, and
nearly corresponds to that adopted by Agathias. His
principle of selection is unknown; it is only certain that
while he omitted much that he should have retained, he
has preserved much that would otherwise have perished.
The extent of our obligations may be ascertained by a
comparison between his anthology and that of the next
editor, the monk Maximus Planudes (1320 A.D.), who
has not merely grievously mutilated the anthology of
Cephalas by omissions, but has disfigured it by inter-
polating verses of his own. We are, however, indebted
to him for the preservation of the epigrams on works of
art, which seem to have been accidentally omitted from
our only transcript of Cephalas.
The Planudean was the only recefision of the anthol-
Ogy known at the revival of classical literature, and was
first published at Florence, by Janus Lascaris, in 1594.
It long continued to be the only accessible collection,
for although the Palatine MS., the sole extant copy of
the anthology of Cephalas, was discovered at Heidel-
berg by Salmasius in 1606, it was not published until
I772, when it was included in Brunck’s Anzalecta Vet-
erum A^etarum Graecorum. This edition was super-
seded by the standard one of Friedrich Jacobs (Leipsic,
1794–1803, 13 vols.), the text of which was reprinted
in a more convenient form in 1813–17, and occupies
three pocket volumes in the Tauchnitz series of the
classics. The best edition for general purposes is per-
haps that of M. Dübner in Didot's Bibliotheca (Paris,
1864-72), which contains the Palatine Anthology, the
epigrams of the Planudean Anthology not comprised in
the former, an appendix of pieces derived from other
sources, copious notes selected from all quarters, a literal
Latin prose translation by Boissonade, Bothe, and
Lapaume, and the metrical Latin versions of Hugo
Grotius. The best edition of the Planudean Anthology
is the splendid one by Van Bosch and Van Lennep
(Utrecht, 1795–1822). Welcker, Meineke, and other
German scholars have written valuable monograms on
the Anthology.
ANTHON, CHARLEs, an American philologist and
professor of classics, was born in New York city in :797,
and died there 29th July 1867. After graduating with
honors at Columbia College in 1815, he commenced the
study of law, and in 1819 was admitted to the bar. But
in 1820 he was appointed assistant professor of languages
in his alma mater, and he thenceforth devoted himself
solely to classical literature. Soon after he commenced
his well-known editions of the classics, the best known
being that of the Poems of Horace, with extensive notes
and comments, published in 1830. In the latter year he
was made rector of the grammar school attached to his
college, and in 1835 he succeeded to the chair of
Professor Morse.
ANTHONY, SAINT, the founder of monasticism,
was born at the village of Coma in Egypt 251 A.D.
Inheriting a large fortune, he thought it his duty to dis-
tribute it among his neighbors and the poor, and to live
a rigidly ascetic life. He spent several years in solitude,
where, according to tradition, he was sorely tempted by
the devil. Many disciples flocked to his retreat at
Fayoom, and built their cells around his, thus forming
the earliest monastic community. (See ABBEY.)
Anthony visited Alexandria when upwards of a hundred
years old, and took an important part in the controversy
with the Arians, – a fact to which we are probably
indebted for the record of the life of the saint written by
Athanasius. Soon after returning to his cell he died
(356 A.D.), his last injunction being that the place of his
burial should be kept secret. For further details of
Anthony’s connection with the monastic system, see
MONASTICISM. -
ANTHRACITE, STONE COAL, KILKENNY CoAL,
or CULM, is a variety of coal differing from the common
or bituminous kind in containing a larger proportion of
carbon in its composition; that element being present in
anthracite to the extent of from 90 to 95 per cent. Of its
entire mass, while the carbon in bituminous coal usually
varies from 75 to 90 per cent. Anthracite is further
distinguished by its compactness, high specific gravity,
bright lustre, which is frequently iridescent on the natural
surfaces, and its conchoidal fracture. It does not soil
the fingers when handled, like ordinary coal; it ignites
with difficulty, and burns with a feeble, smokeless flame,
giving out an intense heat. No sharply defined line of
demarcation can be drawn between anthracite and the
bituminous varieties of coal, as the one series merges by
imperceptible degrees into the other. This gradation is
observable in the coal deposits themselves, anthracite
and bituminous coal being frequently found not far
removed in different parts of the same seam, and the
gradual transformation from a flaming coal to a compact,
lustrous, non-flaming kind, being easily traceable.
ANTHROPOLOGY (the science of man) denotes
the natural history of mankind. In the general classifi-
cation of knowledge it stands as the highest section of
zoology or the science of animals, itself the highest sec-
tion of biology or the science of living beings. . To
anthropology contribute various sciences, which hold
their own independent places in the field of knowledge.
Thus anatomy and physiology display the structure and
functions of the human body, while psychology investi-
gates the operations of the human mind. Philology
deals with the general principles of language, as well as
with the relations between the languages of particular
races and nations. Ethics or moral science treats of
man's duty or rules of conduct toward his fellow-men.
Lastly, under the names of sociology and the science of
culture, are considered the origin and development of
arts and sciences, opinions, beliefs, customs, laws, and
institutions generally among mankind, their course in
time being partly marked out by the direct record of
history, while beyond the historical limit our information
is continued by inferences from relics of early ages and
remote districts, to interpret which is the task of prae-
historic archaeology and geology. Not only are these
various sciences concerned largely with man, but several
among them have in fact suffered by the almost entire
exclusion of other animals from their scheme. It is
undoubted that comparative anatomy and physiology,
by treating the human species as one member of a long
series of related organisms, have gained a higher and
more perfect understanding of man himself and his
A N T
349
place in the universe than could have been gained by the
narrower investigation of his species by and for itself.
It is to be regretted that hitherto certain other sciences
—psychology, ethics, and even philology and sociology
—have so little followed so profitable an example. No
doubt the phenomena of intellect appear in vastly
higher and more complete organisation in man than in
beings below him in the scale of nature, that beasts
and birds only attain to language in its lower rudiments,
and that only the germs of moral tendency and social
law are discernible among the lower animals. Yet
though the mental and moral interval between man
and the nearest animals may be vast, the break is not
absolute, and the investigation of the laws of reason
and instinct throughout the zoological system, which is
already casting some scattered rays of light on the study
of man’s highest organisation, may be destined hence-
forth to throw brighter illumination into its very
recesses. Now this condition of things, as well as the
accepted order, in which the sciences have arranged
themselves by their mode of growth, make it desirable
that anthropology should not too ambitiously strive to
include within itself the sciences which provide so much
of its wealth, but that each science should pursue its
own subject through the whole range of living beings,
rendered to anthropology on account of so much of its
results as concerns man. Such results it is the office of
anthropology to collect and co-ordinate, so as to elabor-
ate as completely as may be the synopsis of man's bodily
and mental nature, and the theory of his whole course
of life and action from his first appearance on earth.
As will be seen from the following brief summary the
information to be thus brought together from contrib-
uting sciences is widely different both in accuracy and
in soundness. While much of the descriptive detail is
already clear and well filled in, the general principles
of its order are still but vaguely to be discerned,
and as our view quits the comparatively distinct region
near ourselves, the prospect fades more and more
into the dimness of conjecture.
Opinion as to the genesis of man is divided between
the theories of the two great schools of biology, that of
creation and that of evolution. In both schools the
ancient doctrine of the contemporaneous appearance on
earth of all species of animals having been abandoned
under, the positive evidence of geology, it is admitted
that the animal kingdom, past and present, includes a
vast Series of successive forms, whose appearances and
disappearances have taken place at intervals during an
immense lapse of ages. The line of inquiry has thus
been directed to ascertaining what formative relation
subsists among these species and genera, the last link of
the argument reaching to the relation between man and
the lower creatures preceding him in time.
The problem of th origin of man cannot be properly
discussed apart from the full problem of the origin of
species. The homologies between man and other ani-
mals which both schools try to account for; the expla-
nation of the intervals, with apparent want of interme-
diate forms, which seem to the creationists so absolute a
separation between species; the evidence of useless
“rudimentary organs,” such as in man the external shell
of the ear, and the muscle which enables some indivi-
duals to twitch their ears, which rudimentary parts the
evolutionists claim to be only explicable as relics of an
aarlier specific condition,-- these, which are main points
of the argument on the origin of man, belong to general
biology. The philosophical principles which underlie
the two theories stand for the most part in strong con-
trast, the theory of evolution tending toward the sup-
position of ordinary causes, such as “natural selection,”
producing modifications in species, whether by gradual
accumulation or more sudden leaps, while the theory of
creation is prone to have recourse to acts of supernatural
intervention. A theory has been propounded by Mr.
Mivart (Genesis of Species, 1871) of a natural evolution
of man as to his body, combined with a supernatural
creation as to his soul; but this attempt to meet the dif-
ficulties on both sides seems at present not to have
satisfied either. Anthropology waits to see whether the
discovery of intermediate forms, which has of late years
reduced so many asserted species to mere varieties, will
go on till it produces a disbelief in any real separation
between neighboring species, and especially whether
geology can furnish traces of the hypothetical animal,
man's near ancestor, but not as yet man. In the
present state of the argument it may here suffice to
have briefly indicated the positions held on either side.
The classification of mankind into a number of per-
manent varieties or races, rests on grounds which are
within limits not only obvious but definite. Whether
from a popular or a scientific point of view, it would be
admitted that a Negro, a Chinese, and an Australian,
belong to three such permanent varieties of men, all
plainly distinguishable from one another and from any
European. Moreover, such a division takes for granted
the idea which is involved in the word race, that each
of these varieties is due to special ancestry, each race
thus representing an ancient breed or stock, however
these breeds or stocks may have had their origin. The
anthropological classification of mankind is thus zoolog-
ical in its mature, like that of the varieties or species of
any other animal group, and the characters on which it
is based are in great measure physical, though intellect-
ual and traditional peculiarities, such as moral habit and
language, furnish important aid. Among the best-
marked race-characters are the following:—
The color of the skin has always been held as speci-
ally distinctive. The colored race-portraits of ancient
Egypt remain to prove the permanence of complexion
during a lapse of a hundred generations, distinguishing
coarsely but clearly the types of the red-brown Egypt-
ian, the yellow-brown Canaanite, the comparatively fair
Libyan, and the Negro. These broad distinctions have
the same kind of value as the popular terms describing
white, yellow, brown and black races, which often
occur in ancient writings, and are still used. But for
scientific purposes greater accuracy is required, and this
is now satisfactorily attained by the use of Dr. Broca's
graduated series of colors as a standard. . By this table
the varieties of the human skin may be followed from
the fairest hue of the Swede and the darker tint of the
Provençal, to the withered-leaf brown of the Hottentot,
the chocolate brown of the Mexican, and the brown-
black of the West African. The color of the eyes and
hair is also to be defined accurately by Broca's table.
This affords, however, less means of distinction, from
the extent in which dark tints of hair and iris are com-
mon to races whose skins are more perceptibly differ-
ent; yet some varieties are characteristic, such as the
blue eyes and flaxen hair of the fair race of Northern
Europe.
As to the hair, its structure and arrangement is a bet-
ter indication of race than its tint. The hair differs in
quantity between scantiness on the body of the Mongol
and profusion on the body of the Aino; while as to the
arrangement on the scalp, the tufts of the Bushman con-
trast with the more equal distribution on the European
head. The straight hair of the North American or
Malay is recognisable at once as different from the wav-
ing or curling hair of the European, and both from the
naturally frizzed hair of the Negro. These marked dif-
ſerences are due to the structure of the hair, which,
examined in sections under the microscope, varies from
35O
A N T
the circular section proper to the straight-haired races,
to the more or less symmetrically oval or reniform sec-
tions belonging to races with curled and twisted hair.
Stature is by no means a general criterion of race,
and it would not, for instance, be difficult to choose
groups of Englishmen, Kafirs, and North American
Indians, whose mean height should hardly differ. Yet
in many cases it is a valuable means of distinction, as
between the tall Patagonians and the stunted Fuegians,
and even as a help in minuter problems, such as sepa-
rating the Teutonic and Keltic ancestry in the popula-
tion of England (see Beddoe, “Stature and Bulk of
Man in the British Isles,” in Mem. Anthrop, Soc. Zon-
don, vol. iii.) Proportions of the limbs, compared in
length with the trunk, have been claimed as constituting
peculiarities of African and American races; and other
anatomical points, such as the conformation of the
pelvis, have specialty. But inferences of this class
have hardly attained to sufficient certainty and gener-
ality to be set down in the form of rules.
The conformation of the skull is second only to the
color of the skin as a criterion for the distinction of race.
Classification of races on cranial measurements has
long been attempted by eminent anatomists, such as
Blumenbach and Retzius, while the later labors of Von
Baer, Welcker, Davis, Broca, Busk, Lucae, and many
others, have brought the distinctions to extreme minute-
ness. In certain cases great reliance may be placed on
such measurements. Thus the skulls of an Australian
and a Negro would be generally distinguished by their
narrowness and the projection of the jaw from that of
an Englishman; while, although both the Australian
and Negro are thus dolichocephalic and prognathous,
the first would usually differ perceptibly from the second
in its upright sides and strong orbital ridges.
The general contour of the face, in part dependent on
the form of the skull, varies much in different races,
among whom it is loosely defined as oval, lozenge-shaped,
pentagonal, &c. Of particular features, some of the
most marked contrasts to European types are seen in
the oblique Chinese eyes, the broad-set Kamchadal
cheeks, the pointed Arab chin, the snub Kirghis nose,
the fleshy protuberant Negro lips, and the broad
Ralmuk ear. Taken altogether, the features have a
typical character which popular observation seizes with
some degree of correctness, as in the recognition of the
Jewish countenance in a European city.
The state of adaptation in which each people stands
to its native climate forms a definite race-character. In
its extreme form this is instanced in the harmful effect
of the climate of India on children of European parents,
and the corresponding danger in transporting natives
of tropical climates to England. Typical instances of
the relation of race-constitutions to particular diseases
are seen in the liability of Europeans in the West
Indies to yellow fever, from which Negroes are exempt,
and in the habitation by tribes in India of so-called
“unhealthy districts,” whose climate is deadly to Euro-
peans, and even to natives of neighboring regions.
These classifications have been numerous, and though,
regarded as systems, most of them are now seen at the
first glance to be unsatisfactory, yet they have been of
great value in Systematising knowledge, and are all more
or less based on indisputable distinctions. Blumen-
bach’s division, though published nearly a century ago
(1781), has had the greatest influence. He reckons five
races, viz., Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Ameri-
can, Malay. The ill-chosen name of Caucasian, used by
Blumenbach to denote what may be called white men, is
still current; it brings into one race peoples such as the
Arabs and Swedes, although these are scarcely less dif-
ferent than the Americans and Malays, who are set
down as two distinct races. On the whole, Professor
Huxley probably approaches more nearly than any other
to such a tentative classification as may be expected in
definition of the principal varieties of mankind, regarded
from a zoological point of view, though anthropologists
may be disposed to erect into separate races several of
his widely-differing sub-races. He distinguishes four
principal types of mankind, the Australioid, Negroid.
Mongoloid, and Xanthochroic, adding a fifth variety,
the Melanochroic.
The special points of the Australioid are a chocolate-
brown skin, dark brown or black eyes, black hair
(usually wavy), narrow (dolichocephalic) skull, brow-
ridges strongly developed, projecting jaw, coarse lips,
and broad nose. This type is best represented by the
natives of Australia, and next to them, by the indige-
nous tribes of Southern India, the so-called coolies.
The Egyptians to some degree approach this type; they
are, however, held by good authorities to be a modified
African race.
The Negroid type is primarily represented by the
Negro of Africa, between the Sahara and the Cape dis-
trict, including Madagascar. The skin varies from dark
brown to brown-black, with eyes of similar dark hue,
and hair usually black, and always crisp or woolly. The
skull is narrow (dolichocephalic), with orbital ridges not
prominent, prognathous, with depressed nasal bones,
causing the nose to be flat as well as broad; and the lips
are coarse and projecting. Two important families are
classed in this system as special modifications of the
Negroid type. First, the Bushman of South Africa is
diminutive in stature, and of yellowish-brown com-
plexion; the Hottentot is supposed to be the result of
crossing between the Bushman and ordinary Negroid.
Second, the Negritos of the Andaman Islands, the
peninsula of Malacca, the Philippines and other islands,
to New Caledonia and Tasmania, are mostly doli-
chocephalic, with dark skins and woolly hair. In
various districts they tend towards other types, and
show traces of mixture.
The Mongoloid type prevails over the vast area lying
east of a line drawn from Lapham to Siam. Its defini-
tion includes a short, squat build, a yellowish brown
complexion, with black eyes and straight black hair, a
broad (brachycephalic) skull, usually without prominent
brow-ridges, flat small nose, and oblique eyes. The dol-
ichocephalic Chinese and Japanese in other respects cor-
respond. Various other important branches of the hu-
man species are brought into connection with the Mon-
goloid type, though on this view the differentes they
present raise difficult problems of gradual variation, as
well as of mixture of race; these are the Dyak-Malays,
the Polynesians, and the Americans.
The Xanthochroi, or fair whites—tall, with almost
colorless skin, blue or grey eyes, hair from straw color
to chestnut, and skulls varying as to proportionate
width—are the prevalent inhabitants of Northern Eu-
rope, and the type may be traced into North Africa, and
eastward as far as Hindostan. On the south and west it
mixes with that of the Melanochroi, or dark whites, and
on the north and east with that of the Mongoloids.
The Melanochroi, or dark whites, differ from the fair
whites in the darkening of the complexion to brownish
and olive, and of the eyes and hair to black, while the
stature is somewhat lower and the frame lighter. To
this class belong a large part of those classed as Kelts,
and of the populations of Southern Europe, such as
Spaniards, Greeks and Arabs, extending as far as India;
while endless intermediate grades between the two white
types testify to ages of intermingling. Professor Hux-
ley is disposed to account for the Melanochroi as them:
selves the result of crossing between the Xanthochrci
A N T
35 I
and the Australioids. Whatever ground there may be
for his view, it is obviously desirable to place them in a
class by themselves, distinguishing them by an appro-
priate name.
A suggestion by Mr. A. R. Wallace has great impor-
tance in the application of the development theory to
the origin of the various races of man; it is aimed to
meet the main difficulty of the monogenist school, how
races which have remained comparatively fixed in type
during the long period of history, such as the white
man and the Negro, should have, in even a far longer
period, passed by variation from a common original.
Mr. Wallace's view is substantially that the remotely
ancient representatives of the human species, being as
yet animals too low in mind to have developed those
arts of maintenance and social ordinances by which
man holds his own against influences from climate and
circumstances, were in their then wild state much more
plastic than now to external nature; so that “natural
selection ” and other causes met with but feeble resist-
ance in forming the permanent varieties or races of
man, whose complexion and structure will remain fixed
in their descendants. (See Wallace, Contributions to
Z/ie Zºſteory of Matural Selection, p. 319.) On the
whole, it may be asserted that the doctrine of the unity
of mankind now stands on a firmer basis than in pre-
vious ages. It would be premature to judge how far
the problem of the origin of races may be capable of
exact solution; but the experience of the last few years
countenances Mr. Drawin’s prophecy, that before long
the dispute between the monogenists and the polygenists
will die a silent and unobserved death.
During the last half century, the fact has been estab-
lished that human bones and objects of human manufac-
ture occur in such geological relation to the remains of
fossil species of elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena, bear, &c.,
as to lead to the distinct inference that man already
existed during the ancient period of these now extinct
mammalia.
This evidence is now generally accepted by geologists
as carrying back the existence of man into the period of
the post-glacial drift, in what is now called the Quater-
nary period. That this indicates an antiquity at least of
tens of thousands of years may be judged in several ways.
The very position in which rude instruments were found
showed that they belonged to time quite separate from
that of history. Thus, at St., Acheul flint hatchets
occur in a gravel-bed immediately overlying the chalk,
which bed is covered by some 12 feet of sand and marl,
capped by a layer of soil, which is shown by graves of
the Gallo-Roman period to have been hardly altered
during the last 1500 years.
The interval between the Quarternary or Drift period
and the period of historical antiquity is to some extent
bridged over by relics of various intermediate civilisations,
mostly of the lower grades, and in some cases reaching
back to remote dates. The lake dwellings of Switzer-
land are perhaps among the more recent of these. They
were villages of huts built on piles in the water at some
distance from the shore, for security from attack—in
fact, fortified water settlements of the same nature as
those of Lake Prasias in the time of Herodotus, and as
those still inhabited in New Guinea and West Africa.
The remains of these Swiss villages are found with the
stumps of the piles still standing, often embedded in
an accumulation of mud or growth of peat which has
preserved a kind of illustrative museum of the arts and
habits of the lake men. From examination of the sites,
it appears that the settlements are of various dates, from
the neolithic or polished stone period, when instruments
of metal were still unknown, to the time when bronze
was introduced, and beyond this into the later age
marked by the use of iron. A few of the lake villages
lasted on till the Roman dominion, as is proved by the
presence of Roman coins and pottery, but they were
soon afterwards abandoned, so that their very existence
was forgotten, and their rediscovery only dates from
1853, when the workmen excavating a bed of mud on
the shore of the Lake of Zurich found themselves
standing among the piles of a lake settlement.
Egypt affords some basis for estimating a minimum
date for its ancient population. The hieroglyphic in-
scriptions, the most ancient written records of the world,
preserve direct memorials of a time which can hardly be
less, and may be much more, than 30OO years before the
Christian era.
The Greeks of the classic period could discuss the
Egyptian chronologies with priests and scribes who per-
petuated the languages and records of their earliest
dynasties; and as the Septuagint translation of the Bible
was made at Alexandria, it is not impossible that its
giving to man a considerably greater antiquity than that
of the Hebrew text may have been due to the influence
of the Egyptian chronology. Even if the lowest ad-
missible calculations be taken, this will not invalidate
the main fact, that above 4000 years ago the Egyptian
nation already stood at a high level of industrial and
social culture.
The Chinese dynasties, like those of Egypt, begin
with an obviously mythical portion, and continue into
actual history; the difficulty is to draw the line where
genuine records begins. Those who reckon authentic
history only from the dynasty of Chow, beginning about
11oo B.C., during which Confucius lived, will at any rate
hardly deny the existence of the earlier dynasty of Shang,
previous to which the yet earlier dynasty of Hea is re-
corded; so that, though much that is related of these
periods may be fabulous, it seems certain that there was a
Chinese nation and a Chinese civilisation reaching back
beyond 2000 B.C.
The teaching of history, during the three to four
thousand years to which contemporary chronicles have
been preserved, is that civilisation is gradually developed
in the course of ages by enlargement and increased pre-
cision of knowledge, invention and improvement of arts,
and the progression of social and political habits and
institutions towards general well-being. The conditions
of such races as the older Jews, Greeks, and Germans,
are known to us by ancient chronicles, and by poetry
and myth even more valuable than chronicle in the
details they unconsciously preserve of the state of Society
at the time whence they have been handed down.
Starting from the recorded condition of such barbaric
nations, and following the general course of culture into
the modern world, all the great processes of mental and
social development may be seen at work. Falling back
or decay also takes place, but only to a limited extent
destroys the results of growth in culture. It is thus
matter of actual record, that the ancestors of civilised
mations were barbaric tribes, and the inference seems
reasonable that the same process of development had
gone on during previous ages outside the domain of
direct history, so that barbaric culture itself arose out
of an earlier and ruder condition of primitive culture,
more or less corresponding with the state of modern
savage tribes. The failure of direct record of this pas-
sage from savagery upward to barbarism was to be
expected from the circumstances of the case. No people
civilised enough to preserve history could have watched
the age-long process of a Savage tribe developing its
culture; indeed, experience shows that independent pro-
gress could hardly have taken place among an uncivil-
ised in contact with a civilised race. Nor could a bar-
baric nation, though it had really and independently
352
A N T
risen from Savagery within some few thousand years,
give any valid account of this gradual advancement, for
the very reason of its having taken place while the nation
was yet in, or but little removed from, the savage state,
one part of the very definition of which is that it has
no trustworthy means of preserving the history of events
even for a single century, much less for the long period
required for so vast a development. This view of the
low origin and progressive development of civilisation
was already held in ancient times, as in the well-known
speculations of the Epicurean school on the condition
of the earliest men, who roved like wild animals, seek-
ing their food from the uncultured earth, till arts and
social laws arose among them, or where the like idea
has taken in China the form of ancient legend, record-
ing the time when their nation was taught to use skins
for clothing, to make fire, and to dwell in houses. In
opposition to such views of primeval rudeness, traditions
of a pristine state of human excellence have long been
cherished, such as the “golden age.” Till of late wide
acceptance has been given to arguments, partly based on
theological and partly on anthropological grounds, as to
man's incapability of rising from a savage state, and the
consequent necessity of a supernatural bestowal of cul-
ture on the first men, from whose high level savages are
supposed by advocates of this theory to have degener-
ated. . The anthropological evidence adduced in support
of this doctrine is, however, too weak for citation, and
even obviously erroneous arguments have been relied on.
To conclude, the comparative science of civilisation
thus not only generalises the data of history, but supple-
ments its information by laying down the lines of devel-
opment along which the lowest prehistoric culture has
gradually risen to the highest modern level. Among
the most clearly marked of these lines is that which fol.
lows the succession of the stone, bronze, and iron ages.
The stone age represents the early condition of mankind
in general, and has remained in savage districts up to
modern times, while the introduction of metals need not
at once supersede the use of the old stone hatchets and
arrows, which have often long continued in dwindling
survival by the side of the new bronze and even iron
ones. The bronze age had its most important place
among ancient nations of Asia and Europe, and among
them was only succeeded after many centuries by the
iron age; while in other districts, such as Polynesia and
Central and South Africa, and America (except Mexico
and Peru), the native tribes were moved directly from
the stone to the iron age without passing through the
bronze age at all. Although the three divisions of
Savage, barbaric, and civilised man do not correspond at
all perfectly with the stone, bronze, and iron ages, the
classification of civilisation thus introduced by Nilsson
and Thomsen has proved a guide of extraordinary value
in arranging in their proper order of culture the nations
of the Old World. Another great line of progress has
been followed by tribes passing from the primitive state
of the wild hunter, fisher, and fruit-gatherer to that of
the settled tiller of the soil, for to this change of habit
may be plainly in great part traced the expansion of in-
dustrial arts and the creation of higher social and politi-
cal institutions. These, again, have followed their
proper lines along the course of time. Among such are
the immense legal development by which the primitive
law of personal vengeance passed gradually away, leaving
but a few surviving relics in the modern civilised world,
and being replaced by the higher doctrine that crime is
an offence against Society, to be repressed for the public
good. Another vast social change has been that from
the patriarchal condition, in which the unit is the family
under the despotic rule of its head, to the systems in
which individuals make up a society whose government
`--- \ -- f § r
is centralised in a chief or king. In the growth of sys-
tematic civilisation, the art of writing has had an influ-
ence so intense, that of all tests to distinguish the bar-
baric from the civilised state, none is so generally effec-
tive as this, whether they have but the failing link with
the past which mere memory furnishes, or can have re-
course to written records of past history and written
constitutions of present order.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM is a term used in theo-
logical writings to denote the figure by which words ex-
pressing human organs and activities are applied to the
divine Being; in short, it is the conception and repre-
Sentation of God as possessed of corporeal and human
properties. Originally and literally the word implied
only the ascribing to God a physical form resembling
the human body, and consequently included under it all
forms of expression which attribute to Him the exercise
of physical organs and senses. But its meaning was
soon extended so as to comprehend all representations
of God which require Him either to be in himself cor-
poreally extended, or to possess a corporeal body as
the necessary condition of His activity. In this wider
sense all theories were designated anthropomorphic,
which identified God with light or the physical universe,
or which placed alongside of Him a primeval, uncreated
Inhatter.
Primitive ideas of God are necessarily framed by man
from the analogy of his own nature. He is, however,
able to represent God to himself under the analogy of
his mental or spiritual, as well as under that of his
material nature. This more refined form was called
anthropopathism, and is that mode of contemplating the
divine attributes founded on the analogy of God to the
human spirit. All forms of expression which ascribe to
God passions, intelligence, or volition, rest ultimately
upon this supposed analogy. In modern theology and
philosophy, it is this mode of thought that usually re-
ceives the name of anthropomorphism.
Anthropomorphism is inseparable from early religion.
The first dim intuition of God as the ruler of the uni-
verse, on whom we depend, cannot at an early time be
seized in all its purity by reason. Sense and imagination
are developed before reason, and in semi-barbarous in-
telligences completely overbalance it. The obje of
their faith is not God himself, but God as manifested in
nature and history. -
The church itself was not free from anthropomorph-
ism of the crudest type. In the 2d century Melito,
bishop of Sardis, wrote a book concerning the corpo-
reity of God; and in the 4th century Audaeus, in Meso-
potamia, held similar views, and had many followers. In
the Middle Ages the question gradually merged into the
more philosophical one of the relation between reason
and faith. In modern theology the problem again
appears, but its aspect is completely philosophical. Phi-
losophy, indeed, has never ceased to concern itself with
this very question. Xenophanes mocked the anthropo-
morphism of his countrymen ; Aristotle denied to the
gods ethical virtue and the possession of emotions or
passions; he allowed to them only a life of intellectual
speculation. Spinoza is one of the strongest opponents
of any form of anthropomorphism, and from him the
modern aspect of the question may be said to proceed.
He brought clearly to light the fundamental difficulty,
the reconciliation of the infinite and absolute nature of
God with any attribute whatsoever; for attribute, as
such, implies negation, i.e., limitation. Spinoza dis-
misses as anthropomorphic the idea of God as an intelli-
gence, as free to act, and as ruling the world, and thus
destroys the ideas of design in nature and of providence.
The consequences of this theory, on questions relat-
ing to the personality of God, miracles, prayer, &c.,
A N T
353
have been worked out very fully in the most recent
tlineS.
ANTIBES, a seaport town of France, on the Medi-
terranean, in the arrondissment of Grasse, which form-
erly belonged to the department of War, but which was
transferred to the new department of Alps Maritimes in
1860. .
ANTICHRIST. The word occurs only in the first
and second epistles of John. It signifies an opponent
or adversary of Christ. The idea expressed by it had its
origin in Judaism. According to prophetic anticipa-
tions, the Messianic time was to be immediately pre-
ceded by a great conflict, in which Jehovah would fight
out of Zion for His own people, and defeat the concen-
trated opposition of the world. An Almighty leader on
the one side seemed to require an antagonist on the
other, a head of the army of darkness against the Prince
of Light.
St. Paul resumes the idea of antichrist. Whatever
}. conceptions he laid aside, and he emancipated
himself from the most of them, he did not abandon the
idea of antichrist or terrible adversary of the true relig-
ion. The prophecies of Daniel, whether in their sup-
posed relation to Antiochus or Caligula, and the impi-
ous command of the latter in particular to desecrate the
Jewish temple, furnished him with traits for the portrait
of Christ’s great enemy, whose manifestation in the
Roman empire the state of the world led him to suspect,
especially as the empire was then identified by the Jews,
as well as by Paul himself, with the fourth and last king-
doms of Daniel’s visions. Blending together the notions
of antichrist and false Christ, the picture which St. Paul
draws is that of the man of sin, “the son of perdition ;
who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is
called God, or that is worshipped ; so that he as God
sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is
God; the wicked one whose coming is after the working
of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.”
The author of the Revelation presents the antichrist
idea in a more definite form than St. Paul. Borrow-
ing characteristic traits from Antiochus. Epiphanes,
perhaps too from Caligula, whose blasphemous order to
set up his own image in the attitude of Olympian Zeus
within the holy temple at Jerusalem created intense
excitement throughout Palestine, aware of the fearful
persecution which the Christians had suffered from
Claudius's successor on the throne of the Caesars, the
apostle John måkes the man of sin or antichrist to be
Nero returning from the East, according to a report
then current.
During the Middle Ages, and those which imme-
diately followed, current opinion discovered antichrist in
heretics and sects. The Apocalypse and second epistle
to the Thessalonians were supposed to point at false doc-
trine and its leading representatives. In their zeal
against such as did not belong to the same church as
their own, ecclesiastics mistook the sense of the pas-
sages relating to the dreaded adversary of Christ. Thus
Innocent III. (1215) declared the Saracens to be anti-
christ, and Mohammed the false prophet; and Gregory
IX. (1234) pronounced the emperor Frederick II. to be
the beast that rose up out of the sea with names of
blasphemy on his head (Rev. xiii. I-6).
As the corruption of the Romish Church increased,
and the necessity of reſorm became more apparent, anti-
ecclesiastical thought found antichrist in the Papacy;
and that again naturally provoked the church to char-
acterise all heretics as the collective antichrist. The
strong language of the apostles became a polemic
weapon, easily wielded against any adversary possessing
worldly power imimical to the church's interests, or
holding opinions incompatible with traditional Ortho-
doxy. The Church of Rome led the way in misapply-
ing the Apocalypse during her contest with civil
powers and heretics; her opponents followed the exam-
ple in turning the instrument against herself. Anti-
christianism could be embodied in the Papacy as well as
in Protestantism. It might be in a corrupt church as
well as in heretical doctrine outside it. Accordingly,
the Waldenses, Wicliffe, Huss, and many others, found
antichrist in the Pope. Luther hurled a powerful
philippic adversus execrabi/em bullam antic/aristi; and
the articles of Schmalkald embody the same view,
affirming: “Der Pabst aber, der allen die Seligkeit
abspricht welche ihm nicht gehorchen wollen, ist der
rechte antichrist.”
This history of opinion respecting antichrist, or
rather the interpretation of such Scriptures as present
the idea, is by no means instructive. Conjectures too
often supply the place of sound exegesis. Much error
has arisen from mixing up portions of Daniel’s vision
with those of the Apocalypse, because they refer to dif-
ferent subjects. The apostle borrows characteristic
features from Daniel’s Antiochus Epiphanes to fill out
his picture of Nero. The combination of St. Paul's
man of sin with St. John's antichristian Nero has also
led to misapprehension. The idea is variously developed .
according to the mental peculiarities and knowledge of
those who entertained it. Vague and general at first, it
was afterwards narrowed, somewhat in the manner of
the Messianic one. Its different forms show that it was
no article of faith, no dogma connected with salvation.
ANTICLIMAX, in rhetoric, is an abrupt declension
on the part of a speaker or writer from the dignity of
idea which he has attained, as in the following well-
known distich :-
“The great Dalhousie, he, the god of war,
Alieutenant-colonel to the earl of Mar.”
ANTICOSTI, a barren island of British North
America, situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
ANTICYRA, in Ancient Geography, the name of
three cities of Greece. (I.) In Phocis, on the Bay of
Anticyra, in the Corinthian Gulf. Its modern name is
Aspra Spitia, where some remains are still visible. It
was a town of considerable importance in ancient times;
was destroyed by Philip of Macedon; recovered its pros-
perity; and was captured by Flaminius in 198 B.C. (2.)
In Thessaly, on the right bank of the River Sperchius,
near its mouth. (3.) In Locris, on the left side of the
entrance to the Corinthian Gulf, and not far from
Naupactus.
ANTIETAM, a small river of the United States,
which rises in Pennsylvania, and flowing into Maryland,
joins the Potomac about 50 miles from Washington.
An indecisive battle between the Federals under M’Clel-
lan and the Confederates under Lee was fought on its
banks on 16th and 17th September 1862. The victory,
however, practically lay with the Federals, as the Con-
federates retreated out of Maryland on the night of the
18th September. -
ANTIGONE, the daughter of CEdipus, known in
Greek legend, first, for the faithfulness with which she
attended her father when he, on discovering that Jocaste,
the mother of his children, was also his own mother, put
his eyes out and resigned the throne of Thebes; secondly,
for having, in defiance of a decree, buried with due rites
the body of her brother Polynices, for which act she was
sentenced to be buried alive in a vault.
ANTIGONE (2,) in Greek legend, the daughter of
Eurytion, king of Phthia, who gave her in marriage to
Peleus, the issue being a daughter, Polydora. Peleus
having accidentally killed Eurytion in a hunt, some Say
the hunt of the Calydonian boar, fled and obtained ex-
4 -
2 A
3.54
A N T
piation from Acastus, whose wife in malice, because her
affection for Peleus was not returned, informed Antigone
that it was, upon which Antigone took her own life.
ANTIGONUS. I., called Cyclops, from his having
lost an eye, one of the generals of Alexander the Great,
was the son of Philip of Elymiotis. In the division of
the provinces after Alexander's death, 323 B.C., Pam-
phylia, Lycia, and Phrygia Major fell to his share.
But Perdiccas, having an eye to universal domin-
ion, determined to divest him of his government,
and laid plans for his life, by bringing various accusa-
tions against him. Antigonus escaped with his son
Demetrius into Greece, where he obtained the favor
and protection of Antipater, 321 B.C.; and when soon
after, on the death of Perdiccas, a new division took
place, he had the province of Susiana added to his
former share. He was likewise intrusted with the com-
mand of the war against Eumenes, who had joined
Perdiccas against the coalition of Antipater, Antigonus,
and the other generals. Eumenes was thoroughly de-
feated, and was obliged to retire with only 600 men to
the inaccessible castle of Nora, and a new army that
was marching to his relief was also routed by Antigonus.
In the interval Antipater had died (318 B.C.), and the
opportunity excited the ambition of Antigonus to
possess the whole of Alexander's empire. Polysperchon
succeeding Antipater in the regency, to the exclusion of
Cassander his son, Antigonus resolved to set himself up
as lord of all Asia. On account of the great power of
Eumenes, he greatly desired to gain him over in his
interest; but that faithful commander, effecting his
escape from Nora, raised an army, and was appointed
the royal general in Asia. He defeated Antigonus in
several engagements, but was at last delivered up to him
through treachery, and put to death. Upon this the
governor of Upper Asia yielded to Antigonus. The
latter now seized upon all the treasurers at Susa, and
directed his march towards Babylon, of which Seleucus
was governor. Seleucus fled to Ptolemy, and entered
into a league with him, together with Lysimachus and
Cassander, in order to check the exorbitant power of
Antigonus (315 B.C.) Notwithstanding this Antigonus
made a successful attempt upon Syria and Phoenicia,
though these provinces were soon after recovered by
Ptolemy, who defeated his son Demetrius, while he
himself was employed against Cassander in Asia Minor.
They were again taken by Antigonus, who, flushed with
success, sent an expedition against the Nabathaean
Arabs dwelling in the deserts adjacent to Judaea. In
the first enterprise his troops were cut to pieces by the
Arabs; but his son commanded the second, and was
more successful. Demetrius then expelled Seleucus
from Babylon; and, success attending his arms where-
ever he went, the confederates had to make a treaty
with Antigonus, stipulating that he should remain in
possession of all Asia, but that the Greek cities should
retain their liberty. This agreement was soon violated,
under the pretense that garrisons had been placed in
some of these cities by Antigonus. At first Ptolemy
made a successful descent into Asia Minor, and on
several of the islands of the Archipelago; but he was at
length totally defeated by Demetrius, in a naval engage-
ment off Salamis, in the island of Cyprus. On gaining
this victory Antigonus assumed the title of king, and
bestowed the same upon his son; and from that time
(206 B.C.), his reign in Asia, and that of Ptolemy in
Egypt, and of the other generals of Alexander in their
respective provinces, properly commence. Antigonus
now prepared a large army, and a formidable fleet, the
command of which he gave to Demetrius, and hastened
to attack Ptolemy in his own dominions. His invasion
of Egypt, however, proved a failure; a battle with
Ptolemy at Mount Casius gained Antigonus no advan-
tage, and, after a few other fruitless efforts, he was
obliged to retire,(306 B.C.) Demetrius attempted the
reduction of Rhodes; but, meeting with obstinate resist-
ance, he was obliged to make a treaty upon the best
terms he could, in order to join his father in crushing a
confederacy that had been formed between Cassander,
Seleucus, and Lysimachus. Father and son advanced
with their united forces into Phrygia, and met the
enemy at Ipsus. . A decisive battle was fought, in which
Antigonus ſell, in the 81st year of his age, 301 B.C.,
and with him fell the fortunes of his house.
ANTIGONUS (GONATAS), son of Demetrius
Poliorcetes, and grandson of the former Antigonus, was
born at Gouni in Thessaly about 319 B.C. On the death
of his father in Asia, 283 B.C., he assumed the title of
king of Macedonia, but did not obtain possession of the
throne till 277, after it had been successively in the hands
of Pyrrhus, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy Cerau-
nus. Antigonus repelled the invasion of the Gauls, and
continued in undisputed possession of Macedonia till 273,
when Pyrrhus returned from Italy and dethroned him.
Pyrrhus fell, 272 B.C., at Argos, and Antigonus was
again restored to power. The latter part of his reign
was comparatively peaceful, and he gained the affection
of his subjects by his mildness of disposition and his cul-
tivation of arts. He resisted the formation of the
Achaean league, but did not resort to arms to enforce his
opposition. He died, leaving his kingdom in peace, in
the 80th year of his age, and the 44th of his reign, 239 B.C.
ANTIGUA, one of the West Indian Islands, in the
British Leeward group, situated 50 miles E. of St.
Christopher, with an area of 108 square miles, and a cir-
cumference of about 50 miles. Population in 1871,
35, I57.
ANTILEGOMENA (contradicted or disputed), an
epithet applied to the early Christian writers to denote
those books of the New Testament which, although
sometimes publicly read in the churches, were not for a
considerable time admitted to be genuine, or received
into the canon of Scripture. These books are so denom-
inated in contradistinction to the Homologoumena, or
universally acknowledged writings.
ANTILLES, a name that is usually, although by no
means uniformly, applied to the whole of the West In-
dian Islands, with the exception of the Bahamas; it has
also, on the one hand, been employed to designate
Smaller portions of the same group, and, on the other,
it has been extended so as to comprehend the whole
archipelago, inclusive of the Bahamas. The traditional
derivation of the word Antilles itself, from Antilla, a
continent supposed to lie to the west of the Azores, and
for which Cuba, or some other West Indian island, was
mistaken, is too doubtful and too vague in its application
to be of any value in determining the proper use of the
term; the weight of authority seems to be in favor of the
first acceptation. In this sense the Antilles have been
divided into two groups: — the Greater Antilles, includ-
ing Cuba, Jamaica, Hayti, and Porto Rico; and the
Lesser Antilles, forming the remainder of the islands.
See WEST INDIES.
ANTIMACHUS, the Colophonian, a Greek poet who
was honored by the Alexandrine grammarians with the
second place in their epic canon. Of his works nothing
remains to us but the merest fragments; and of his life,
we know little more than that he was born at Claros;
was beaten by a rival in poetical competition at Samos;
met, either then or in equally discouraging circumstances
with Plato; fell in love with a lady called Lyde; lost her
by death; bewailed her in an elegy of extreme erudition,
if not of extraordinary pathos; and celebrated in his epic
the seven heroes of Thebes.
A N T
355
ANTIMONY, a metal found native to a small extent
in many of the localities from which its ores are derived.
It has been obtained at Sahlberg, near Sahl in Sweden,
at Andreasberg in the Harz, at Allemont in Dauphiny,
Przibram in Bohemia, besides being brought from Borneo,
Chili, Mexico, New Brunswick, &c. It also occurs in
nature alloyed with other metals; allemontite being ar-
senical antimony; dyscrasite, antimonial silver; and
breithauptite, a native alloy of antimony and nickel.
Among the ores of antimony may be enumerated valen-
tinite, or white antimony; and cervantite, or antimony
ochre, both oxides of antimony; and kermesite, red
antimony, or antimony blende, or oxysulphide of the
metal. Various sulph-antimonites of other metals are
also met with, but they possess only a mineralogical in-
terest. The antimony of commerce is derived almost
entirely from the sulphide, stibnite, or grey antimony
ore, which is found in great abundance in Borneo, in
Nevada, and at Prince William antimony mine, New
Brunswick. It is also mined at Schemnitz and Krem-
mitz in Hungary, at Przibram in Bohemia, at Wolfsberg
in the Harz, and at Braunsdorf, near Freiberg, Bavaria.
Crude antimony sulphide is used in the manufacture of
black lead pencils. For the action of antimony as a
poison, see Poisons.
ANTINOMIANS, a term first employed by Luther
as a designation of the followers of John Agricola, who
maintained that the moral law was not binding, as such,
upon Christians (see AGRICOLA, JoHANNEs). In this,
as in many other cases, however, the thing existed long
before the name.
ANTINOMY is the word employed by Kant, in the
Critical Philosophy, to mark the inevitable conflict or
contradiction into which, according to his view, specu-
lative reason falls with itself, when it seeks to conceive
the complex of external phenomena, or nature, as a
world or cosmos. Literally the word means a conflict
or opposition of laws. It is used by Kant both in a
generic and in a specific sense; the fate that lies upon
the speculative endeavor of human reason taking the
form of four special contradictions. For the generic
sense Kant also has the word Antithetic, each antinomy
being set forth in the shape of thesis and antithesis, with
corresponding demonstrations, the perfect validity of
which, in all cases, he most positively guarantees. The
conflicting propositions, or the cosmological ideas in-
volved in them, are intimately, though somewhat ob-
scurely, related to the four heads of categories of the
understanding in the Kantian system, but this is not the
place to enter into such details.
ANTINOUS, a beautiful youth, who was page to the
emperor Hadrian, and greatly beloved by him. After
his mysterious death by drowning in the Nile (130 A.D.),
Hadrian — for whose sake, according to one account,
he had offered himself a voluntary victim to destiny—
caused the most extravagant respect to be paid to his
memory by ceremony and monument.
ANTIOCH, a city in Syria, described as “Epidaph-
nes,” or as," on the Orontes,” to distinguish it from
the fifteen &ther Greek towns which, like itself, owed
their foundation to Seleucus Nicator, and their names to
his father Antiochus. While the wide-spread notoriety
of Daphne, with its beautiful grove, compared to the
vale of Tempe, and with its extraordinary excesses of
pleasure, rendered it available as a local designation for
Antioch, the river Orontes also seems to have served the
same purpose with more than usual interest, owing, per-
haps, to its fabulous history. Originally, it had been
called Typhon, from the snake-legged giant of that
name (Strabo, p. 750), who here struck by the thunder-
boit of Jupiter, and seeking escape under the earth,
formed the bed of the river by his trail, and its source
by ...is descent. Orontes, it was said, was the name of a
man who had built a bridge over the river, and when in
Roman times the course of the stream was partly
changed, a tomb (soros) was found in the old bed con-
taining the bones of a man of colossal size, which the
oracle declared to be those of Orontes. On the coins of
Antioch struck by Tigranes, and frequently on those of
later times, the city is personified as a female figure
seated on a high rock or hill, from under which issues
the Orontes in the form of a youth in the attitude of
swimming. The same representation occurs in a marble
statue in the Vatican, and in a silver statuette in the
British Museum ; and in each case there can be little
doubt that the original model was the celebrated statue
of Antioch by Eutychides, a sculptor of Lysippus.
On the dismemberment of the Eastern empire founded
by Alexander the Great, it fell to Seleucus to make him-
self master of that portion of it included in Syria. It
was an age remarkable for the building of new towns
more or less on the plan of Alexandria, and accordingly
Seleucus, instead of establishing himself at Antigonia,
‘the newly-built capital of his defeated rival, chose a site
a little further down the Orontes, about 20 miles from
its mouth, for the capital of his new kingdom, the task
of laying out and building it being entrusted to the ar-
chitect Xenaeus. On Mount Silpius was placed the
citadel, and on the slope towards the river the town.
Seleucus destroyed Antigonia, transferred its inhabitants
to Antioch, and perhaps, as has been said, utilized its
building material. In addition to this new population
there were the old inhabitants of the village of Iopolis or
Ione, which had before occupied the citadel, and which
traced its origin to lone, an Argive fugitive from Egypt,
in search of whom Triptolemus had been sent from
Eleusis. Though this legend appears to have originated
simply from the name Ione, the people of Antioch yet
boasted of a common descent with the inhabitants of
Attica, struck coins with the head of Pallas and an owl,
precisely like coins of Athens, and maintained the tra-
ditions of Triptolemus as of a sort of ancestral hero.
Besides Iopolis, the villages of Meroe, afterwards a
suburb, and Bottia, on the banks of the Orontes, where
Alexander dedicated a temple to Jupiter Bottiaeus,
claimed to have furnished the original inhabitants of
Antioch. But the town founded by Seleucus, 300 B.C.,
soon became insufficient for the influx of population,
and a new district had to be enclosed, the original walls
being allowed to remain. For the same purpose a third
addition was made in the time of Seleucus Callinicus
(246-226 B.C.), and a fourth under Antiochus Epiphanes
(175–164 B.C.), to whom the city owed also many new
buildings of great splendor. From its four parts, each
separately walled, Antioch was now called a tetrapolis,
and in point of situation, architectural magnificence,
and resources of enjoyment, ranked after Rome and
Alexandria as the next city of its time.
ANTIOCH IN PISIDIA, another of the many cities
founded by Seleucus Nicator, was situated on the south
side of the range of mountains between Phrygia and
Pisidia. Its remains, which were identified by Arundel
in 1835, are close to the modern Yalobatch, and include
the ruins of several temples, a theatre and a magnificent
aqueduct.
ANTIOCHUS I. (SOTER, the Deliverer) succeeded
his father Seleucus Nicator, the ſounder of the Syrian
kingdom, in 28o B. C. He maintained for a time his
father's Macedonian policy, but at length came to terms
with Antigonus Gonatas. Successful at first against the
Gauls, who had invaded Asia Minor, he was finally
slain by them in battle, (261 B.C.)
ANTIOCHUS II. (THEos, the God), the son and
successor of Antiochus I. Under him Syria was troubled
356 f
A N T
with a long Egyptian war, and lost Parthia and Bactria,
which became independent. He was forced by Ptolemy
of Egypt to put away his wife and marry an Egyptian
princess, Berenice; but on Ptolemy's death Berenice
was discarded, and Laodice restored. The latter, how-
ever, out of revenge or mistrust procured the death of
her husband, her rival, and their son, 246 B. c.
ANTIOCHUS III., surnamed the Great, was the
son of Seleucus Callinicus, and ascended the Syrian
throne at the age of fifteen, on the death of his brother,
Seleucus Ceraunus. His reign embraced a series of
wars against the revolted provinces and neighboring
kingdoms, in the prosecution of which his disasters and
successes were equally great. His march to India; his
agreement with Philip of Macedonia for the partition of
Egypt; his conquest of Palestine and Coele-Syria; his
occupation of Asia Minor and the Thracian Chersonese;
his collision with the Romans; his expedition into
Greece, with the defeat at Thermoplylae by Acilius
Glabrio, and at Mount Sipylus (in Asia Minor) by
Scipio; and his dearly purchased peace in 188 B.C., are
the chief events of his life. He was killed in an attempt
to plunder a temple at Elymais, 187 B.C., and was suc-
ceeded by his son Seleucus Philopator.
ANTIOCHUS IV., (EPIPHANES, the Illustrious,
and by parody, EPIMANES, the Insane), who had been
a hostage in Rome from 187 B.C., ascended the Syrian
throne on the death of Seleucus, 175 B.C., and soon
made himself famous by his conquest of Coele-Syria,
Palestine, and Egypt itself, with the exception of Alex-
andria, which would likely have also been his if the
Romans had not interfered and forbidden him the country.
During his Egyptian campaigns he twice took Jerusalem
(17O and 168 B.C.); but he appears to have seen that he
could never hope to subdue Judaea until he had rooted
out the peculiar Jewish religion. He accordingly promul-
gated a decree, enjoining unformity of worship throughout
his dominions; and on the refusal of the Jews to obey it,
he went in person to Jerusalem and endeavored to force
on them the worship of the Greek deities. This perse-
cuting policy stirred up the resistance of the Maccabees;
and it was while hastening to quell this revolt that he
fell ill of a loathsome disease, and died, raving mad, at
Tabae, in Persia, 164 B.C. His death was thought by
the Jews to be an appropriate punishment for his perse-
cution of them.
ANTIOCHUS VIII., king of Syria, was the second
son of Demetrius Nicator. During his reign (125–96
B.C.) those discords and wars began between the princes
of the royal house of Syria, which form almost its sole
history, till the kingdom was reduced to a Roman colony
in 65 B.C.
ANTIOCHUS, OF ASCALON, a philosopher of the
1st century before Christ, who, coming under the influ-
ence of Philo the Academic and of Mnesarchus the
Stoic, was led to attempt a reconciliation between their
antagonistic doctrines, and thus gave rise to what has
been called the Fifth Academy. In regard to the great
question of the degree of certainty attainable by man,
he held, in opposition to the scepticism of Philo, that
the human intellect has in itself a sufficient test of truth;
and in regard to the question wherein happiness consists,
he maintained that, while virtue was the greatest essen-
tial, the circumstances of life were not a matter of indif.
ference. Of his writings none have been preserved to
us; and for the greater part of our information we are
indebted to Cicero, who had studied under him at
Athens, and continued to keep up a friendly intercourse
with him afterwards. He visited Alexandria and Rome,
and lectured on philosophy in both cities.
ANTIOPE (1), in Greek legend, the mother of Am-
phion and Zethus, was, according to the Odyssey, a
daughter of the river god Asopus. In later poems, as
in the Cypria, she is described as the daughter of Lycur-
gus, who appears as a king of Thebes. Her beauty at-
tracted Jupiter, who, assuming the form of a satyr, took
her by force. After this she was carried off by Epopeus,
king of Sicyon, who would not yield his possession of
her till compelled by his uncle Lycus. On the way
home she gave birth, in the neighborhood of Eleutherae,
to the twins Amphion and Zethus, of whom the former,
some supposed, was the son of the god, the other the
son of Epopeus. Both were left to be brought up by
herdsmen. At Thebes Antiope now suffered from the
persecution of Dirce, the wife of Lycus, but at last
escaped toward Eleutherae, and there found shelter, un-
knowingly, in the house where her two sons were living
as herdsmen. Here she was discovered by Dirce, who
ordered the two young men to tie her to the horns of a
wild bull. They were about to obey, when the old
herdsman, who had brought them up, revealed his secret,
and they now carried out the punishment on Dirce in-
stead. For this, it is said, Bacchus, to whose worship
Dirce had been devoted, visited Antiope with madness,
, which caused her to wander restlessly all over Greece till
she was cured, and thereafter married by Phocus of Tit-
horea, on Mount Parnassus, where at last both were
buried.
ANTIOPE (2), an Amazon who bore to Theseus a
son, Hippolytus. As to how Theseus became possessed
of her there are various reports. Either she gave her-
self up to him out of love, when with Hercules he cap-
tured Themiscyra, the seat of the Amazons, or she fell
to his lot then as a captive.
ANTIPAROS, the ancient Oliaros, an island of the
kingdom of Greece, one of the Cyclades, in the modern
eparchy of Naxos, situated on the west of Paros, from
which it is separated by a strait about a mile and a half
wide at the narrowest point.
ANTIPAS, HEROL. See HEROD ANTIPAs.
ANTIPATER, regent of Macedonia during Alex-
ander's Eastern expedition, 334 B.C. He gained his
distinguished position by his faithful attachment and his
prudence. In 330 he had to subdue the rebellious tribes.
of Thrace; but even before this insurrection was
quelled, the Spartan king Agis had risen against Mace-
donia. Having settled affairs in Thrace as well as he
could, Antipater hastened to the south, and in a battle
near Megalopolis, gained a complete victory over the
insurgents. In the first partition of Alexander the
Great’s empire among the Macedonian generals, Anti-
pater and Craterus had allotted to them the administra-
tion of the dominions in Europe with the exception of
Thrace, which was given to Lysimachus. . The death of
Alexander tempted the Greeks to assert their independ-
ence, but the prudence and valor of Antipater crushed
all attempts in the Lamian war, and established the
Macedonian rule in Greece on a firm footing. At the
same time Craterus was engaged in a war against the
AEtolians, when news arrived from Asia which induced
Antipater to conclude peace with them; for Antigonus
reported that Perdiccas contemplated making himself
sole master of the empire. Antipater and Craterus
accordingly prepared for war against Perdiccas, and
allied themselves with Ptolemy the governor of Egypt.
Antipater crossed over into Asia in 321; and while still
in Syria, he received information that Perdiccas had
been murdered by his own soldiers. Antipater now, as
sole regent, made several new regulations, and having
commissioned Antigonus to continue the war against
Eumenes and the other partisans of Perdiccas, returned
to Macedonia, where he arrived in 32O. Soon after he
was seized by an illness which terminated his active
career 319 B.C. Passing over his son Cassander, he
A N T
357
appointed Polysperchon regent, a measure which gave
rise to much confusion and ill feeling.
ANTIPHILUS, a painter of the 4th century before
Christ, who was placed by the ancient critics in the
highest rank after Apelles and Protogenes.
ANTIPHON, the most ancient of the ten Athenian
orators contained in the Alexandrine canon. He
was born 480 B.C. at Rhamnus. During the
Peloponnesian war he was several times entrusted
with the command of detachments of the Athenian
forces, and took an active part in the political affairs of
Athens. He had a hand in the overthrow of the
democracy, and the establishment of the oligarchy of
the Four Hundred, 41 I B.C.; but as the new govern-
ment was soon after changed, Antiphon was accused of
high treason, and put to death.
ANTIPHONY, a species of psalmody in which the
choir or congregation, being divided into two parts, sing
alternately. The peculiar structure of the Hebrew
psalms renders it probable that the antiphonal method
originated in the service of the ancient Jewish Church.
ANTIPODES, a word of Greek derivation (against,
opposed to feet), - from the inhabitants walking feet to
feet,_ is a relative term applied to any two peoples or
places on opposite sides of the earth, so situated that a
line drawn from the one to the other passes through the
centre of the globe and forms a true diameter. Thus,
the North Pole is exactly antipodal to the South. Noon
at the one place is midnight at the other, the longest
day corresponds to the shortest, and mid-winter is con-
temporaneous with mid-summer. In the calculation of
days and nights, midnight on the one side may be re-
garded as corresponding to the noon either of the pre-
zious or of the following day. If a voyager sail east-
ward, and thus anticipate the sun, his dating will be
...twelve hours in advance, while the reckoning of another
who has been sailing westward will be as much in arrear.
There will thus be a difference of twenty-four hours be-
tween the two. In this way the Portugese in Macao
are a day before their Spanish neighbors in the Phil-
ippine Islands.
ANTIPYRENE, a valuable febrifuge obtained from
coal-tar. It has lately been much used in treatment of
headaches arising from congestion, administered in doses
of from 5 to 25 grs. Its habitual use is greatly to be
reprobated, as it is dangerous in a layman's hands, and it
should never he given in combination with any of the com-
pounds of nitrous acid, as the result is a virulent poison.
ANTIQUE, denoting etymologically anything that
is ancient, is conventionally restricted to the remains of
Greek and Roman art, such as sculptures, gems, &c.
ANTIQUITIES. In keeping with its derivation,
the word “antiquities” had for long a wide and general
acceptation, embracing everything belonging to the
knowledge of the remoter past. The range of the term
has been gradually lessened, and a distinction has grown
up between history on the one hand and antiquities on
the other, though the line of demarcation is not of the
most definite kind.
At the revival of learning, when such enthusiasm was
felt for everything classical, the relics of Greece and Rome
were carefully collected and preserved; but it was some
time before a transition took place from classical to
national antiquarianism; and hence it is that the earliest
literature or archaeolgy is almost solely confined to the
classical area.
ANTISEPTICS, substances which have the property
of preventing or arresting putrefaction in dead animal or
vegetable matter. The access of air, together with a
moderate amount of warmth and of moisture, are neces-
sary to the occurrence of the putrefactive changes, which
consist essentially in the breaking up of the complex
organic material, and the formation of new and simpler
combinations among its constituent elements. During
the process various gases and vapors are evolved, and the
lower forms of animal and vegetable life are observed to
grow and multiply in the putrefying substance.
Putrefaction may be prevented by removing one or
more of the conditions essential to its occurrence. Thus,
by exclusion of the atmosphere, dead matter, which
would speedily undergo decomposition, may be kept in-
tact for an indefinite length of time, as shown in the
method of preserving meat by hermetically sealing the jars
after the expulsion of the air by the heat. Again, the
preservative influence of a low temperature is well known;
and extreme cold is a powerful antiseptic, as proved in
case of the frozen mammoths of northern Asia. Quinine
has been found to possess strong antiseptic properties.
The tar products, notably carbolic acid, are among the
most appproved and extensively used of all antiseptic
agents. One of the most important applications of anti-
septics has been their introduction into medical and sur-
gical practice. Although their internal administration,
with the view of counteracting diseases believed to be due
to morbid poisons, has not hitherto yielded any marked
practical result, their employment in the treatment of
wounds has attracted much interest, and has exercised
an important influence on surgical practice during late
years, Iodoform, specially, being largely used. .
ANTISTHENES was the earliest Greek expositor of
a philosophy and mode of life to which the name of
Cynicism soon came to be applied. Though a native of
Athens, he was the son of a Thracian mother; and it
was in the gymnasium of Cynosarges, to which the half-
breeds were restricted, that he is said to have taught.
From that place he and his followers probably received
the name Cynic; but the popular derivation of the word
connected it with the dog, whose shamelessness and im-
portunity many of their actions seemed to imitate. In
the time of Diogenes the name was firmly fixed as a
nickname, and even adopted by the Cynics themselves.
Antisthenes was apparently born some years be-
fore the Peloponnesian war began, and from his re-
mark on the rejoicings after the battle of Leuctra,
(371 B.C.) — that the Thebans were like a pack of
schoolboys who had thrashed their master—it may be
inferred that he lived on nearly to the middle of the 4th
century B.C.
Antisthenes was poor, and lived in the midst of a com-
mercial population which had suffered severely from the
disasters attending the downfall of the Athenian empire.
He became the philosopher of the proletariat, carrying
into the haunts of the indigent and the vicious those
principles which had been spreading in wealthier circles,
and modifying them to suit altered circumstances. His
earlier culture had always been more literary and rhet:
orical than strictly philosophical, and he never attained
a mastery over metaphysical problems. Antisthenes
opposes a crude Realism to the Idealism of Plato. The
attitude of Antisthenes towards intellectual philosophy
is in the main negative, and the general result he comes
to is that logical or metaphysical investigations which go
beyond name are unfruitful and frivolous. &
He seems not to have been specially extravagant in
conduct; but the later Cynics, who were without his
culture, made it a point to disregard all decency and so:
cial conventions. Whatever they had to do they deemed
it their duty to do in public—at least such is the tenor
of many tales. The wise man, they held, would follow
another law than that of his city; he was a citizen of the
world. Sexual desires he would unquestionably have to
satisfy, but in the most convenient way, without regard
to sentimental objections or to beauty—the uglier the
better. Some, at least, of the Cynics maintained the
Af
358
A N T
advisability of a community of wives. They allowed to
no ceremonies more than a relative force.
So far the Cynics taught practically. But they were
also great in repartee and sarcasm. The fine touch of
Socratic irony, which had given offence by talking occa-
sionally about pots and pans, was succeeded by a rough
and sometimes gross satire, which scrupled not to deal
with matters viler still. Antisthenes, it is said, had some
powers of social attraction; but if it were so, his suc-
cessors were more marked by the severity of their re-
bukes. From the Homeric poems, the Bible of the
Greeks, they drew many of the weapons of their war-
fare, parodying its language, and applying it to suit their
own circumstances. Public manners, men and measures
were assailed in no merciful spirit. Antisthenes com-
pared the cry of democratic politicians to the speech in
which the hares demanded equality of rights from the
lion. He was equally at odds with the aesthetic and lit-
erary tendencies of his time. Aristippus, Plato, and
Isocrates were among his literary enmities. Nor was he
less trenchant in his criticisms of popular superstitions,
of soothsayers, and mystery-mongers. When the priest
dilated in his sermon on the blessedness of the other
world for the initiated, Antisthenes interrupted him with
the words: “Why don’t you die, then?”
The great age of Cynicism in Greece is the century
from 400 to 300 B.C. Then for more than three cen-
turies the name continued a tradition, when in the 1st and
2d centuries of the Christian era it was revived. The
majority of the Cynics of that date were a worthless set
of vagabonds, who used the garb and the name as a
cover for all iniquities. They may be compared to the
mendicant orders in the worst days of their corruption.
But amongst them two or three names have a brighter
light thrown upon them. Demetrius is lauded by his con-
temporary Seneca, and about a hundred years later Demo-
nax is enthusiastically presented to the world by Lucian.
ANTITHESIS (a vrijegºš) is, in rhetoric, the
bringing out of a contrast in the meaning by an obvious
contrast in the expression, as in the following:—“When
there is need of silence, you speak, and when there is
need of speech, you are dumb ; when present, you wish
to be absent, and when absent you desire to be present;
in peace you are for war, and in war you long for peace;
in council you descant on bravery, and in the battle you
tremble.”
ANTITYPE (dºvrärvzos) denotes a type or figure
corresponding to some other type. It is in the sense
of copy or /i/*eness that the word occurs in the New
Testament (Heb. ix. 24; 1 Peter iii. 21). By the
fathers of the Greek Church antitype is employed as a
designation of the bread and wine in the sacrament of
the Lord’s supper.
ANTIUM, a city on the Italian coast, about 33 miles
S. from Rome. Its site is now occupied by the village
Porto d’Anzio, or d’Azuzo. Founded, it is supposed, by
Pelasgians, it became connected with the Latin League,
and about the beginning of the 4th century before Christ
passed into the hands of the Volsci. As the chief city
of this people it continued, in spite of repeated defeat,
to carry on, with intervals of peace, a pertinacious war
against the Romans till the year 338 B.C., when it was
finally subdued, and garrisoned by a Roman colony, its
ships being destroyed, and their rostra or beaks sent
to ornament the speaker’s platform in the Forum.
Towards the close of the republic it was again a
beautiful and flourishing town, greatly resorted to by
the wealthier Romans. It is now the property of the
Borghese family, and is a favorite bathing-place in the
early summer months. Among the ancient remains that
have been discovered here are the Apollo Belvedere, and
the Borghese or Fighting Gladiator.
ANTIVARI, or BAR, a town of Turkey, in Albaniz,
situated on the Adriatic Sea, 18 miles N.W. of Scutari.
Population about 6000.
ANTONELLO DA MESSINA. Of the events of this
celebrated painter’s life we know little more than that he
was probably born at Messina about the beginning of
the 15th century; lived and labored at his art for some
time in his native country; happening to see at Naples
a painting in oil by Jan Van Eyck, belonging to Alfonso
of Aragon, was struck by the peculiarity and value of
the new method; set out for the Netherlands to acquire
a knowledge of the process from Van Eyck's disciples;
spent some time there in the prosecution of his art;
returned with his secret to Messina about 1465; probably
visited Milan ; removed to Venice in 1472, where he
painted for the Council of Ten ; and died there about
I4O2.
*NTONIDEs, HANS [JAN VAN DER GOEs], a
Dutch poet, was born April 3, 1647, at Goes, in Zea-
land, of poor but respectable parents. They removed to
Amsterdam when he was about four years old, and he
there enjoyed the tuition of Hadrian Junius and James
Cocceius. His parents designed him ſor an apothecary;
but Buisdro, , one of the lords of the admiralty at
Amsterdam, defrayed his college expenses, and enabled
him to take the degree of doctor of physic. His writ-
ings are remarkable for their warmth of fancy and vigor
of expression, which sometimes degenerate into extrava-
gance and bombast. His complete works were printed
at Amsterdam in 1714, 4to, with a sketch of his life.
ANTONINI, ITINERARIUM, a valuable register,
still extant, of the stations and distances along the vari-
ous roads of the Roman empire, seemingly based on
official documents, which were probably those of the
survey organised by Julius Caesar, and carried out under
Augustus.
ANTONINUS LIBERALIS, a Greek grammarian,
who probably lived about 147 A.D. His work consists
of forty-one tales of mythical metamorphoses, and is
chiefly valuable for the study of Greek mythology.
ANTONINUS, MARCUs AURELIUS. See AURE-
LIUS MARCUS. *
ANTONINUS, TITUs AURELIUS FULvUS BORO-
NIUS ARRIUS, surnamed PIUS, was the son of Aurelius
Fulvus, a Roman consul, whose family had originally
belonged to Nemausus (Nismes). He was born near
Lanuvium, 86 A.D., and, having lost his father, was
brought up under the care of Arrius Antoninus, his
maternal grandfather, a man of integrity and culture,
and on terms of friendship with the younger Pliny.
Having filled with more than usual success the offices of
quaestor and praetor, he obtained the consulship in 120
A.D.; was next chosen one of the four consulars of Italy;
greatly increased his reputation by his conduct as pro-
consul of Asia; acquired much influence with the
emperor Hadrian, by whom he was at length adopted
as his son and successor in February 138 A.D.; and a few
months afterwards, on Hadrian's death, was enthusiastic-
ally welcomed to the throne by the Roman people, who,
for once, were not disappointed in their anticipation of
a happy reign. For Antoninus came to his new office
with simple tastes, kindly disposition, extensive experi-
ence, a well-trained intelligence, and the sincerest desire
for the welfare of his subjects. Instead of plundering
the provinces to support his prodigality, he emptied his
private treasury to assist the provinces. Instead of
exaggerating into treason whatever, was susceptible of
unfavorable interpretation, he turned the very conspira-
cies that were formed against him into opportunities of
signalising his clemency. Instead of stirring up the per-
secution of the Christians, and gloating over the suffer-
ings of their martyrs, he extended to them the strong
*
A N T *
359
hand of his protection through all the empire. Rather
than give occasion to that oppression which he regarded
as inseparable from an emperor's progress through his
dominions, he was content to spend all the years of his
reign in Rome, or its neighborhood. Under his patron-
age the science of jurisprudence was cultivated by men
of high ability, and a number of enactments were passed
in his name that are equally characteristic of his human-
ity and his justice. Antoninus died of fever on the 7th
of March 161.
ANTONINUS, WALL OF, called GRAHAM's DYKE
by the natives of the district through which it passed, is
the name given by historians to that series of defensive
posts, connected by a rampart and a wall, which at one
time extended across the island from the Frith of Clyde
on the west to the Frith of Forth on the east. The
former of these appellations it has received from the
Roman emperor in whose reign it was erected; the origin
of the latter is rather doubtful.
The nature and appearance of the wall when perfect
have been described in very similar terms. “It consisted,”
says Stuart, “in the first place, of an immense fosse or
ditch—averaging about 40 feet in width by some 20 in
depth—which extended over hill and plain in one un-
broken line from sea to sea. Behind this ditch on its
southern side, and within a few feet of its edge, was
raised a rampart of intermingled stone and earth,
strengthened by sods of turf, which measured, it is Sup-
posed, about 20 feet in height, and 24 in thickness at
the base. This rampart was surmounted by a parapet,
behind which ran a level platform for the accommoda-
tion of its defenders. To the southward of the whole
was situated the military way—a regular causeway road
about 20 feet wide—which kept by the course of the
wall at irregular distances, approaching in Some places
to within a few yards, and in others receding to a con-
siderable extent.”
Although in many parts of its course all traces of
Antonine's wall have been obliterated, the line along
which it stretched has been mapped out by Gordon and
others with accuracy. Its entire length may be set down
at about 36 English miles.
How many years Antonine's wall continued to be the
boundary of the Roman territories in Britain it is im-
possible to say, but there is every reason for believing
that it was so for only a brief period.
ANTONIO NICOLAO, a Spanish biographer, was
born at Seville in 1617. After finishing his studies at
Salamanca, he returned to Seville, and shut himself
up in the royal monastery of Benedictines, where
he devoted several years to writing his Aió//o//eca //is-
Alanica, a work in four vols, folio, two of which he pub-
lished at Rome in 1672. The work consists of two
parts; the one containing the Spanish writers who flour-
ished before the end of the 15th century; the other—the
part published by Antonio himself-treating of later
writers. He was recalled to Madrid by Charles II., and
died in 1684, leaving nothing but a magnificent library
of over 30,000 volumes.
ANTONIUS MARCUs, the Roman orator, was born
143 B.C. Aſter having filled the office of questor (113),
he was appointed praetor in 194, and proprietor in the
following year, the province of Cilicia, being assigned to
him. Here he was so successful in the war against the
pirates, that a naval triumph was awarded him in 102.
He was consul along with A. Postumius Albinus in 99,
when he successfully opposed the agrarian law of the
tribune Titius. He was censor 97, and held a command
in the Marsic war in 90. Belonging as he did to the
party of Sulla, he was put to death by order of
Marius and Cinna when they obtained possession of
Rome (87 B. C.)
&
ANTONIUS, MARCUs [MARK ANTONY], grand-
son of Antonius the orator, and son of Antonius Cre-
ticus, seems to have been born about 83 B.C. While
still a child he lost his father, whose example, how-
ever, had he been spared, would have done little
for the improvement of his character. Brought up
under the disreputable Cornelius Lentulus Sura, whom
his mother had married, Antony spent his youth in
profligacy and extravagance. For a time he co oper-
ated with the reprobate Clodius in his political plans,
chiefly, it is supposed, through hostility to Cicero, who
had caused Lentulus, his stepfather, to be put to death
as one of the Catline conspirators; but he soon with-
drew from the connection, on account of disagreement
which, appropriately enough, arose in regard to his
relations to his associate’s wife, Flavia. Not long
after, in 58 B.C., he fled to Greece, to escape the
importunity of his creditors; and at length, after a
short time spent in attendance on the philosophers at
Athens, found an occasion for displaying some of the
better features of his character in the wars that were
being carried on by Gabinus against Aristobulus in
Palestine, and in support of Ptolemy Auletes in Egypt.
A new chapter in his life was opened by the visit, which
he made to Julius Caesar in Gaul (54 B.C.), Welcomed
by the victorious general as a valuable assistant in his
ambitious designs, and raised by his influence to the
office of quaestor, augur, and tribune of the plebs, he
displayed admirable boldness and activity in the main-
tenance of his patron’s cause, in opposition to the vio-
lence and intrigues of the oligarchical party. At length
his antagonists prevailed, and expelled him from the
curia; and the political contest became a civil war.
The Rubicori was crossed; Caesar was victorious, and
Antony shared in his triumph. Deputy-governor of
Italy during Caesar's absence in Spain (49), second in
command in the decisive battle of Pharsalia (48), and
again deputy-governor of Italy while Caesar was in
Africa (47), Antony was now inferior in power only to
the dictator himself, and eagerly seized the opportunity
of indulging in the most extravagant excesses of luxurious
licentiousness — excesses which Cicero depicted in the
A/hi/ippucs with all the elaborate eloquence of political
hatred. In 46 he seems to have taken offence at Caesar,
because he insisted on payment for the property of Pom-
pey which Antony professedly had purchased, but had
merely appropriated. But the estrangement was not of
long continuance; for we find Antony meeting the dictator
at Narbo the following year, and rejecting the advances of
Trebonius, who endeavored to discover if there was
any hope of getting Antony to join in the conspiracy
that was already on foot. In 44 he was consul along
with Caesar, and seconded his ambition by the famous
offer of the crown on the 15th of February, thus
unconsciously preparing the way for the tragedy of the
15th of March. To the sincerity of his adherence to
Caesar the conspirators themselves bore witness on that
memorable day, by the care which they took to keep
him engaged without while the daggers were doing their
work within. This was the second great epoch in
Antony's life. A brighter prospect than ever was then
opened to his ambition. By his eloquence — a heredi-
tary gift — he managed to stir up the minds of the
populace against the assassins of Caesar, and drove them
from the city. He made peace with the remaining rep-
resentatives of the Senatorial party, and almost seemed
to have succeeded to the power and position of his
unfortunate patron. But the youthful Octavius, whom
Caesar had adopted as his son, arrived from Illyria, and
claimed the inheritance of his “father.” Agreement
was impossible, and war ensued. Octavius obtained
the support of the senate and of Cicero; and the
36O
A N T
veteran troops of the dictator flocked to his standard.
Antony was denounced as a public enemy; and the city
gave its loudest applause to §. tirades of his most elo-
quent accuser. His cause gradually lost ground,
and at last seemed to be totally ruined when
his army was defeated in the siege of Mutina (43
B.C.) But escaping to Cisalpine Gaul, he formed a
junction with Lepidus, and they marched towards Rome
with 17 legions and Io,000 cavalry. The wily Octavius
now betrayed his party, and entered into terms with
Antony and Lepidus. Gaul was to be Antony's ; Spain
fell to the lot of Lepidus, and Africa, Sardinia, and
Sicily were to belong to Octavius. A conjunct pro-
scription followed, each of the partners in the villainous
design bartering the life of his friends for the pleasure
of destroying his foes. The detested author of the
A’hilippics was given up to Antony's revenge; and, ac-
cording to Appian, the number of the victims amounted
to 300 Senators and 2000 knights. In the following
year Antony and Octavius proceeded against the con-
spirators Cassius and Brutus, who still maintained
themselves at Macedonia; and, in the battles of Philippi,
stamped out the last embers of republican Rome.
While Octavius returned to Italy, Antony proceeded to
Greece, and thence to Asia Minor, for the sake of
recruiting his funds, completing the subjugation of the
eastern provinces, and obtaining satisfaction about the
conduct of the Egyptian queen during the recent contest.
On his passage through Cilicia in 41 he was visited by
Cleopatra, who came to answer the charges in person.
She sailed up the Cydnus in a gorgeous bark, with a
fantastic and brilliant equipage, and brought all her
allurements to bear on the heart of the voluptuous
Roman. Her success was complete ; and he who was
to have been her judge, was led captive to Alexandria
as her slave. All was forgotten in the fascination and
delight of the passing hour; and feasting and revelry
found perpetual and ever-varying renewal. At length
Antony was aroused by the Parthian invasion of Syria,
and the report of an outbreak between Fulvia his wife
and Lucias his brother on the one hand and Octavius on
the other. On arriving in Italy he found that the war
was over, and Octavius the victor ; and the chief cause
of disagreement being soon after removed by the death
of Fulvia, a reconciliation was speedily effected between
the triumvirs, and cemented by the marriage of Antony
with Octavia, the sister of his colleague. A new
division of the Roman world was agreed on at Brun-
dusium, Lepidus receiving Africa, Octavius the west, and
Antony the east. Returning to his province, Antony
was for a time successful ; his general, Ventidius, beat-
ing the Parthians, and Socius capturing Jerusalem and
conquering Antigonus. But after another visit to
Italy, during which the triumvirate was prolonged for
five years, Antony sent away his wife, yielded himself
completely to the evil influence of Cleopatra, indulged
not only in licentiousness, but in tyranny, and allowed
his affairs to be neglected or delayed. An expedition
against the Parthians was a failure; but for this his
success against Artavasdes, the Armenian king, in some
measure compensated. Octavius at length determined
to get rid of Antony, and had little need of invention
to bring charges sufficient against him. About two
years were spent in preparations and delays on both
sides, and it was not till the year 31 that the fate of
Antony was decided by the battle of Actium. Defeated
and deserted, he once more sought refuge and repose in
the society of Cleopatra, but was followed even there
by his relentless rival. At first he made a gallant
effort to defend himself, and partially succeeded. But
convinced of the hopelessness of his position, and
assured of the suicide of his mistress, he followed
...the example which he was falsely informed she had
given (30 B.C.)
ANTONOMASIA is, in rhetoric, the substitution of
any epithet or phrase for a proper name; as “Pelides,”
or “the son of Peleus,” for Achilles; “the Stagyrite ” for
Aristotle; “the author of Aaradise Zost " for Milton;
“the little corporal” for Napoleon the First. The
opposite substitution of a proper name for some generic
term is also sometimes called antonomasia; as, a “Cicero”
for an orator. In both cases the figure is akin to
metonymy.
ANTRIM, a maritime county in the north-east cor-
ner of Ireland, in the province of Ulster. It comprises
without including the 50,803 acres under water, an area
of 71 1,275 statute acres, of which 16,702 belong to the
incorporated county of the town of Carrickfergus.
In area Antrim is exceeded by eight other counties in
Ireland, but in population by Cork and Dublin alone.
A large portion of the surface, especially towards the
east, consists of mountains and bogs; and it is computed
that about 120,000 acres are irreclaimable. The mount-
ains, occupying about one-third of the county, stretch
from South to north, and terminate on the northern shore
in abrupt and almost perpendicular declivities.
Lough Neagh, the largest lake in Europe, with the
exception of Lake Ladoga, Lake Wener, and the Lake
of Geneva, is principally in Antrim.
The climate is very temperate. The average annual
rain-fall at Belfast is about 33 inches.
The soil varies greatly according to the district, being
in some cases a rich loam, in others a chalky marl, and
elsewhere a coating of peat. The chief feature in the
tillage of a considerable portion of the county is the
potato-fallow. The quantity of potato-land is commonly
regulated by the quantity of manure that can be collected;
and since the use of lime was introduced it has been
greatly increased. After potatoes, wheat or oats are
Sown; if the latter, two or three crops are successively
taken.
Antrim has long been distinguished for its linen manu-
facture, which is still the most important in the county.
It was formerly carried on by hand-loom weavers, but
the introduction of machinery has completely changed
the character of the occupation. In 1841 there were
about 240,000 spindles in operation, and now there are
upwards of 580,000. There are also extensive paper-
mills in the county, and various manufactures in connec-
tion with the trade of the district. The exports are
linen, linen yarn, all kinds of grain, pork, bacon, hams,
beef, butter, eggs, lard, potatoes, soap, and candles.
The communication by means of roads is good, and
there are several important railway lines.
ANTRIM, a town of Ireland, in the county noticed
above, half a mile from Lough Neagh, on the banks of
the Six-mile Water, in a fertile and beautiful valley, 13
miles north-west of Belfast, and IO6 north of Dublin.
ANT W ERP (Dutch, Antwerpen; French, Azazers;
Spanish, Amberes; Old German, Antorſ; from “aent
werſ,” “on the wharf"), a province of Belgium, bounded
by the Dutch province of North Brabant on the N., and
by the Belgian provinces of Limbourg on the E., South
Brabant on the S., and East Flanders on the W. The
greater part of the province, which consists of an exten-
sive plain of 1096 square miles, scarcely diversified by a
single elevation, is sandy but fertile, producing grain,
flax, hemp, fruit, and tobacco, as well as cattle, sheep,
and horses; on the north and north-east, however,
there are considerable tracts of morass and heath. The
principal rivers, the Scheldt and its tributuries, the
Rupel, the Nethe, and the Dyle, are navigable to a
large extent, while railways intersect the country in
various directions, and there are also several canals.
A N T — A N U
361
The chief towns are Antwerp, Mechlin (Malines) Turn-
hout, Lierre, and Boom. Population in 1870, 492,482.
ANTWERP, the capital of the province of the same
name, is situated about 50 miles from the open sea, and
25 north of Brussels, in a level tract on the right bank
of the Scheldt, which is there about 2200 feet broad,
and has a depth at ebb-tide of from 30 to 40 feet, with
a rise at spring-tides of 12 or 14. Antwerp seems to
have been founded by people of Saxon race some time
before the 8th century, when the Antwerpians or Ganer-
bians, as they began to be called, were converted to
Christianity by St. Willebrod and some Irish monks.
A certain Rohingus of that period styles himself prince
of Antwerp; and mention is made of a market-toll in
force in 726.
the Northmen, who kept possession of it for about sixty
years. It was erected into a marquisate of the Holy
Roman empire by Henry II., in 1008, and, as such, was
bestowed by Henry IV., in Io?6, on Godfrey of Bouil-
lon. About the beginning of the 12th century it had
considerable commercial prosperity; and in the 13th, its
municipal institutions took definite shape. It is worthy
of notice that the law of 1290 contained provisions
identical with those of the Habeas Corpus Act in Eng-
land, maintaining the inviolability of the citizen's dwell-
ing, and acknowledging the right of every man to be
judged by his peers, and to have a voice in the imposi-
tion of taxes. As the result of such security and free-
dom, the commerce of the city rapidly increased. The
English wools for the great manufactories at Louvain,
Brussels, Tirlemont, Diest, and Leau, were imported
through Antwerp; and the English merchants, who
formed a “factory” there in 1296, received special pro-
tection by charters (1305, 1341, 1346, 1349) from the
Dukes of Brabant, at that time in possession of the mar-
quisate. In 1338, while Edward III. of England was
spending the winter in the city with his queen Philippa,
she gave birth to Lionel, afterwards Duke of Clarence,
and the event was celebrated by a magnificent tourna-
ment. To the king, then in great need of money, the
merchants of Antwerp advanced 400,000 florins. The
marquisate passed successively into the hands of the
counts of Flanders and the house of Burgundy, and
returned to Brabant about 1406. In 1474 the town
made over a large house in Billinck Street to the English,
in 1550 an “English Bourse’’ was established, and in
I558 the beautiful Hop van Lyere—now a military hos-
pital — was ceded for the accommodation of our mer-
chants. Between 1488 and 1570 was the time of the
greatest prosperity which Antwerp was destined to at-
tain for several centuries. The discovery of America in
1492, and of the passage to India in 1497, produced a
great change in all European navigation, and perma-
mently altered the old courses of commerce. While, in
consequence of this, the cities of the Hanseatic League
had withered, and Venice, and Nuremberg, and Bruges
were sinking into decay, Antwerp was growing daily
more worthy of the name which she soon acquired, “the
wealthy Antwerp.” By contemporaneous writers, such
as Guicciardini and Scribanius, the most glowing ac-
counts have been left of her greatness. But from this
height of prosperity the city was suddenly cast down by
the wars of the 16th century. In 1576 it was taken by
the Spaniards, and given up to a three days’ pillage; it
was besieged, though in vain, by the duke of Alençon
in 1583; and, after a very obstinate defence, it fell
before the assaults of the duke of Parma, whose triuri-
phal entry took place on the 17th of August 1585. Its
glory departed; its commerce was ruined; its inhabitants
were scattered. The Dutch, in their jealousy, endeav-
ored to complete its ruin by building forts on the river to
intercept the passage of ships; and finally, by the peace
In 837 the town fell into the hands of,
of Westphalia, in 1648, the Scheldt was definitely closed.
In 1794 the city fell into the hands of the French, who
opened the river and made Antwerp the capital of the
department of Deux Něthes. Napoleon, who visited
the place in 1803, attempted to make it a great military
and commercial centre, and spent no less than £2,000,-
Ooo in the construction of docks. It continued in
French possession till 1814, when it was surrendered
after the treaty of Paris by Carnot, who up to that time
had defended it with great bravery against the allied
army under Graham. From 1815 to 1830, Antwerp
with the rest of Belgium united with Holland in form-
ing the kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1830, during
the Belgian revolution, the citadel was held by the old
Dutch general Chassé, who resolutely refused to surren-
der. At length, however, in 1832 he was forced to
capitulate to the French, under Marshal Gérard, and the
city was handed over to the Belgians. All matters of
dispute between Belgium and Holland being finally set-
tled by the treaty of 1839, Antwerp has continued
peacefully to advance in prosperity ever since.
Antwerp is the birth-place of a number of distinguished
men in various departments, as the painters Vandyck
(b. 1599), Temiers the elder (1582), !. the younger
(16Io), Jordaens (1594), Frans Floris (152O), Gonzales
Cocques (1618) ; the philologist Gruter (1560), the
geographer Ortelius (1527), the engraver Edelinck (1649),
and, among more modern celebrities, Van Meteren the
historian, Ogier the dramatist, and Henri Conscience the
novelist. Rubens was born at Cologne, but his family
belonged to Antwerp, and he was educated, resided, and
died in the latter city.
According to the general census of 1846, Antwerp
contained 88,487 inhabitants, of whom 85,961 were
Roman Catholics, and 1312 Protestants. In 1851 the
population was 95,501, and in 1873, I26,663, or,
including the suburbs now situated within the fortifica-
tions, above 180,000. The majority of the inhabitants
speak Dutch or Flemish, and the rest, for the most part,
French or Walloon.
ANUBIS, an Egyptian deity, called in hieroglyphs
An epu or Anup, and in Coptic, Azzo' or Azzoub. It
appears from the hieroglyphic legends that he was the
son of Osiris and Isis, not Nephthys, as stated by
Plutarch. His name has no particular meaning in
hieroglyphs, although it resembles the Coptic azeebe, the
appellation of a particular kind of dog. His worship
was of the oldest period, and is found in tombs at
Memphis, of the age of the 4th dynasty, at which period
all dedications run in his name instead of that of Osiris,
which did not appear till the 6th. At this time he is
always styled resident in the sacred abode, and attached
to the land of Ut, and lord of the Taser of Hades. At
the earliest period he presided over the funeral rites and
embalming of the dead, on account of having rendered
these offices to his father Osiris. Besides his sepulchral
character, Anubis was also called Ap-heru, “opener of
the roads” or “paths,” which were supposed to lead to
heaven. He is represented with the head of a jackal,
seldom with that of a man, and rarely with any head
attire, although at the Roman period his head is sur-
mounted by the pschent, or the crown of Upper and
Lower Egypt. The jackal was his sacred living animal,
and was embalmed after death, and this animal repre-
sented either the two hemispheres which environed the
terrestrial globe, or the tropics. Figures of Anubis in
porcelain are not uncommon in Egyptian collections,
having been attached to the outer network of bugles
which covered the mummies, but in other materials they
are much rarer. The jackal, his animal and emblem, is,
however, often placed on chests, or other sepulchral
monuments. His worship commenced at the earliest
362
A N V – A PE
period of Egyptian history, and continued, in one form
or another, till Egyptian paganism was superseded by
Christianity. He was, in fact, one of the oldest, if not
the oldest deity of the paganism of the world.
ANVIL, an iron block, with a smooth flat steel face,
on which the malleable metals are hammered and shaped.
The common blacksmith's anvil is built up of six pieces
welded to a central core, viz., four corner pieces, a pro-
jecting end, with a square hole for the reception of a
chisel with its edge uppermost, and a conical end for
hammering curved pieces of metal. These six pieces are
first roughly welded to the core, and the whole is then
thoroughly hammered and suitably shaped. A thin
facing of steel is next welded on and carefully tempered;
the surface of this is then ground perfectly flat, and, if
need be, polished.
ANWARI, one of the earlier Persian poets, was
born in Khorassan, in the 12th century. He enjoyed the
special favor of the Sultan Sandjar, whom he attended
in all his warlike expeditions. e died about I2OO.
AN WEILER, or ANNWEILER, a town of Bavaria,
in the Rhine Palatinate, situated on the Queich, eight
miles west of Landau, containing 2,734 inhabitants,
who are chiefly employed in cloth weaving, brushmak-
ing, tanning, and dyeing. Near it is the castle of
Trifels, in which Richard Coeur de Lion was imprisoned
II]. I IO 2.
AğEN OR, a Greek sculptor, a native of Naxus,
who it is inferred lived about 500 B.C.
ANZIN, a town of France, in the department of
Nord, situated on the Escaut (Scheldt), not far from
Valenciennes, in the center of the most valuable coal-
mining district in France, a large part of which takes
its name from the town, and gives employment to
about 6,000 persons. Anzin also possesses iron
foundries, glassworks, breweries, and distilleries of con-
siderable value. Population, 7,283.
AOSTA, a town of the kingdom of Italy, the capi-
tal of a circle of the same name in the province of
Turin, situated on the Dora Baltea, at the point where
the roads over Great and Little St. Bernard meet, forty-
nine miles north of Turin. The inhabitants, who
number 7,669, carry on a considerable trade in wine,
cheese, leather, and hemp.
APALACHICOLA, a town in Franklin county, Fla.,
is situated at the mouth of the Apalachicola river, on
the Gulf of Mexico, ninety, miles southwest of Talla-
hassee, in the center of a rich cotton country. It is
the location of a marine hospital, also contains a cus-
tom house, six churches, one weekly paper, a number
of saw mills, oyster and fruit canneries, foundries, and
machine shops, besides other lines of industry. ->
Aï;}. in Ancient Geography, the name of sev-
eral Asiatic cities:–1. A large city of Syria, in the
valley of the Orontes, so named by Seleucus Nicator,
after Apama, his wife. 2. A larges commercial city in
Phrygia, which owed its existence to Antiochus Soter,
and its name to his mother, Apama. It is identified
with the modern Denair, where there are still a number
of ancient ruins. , 3. A city mentioned by Stephanus and
Pliny as situated near the Tigris, the identification of
which is still uncertain. 4. Now A'um-Ka/a, on the
left of the Euphrates, opposite Zeugma. 5. The name
given to Myrlea of Bithynia, by Prusias I., who rebuilt
it. The ruins lie near Medania. 6. A Greek city in
Parthia, near Rhagae.
APAN AGE, the provision in the form of lands or
feudal superiorities made for younger sons by the kings
of France. The custom of bestowingapanages was first
established under the dynasty of the Capets; the rule at
an earlier period being that the kingdom should be divided
as equally as possible among all the members of the family
on the death of the sovereign. In England, where apatn-
age is not a legal term, the word is used popularly in a
variety of cognate senses. - w
APATIN, a town of Hungary, situated on the left
bank of the Danube, 125 miles S. of Pesth. It has
manufactures of woollen cloth and silk, dye-works, and
a considerable trade in raw silk, hemp, madder and woad.
Population, I I,047.
APATURIA, Greek festival held annnally by all the
Ionian towns except Ephesus and Colophon. But, un-
less at Athens, little is known of the manner in which it
was conducted. There it fell in the month of Pyazzep-
'sion, corresponding nearly to our November, and lasted
three days, the occasion being one on which the various
phratria, or clans of Attica, met to arrange matters
| proper to each. According to the popular derivation,
however, the festival originated I IOO B. C., to commem-
orate an encounter between the Athenians and Boeo-
tians, in which the King of Attica, Thymoetes, having
been challenged to single combat by the Boeotian king,
Xanthius or Xanthus, and, being afraid to meet him,
accepted as a substitute Melanthus, an exile, with the
condition of his succeeding, if victorious, to the throne
of Attica. When the combatants met, Melanthus,
to throw his adversary off his guard, declared that he
was being unfairly assisted by a man wearing a black
goat’s skin. Xanthus, turning to look, was struck down.
APE, a word of uncertain, and not improbably Afri-
can origin, and by some supposed to have originated in
an imitation of the animal’s “chatter.”
"The zoological group denoted by the term “ape,”
when used in its widest sense, includes animals known
by the familiar terms of “monkeys” and “baboons,”
as well as others bearing the less known names of
“sapajous,” “sakis,” and “marmosets.” In a more
restricted sense the term “ape * is sometimes emphatic-
ally applied to those of the whole group which are most
man-like in structure, namely, to the orang, the chima-
panzee, the gorilla, and the gibbons. -
Certain other animals, of very different structure, are
generally associated in the same ordinal group with the
apes. These other animals are the lemurs, or lemur-
oids; called also “half-apes,” after their German desig-
nation of Halbaffen.
By Linnaeus these creatures, together with bats and
man, were placed in his highest and first order, to which
he gave the name “Primates,” dividing its contents
into the four genera, Aomo, Simia, Zemur, and Vesper-
ti/io. The bats are now by universal consent removed
from the order; and some eminent naturalists, notably
Professor Alphonse Milne-Edwards, are disposed to re-
move from it the lemurs also ; but in every case there
can be no question but that the latter animals must at
least rank as sub-order, for which the term “Alemuroidea?”
has been proposed.
The question whether man should or should not be
placed in the same zoological order with the apes, must
be decided according to the principles of classification
adopted. If that classification be purely morphological,
i.e., be determined by form and structure only, he can-
not well be separated from them at least by any naturalist
who would also include the lemurs in such order. The
Linnean name “Primates’ has been retained for the
ape order, not only by naturalists who (like Professor
Huxley) retain man within its limits, but also by others,
who consider that he should be excluded from it. Cuvier,
on the other hand, proposed for the original group of
apes and lemurs only the term Quadrumanes (or four-
handed), giving to that order, within which he placed man
alone, the antithetical term Bimanes.
Priority of use determines our preference for the
Linnean name “A”-imates,” but this preference is rein-
THE ORANg-ouTAN (Simia satyrus).
From Mr. Wolf's sketch at Zoological Gardens.
º
THE cºnteaszer (Troglodytes niger). The Gormla (Troglodytes gorilla).
From Mr. Wolf's "Sketches.” From “Trans, Zool. Society.”
º - -
/ º
%2.



THE BABUIN BABoon (Cynocephalus babuin)
{
\，
//§;
Y
//|-//
Huntpoint's Lagorariz (Lagothrix Humboldtii).
Tae Black-Hasided Serpen Monkey (Ateles melanochir).









A P E
363
forced by considerations derived from anatomy and
physiology.
The whole of the apes, as indeed the whole of the
half-apes also, differ from man in having the great toe,
or (as it is called in anatomy) the hallux, so constructed
as to be able to oppose the other toes (much as our
thumb can oppose the fingers), instead of being parallel
with the other toes, and exclusively adapted for support-
ing the body on the ground. The prehensile character
of the hallux is fully maintained even in those forms
which, like the baboons, are terrestrial rather than ar-
boreal in their habits, and are quite quadrupedal in their
mode of progression. It was this circumstance that led
Cuvier to bestow the name Quadrumanes upon the apes
and lemurs. . Now, if we accept, with Professor Owen,
as the definition of the word “foot,” “an extremity in
w/ec/º the Aad/ux forms the fulcrum in standing or
waſ.ºing,” then man alone has a pair of feet. But, ana-
tomically, the foot of apes (as well as that of half-apes)
agrees far more with the foot of man than with his
hand, and similarly the ape's hand resembles man's hand
and differs from his foot. Even estimated physiologi-
cally, or according to use and employment, the hand
throughout the whole order remains the special prehen-
sile organ; while the predominant function of the foot,
however prehensile it be, is constantly locomotive.
Therefore the term Quadrumana is apt to be mis-
leading, since, anatomically as well as physiologically,
both apes and men have two hands and a pair of feet.
Apart then from man, the apes constitute the first
sub-order of that which is the most man-like order of
the class Mammalia (beasts), and which bears the name
“A” meazes.”
Such being the position of apes as a whole, they are
zootomically divisible into a number of more and more
subordinate groups, termed respectively families, sub-
Jamilies, and genera.
The great group of apes is divisible into two great
families, which are sharply distinguished by geographical
distribution as well as by structural differences. The
first of these families, SIMIADAE, is strictly confined to
the warmer latitudes of the Old World. The second
family, CEBIDAE, is as strictly confined to those of the
New World. *
Of the three sub-families into which the Simiadae are
divided, the first, SIMIINAE, contains only the orang,
the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the gibbons. These
are the creatures which, anatomically, are the most like
man of all the apes, on which account they are often
called the “anthropoid" apes. They are also termed,
on account of the relative breadth of their breast-bone
or Sternum, the “latisternal” or “broad breast-boned ”
apes.
The orang (S. satyrus) constitutes the genus Simla,
which gives its name to the whole family (Samada), as
well as to the sub-family (Samizzla) to which it belongs.
Of this genus there is but one certain species, which is,
however, subject to considerable variation. The orang
is exclusively confined to the islands of Borneo and
Sumatra, where it frequents the swampy forests near
the coast. It attains a height of about 4 feet 4 inches;
but its bulk is considerable, its legs, however, being ex-.
ceedingly short. Its arms, on the contrary, are exceed-
ingly long, reaching down to the ankle when the animal
is placed in an erect posture. In harmony with this
structure the animal rarely assumes, naturally, a truly
erect posture, but walks resting on the knuckles of its
hands and the outer sides of its feet, the soles of the lat-
ter being turned mainly inwards. The animal is cov-
ered with long, reddish-brown hair, and there are no
naked spaces on the hinder part of the trunk. There is
no vestige of a tail. The hands are very long ; but the
thumb is short, not reaching to the end of the metacar-
pal bone of the adjacent (index) digit. The feet have
exceedingly long toes, except the great toe, which only
reaches to the middle of the proximal phalanx of the
index digit of the foot. The brain of the orang has the
cerebrum greatly convoluted, and is altogether more
like the brain of man than is that of any other ape.
The chimpanzee and gorilla togethel form the genus
Troglodytes. Both of these species agree with the orang
in being destitute of any rudiment of a tail, in having no
cheek pouches, and no naked spaces at the hinder part
of the trunk, as also in possessing tusk-like camines, and
in the habit of resting on the knuckles of the hand in
walking on the ground and of mainly dwelling in trees.
The chimpanzee (Z. miger) is found in Western Africa,
from the Gambia to the Benguela, and extending inland
to 28° E. long. It is the most man-like of the latister-
nal apes in the proportion of its arms, as these only
reach a little below the knees when the body is placed
upright. It is of moderate stature, never appearing to
exeeed 5 feet in height. In disposition it is lively and
intelligent, and its playfulness in captivity contrasts
greatly with the lethargy of the Orang.
The gorilla (T. gorz//a) is also West African, but has
a less extended range than the chimpanzee, namely, be-
tween the Cameroon and Congo rivers only. It is the
largest ape known, attaining a bulk of body considerably
exceeding that of a man, though, on account of the
shortness of its legs, it never seems to exceed the height
of 5 feet 6 inches. It was first made known to moderns
by Dr. Thomas Savage, but it appears to have been
seen by Hanno of Carthage, in his voyage south
of the pillars of Hercules. The gorilla has not such
dark hair as has the chimpanzee, being blackish-dun in
color, and becoming grey when old. Its skin, however,
is black. Its arms are longer than those of its congener,
reaching half-way down the shin. The forehead is not
rounded, the supra-orbital crest being more prominent
than even in the chimpanzee: the ears too are smaller
relatively. The larynx is provided with enormous air-
sacs, communicating with the verticles and meeting
the trachea, and extending to the axilla with age. There
is no OS intermedium in the carpus, and there are thir-
teen pairs of ribs.
The gibbons, or long-armed apes, form the genus
Aylobates, confined in the present day to the south-
eastern continent of Asia and the Indian Archipelago.
There are several species, but individual variation and
sexual difference in color are so great that their limits
are not yet well defined. One well-marked species, the
largest of the genus, is the siamang (A. syndactylus) of
Sumatra, which is remarkable as being the ape with the
best developed chin and widest breast-bone. In cap-
| tivity their manners are gentle, although their activity
is surprising; especially remarkable are the enormous
distances they can swing themselves by their long arms.
In spite of this length of arm, which seems to render
their bodily proportions so unlike those of man, the
length of leg, when compared with the length of the
trunk of the body, is more human than in either of the
two preceding genera. Another point in which they
approach mealest to man, is the quality of voice which
at least some of the species (e.g. H. hoo!ock) possess.
On leaving the gibbons, which close the series of
Anthropoid apes, we come at once upon animals of
very different aspect, and from creatures devoid of any
vestige of a tail, we pass at once to monkeys, which
have that organ at its maximum of development. These
are the two genera Semnopithecus and Colobus, which so
so closely resemble each other as to be hardly separable,
but for their different geographical distributions. To-
gether they form the sub-family Semnopitheca 776, and
364
A P E
agree in having, as well as the long tail, arms shorter
than the legs, and a slender body.
One species, S. entellus (the hounaman), is an object
of religious veneration to the Hindoos. Another very
remarkable kind is found in Borneo. It is S. nasalis
(the kahau, or proboscis monkey), and, as its name im-
plies, it has an exceedingly long nose. In the young
state, the nose is much smaller relatively, and is bent
upwards.
We now come to the concluding genera of the apes
of the Old World, together forming the third sub-fam-
ily Cynopithecinae. ... This is a very natural group, but
one exceedingly difficult to subdivide in a satisfactory
manner, because the different characters gradually alter
as we pass from round-headed, long-tailed, and compar-
atively slender monkeys to dog-faced, short-tailed,
and massive baboons. All the Cynopithecinae agree in
having pretty well-developed thumbs and a 'single stom-
ach, as also in having the sides of the face distensible,
serving as pockets wherein food may be temporárily
stored, and technically called “cheek pouches.” The
hair is often annulated.
The first genus, Cercopithecus, includes those species
of the sub-family, which by their length of tail and
comparative slenderness, most nearly approach the mem-
bers of the preceding sub-family. Many of the species
(e.g. the Diana and white-nosed monkeys) are very
attractive animals.
The next genus, Macacus, is Asiatic, with the excep-
tion of the Barbary ape, or magot (M. in uus), which is
found in Northern Africa and on the Rock of Gibraltar.
Already, in some of the Cercopitheci, notably in the
mangabeys, the muzzle has acquired a greater prolonga-
tion. This becomes still more marked in the Macaca.
It is this greater production of muzzle, the greater size
in the ischiatic callosities, the frequent shortness of the
tail, and the different geographical distribution, which
can alone be given as differentiating these animals from
the Cercopatheci. In some kinds the tail is long.
Occasionally (as in the wonderoo, AZ. silenzas) it is
tufted at the end and short. Sometimes, as in M. mem-
estrizztts, it is very short, and occasionally, as in M.
inuus, it is absent. On account of this absence of tail
this species has sometimes been made the type of a dis-
tinct genus, Zzzzzus.
The AZacaci present us with the most northern forms
of apes, namely, that of Gibraltar, and M. speczosus of
all).2111. &
J H. remaining apes of the Old World are the
baboons, which are entirely confined to Africa, and to
that part of Asia which is zoologically African, namely,
Arabia. These animals, which constitute the genus
Cynocepha/us, have the characters of the Macaci still
further developed in having still larger callosites, and a
muzzle so extremely produced as to give the head the
appearance of that of a dog, whence their generic
name. The general form has also here become very
massive, and the limbs being sub-equal in length, the
appearance, like the locomotion, is quadrupedal. But
the baboons have not only the muzzle so greatly pro-
duced, they have also the nostrils terminal in position
º those of a hound and unlike what we have yet met
W1th.
The baboons are the least arboreal and the least fru-
givorous of the Old World apes, some species, e.g., the
chacma of Southern Africa (C. porcarius), living hab-
itually amidst rocks, and feeding on eggs, large insects,
and scorpions, as well as on vegetable food.
The Cebidae are more thoroughly arboreal in their
habits than are the Simiadae. Ranging over tropical
America, they have their headquarters in the forests of
Brazil, a region where most animal forms put on a more
decidedly aboreal character. Accordingly, it is amongst
the Ceòidra that we meet with, for the first time, a
special arboreal organ— namely a prehensile tail. Such
a 'tail has its free end curled, and capable of grasping
. greater or less tenacity the objects about which it
COllS. g
None of the Cebidae attain the bulk of the larger
baboons, nor have any such prominent muzzles as have
the latter.
The Ceòidae are subdivisible into five sub-families:—
I. Cebizia; 2. Mycetinae; 3. Aitheciinae; 4. Myctºpith-
ecina; and 5. Hapalinae.
The first sub-family consists of the four genera,
Ateles, Æriodes, Zagothrix, and Cebus.
. The genus Ateles is composed of the spider monkeys,
which, as their name implies, have long and slender
limbs. They have also a very long tail, which is in the
highest degree prehensile, being naked beneath towards
the tip, for more secure prehension. So powerful is the
grasp of this organ that the whole body can be sustained
by it alone. It even serves as a fifth hand, as detached
objects, otherwise out of reach, can be glasped by it,
and brought towards the hand or mouth.
The spider monkeys are very gentle in disposition,
and, by this and by their long limbs and special fitness
for tree-life, seem to represent in an analogous manner
in the New World the gibbons of the Old. ,
Three species of * having much general resemblance
to spider monkeys have been erected into the genus
Briodes, (AE. arachnoldes, hemzdactylus, and hypoxane-
thus). These animals, which are from South-Eastern
Brazil, have the ſur woolly, the thumb more or less rudi-
mentary, the nails very laterally compressed, and the
nostrils more approximated than in the other Cebidae.
The woolly monkeys, Zagothrax, differ from the two
preceding genera in having the thumbs well developed.
Their nails are compressed laterally, as in Briodes, but
their nostrils are not approximated. As their name im-
plies, their fur is woolly. Like Eruodes and Ateles, they
have the tail strongly prehensile, and naked beneath
towards the tip.
The genus Cebus, the typical genus of American apes,
is composed of the Sapajous, so commonly seen in cap-
tivity, and so much used for the exhibition of tricks of
various kinds. Smaller in size, they are more robust in
form than are the spider monkeys. They have well-
developed thumbs, and their tail is curled at the end,
but, not being naked beneath, is less strongly prehensile
than in the three preceding genera. The Sapajous have
a pleasing voice, a flute-like whistling tone.
The next sub-family of American apes is very dis-
tinct, consisting, as it does, of a single genus, Mycetes.
composed of the howling monkeys. These creatures
are the most bulky of the American apes, and are those
the muzzles of which are the most projecting. The
howlers have iong, very prehensile tails, naked beneath
towards the tips. Their thumbs are well developed.
Some of the species show much brilliance of color, with
bright red or golden hair on the flanks. There is, how-
ever, so much individual variation, or so many local varie-
ties, that the species are as yet very little determined.
The sexual difference in color is great in one species— the
male being deep black, and the female pale straw color.
The third sub-family of American apes is composed
of very peculiar forms, termed Sakis, which are subdi-
vided into two genera, Pithecia and Brachyurus, ac-
cording as the tail is long or short. They are together
distinguished from all the Cebidae yet noticed, by not
having the tail prehensile, even when long; also by hav-
ing the lower incisor teeth inclined forwards, instead of
standing up vertically.
The Brachyuri are the only American apes with short
A P E 365
* sº
tails, and they are the least arboreal, frequenting bushes
rather than trees. They are very timid creatures, and
gentle, and rather slow in their movements.
The beautiful little Squirrel monkey, or Saimiri, and
three allied species (Ch. ustus entomophagus, and
OErstedia), form the genus Chrysothrix. They are
distinguished from all other apes by the great backward
prolongation of the bony cranium, the orbits of which,
though smaller than those of Myctipithecus, are, never-
theless, separated, but by an imperfect bony septum.
A few other kinds of American apes, together forming
the genus Callithrix, somewhat resemble the night apes,
but the eyes are much smaller, and the nostrils wider
apart. They differ from Chrysothrix in having small
canine teeth, and the tail furnished with long hairs.
The species of this genus are — Moloch, Personatzes,
Amuctus, Gigo, Melanochir, Discolor, Donacophilus,
Ornatus, and Castameozentris.
There remains now to notice but one more group of
apes, those which have been classed as the last sub-
family— the Hapalinae, marmosets, or oustitis. In
Several, and especially the more commonly seen species,
a tuft of long hairs projects outwards and backwards on
each side of the head. These animals are very small,
the largest being about the size of squirrels. They are,
like Squirrels, active in their motions, and arboreal in
their habits, living in small troops, and eating insects as
well as fruit. They are very difficult to keep in captivity
in northern climates; but, nevertheless, they have
occasionally bred in captivity, bringing forth as many
as three at a birth, while all the other apes habitually
bring forth but one.
THE ExtERNAL FoRM AND CLOTHING.
The difference in bulk between the different members
of the group (e.g. Zºroglodytes and Haftale) is extreme,
being greater than that between a man and a common
squirrel.
The proportions of the body as regards the relative
lengths of the two pairs of limbs one with the other, and
both with that of the trunk, vary considerably. The
length of the tail presents some noteworthy points. At
its first appearance it is found at once at its greatest
absolute length, and also greatly developed relatively,
being about twice the length of the trunk. Its greatest
relative length is, however, attained in Ateles, where it
reaches three times the length of the trunk. The form
of the head presents great differences—it may be
rounded, produced vertically, drawn out posteriorly to
an extreme degree, or anteriorly. A production of the
muzzle, necessitated by the presence of large teeth, exists
already in 7'roglodytes; but in the baboons, not only is
this prolongation carried much further, but the termi-
nal position of the nostrils gives an emphatically dog-
like aspect to the face.
The eyes may be small compared with the size of the
head, as in the baboons; they may, on the contrary,
attain a relatively enormous size. They are always for-
wardly directed, and never much more separated one
from another than in man. They may, however, be
much more closely approximated.
The external ears are always well developed, and have
very generally their posterio-superior angle pointed.
They may be large and small in the same genus, as in
Zºroglodytes. Only in the gorilla do we find present,
even in a rudimentary condition, that soft depending
portion of the human ear which is termed the “lobule.”
The nose has scarcely ever more than a very slight
prominence, and yet an enormous development is to be
met with in Semnopithecus masalis; while in S. roxel-
Jaſta, we find a sharply prominent, though smaller and
extremely upturned nose.
The lips are generally thin, but may be very exten-
sive, as in Simia.
The hands are generally provided with thumbs, though
these organs (as in Coſobus and Ateles) may be repre-
sented only by small nailless tubercles.
The hal/ux (great toe) is never rudimentary like the
pollex. It is never, as it often is in man, the longest
digit of the foot, but is constantly the shortest one. As
compared with the entire length of the foot, it is most
human in the chimpanzee and some gibbons.
All the apes, without exception, differ from man in
having the body almost entirely clothed with copious
hair, and especially in never having the back naked.
Great brilliance of color is sometimes found in the
naked parts of the body, particularly in the Simada,
and especially in the region of the face.
The skeleton of apes generally, if we except the tail,
consists of but few more bones than that of man. The
proportions of its parts, except as regards the relative
length of the limb bones, are also much as in man; nor
are their shapes, except those of the jaws and haunch
bones, greatly different. The same general resemblance
may be predicated of their minute structure, though the
osseous tissue is generally rather dense, and the medul-
lary cavity in the long bones is small.
THE MUSCLES.
The muscles are very similar in number, distribution,
and furm to those of man, except that in the long-tailed
forms.
The absolute size of the brain never in any ape ap-
proaches that of man. Thus the cranial capacity is never
less than 55 cubic inches in any normal human spbject,
while in the orang and chimpanzee it is but 26 and 27%
cubic inches respectively.
The teeth of apes consist, as in man, of incisors,
canines, premolars, and molars; but the series of teeth
nowhere forms so perfect an arch as in man, the opposite
series of grinding teeth tending to become more parallel.
No ape has the teeth placed in one uninterrupted series
in each jaw, as is the case in the human species, but there
is always a small interval between each upper canine and
the adjacent incisor, and between each lower canine and
the adjacent premolar. This condition is due to the
excessive size of the canines, the interspaces giving pas-
sage to the apices of these teeth.
The alimentary, circulating and excretory organs of
apes closely resemble those of man. The mouth is
always guarded by laps, which, though generally thin,
are often very mobile and extensible.
The tongue is much longer, relatively, in most apes
than in man; but it may closely resemble his, as does
that of the orang.
The stomach is simple in all the apes except the Sem-
mopithecima. It is especially human in shape in Aylo-
ãates, except that the plyorus is somewhat more elong-
ated and distinct.
The lazer may be very like man's, especially in Hyāo-
/ates, the orang, and the chimpanzee; but in the gorilla,
both the right and left lobes are cleft by a fissure almost
as much as in Cynocephalus.
The larynx is in many apes furnished with sac-like
appendages. These are different in different species as
regards number, size and situation.
The lungs have generally the form of those of man;
but the right lung may have four lobes.
The great arterial trunks in Samia and Troglodytes
are arranged as in man. In Hybolates and the lower
apes, however, the left carotid may take its origin from
the innominate artery.
366 *.
A. P. E.
THE GENERATIVE ORGANS.
The generative organs, are, in common with the other
parts of the body, formed on the same model as in the
human species.
Gestation in the lower Simiadae lasts about seven
months, but in the Hapalèna, only three months.
Merzstruation occurs periodically, but the excretion is
less sanguineous than in the human species.
Aactation lasts, in the better known forms, for an
average of six months, and the young are carried at the
breast in a very human attitude.
There appears as yet to be no evidence of the exist-
ence of apes earlier than during the Miocene period.
This absence of evidence must by no means be taken as
a conclusive proof of their non-existence, since, as Dr.
Falconer has pointed out, we ought not to expect to
find ape fossils often. We ought not to expect this,
because the agility and arboreal life of these animals
enable them to escape local inundations, and other
causes of destruction and speedy burial, to which more
sluggish and terrestrial animals are exposed. When
they fall dead they are almost immediately devoured by
carnivorous animals and feeders on carrion, and it is
owing to this that their remains are so rarely found in
India, on which account the Hindoos believe that they
bury their dead.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.
The apes are, as far as is yet certainly known, at
present almost confined to tropical latitudes. Their
most northern limits in the Old World are Gibraltar.
In the New World the highest northern latitude certainly
known to be attained is 18° or 19° in Southern Mexico,
but they possibly reach even latitude 23°. Father
David, however, sees no reason (considering the severity
of the climate of Moupin) why apes should not also be
found in the mountains of Northern China, and the
natives have repeatedly assured him they are to be found
there. Southward, apes are found to near the Cape of
Good Hope, and the island of Timor (Macacus cynomo/-
gus), in the Indian Archipelago, in the Old World, and
to about 30° in Brazil and Paraguay, in the New World.
As to vertical extent, a Semnopithecus has been seen
near Simlah, at a height of 1 1,000 feet; Dr. Hooker
saw monkeys in the Himalaya at an elevation above
8,000 feet; and Semnopithecus roxellanae and Macacus
thibetanzas were found by Father David inhabiting the
Snow Mountains of Moupin, in Thibet, at an elevation
of about 3,000 metres, where frost and Snow last several
months.
Some of the localities richest in monkeys are islands,
such as Ceylon, Borneo, Sumatra, and Java ; and apes
are also found in Trinidad, and the island of Fernando
Po. There are, however, certain islands which seem
eminently well suited to support an ape population,
where apes, nevertheless, are conspicuous by , their
absence. Such are the West Indian Islands, Madagas-
car, and New Guinea; moreover, no ape inhabits
tropical Australia. These facts become the more re-
markable, if, as Father David suspects, apes exist in
Northern China to-day. Evidently it is not climate
which prevents their existing in Central Europe, now.
The continents of Africa, south of the Sahara; of Asia,
south of the Himalaya; and of America, from Panama
to the southern part of Brazil, are, with the islands
before mentioned, the special ape regions of the existing
fauna.
There is a remarkable difference between the ape
population of the New and the Old World, the latter
being inhabited exclusively by Simiadae, the former as
exclusively by the Cebidae. Europe has but a single ape
species; and Asia, north of Himalaya, has but the few
found in Thibet, China, and Japan. Africa, north of
the Sahara, is zoologically a part of Europe, and there
also Macacus inauzes is found, which is the only African
species of the genus.
One form of Macacus, and a very peculiar one (M.
niger), is found in the islands Batchian and Celebes; and
it is a noteworthy fact that this, the most baboon-like of
all the Macaci, should only existin a region so extremely
remote from Africa. The genus Macacus is the most
widely spread of any existing genus—namely, from
Gibraltar, North Africa, Thibet, and Japan (perhaps
even from Northern China), down to the island of
Timor, and from the north-west of Africa in the west,
to Batchian, Japan, and the Philippine Islands in the
east. In ancient times this genus seems to have extended
to France, and even to Essex. . It is interesting to note
that, in the Miocene period, the geographical range of
the apes of India was much greater. Gibbon-like monk-
eys existed in the south of France, while forms inter-
mediate between Semnopithecus and Macacus abounded
in Greece.
In America, north of Panama, the genera as yet
known to be represented are Chrysothrax, Myctipithe-
cus, Cebus, Ateles, Mycetes, and Æapale, in Veragua;
Myctipithecus, Cebus, Ateles, and Mycetes, in Cost Rica
and Nicaragua; Ateles and Mycetes, in Guatemala; and
Ateles, in Southern Mexico. Brazil is, of course, the
headquarters of the American apes; but different por-
tions of that vast region have a somewhat different ape
fauna. Thus the genus AEroides appears in South-
Eastern Brazil to represent the species of Ateles inhab-
iting the more northern and western parts of the empire.
Southwards, the genera Cebus, Mycetes, Chrysothrix, and
Ca/Ziz/Arix extend furthest; but they do not probably all
extend to the furthest limit yet known, namely, 30° S.
The species found farthest south are Mycetes caraya,
Ceòus fatuel/us, and Cal/ithrix personatus.
By universal consent apes are placed in the highest
rank of all brutes, and, excepting man, are generally
taken to be the most perfect animals of the mammalian
class. It may be questioned, however, whether, if the
animal man had never existed, this place would be
assigned them by any observing intelligence. The half-
apes, or lemurs, commonly placed in the same order
with them, are certainly inferior mammals; and it
might be contended that the perfection of the mam-
malian type is rather to be found in the Felidae (or cat
family), by reasoning analogous to that by which it
might also be contended that birds (with their different
limbs, perfect circulating and respiratory systems, acute
sense organs, complex instincts, and teachableness) are
really the highest of all vertebrate animals, and repre-
sent the vertebrate type of structure carried to the
highest degree of perfection yet attained.
The question as to which animals are most nearly
allied to apes is one by no means easy to answer. Leav-
ing man aside (whose close anatomical resemblance to
apes is so obvious), it is at present extremely difficult to
say what are the apes’ truezoological affinities. It is to be
hoped that future palaeontological researches may afford
us materials for tracing these out; but at present a chasm
separates the apes from every other group of animals.
But if the apes cannot be considered to show evidence
of genetic affinity with any other mammalian order, do
they constitute so homogeneous a group as to suggest
the former existence of one ancient root-form common
to them all? To this question it may be answered that
the differences between the Simiadae and Cebidae are
such as to render it doubtful whether they may not have
had respectively quite different origins, and whether
their resemblances may not have been superindubed by
similarity of needs and conditions.
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(Cebus leucogenys).
THE WHITE-CHEERED SAPAJou
THE GoLDEN MARMoser (Midas chrysoleucus).
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THE Moloch CALLITHRix (Callithrix moloch).
gar APE (Nyctipithecus lemurinus).
THE LEMURINE NI











THE ENTELLus-LIRE GIBBox (Hylobates entelloides). THE PRoboscis Monkey or THIBET (Semnopithecus roxellanae)

A P E — A P H ſº
367
APELDOORN, a flourishing town in the Nether-
Hands, in the province of Guelderland, 17 miles N. of
Arnheim, with large paper-mills and a population of
upwards of 12,000. A short distance off is the Castle of
Loo, the favorite residence of King William I. -
APELLAS, a Greek sculptor, mentioned by Pau-
sanias as the author of a group at Olympia, representing
a quadriga, with the statues of a charioteer and of
Cynisca, the sister of Archelaus. A bronze sculptor of
the same name, and probably the same person, occurs
in Pliny.
APELLES, the most celebrated of ancient Greek
painters. The date assigned to him by Pliny is 332
B.C., and with this agrees the fact of his having been
the court painter of Alexander the Great, who it was
said would allow no one else to paint his portrait,
though, in point of fact, portraits of him by other
artists are known. Apelles had worked before then for
Philip, the father of Alexander, and with a career of
nearly half a century, was at work after in the time of
the first successors to Alexander’s empire. He was
born at Colophon, where it appears his father Pytheas,
also a painter, resided. His first instructor was a cer-
tain Ephorus, of Ephesus, which was then the centre of
the Asia Minor school of painting; the rival school
being that of Sicyon in Greece proper, whither Apelles
next proceeded, apparently to undergo the stricter
discipline in drawing for which that school was renowned,
and perhaps also, as is said (Plutarch, Arač., . 13), to
win a share of the good fortune and ſame of its leaders.
He was here in the neighborhood of Corinth, and it
was probably then that he was taken by the beauty
of the young Lais, on seeing her drawing water at the
fountain of Peireme. Another incident, that of his
having seen the notorious Phryne bathing at Eleusis,
and from this conceived the design of his picture of
Aphrodite Anadyomene, would also fall about this
time, for the two reasons that Phryne’s celebrity
occurred in the period before Alexander, and that
Apelles is not known to have made a second stay in
that district of Greece. From Sicyon he went to the
Macedonian court, and was there employed until Alex-
ander departed on his expedition into Asia, on which
the painter accompanied him as far as Ephesus, where
he settled. Of the intimacy between him and his royal
patron there are a number of stories, which, however,
from the variety in the telling, may be without founda-
tion in fact. According to Pliny, Alexander having
betrayed ignorance by some remark about painting, was
told by Apelles to be silent, lest the boys who were rub-
bing down colors in the studio might laugh at him.
Still, so far as the painter’s readiness of rebuke is con-
cerned, these stories are confirmed by other incidents, as
when he told an artist, who boasted of his speed in
work, that the wonder was why he could not produce
more of such stuff in the same time; or, when having
once accepted correction from a shoemaker about a
wrongly painted boot in one of his pictures, he declined
further criticism from him, with the observation which
has since become a proverb, Me supra crepidam sutor
judicaret (Pliny, xxxv. 84).
APENNINES, an extensive range of mountains rav-
ersing the entire extent of the Italian peninsula, and
forming, as it were, the backbone of that country. The
name Apennines is probably of Celtic origin, and derived
from Aen, properly signifying a head, or mountain
height. The Apennines may be considered as a South-
ern branch of the great Alpine system of Europe. Both
the mountain systems have a general resemblance as
regards the age and lithological character of the rocks
and strata which compose them. Geographers have
differed as to the point where the Apennines are to be
distinguished from the Alps. Some have placed it at
the pass of Bocchetta; others at the Col di Tenda; and
others at the low pass which runs from Savona to Cairo.
Strabo, who gives a very accurate account of the general
features and direction of this chain, considers it as begin-
ning in the vicinity of Genoa. From Col di Tenda the
Apennines run in a semicircle round the Gulf of Genoa,
in a general direction from west to east; they after-
wards turn to the south, and traverse the whole of the
Italian peninsula to the Strait of Messina. The entire
length of the chain is about 600 miles measured in a
direct line, and about 800 miles iſ measured along the
windings.
The Northern Apennines include what are usually
designated the Ligurian and Tuscan Apennines. The
Ligurian Apennines extend from the Maritime Alps past
Monte Gisa to the borders of Tuscany.
The Centra/ or Romaze Apennuizzes comprehend that
part of the chain between Monte Cornaro, in which the
Tiber rises, and Monte Velino, north of Lake Fucino.
Its general direction is from N.N.W. to S.S.E. or
nearly parallel to the Tiber. The descent towards the
Adriatic is continuous and direct, towards the Mediter.
ranean it forms two distinct inclined planes.
The Southern Apen nines include the remaining por-
tion of this chain. From Monte Velino they proceed
in a south-easterly direction to the valley of the Ofanto,
which cuts through the range. South of that limit, one
short branch extends eastward towards Altamura,
another runs westward to the neighborhood of Salerno,
while the main chain is prolonged nearly due south to
the heights of Aspromonte overlooking the Strait of
Messina. As a general rule, the same formations occur
in the Apennines as in the Alps, and the system usually
consists of a central ridge having secondary and lower
ridges running parallel with the main range, the inter-
vening country being formed of but slightly disturbed
newer Tertiary deposits. Thus, in that portion of the
Apennines which borders on and extends into Tuscany
and Bologna, the system consists of two parts. . The
one which is most distant from the Mediterranean forms
the Apennines proper; here the Eocene beds prevail,
and are covered, especially on the north flank, by Mio-
cene and Pliocene beds; the axes of elevation are numer-
ous and parallel to each other, following strikes which
run from W. N.W. to E.S.E., and from N.W. to S.E.
The other part is nearer the Mediterranean, and is
remarkable for its richness in metalliferous ores. The
district of Carrara abounds in marbles belonging to the
Liassic and Oolitic periods. Nearly all the mountains
between Carrara and Monte Sagra have beds of marble,
which sometimes acquire considerable thickness, as for
instance in the vertical escarpments of Monte Corchio,
The mountains between the meridians of Genoa and
Parma form but one chain, composed of parallel ridges
striking W. N.W. to E.N.E. Towards, Genoa, the
mountains conform to the S.S.W. and N.N.E. direc-
tions of the Western Alps, the main axis of the chain is
chiefly formed of the Secondary rocks, while the minor
ranges are formed of Tertiary beds. The mountains,
as a whole, rise from N. to S., culminating in Monte
Corno, 9593 feet high, beyond which their height again
decreases. Mount Amaro is 8960 feet, and Mount
Velino 7910 feet high.
APENRADE, a town of Prussia, in Schleswig, beau-
tifully situated on the Apenrade fiord, an arm of the Lit-
tle Belt, 38 miles N. of Schleswig. Population, 5932,
APHASIA, a term applied to indicate a condition in
which the function of expressing ideas by articulate
sounds is arrested, perverted, or destroyed, in conse-
quence of lesion of the brain. Loss or perversion of the
power of expressing ideas by written signs is often asso-
368
A P H — A P I
ciated with this condition. The term Aphasia is gener-
ally held to comprise two great varieties: (1), Amnesic
Aphasia, in which the memory of words is lost or per-
verted; and (2), Ataxic Aphasia in which the function
of articulation is lost or perverted. Although this broad
distinction is very properly made, it very rarely happens
that a case occurs in which the two conditions are not to
a greater or less extent coexistent.
Amnesic aphasia is symptomatised very variously.
The earliest and most common indication consists in the
loss of the memory of substantives and names, other
parts of speech being properly applied; in such cases a
periphrasis is employed to express the term. Themem-
ory of a language with which the patient had been thor-
oughly conversant may become lost. Terms are persist-
ently misapplied; for instance, in recorded cases “pam-
phlet” has been used for “camphor,” “hogshead” for
“sugar,” “horse” for “man,” &c., &c. This symptom
has been named Heterophasia. In ataxic aphasia—the
function of articulation is completely or partially lost,
the patient being only able to indicate by signs that he
is conscious of the idea conveyable by the term; thus an
ataxic aphasic, who had been an engine-driver, when
asked what had been his trade, could only express him-
self by imitating the sound made by an engine when
starting, “Hish, hish, hish.”
Aphasia, whether amnesic or ataxic, may, but seldom
does exist disassociated from absolute insanity.
Great interest has centred around the question of the
pathology of aphasia, as many observations have been
adduced which appear to connect with this condition le-
sion of a specific portion of the brain, and from this it
has been sought to deduce the absolute localisation of the
function of speech in the hemispherical ganglia.
APHORISM is a terse and definite statement of
a principle or important doctrine in science or philos-
ophy. The word has been used as the title of some
well-known works—as the Aphorisms of Hippocrates,
the Aphorisms of the School of Salermo, and the
Aphorisms of Boerhaaze, which represent respectively
the medical doctrines of the 5th century B.C., and the
12th and 17th centuries of the Christian era. One of
the best specimens of a philosophical treatise wholly
written in aphorisms is the AWozzem Organum of Lord
Bacon.
APHRODITE [VENUs]. From the accepted mean-
ing of the name Aphrodite, “born in the foam of the
sea,” together with Hesiod’s account of her appearing
first in the waters round Cythera, and finally landing
on Cyprus; and from the further explanation of her prin-
cipal title Urania, to the effect that she derived her
being from the maimed Uranos, this goddess might
appear to have been of pure Greek origin, as indeed
would also be gathered from the fact of Homer placing
her among the Olympians, and calling her a daughter of
Zeus and Dione. But her connection with Cyprus,
which even Homer admits, calling her Kypris, and in
the Odyssey, speaking of her visit to Cyprus, where
were a temple and an altar for her, has provoked an
inquiry as to how far her worship may have been based
on that of Astarte, the patron goddess of the Phoenician
settlers in that island, the more so since the worship of
Aphrodite Urania flourished mainly in the track of the
Phoenician factories in the islands and in Greece proper.
The obvious facts are —first, that Aphrodite was not
associated with any of the legendary families of the main-
land of Greece, her mortal favorites—Adonis, Pygma-
lion, Anchises, AEneas, Paris—being all non-Hellenic,
and more or less Asiatic in origin; secondly, that her wor-
ship in Cyprus, as Herodotus was told (i. IoS), had been
transplanted from Ascalon, where was the oldest temple
of a goddess whom the Greeks translated into Aphrodite
Urania, and identified with the Alitta of the Arabians,
the Mylitta of the Assyrians, and the Astarte of the
Phoenicians; thirdly, that this Astarte or Mylitta was
a goddess of the heavens (Urania), or better, of the
heavenly bodies, and, though the details are unknown,
doubtless personified the harmony of their movements
while controlling their supposed influence on human
affairs, not least their influence on the sea, in which
respect her worship would commend itself to a seafar-
ing and trading people like the Phoenicians. As the
universal goddess of love, her province embraced every
phase of nature. While this, which was the basis of the
character of Astarte, was the basis also of the character
of Aphrodite; and while, through commercial ascend-
ency, the alphabet of the Phoenicians, and their system
of numbers, weights, and measures were adopted by the
Greeks, there is nothing in the way of assuming that
the idea of their goddess Aphrodite was borrowed under
similar circumstances. . From being the goddess of
beauty and love throughout nature, she became goddess
of love in the hearts of gods and men; either inspiring
a passion for herself, as in the case of Pygmalion and
Anchises, or herself inflamed with love, as for Adonis
and Cinyras, the reputed founder of her worship in
Cyprus; or again inspiring a passion between two other
persons, as between Paris and Helena, and between
Phaon and the women of Lesbos. When the subjects
were women, her power was frequently carried to a
desperate issue, as in the cases of Medea, Pasiphaë,
Phaedra, and many others. But she gave also the
pleasures of love, and while this led to the degradation
of her character finally, it was differently viewed in
earlier times, in which she was in this matter simply the
goddess of domestic life and of the relations between
families, being in some places associated with Eileithyia,
the goddess of childbirth, or elsewhere regarded, like
Artemis, as a guardian of children and young maidens.
APICIUS. There were three Romans of this name,
all celebrated as epicures. The second, M. Gabius
Apicius, who lived under Tiberius, is the most famous.
He invented various cakes and sauces which bore his
name, and rival schools of cookery claimed their
descent from him.
APION, a Greek grammarian and commentator upon
Homer, son of Posidonius, was born at Oasis in Libya,
but called himself a native of Alexandria, where he
studied. He taught rhetoric at Rome about 30 A.D.
With extensive knowledge and great oratorical power
he combined an unbounded vanity, as the epithet
cymbalum mund, applied to him by Tiberius seems to
imply.
APIS, a sacred bull worshipped at Memphis from
the earliest period, having probably been introduced
into the religious system as early as the 2d dynasty
by the king Kaiechos, who instituted the worship
of Apis and the bull Mnevis. His name in hiero-
glyphs was Hapá, and meant “the hidden,” as he
had to be discovered amidst the cattle, which was
done by certain diacritical marks. According to the
hieroglyphic inscriptions which accompany his form,
he was the second birth or living incarnation
of the god Ptah, the Egyptian Hephæstos or Vul-
can. Apis is first mentioned and appears in the
monuments of the 4th dynasty. The two bulls Apis
and Mnevis are considered to have respectively repre
sented the moon and sun, and seem both to have been
buried at Memphis. He was supposed to have been
born of a virgin cow, rendered pregnant by a moon-
beam or a flash of lightning. The mother of Apis,
according to Strabo, had a part of the temple of the
Apis reserved for her use; and the hieroglyphic inscrip-
tions record a prophet or priest attached to her service.
A P O
369
On the monuments she shares the honors of the bull,
and is represented under the attributes of Athor as a
goddess with a cow's head. This cow had her especial
name, these animals having each a separate appellation.
According to the Greek writers Apis was the image of
Osiris, and worshipped because Osiris was supposed to
have passed into a bull, and to have been soon aſter
manifested by a succession of these animals. The
hieroglyphic inscriptions identify the Apis with Osiris,
adormed with horns or the head of a bull, and unite the
two names as Hapi-Osor, or Apis Osiris. According to
this view the Apis was the incarnation of Osiris mani-
fested in the shape of a bull. On the announcement of
the birth of an Apis, the sacred scribes and priests pro-
ceeded to verify the characters of the calf. The marks
of the Apis were a black colored hide, with a white
triangular spot on the forehead. The day of his birth
was kept as an annual festival. His life was not allowed
to exceed 25 years, and should it have attained the
maximum reckoned from the date of his enthronisation,
the Apis was killed and thrown into a well, in which
the priests asselted he had precipitated himself. The
Apis was embalmed at great cost, but the operation
consisted in preparing with bitumen the skull and a few
of the principal bones of the bull made up into an
appropriate shape. The second genius of the Karneter,
or Egyptian Hades, was also called Hapi or Apis, but
he was quite distinct from the bull god and the son of
Osiris. His type was that of a human mummy with
the head of a Cynocephalus ape. Bronze native
figures of the Apis are not uncommon, and those of
stone are occasionally found, but porcelain ones are ex-
tremely rare.
APOCALYPSE, a designation under which the last
book of the New Testament is frequently referred to.
See REveLATION OF ST. JoHN. The name is applied
generally to predictions relating to the growth and tri-
umphs of the Messiah's kingdom, especially as revealed
in visions or expressed by means of symbols. The more
important extra-biblical writings of this kind are noticed
in the article which immediately follows.
APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE. This branch of
later Jewish literature took its rise after the older
prophecy had ceased, when Israel suffered sorely from
Syrian and Roman oppression. Its object was to en-
courage and comfort the people by holding forth the
speedy restoration of the Davidic kingdom of Messiah.
Attaching itself to the national hope, it proclaimed the
impending of a glorious future, in which Israel, freed
from her enemies, should enjoy a peaceful and prosper-
ous life under her long wished for Deliverer. The old
prophets became the vehicle of these utterances. Rev-
elations sketching the history of Israel and of heathen-
ism are put into their mouths. The prophecies take
the form of symbolical images and marvellous visions.
As the old remained unfulfilled in the progress of events,
and doubts arose about their truthfulness, it was neces-
saly to give them a new turn and a more correct inter-
pretation. Working in this fashion upon the basis of
well-known writings, imitating their style, and artificially
reproducing their substance, the authors naturally
adopted the anonymous. The difficulty was increased
by their having to paint as future, events actually near,
and to fit the manifestation of a personal Messiah into
the history of the times. Hence apocalyptists employed
obscure symbols and mysterious pictures, veiling the
meaning that it might not be readily seen. The artificial
imitative character of their productions caused certain
peculiarities; and the main object was attained by fasten-
ing the spirit of their contemporaries on the immediate
fulfillment of their highest aspirations. From the inten-
tionally dark imagery enfolding the ideas, it is diſficult to
discover the exact times of their appearance and the his-
torical interpretation.
The earliest of such apocalypses is the canonical book
of Daniel, in which an old seer in the Chaldean captiv-
ity is employed to portray the oppression of the Jews
under Antiochus Epiphanes. This was the model for
all later ones. The literature in question was not con-
fined to the Jews. Christians not only used the pro-
ductions in which the Messiah was described after the
Jewish fashion, but composed similar ones themselves—
Jewish Christians in particular. Here the Apocalypse
of John is the noblest example, and deserves the honor
of naming the entire range of literature.
The most obvious division of apocalyptic works is that
founded upon authorship, Jewish or Christian. This,
however, cannot be carried out with exactness because
of later interpolations, proceeding from Christians who
used the Jewish prophecies with the object of making
them more suitable. But it is not easy to trace the ex-
tent of subsequent elaborations; and we have only to
rely on probable conjecture.
I. JEWISH APOCALYPTIC.
1. AEnoch.-Under the name of this antediluvian patri-
arch a book exists which is quoted in the epistle of Jude.
After it had disappeared, except the fragments preserved
by ecclesiastical writers, it was found in Ethiopia among
the Abyssinians, and published in 1821; subsequently by
Dillman in 1851, to which the latter scholar added a
German translation in 1853.
The work contains much curious matter about the
secrets and powers both of the visible and invisible world.
Besides its historical views which relate mainly to the
past, present and future of the Jewish people, as also to
heathen kings and potentates, much of the legendary
and hagadic is interspersed. Daniel’s seventy weeks,
reaching down to the Messianic age, are changed into
seventy periods of heathen rulers. The writer has
withal a religious spirit. He is a strict moralist, warm-
ing and threatening. His imagination is vivid, but in-
capable of sublimity. The sweep of his prophetic vision
is extensive. He has poetic force and vigor.
2. Another apocalyptic production is the so-called
Fourtſ, Book of Esdras, or 7'he Prophecy of Zzra,
originally written in Greek, but known now only in ver-
sions— Latin, Ethiopic, Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian.
The whole consists of a series of visions, which Ezra,
who is put unchronologically into the 30th year of the
Babylonian captivity, is supposed to have had.
The poetic excellence of this production is much greater
than that of Enoch. It is, indeed, below the Apoca-
lypse of Daniel ; but its merit is considerable.
3. The Book of the jubilees, or the Zittle Genesis,
% A&zz?) 2-6 v8615, Zarza Genesis. –This work is apoca-
lyptic only in part, though called the Apocalypse of
Moses in the notices of it by George Syncellus and
George Cedrenus. In the form of a revelation made to
Moses during his stay on Mount Sinai, it professes to be
intended for future races, and to contain prophetic ad-
monitions relating to coming times. It is predominantly
historical and chronological, beginning with the old his-
tories of the creation. From the commencement of the
world till the entrance into Canaan is divided into 50
jubilee years; and every event is arranged according to
jubilees, years of weeks, and years. The author was an
energetic Palestinian Jew, conversant with the history
of his people, and conservative, who meant to confilm
them in attachment to the faith, by narrating their past
fortunes over again, and keeping them alive to their
principles.
The Zife of Adam seems to have been identical with
the book of Jubilees, or perhaps a part of it. If the
24 A
37O
A PO
V-
latter, it may have been another recension, enlarged and
modified in various respects.
The Book of Adam's Daughters, mentioned in Gela-
sius's decree about authentic and apocryphal books, also
appears to be the same as the Jubilees.
4. The Assumption or Ascension of Moses is , a
prophecy of the future relating to Israel, put into the
mouth of Moses, and addressed to Joshua just before
the great lawgiver died. Founded upon the book of
Deuteronomy, it is brief and unpoetical. But it seems
to have been large at first, for according to Nicephorus,
it consisted of 1400 stichs, while the Jubilees had only
I IOO. The work is an appropriate sequel to the Jubi-
lees, but it seems to have proceeded from a different
writer, though he lived at the same time. Internal evi-
dence points to its composition after the death of Herod
the Great, and before the destruction of Jerusalem.
5. Apocalypse of Moses contains an account of the
formation of Adam and Eve, their fall, Seth's dialogue
with his mother about Adam, and the disposal of the
latter’s body beside that of Abel. The reve/ation is
said to have been made to Moses when he received the
tables of the law and was instructed by the archangel
Michael.
6. Z'he Sibyllines.— Under this general name there
exists a collection of oracles said to proceed from the sibyl
in which Jewish ideas are promulgated and recommended
to the Gentiles. The contents, however, are of a mixed
character. Instead of a connected whole written by one
person at a specific time, we have a heterogeneous assem-
blage of materials, Jewish, Christian, and heathem, of
earlier and later origin, which must be separated and sifted
before they can be assigned to their respective origins.
7. The Apocalypse of Baruch. —In this rhetorical
ploduction Baruch receives revelations respecting the
future of Israel. Though Jerusalem has been destroyed
by the Romans, and the calamities of the chosen people
seem excessive, the prophet is comforted with the hope
of better times, since the Messiah will come shortly to
set up his kingdom after the Roman one has been
destroyed. Then will be the judgment and the consum-
mation; sinners will be punished, and the righteous
rewarded.
II. CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC.
Christians followed the example of the Jews in using
the sibyl as a vehicle of their ideas. Besides referring
to the past, which they did mainly with reference to the
person and work of Jesus Christ, they looked forward
to the destruction of the world-power, and the consum-
mation of all things at the second coming of Christ.
They employed to a considerable extent both Jewish and
heathen documents, interpolating or modifying them not
very strongly. Often content with non-Christian sources,
they adapted them but slightly, so that the ideas pecul-
iar to Christianity shine forth dimly. The prophetic
form of the Apocalypse does not demand the enuncia-
tion of doctrine, but rather a general indication of his-
toric events, or the threatening announcement of destruc-
tion to the enemies of God. It deals with the utterance
of principles exemplified by kingdoms and their rulers.
1. 7%e Apocalypse of Asdras.-This Greek pro-
duction resembles the more ancient fourth book of
Esdras in some respects. The prophet is perplexed
about the mysteries of life, and questions God respecting
them. . The punishment of the wicked especially occu-
pies his thoughts. Since they have sinned in conse-
quence of Adam’s fall, their fate is considered worse
than that of the irrational creation. The description of
the tortures suffered in the infernal regions is tolerably
minute. At last the prophet consents to give up his
spirit to God who has prepared for him a clown of
immortality. The composition is feeble and tame, a
poor imitation of the ancient Jewish one. *
2. The Apocalypse of Paul.– This work contains a
description of the things which the apostle saw in
heaven and hell. The narratives descend to minute
particulars, and possess no force or poetic power.
Imitated from the Revelations of St. John, their great
inferiority is apparent. Internal evidence assigns it to
the time of Theodosius, i.e., about 390 A.D. Where the
author lived is uncertain.
3. The Apoca/ypse of John contains a description of
the future state, the general resurrection, and judgment,
with an account of the punishment of the wicked, as
well as the bliss of the righteous. It appears to be the
work of a Jewish Christian, for the bodily appearance of
Antichrist is derived from Jewish sources; and there are
numerous quotations from the Old Testament, especially
from David. The date is late, for the writer speaks of
“the venerable and holy images,” as well as “the glori-
ous and precious crosses and the sacred things of the
churches,” which points to the 5th century, when such
things were first introduced into churches.
4. The Apocalypse of Peter contains a narrative of
events from the foundation of the world till the second
advent of Christ. The book is said to have been written
by Clement, Peter's disciple.
5. The Revelations of Bartholomew.—In the year
1835, Dulaurier published from a Parisian M.S., Sub-
joining a French translation, what is termed a fragment
of the apocryphal Revelations of St. Bartholomew, and
of the history of the religious communities founded by
St. Pachomius. The late date of the production is
obvious.
6. The Apocalypse of Mary, containing her descent
into hell, is not published entire, but only several por-
tions of it from Greek MSS. in different libraries.
7. The Apocalypse of Daniel has been published only
in part (a little more than the half). The date of the
document is determined by the monarch going to Jeru-
salem to deliver up his kingdom to God, and being suc,
ceeded by his four sons, who reside in different and
distant cities.
8. The Ascension and Vision of Isaiah. — The first
portion of the work called the Ascension of Isaiah in the
Ethiopic text, gives an account of Isaiah's being put to
death by the saw, under the reign and at the command
of Manasseh. The prophet had had a vision respecting
Christ, His crucifixion and ascension, as well as of the
general apostacy which should take place in the early
churches, of the descent of Berial in the form of a ma-
tricidal king, the duration of his reign, the descent of
the Lord from heaven to destroy the wicked, and cast
the ungodly into the fire. For this vision and prophecy
Isaiah is condemned, and dies the death of a martyr
(chapters, i.-v.) The second part (chapters. vi.-xi.)
is essentially the same as Isaiah’s vision in iii. I4—iv.
22.
9. The Shepherd of Hermas.- This production be-
longs in a certain sense to the present class of writings,
and is usually reckoned among the apostolic fathers. It
is not, however, apocalyptic in the proper acceptation
of the epithet, because it wants the form. The apoc-
alyptic idea has a different phase. The same remark
applies to —
io. The Testaments of the Zwelve Patriarcés. .
Many apocalyptic writings, both Jewish and Christian,
are mentioned in ancient works of which nothing is now
known. Time has swept them away beyond recovery.
It would be useless to collect the scattered notices of
them. º
APOCRYPHA. This term is a Greek word mean-
ing hidden, secret. It occurs, for example, in Col. ii.
A PO
37 I
#. “In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and
nowledge,” and elsewhere in the New Testament. It
is first found applied to writings in Clemens Alexan-
drinus, Stromata, iii. c. 4. When applied to writings
the name may be supposed to have first expressed the
nature of their contents; the writings were secret, em-
bodying an esoteric teaching, profounder than that
contained in the ordinary books of the system, and
unknown to the ordinary people who professed it.
Such writings were held to exist in connection with al-
most all the ancient systems of religion.
From the nature of the case, the same word might
very well describe such writings further, either in respect
of their use or in respect of their origin. In use these
writings were, of course, like the doctrines they contained,
both private and secret; they were not read in general
meetings, and did not belong to the publicly recognised
books of the system. Only some were admitted to the
knowledge of them. That which formed the subject of
public reference and instruction was the general doctrines
of the system, while these peculiar and more recondite
works were at most brought forward on rare occasions.
And naturally the same secrecy which hung over their
use generally also shrouded their origin. In some cases
this might be a real mystery; the books were sometimes
of ancient and uncertain date, and their authorship un-
known. But oftener the mystery was fictitious, created
for the purpose of securing respect for the doctrines in-
culcated in the writings, which themselves were forger-
ies of very recent times. Wolks of this kind were of
very common, occurrence in the East during the centuries
immediately preceding and following the birth of Christ.
In order successfully to float them and give them impulse,
they were generally launched under some ancient and
famous name; and books existed, claiming to be the pro-
ductions of almost every renowned patriarch or sage
from Adam downwards. Even when sent out anony-
mously, and of an historical rather than a doctrinal char-
acter, the scene of their narratives was laid in far back
times, and famous personages were introduced acting and
speaking, the design being to recommend to the living
generation the conduct pursued or the sentiments
expressed by the ancient hero or saint.
The term Apocrypha appears in this way to have
passed through several stages of meaning, and from ex-
pressing a meaning good, or at least neutral, it came at
last to have a very bad sense, differing very little from
spurious. From the use of the word in ancient wiiters
it does not appear that this progress from a good or in-
different to a bad sense was a matter of time, for the
indifferent and bad meanings of the word seem to have
existed side by side. Some ecclesiastical writers divide
the sacred books into three classes— recognising first,
some that ale canonical; second, some that are not canon-
ical, but of inſelior value, profitable to be read for
moral uses, but not to be founded on for doctrine — to
this class the name ecclesiastical was sometimes given;
and third, some that are apocryphal. Other writers
know of only two classes, embracing both the second
and third classes of the former division under the name
apocryphal. This difference indicates a milder and a
severer use of the term.
APOCRYPHA OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.—The books
bearing this name are not contained in the Jewish or
Palestinian Canon, i.e., in the Hebrew Bible, but in
the Alexandrian Canon, i.e., in the Greek translation
known as the Septuagint. Considerable obscurity
hangs over the date and the circumstances of the close
of the Hebrew Canon, and the principles which guided
the collectors in their selection of books to be embodied.
It is most probable that the three divisions referred to
in the New Testament, of law, prophets, and writings
(Psalms) are of ancient origin; that the first two divis.
ions were closed while prophetic men were still living,
that is, considerably anterior to the close of the Per-
sian period, while the third still remained open ; and
that at whatever time the third was closed, the books
added to it were added under the impression that they
were books composed before the succession of Prophets
had ceased.
With the Greek or Alexandrian Canon the case was
very different. This was, properly speaking, not an
ecclesiastical, but a literary collection at first, for the
tradition that it was commenced under the auspices of
Ptolemy Philadelphus cannot be altogether set aside.
At first only the books of Moses and perhaps Joshua
were translated, the interest felt in the book being con-
fined to the law. Only gradually and at intervals other
books were added, for the translations are not only by
different hands, but of very different dates.
The following books form the Apocrypha of the
English Bible. They are given in the order in which
they stand there:— I. I. Esdras. 2. II. Esdras. 3.
Tobit. 4. Judith. 5. The additions to the Book of
Esther. 6. The Wisdom of Solomon. 7. The Wis-
dom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus. 8.
Baruch. 9. The Song of the Three Holy Children.
Io. The History of Susanna. II. The History of the
Destruction of Bel and the Dragon. 12. The Prayer
of Manasses, king of Judah. 13. The First Book of
Maccabees. 14. The Second Book of Maccabees.
A few statements may be made regarding the general
characteristics of the Apocrypha.
1. These books are of very great interest and value as
a reflection of the condition of the fragments of the
scattered nation, and of the feelings and aspirations
which they cherished for a period of several hundred
years, and in all the chief countries of the world. Some
of the books, such for example as Tobit, belong to the
Persian period, and were composed in the East, in
Babylon or Persia, and describe the external life as well
as the feelings and hopes of the exiles there; others
arose in Palestine, such as AEcclesiasticus, and reflect the
condition of life and the shades of religious speculation
in the home country; while others, such as the Wisdom
of Solomon, originated in Egypt, and afford means of
estimating the influence of Greek thought upon the
native doctrines of the Old Testament; and perhaps in
the 2d AEsdras there may even be detected traces of
Christian influence. The broad undivided stream of
Old Testament doctrine and hope breaks at the era of
which we are speaking into three channels. The largest,
and that which best preserves its primary direction, con-
tinues to run in Palestine, diverging to some extent, and
widening under the contributions which time and a very
chequered experience and reflection made to it; while
on each side of this another runs, one on the east and
one on the west, directed and partly fed by the ideas of
Persia and Greece respectively. To a certain extent the
streams unite further on, and pour their united contri-
butions into the great sea of Christian thought. The
central stream is, of course, the most interesting, al-
though to estimate it properly the books of the English
Apocrypha are quite insufficient, other works belonging
to the same region must also be taken into account,
Sugh as the great Book of Ænoch, and several more.
The two collateral currents are also of extreme interest,
although it is far from easy to analyse their waters, and
say with assurance what elements belong to the primary
Old Testament sources and what are local contributions.
Many have discovered traces of Persian ideas even in
the canonical books of the Old Testament, particularly
in the doctrine of angels in the later books, but the trust-
worthiness of such discoveries may be very fairly ques-
372
A PO
tioned. At the same time, there either is, in the book
of 7 obit, an advance absolutely on the Old Testament
doctrine of angels and demons, or there are traces of a
method of interpreting the history in Gen. ch. vi., and
a carrying out of the method to further consequences,
which are both unknown to the canonical Scriptures.
And if in the Alexandrian Wisdom of Solomon a
progress directly in adzance of what is found in Prov.
viii., on the doctrine of Wisdom, may be justly con-
tested, there is certainly what may be called a progress
round about, the ideas about Wisdom are expanded
and placed in new lights, and made to enter into new rela-
tions, in such a way that a general approximation to the
New Testament doctrine of the Logos was the result.
But in general, as a means of estimating the changing
shades of feeling, the rise and fall of hopes, or rather
the steady glow of a hope which no hardship could
extinguish, the efforts to accommodate faith to circum-
stances and hold it fast in spite of all that was against
it, in a word, as a means of estimating the inner life of
a most interesting people in the very crisis of their his-
tory, the apocryphal books are invaluable. No more
beautiful picture of piety or disinterested benevolence and
patriotic warmth could be seen than is presented in the
book of Zobit; neither could religious zeal and courageous,
even almost reckless, patriotism, easily find higher expres-
Sion than in the first book of Maccabees, or even in the
unhistorical tale of judit/; ; while the under current of
observant thoughtfulness, that contemplates but hardly
mixes in life, runs in a deep, if calm and passionless stream
in the proverbs of the Son of Sirach. At no time was the
nation idle. A people that had conceived such hopes,
hopes which at last culminated in Christianity, could not
be idle or even anything less than restless and turbulent.
There is no form of deed celebrated in the ancient history
of the people that they did not try to reproduce, and no
form of literary composition which, in those mournful
centuries so full of oppression, they did not strive to
imitate, with an inextinguishable life and hopefulness.
This last fact, perhaps, might furnish the means of a
classification of the books different from that suggested
above, and similar to the division usually adopted in the
Old Testament Scriptures. (I.) Historical, such as 1st
Maccabees, although most that assume the historical
form, such as %udith, are simple romances, and can be
used only as an index of ideas and feelings, not in proof
of facts; while others, like Bel and the Dragon, are
completely fabulous. (2.) Prophetical, such as Baruch
and 2d Esdras. In these the religious hopes of the
people are most fully exhibited ; for example, the Mes-
sianic expectations. Fully to understand these, how-
ever, other works, such as the book of Enoch, not con-
tained in the recognised Apocrypha, have to be included.
The prophetic literature almost always assumes the form
called apocalyptic. (3.) Philosophical, or books com-
ing under the Hebrew name of Wisdom. Here belong
the Son of Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, to which
must be added others not included in the English
‘Apocrypha-e.g., the AEra/ter of Solomoza and 4th
AMaccabees.
The degree of estimation in which the apocryphal
books have been held in the church have varied much
according to place and time. As they stood in the
Septuagint or Greek Canon, along with the other books,
and with no marks of distinction, they were practically
employed by the Greek fathers in the same way as the
other books; hence Origen, Clement, and others, often
cite them as “Scripture,” “divine Scripture,” “in-
spired,” and the like. On the other hand, teachers con-
nected with Palestine, and familiar with the Hebrew
jº, rigidly exclude all but the books contained
there.
Somewhat bitter controversies have raged over the
Apocrypha in recent times. One was carried on, in
Scotland in 1825 and following years, which had the
effect of inducing the British and Foreign Bible Society
to employ its funds for the circulation of the canonical
Scriptures only.
APOCRYPHAL BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. —-
These may be divided into two classes—those books
which were actually held as inspired by some portion of
the Christian church, and those which were never ac-
knowledged as canonical. Among the first are some of
the writings ascribed to the apostolical fathers. The
First Epistle of Clement was read in the churches, is
quoted in the same manner as Scripture by Irenaeus,
and is found in the Codex Alexandrinus. The Pastor
of Hermas was also lead in the churches, is mentioned
as inspired by Irenaeus, Clemens Alexandrinus, and
Origen, and is found in the Codex Sinaiticus. Some-
what similar respect was paid to the Epistle of Polycarp
and the Epistle of Barnabas. Besides these books
there were different gospels in use in the early period of
Christianity. The most famous of these was the Gos-
pel according to the Hebrews. Some critics regard it
as the earliest gospel of which we know anything.
We know very little more of the other gospels and
apocryphal books than their names. Eusebius men-
tions the Acts of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, and the
Revelation of Peter; the Acts of Paul, and the Doc-
trines of the Apostles. Origen mentions also the
Gospel according to the Egyptains, the Gospel of
Basilides, and the Gospel according to Thomas, and
according to Matthias. All these works have perished,
and criticism can only conjecture, from a few scattered
hints and fragments, what was their nature. The other
set of apocryphal books consists of works that have
come down to us relating to Christ and his apostles,
but which were never regarded as inspired by any sect.
APOLDA, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy
of Saxe Weimar, situated near the river Ilm, 9 miles
east of Weimar, with which it is connected by railway.
Hoisery and cloth are the chief manufactures of the
town, besides which it contains pin and button factories.
and bell foundries. There are mineral springs in the
neighborhood. Population, Io,507.
APOLLINARIS SIDONIUS, CAIUS SOLLIUs, an
eminent Christian writer and bishop, was born in Lyons
about 430 A.D. Belonging to a noble family he was
educated under the best masters, and particularly excel-
led in poetry and polite literature. He married Papian-
illa, the daughter of Avitus, who was consul, and aſter-
wards emperor, by whom he had three children. But
Majorianus, in the year 457, having deprived Avitus of
the empire, and taken the city of Lyons, Apollinaris
fell into the hands of the enemy. The reputation of his
learning led Majorianus to treat him with the greatest
respect; in return for which Apollinaris composed a pane-
gyric in his honor, which was so highly applauded that
he had a statue erected to him at Rome, and was hon-
ored with the title of Count. In 467 the Emperor
Anthemius rewarded him for the panegyric which he
had written in honor of him, by raising him to the post
of governor of Rome, and afterwards to the dignity of
a patrician and senator. But he soon quitted these
secular employments for the service of the church; and,
in 472, was chosen to succeed Eparchius in the bishop-
ric of Clermont. On the capture of that city by the
Goths in 480 he was obliged to retire, as he had taken
an active part in its defence; but he was soon restored
by Evaric, king of the Goths, and continued to govern
the church as before. He died 482 or 484 A.D.
APOLLINARIS, SULPICIUS, a learned grammarian
of Carthage, lived in the 2d century, under the Antonines.
A PO ſº
373
APOLLO. The influence of the sun on nature in a
country like Greece, either brightening the fields and
cheering mankind, or scorching and destroying with a
pestilence, or again dispelling the miasma collected from
marshes by night, was taken by the Greeks to be under
the control of a divine being, to whom they ascribed, on
human analogy, a form and character in which were re-
flected their own sensations. That divine being they
called Apollo, a name which applied to him in two ways,
either as “the destroyer,” or the “repeller of ills.”
Apellon is both the Doric and the old Roman form of
his name. Under the frequent title of Phoebus, he was
hailed as god of the streaming light of the sun. Next
to its daily course, which, however, was under the guid-
ance of a special subordinate deity, Helios, the most
obvious and invariable phenomenon of the sun was its
withdrawal in winter and return in summer, and accord-
ingly on this was based one of the principal features in
the character of the god, which was also recognised in
annual festivals in his honor, and made more explicit by
the myth, in which after his birth, amid the splendid
summer light of Delos, he is carried off in, a car drawn
by swans to the fabulous region of the Hyperboreans,
where the sun was believed to tarry during the winter.
The other class of solar phenomena, being variable in
their occurrence, appeared to be directed by a precarious
will, and from this was evolved for Apollo the double
character of a god possessed of power over the sun,
and at the same time guided in the exercise of it by the
conduct of mankind. Hence the prominence of expia-
tory offerings in the worship of a god whom no act of
wrong escaped. By his knowledge of what transpired
on earth and in the councils of Olympus, he was pre-
pared to be the god of oracles, which threw light on
the future and banished the monsters begotten of terror
at its obscurity. From observing the jubilant voice of
nature greeting the sunshine, it was an easy step to re-
gard Apollo as the god of music; while again the func-
tion of a god of medicine was peculiarly appropriate to
a deity who, if he destroyed life, also saved it. In many
ways the sun gladdened the herdsman and favored his
flock. Hence both Apollo and Helios (Sol) had sacred
herds of cattle of their own, while the former when in
exile on earth himself acted as a herdsman.
With his oracular power was associated his function as
god of music (Citharoedus), and leader of the Muses
(Musagetes), in which capacity he caused Marsyas to be
flayed alive because he had boasted superior skill in play-
ing the flute, or again, caused the eans of Midas to grow
long because he had decided in favor of Pan, who con-
tended that the flute was a better instrument than the
lyre. But that which brought Apollo most closely home
to the hearts of the people was his character of a destroy-
ing but yet an appeasable god. Pestilence and death by
an unseen cause, or in the beauty of youth, were traced
to him, and to prevent doubt as to his having, a good
reason in each case, there were the myths which told
how, for example, he sent a pestilence on the Greeks
before Troy, because Chryseis, the daughter of his
priest, was retained in captivity by Agamemnon ; or
again, how with the aid of his sister Artemis (Diana) he
slew the children of Niobe, because she had boasted of
their beauty. A typical instance of his causing death
undesignedly is that of his favorite, the beautiful, young
Hyacinthus, who was killed by the disc (a symbol of the
sun) which Apollo had thrown in play. In Rome the
worship of Apollo was not introduced until 320 B.C.,
in which year the city had been visited with a pestilence.
The most frequent symbols of Apollo are the bow and
the lyre; the tripod, suggesting his oracular power; the
laurel, which was carried by penitents as well as worn by
victors, and into which Daphne was changed for ...ot
yielding to his love; the palm, the wolf, the deer, and
the raven. In the ripe period of art Apollo appears in
a form which seeks to combine manhood and eternal
youth. His long hair is usually tied, like that of his
sister Diana, in a large knot above his forehead. As
leader of the Muses, he wears long ample drapery girt at
the waist, his tresses falling on his shoulders.
APOLLO BELVIDERE, a marble statue of Apollo,
found towards the end of the 15th century near Antium
(Capo d'Azzo), a favorite resort of Roman emperors.
Julius II., while yet a cardinal, purchased it; and on
becoming Pope allowed it to be placed, through Michael
Angelo, in the Belvidere of the Vatican, whence it was
taken by the French in 1797, but restored in 1815 The
marble some believe to be Greek, though perhaps the
best authorities call it Carrara. In any case the statue
is not an original work, but a copy apparently from a
very fine Greek statue of about the beginning of the 3rd
century B.C., of which another copy has been identified
in a bronze statuette now in St. Petersburg, known as
the Strogano-Apollo. Lately also a marble head has
been found at Rome, corresponding closely in measure-
ment and in style, confirming what is suggested by the
statue, viz., that the original was of bronze. From the
bronze statuette it is found that the Apollo Belvidere
held forward in his left hand, not a bow as was thought,
but the deg is, in the attitude of spreading consternation
among an enemy, as he did among Trojans, and it is
usual to adopt as the occasion for the production of this
statue the invasion of the Gauls, whom, in 278 B.C., the
god drove in alarm from his sanctuary at Delphi. The
extraordinary praise bestowed on it by Winckelmann
secured for this statue a fame from which the discovery
of true Greek sculptures since then has gradually de-
tracted, to this extent, that even its original cannot now
be placed in the best period of Greek art.
APOLLODORUS, a celebrated painter of Athens
who lived about 408 B.C. From the improvements he
introduced into the art of mingling colors, and the use
he made of shading, he obtained the surname, 2×10-
pa'q205.
APOLLODORUS, an Athenian grammarian, son of
Asclepiades, and disciple of Aristarchus, lived about 140
B.C. His most famous production is his Bibliotheca,
which treats of the gods and the heroic age; and though
the extant work is possibly only an abridgment by an-
other hand of the original, it is of great value in mytho-
logical inquiries. The best edition is that of Heyne, 2
vols. 8vo, published is 1803. *
APOLLODORUS (60–130 A.D.), an architect, born
at Damascus, a ſavorite of Trajan, for whom he con-
structed the stone bridge over the Danube (IO4 A.D.),
which was esteemed the most magnificent of all the
works of that emperor. He also planned a gymnasium,
a college, public baths, the Odeum, and the Forum
Trajanum, within the city of Rome; and the triumphal
arches at Beneventum and Ancona. The Trajan column
in the centre of the Forum is celebrated as being the
first triumphal monument of the kind, and the model of
many others in different cities, as Paris, London, St.
Petersburg, &c. On the elevation of Hadrian to the
throne, Apollodorus was banished from Rome, and
shortly afterwards, being charged with imaginary
crimes, was put to death (Dion Cassius, lxix.)
APOLLONIA, the name, derived from the god
Apollo, of several cities of antiquity. The most im-
portant are— I. An Illyrian city on the right bank of
the Aous, which owed its foundation to the Corinthians
and Corcyreans. It soon became a place of commercial
prosperity, was at a later period regarded as of military
importance, and towards the close of the Roman re-
public acquired fame as a seat of literature and philoso-
374
A PO
phy. It seems to have sunk with the rise of Aulon, and
few remains of its ruins are to be found. 2. A Thra-
cian city (afterwards Sozopolis, and now Sizeboli), col-
onised by the Milesians, and famous for its colossal
statue of Apollo, which Lucullus removed to Rome.
The port of Cyrene (afterwards Sozusa, now Marsa
Sousah), which at length outgrew the greatness of
Cyrene itself, and has left ample evidence of its magnifi-
cence in the ruins of its public buildings. It was the
birth-place of Eratosthenes, usually known as of Cyrene.
APOLLONIUS, surnamed MoLo, a distinguished
Greek rhetorician, the instructor of Caesar and Cicero.
Born at Alabanda, he settled at Rhodes, and in the dic-
tatorship of Sulla, was sent as ambassador from the
Rhodians to Rome. He was the first Greek who ad-
dressed the senate without an interpreter. Cicero re-
newed his studies under him when he afterwards visited
Rhodes on his return from Asia. The works of Apol-
lonius have perished.— Another rhetorician of the same
name, likewise a native of Alabanda, and an inhabitant
of Rhodes, was surnamed The Effeminate 6 Ma:Aaxos.
Both are mentioned by Cicero with high respect.—
Cicero, Brutus, 89,90, 91; De Znv. i. 56; De Orat.
i. 17, 28; Quintil. iii. I, § 16; xii. 6, § 7, &c.
APOLLONIUS, surnamed DyscoLUs (Aviózzolos,)
or The Crabbed, was a native of Alexandria, and lived
in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. He was
the first systematic writer on grammar, and is styled by
Priscian “Grammaticorum Princeps.” Of his extant
grammatical works the principal one is the treatise On
Syntax, the best edition of which is that of Bekker,
Berlin, 1817.
APOLLONIUS, a Greek epic poet, surnamed RHo-
DIUS, from his long residence in Rhodes, though he is
supposed to have been a native of Alexandria.
APOLLONIUS of TRALLES and his brother TAU-
RISCUS were sculptors of the famous Farnese Bull, a
group representing Zethus and Amphion tying the
revengeful Dirce to the tail of a wild bull. This work
is now at Naples. There were several other sculptors
named Apollonius.
APOLLONIUS, a grammarian of Alexandria, author
of a Homeric Lexicon, A&#819 “Oumpuzzai, which was
first published by Villoison, in two vols. fol., at Paris,
in I773.
APOLLONIUS of PERGA (PERGAEUs), next to
Archimedes the most illustrious of the ancient Greek
geometricians, was born probably about 250 B.C., and
died during the reign of Ptolemy Philopator (222–205
B.C.), flourishing thus about forty years later than
Archimedes. He studied at Alexandria under the suc-
cessors of Euclid, and is one of the brightest ornaments
of that famous mathematical school. e
But a few of the mathematical works of Apollonius
have escaped the ravages of time. Of the greater part
we have merely the names and general description
given by Pappus in his preface to book vii. of the
AMathematica/ Collections. His treatise on the Comic
Sections gained him the title of The Great Geometer,
and is that by which his fame has been transmitted to
modern times.
APOLLONIUS, surnamed TYANAEUs, a Pythago-
rean philosopher, born at Tyana, the capital of Cappa-
docia, shortly before the Christian era. According to
his biographer Philostratus, he studied grammar and rhet-
oric at Tarsus under Euthydemus, but he soon left that
gay and luxurious city for the quiet town of AEgae in the
vicinity, where he spent his time in the company of
philosophers and priests within the temple of Æscula-
pius. Among these he met Euxenus, one of the fol-
lowers of Pythagoras, and from him he learned with
enthusiasm the doctrines of the Samian sage. While
yet a mere youth he renounced all the ordinary pleasures
of life. Abjuring the use of flesh and wine, he lived on
the simple fruits of the soil, wore no clothing but linen
and no sandals on his feet, suffered his hāir to grow,
and slept on the hard ground. He strictly observed the
Pythagorean penance of five years' silence, suffering
often the most painful trials of his patience without a
murmur. Philostratus relates so many wonderful
stories of his hero — how on one occasion, for instance,
he awed an excited populace to silence by the mere
waving of his hands, how he performed many miracles
with a word, and how he knew all tongues without ever
having learned them — that some have questioned the
very existence of Apollonius; while others, admitting
with reason the fact of such ascetic having lived about
this time, regard him as a compound of magician,
impostor, and religious fanatic.
Apollonius is not to be looked upon as a shallow and
vulgar impostor, though to influence men's minds he had
recourse to artifices and pretensions unworthy of a true
philosopher. With some of the spirit of a moral and
religious reformer, he appears to have attempted, though
vainly, to animate expiring paganism with a new and
purer life.
APOLLOS, a Jew of Alexandria, who came to Ephe-
sus during the absence of St. Paul at Jerusalem. Apol-
los was a learned man, “mighty in the Scriptures,” and
preached “boldly” in the synagogue the doctrine of a
Messiah, knowing as yet “only the baptism of John.”
Aquila and Priscilla having heard him, instructed him
more fully in the doctrines of the gospel. Some time
after this he went to Corinth, and was there very useful
in convincing the Jews out of the Scriptures that Jesus
was the Christ. Thus he watered what St. Paul had
planted in that city (I Cor. iii. 6). The division of the
church at Corinth, in which one of the parties called
itself by his name, was not prompted by him, and did
not disturb the friendly relations that existed between
him and St. Paul. Apollos hearing that the apostle was
at Ephesus, went to meet him, and declined to return to
Corinth, though St. Paul “greatly desired” him to do
so. St. Jerome says that Apollos was so dissatisfied
with the division at Corinth, that he retired into Crete
with Zenas, a doctor of the law; and that the schism
having been healed by St. Paul’s letter to the Corin-
thians, Apollos returned to the city, and became its
bishop. Less probable traditions assign to him the
bishopric of Duras, or Iconium in Phrygia, or Caesarea.
APOLOGETICS is, properly speaking, the part of
theology which vindicates the right of theology in gen-
eral, and of Christian theology in particular, to exist as
a science, and is occasioned by the presence of anti-theo-
logical and antichristian speculation. Apologetics is
therefore the scientific representation of the grounds on
which Christian theology, in so far as it is a part of
human knowledge, rests and may be vindicated. So
long as Christianity lies hid, as it were, in the mind of
man or in the consciousness of the church, without
assuming an external or objective form, so long as it re-
mains only in the form of a force impelling men to ac-
tion, so long as it is content to manifest itself on the
active or practical side only, there is no great need of
Apologetics; but whenever Christian dogmatics arise,
whenever Christianity objectifies itself on 1ts intellectual
side, and begins to force its way into the circle of the
sciences, its entrance is disputed, it has to face hostile
criticism, and begins to form an apologetic.
Apologetics is therefore the logical antecedent but the
historical consequent of dogmatics; it is the introduction
to dogmatics, it prepares the way for it logically by
justifying its claim to exist, but it actually comes after
dogmatics in the history of the intellectual manifestation
A P O
375
of Christianity, because, as a matter of fact, men do not
feel called on to justify Christian theology until it actu-
ally exists in a dogmatic form. Thus, Apologetics may
be compared to psychology, and in some respects is to
dogmatics what psychology is to metaphysics. Just as
psychology is the link between physics and metaphysics,
just as in psychology the two spheres of impersonal and
personal life touch each other, and the two sets of
natural and spiritual laws are seen in conjoint action, so
Apologetics lies between human and superhuman science,
in it the two spheres of human life and revelation meet,
and the various and different laws which regulate each
adjust themselves to each other's varying action ;
and psychology, which is historically consequent to
metaphysics, is logically its antecedent and intro-
duction. The position of Apologetics necessarily gives
it a somewhat changeable nature. All sciences change,
but they do so according to an inward develop-
ment of their own, and their change is so far or-
derly and progressive; but the course of Apologetics
must always be more or less erratic, because it has to do
with the varying relations of the two spheres of human
life and revelation, and has to adjust itself afresh at each
change in these relations. The special form, too, which
Apologetics has for the most part assumed—a defence or
vindication of Christianity — has made it more change-
able. It has been compelled to change its front from
time to time to meet the altered form of attack.
The first period, extending from the beginning of the
2d century to the end of the 5th, may be subdivided into
two: (1) From the beginning of the 2d to the begin-
ning of the 3d century; and, (2.) From the beginning
of the 3d to the end of the 5th. The first of these is
marked by the writings of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras,
Tertullian, and Minucius Felix. The two Apologies of
Justin were directed, the one against the Jews, and the
other against the pagans. In both he follows the same
method of justifying the Christian religion from the
charges which were then commonly brought against it,
and then attacking his opponents severely. All the
apologists of this age follow the same course, and we
See from their writings that the common attacks upon
Christianity were charges of atheism, immorality prac-
tised, at their Agapae, the Thyestaean banquets, and the
like. The second of these periods is marked by the
writings of Origen, Arnobius, Lactantius, Eusebius,
Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine. These names show the
couise that Apologetics was taking. It had raised itself
far above the position of a mere defence against vulgar
prejudice and polished sarcasm; and Origen, when he
opposed Celsus, was giving a philosophical defence
against a philosophical attack upon the principles which
lay at the basis of Christianity. With Arnobius begins
the study of Christian evidences; and he tries to show
that Christianity is not merely probable, but certainly
true; while Lactantius proceeds upon the idea that, if
Christianity be only clearly understood, it must be
accepted, that its best defence is a clear statement of the
principles on which it rests. Eusebius, on the other
hand, is the first of the learned apologists, and proves
the truth of Christianity by an elaborate comparison
between it and all that was best in the various systems
which went before it, and so far prepared the way for
it. Cyril opposes Julian as Origen had opposed Celsus.
Julian had directed his attack against the claims of
Christianity to universal dominion; he admitted that it
was one form, but denied it was the only form of truth,
and Cyril's defence is interesting, inasmuch as it is the
first answer of the Christian apologist to the objections
of the pure Theist. Augustine's great work, the De
Cizztate Dei, is apologetic in so far as it endeavors to
show that Christianity and the church are the only alk
of safety in presence of the dissolution of the empire
and human Society which then seemed imminent.
The second period dates from the 6th to the middle of
the 15th century. It embraces the growth, life, and de-
cline of scholasticism. . In this period there are no direct
attacks upon Christianity, and so no direct defences of
it; but still Apologetics, although for the most part ab-
sorbed into the sum of Christian doctrine, and recognis-
able only in the attempt to assimilate philosophy and
theology, is to some extent visible in the jealous defence
of particular doctrines against the attacks of Nominal-
ism, and reveals itself more prominently in the attacks
made by Christian theologians upon the Jewish and Ma-
hometan religions.
The third period extends from the middle of the 15th
to the middle of the 17th century. This was the age of
the Renaissance and of the Reformation, an age of in-
quiry, doubt, and change. Along with the Reformation,
keeping with it as long as it was merely destructive, and
abandoming it as soon as it became Constructive, was a
spirit or tendency, best described by the term Human-
ism. The Humanists were men who were thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of the old classical poets of
Greece and Rome, and had imbibed many of the old
pagan ideas with reference to Christianity. Humanism,
which was at first learning revived, contained within it
two tendencies which afterwards showed themselves hos-
tile to Christianity: the first was embodied in literary
criticism, and mainly displayed the antagonism between
literature and dogma, while the other took the form of
a pantheist philosophy, founded on the divinity of Na-
ture.
The fourth period extends from the middle of the 17th
to the end of the 18th century. During this period, anti-
christian speculation assumes distinct forms, and Apol-
ogetics undergoes corresponding changes. The English
deism, which began with Lord Herbert of Cherbury and
Hobbes, and ended with Hume, called forth an innum-
erable number of replies from Christian theologians, and
the special nature of the attack then made upon Chris-
tianity still gives their special form to English works
upon Apologetics. The general tone of English Deists
was that there was no warrant for the mysteries in Chris-
tianity, for its superior morality, for its historical posi-
tion and influence, and so English Apologetics has been
mainly concerned with the doctrine of the evidences of
Christianity; and the general line of argument commonly
taken has been, that there is as much evidence for Chris-
tianity as for some ordinary set of opinions generally ad-
mitted. In the French scepticism, the principal charge
made against Christianity was that it rested on impost-
ure and was maintained by trickery. An attack of this
kind is answered, not so much by special defence, as by
a silent appeal to historical testimony and to the charac-
ter of man, and it is not to be wondered at if the French
Church has not produced any very valuable apologetic
writings defending Christianity from the special attacks
of this school. The German rationalism began with
Lessing's publication of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, and
ended with Kant. In its earlier form it was little else
than an importation of the ideas of the English Deists,
but latterly it assumed a special form by upholding the
authority of the individual reason. The replies to the
ordinary arguments of the English Deists were very nu-
merous, but do not deserve further notice. The author-
ity of the individual reason may be vindicated, either in
the province of criticism or in that of dogma; the one
effort gave rise to the critical rationalism of Eichholm
and Paulus, and the other to the dogmatic rationalism
of Wegscheider.
At the present time Apologetics seems to be in a tran-
sition state. Since the time of Kant the historical
376 *
A PO
method of investigation has become all powerful in
almost every department of human knowledge, and at
the present the chief attacks made upon the supernat-
ural and unique character of the Christian religion and
theology are based upon the comparative science of
religions. It is held that the Christian religion is the
highest and most perfect development to which the relig-
ious spirit of man has yet reached, but that it simply
differs in degree of development from any other religion.
It is said that the Christian theology contains, like all
other theologies, a great phany elements of truth, but
that is simply a natural religion like any other. This
mode of attack has not yet been thoroughly faced by
Christian apologists, but it must be the work of the
Apologetics of the future to vindicate the supernatural
character of Christianity by arguments which are based
upon historical investigation and comparison of the dif-
ferent religions of mankind.
APOLOGUE. This word was originally, in Greek
and Latin, employed loosely for any kind of story, but
has now become synonymous with moral fable. See
FABLE.
APOPHTHEGM, a short, sententious, instructive
utterance, as “Knowledge is power,” “True greatness
always wills.” Of such sayings Plutarch made a famous
collection in his Apophthegmata Laconica, and the bib-
lical book of Proverbs abounds with examples.
APOPLEXY, a term in medicine which, though now
also employed with other significations, is commonly
understood to apply to a fit of sudden insensibility occur-
ring in connection with some diseased condition of the
brain,
Apoplectic attacks vary both as regards their intensity
and their attendant phenomena, but well-marked cases
F. the following symptoms: The person attacked
ecomes, more or less suddenly, deprived of conscious-
ness and all power of voluntary motion. He lies as if
in a deep sleep, with a flushed face, a slow pulse, stertor-
ous breathing, accompanied with puffing of the cheeks
during expiration, and with the pupils of the eyes insen-
sible to light, and contracted or unequal. This state in
many respects resembles the coma of narcotic poison-
ing, and is unfortunately too often mistaken by unskilled
Fº for alcoholic intoxication. The symptoms and
istory of the case, however, are usually sufficient to
enable a medical man to form a correct diagnosis. In
this condition of insensibility death may occur within a
few hours, or there may be a gradual return to con-
sciousness, in which case it is frequently observed that
some trace of the attack remains in the form of paraly-
sis of one side of the body, while occasionally there may
also be noticed some impairment of the mental powers,
pointing to damage done to the brain.
Although thus generally sudden in its onset, it is sel-
dom that an attack of apoplexy occurs without some
previous warning. Persistent headache of a dull throb-
bing character, a sense of fulness in the head, vomiting,
giddiness, noises in the ears, slight confusion of the mind,
and numbness of a limb or of one side of the body, are
among the more important premonitory symptoms; and
these may exist for a variable length of time before the
fit comes on. Such symptoms, more particularly the
association of them, when occurring in a person at or
beyond middle liſe are to be regarded with anxiety, as
indicating danger of an apoplectic seizure. Various
morbid conditions of the brain are capable of giving
rise to fits of apoplexy. Hence different forms of apo-
plexy have been described by medical writers, such as the
congestive, where the cause appeared to lie in an
engorgement of the blood-vessels of the brain and its
membranes; and the ferous, where sudden effusion of
fluid into the ventricles or substance of the brain seemed
to have brought on a fit. But by far the most frequent
and important occasion of apoplexy is hemorrhage into
the brain by the rupture of blood-vessels. Indeed, by
many modern writers the term apoplexy is applicd only
to cases of cerebral haemorrhage. The blood-vessels of
the brain, like those in other parts of the body, are lia-
ble to undergo degenerate changes after middle life.
These changes affect the minute capillaries, as well as
the larger vessels, rendering their texture fragile, and at
the same time impairing their function in carrying on
the healthy nutrition of the brain. Hence, in the
immediate vicinity of the diseased blood-vessels. the
substance of the brain itself undergoes degeneration,
and becomes softened. The capillary vessels having thus
lost the natural support of the surrounding tissues, and
being themselves weakened by disease affecting their
walls, are liable to give way, and blood escapes into the
brain. The haemorrhage may be slight in amount and
in parts of the brain where its presence gives rise to
little disturbance, but where a large blood-vessel has
ruptured, and more especially where the blood has been
extravasated in or around the important structures at
the base of the brain, the result is a fit of apoplexy as
above described, and death not unfrequently follows
within a short period. In favorable cases where a cer-
tain measure of recovery takes place, the effused blood
undergoes gradual absorption, or becomes enveloped in
a sort of capsule formed by the surrounding brain sub-
stance, and ceases to cause further disturbance. But
even in such cases some degree of paralysis remains at
least for a time. Moreover, the nutrition of the brain
is so impaired as to render probable a recurrence of the
hº and thus the danger to life, as is well
known, increases with each successive àttack.
From what has been above stated, it will be observed
that apoplexy is to be regarded as a disease of advanced
life. With respect to the treatment of apoplexy, it must
be admitted that little can be done during the state of
unconsciousness. The practice of blood-letting, once
so common in this disease, is now almost entirely
abandoned, although there are physicians who still
recommend its employment, especially where the attack
occurs in stout, plethoric persons. Where death
appears to threaten from the failure of the heart's action,
warm applications to the surface of the body, and,
should there exist any power of swallowing, the cau-
tious administration of stimulants, are to be recom-
mended. The case must be anxiously watched, and
symptoms treated as they arise. When consciousness
returns, the utmost care and quietness are to be
observed to prevent the occurrence of inflammatory
action, so apt to be developed, as a result of haemor-
rhage into the brain.
APOSTASY, denoting in classic Greek a defection or
revolt from a military commander, is generally employed
to describe a complete renunciation of the Christian
faith. In the first centuries of the Christian era, apos-
stay was most commonly induced by persecution, and
was indicated by some outward act, such as offering
incense to a heathen deity or blaspheming the name of
Christ. The Emperor Julian, who is known in history
as The Apostate, abandoned Christianity for paganism
soon after assuming the purple, though it is question-
able whether he had ever really embraced the Christian
faith.
APOSTLE (one who is sent forth) is in the New
Testament, and in Christian literature, a technical term
— apostle of Jesus Christ. It appears that the name
was originally applied to the twelve disciples in refer-
ence to the special mission to preach and work miracles
in Israel, on which our Lord sent them forth during
His ministry on earth. Luke alone of the evangelists
S.
A PO \
377
uses the word in a technical sense out of connection
with this mission. After the resurrection the eleven,
who again become twelve by the election of Matthias in
the room of Judas, are regularly designated apostles.
The precise prerogative of the apostolate is not defined.
The apostles themselves feel that their distinguishing
qualification, is their personal fellowship with Jesus
through all his ministry, their main office to witness to
the resurrection.
Of the history of the apostles we have almost no
authentic knowledge beyond what is stated in the New
Testament.
APOSTLES’ CREED, one of the earliest and most
generally accepted symbols of the Christian faith, so
called from the fact that its authorship was attributed
to the twelve apostles. See CREEDs.
APOSTOLIC or APOSTOLICAL, a name assumed
at different times by various churches and sects on the
ground of some special connection with the apostles.
APOSTOLIC CANONS. These are rules to regu-
late Christian life and the discipline and government of
the Christian church, which, it is supposed, have come
down to us from the apostles. The Apostolic Canons
consist of a series of eighty-five rules, of which the
first fifty are held to be the most important. These
rules contain a tolerably complete directory for the
guidance of the clergy in their daily life and usual
round of duties. It is somewhat remarkable that the
life of the ordinary layman is for the most part left un-
noticed; four Canons only deal with the laity, the rest
of them speak of the clerical life and that alone. The
authority of these Canons varies in the Eastern and in
the Western Church. The Eastern Church, following
the guidance of John of Damascus, has received as
authoritative the whole eighty-five, and makes them of
equal authority with the Epistles of St. Paul, i.e.,
acknowledges that they possess plenary authority. The
Western Church has always hesitated to receive more
than the first fifty, and has received them more on the
recommendations of such distinguished popes as John
II., Stephen III., and Urban II., than because of their
own intrinsic value; and it was only when they were
incorporated in the decretals that they obtained a real
authority.
APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTIONS are a collection
of eight books of directions and prescriptions on eccle-
siastical and theological matters, for which apostolic
origin and authority have frequently been claimed. It
is probable that the first six books form the earliest
part of the whole, and it is certain that they were known
and quoted as a separate treatise; the seventh book
was also separately known, and in many parts bears a
curious resemblance to the Epistle of St. Barnabas; the
eighth is also an independent work, and is more legisla-
tive than the others.
APOSTOLIC FATHERS. The apostolic fathers
is a name given to certain writers in the earliest period
of Christianity, who were believed to have been the
disciples of the apostles, and to have had intercourse
with them. Those generally included under the title
are Clemens Romanus, Ignatius, Polycarp, Barnabas,
and Hermas. Sometimes the name is extended to
Papias of Hierapolis and the writer of the Epistle to
Diognetus. A critical examination of the writings
attributed to these men, and a critical sifting of the
traditions which we have in relation to their history,
bring out the circumstance that the name is unsuitable.
Clemens Romanus, Barnabas, and Hermas were sup-
posed to be persons mentioned in the New Testament;
but criticism proves conclusively that this is a mistake
in regard to Barnabas and Hermas, and possibly also
in regard to Clemens. Polycarp, in all probability,
and according to the best testimony, had Intercourse
with apostles, but it was in his early youth; and his
Letter belongs to a period considerably later than that
of the apostles. The Epistles of Ignatius, as well as
the personal history of that martyr, are involved in
great obscurity, and critics differ widely in regard to
both. At the same time, the writings assigned by
most critics to these men with some degree of certainty
belong to a very early age of Christianity. They are
among the earliest utterances of the Christian faith
which have come down to us. All of them are of the
nature of occasional productions, with perhaps the
exception of the Pastor of Hermas. All of them breathe
a spirit of deep piety. There is no attempt to formulate
the truths of Christianity. There are very few refer-
ences to the books of the New Testament, and very few
quotations from them. All of them are written in
Greek.
Clemens Romanus.- According to the statement of
Irenaeus, Clemens was the third bishop of the Roman
Church; this seems to have been the tradition among
the Greek writers. Very late fictions represented him
as a martyr. Eusebius gives as the date of his episco-
pate from 93 to IOI A. D. The only writing which can
in any satisfactory manner be ascribed to Clemens
Romanus is an epistle from the Roman Church to the
Corinthian. Quarrels had arisen in the Corinthian
Church, most probably in the reign of Domitian, as to
some of the office-bearers of the church. And the
Roman Church sent a letter to the Corinthian Church
urging it to pursue a peaceful course, to shun envy and
jealousy, and to do all things in order. The writing
of this letter is ascribed to Clemens by Dionysius,
bishop of the Corinthian Church, in a letter to Soter,
bishop of the Roman Church (166–174 A.D.), and all
subsequent testimony is in favor of this authorship.
The letter was found at the end of the Codex Alexan-
drinus. Its position there is in harmony with the cir-
cumstances noted by several of the ancients, that it
was read in the churches on the Sunday. Clemens
Alexandrinus also frequently quotes it as the work of
the “Apostle Clemens,” and the mode of quotation is
such as to lead one to believe that he regarded it as
Scripture, though some have maintained that he did
not regard it as canonical. The genuineness of the
epistle has been generally acknowledged. There is
strong external testimony for it, and the internal evi-
dence is at least not against it.
Ignatius.-The information we get in regard to
Ignatius up till the time of Eusebius is exceedingly
scanty. He is mentioned in the epistle of Polycarp.
The birthday of the martyr (i.e., the day of his martyr-
dom) was celebrated in the church of Antioch.
Speeches were delivered in his praise. Wonderful sto-
ries were told of him. He was one of the children
whom Christ took up in his arms and blessed. He
introduced antiphonal chants into the service of the
church, because he had seen a vision of angels praising
God in antiphonal hymns. The details of his martyr-
dom are given in a document devoted to the purpose.
Of this document there are eight forms; but one is
generally believed to be better than the rest. This one
states that Trajan, in the ninth year of his reign, was
in Antioch, that Ignatius was brought before him, and
that the emperor condemned the bishop to be sent to
Rome, and to be exposed to the wild beasts.
Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna. The principal part
of the information we have in regard to him is derived
from Irenaeus, and may be accepted with confidence.
Irenaeus knew Polycarp personally, and remembered
how Polycarp “related his intercoverse with John and
the rest who had seen the Lord.” The apostles ap-
378
A PO
Fº Polycarp a bishop of the church in Smyrna, and
e remained there a long time teaching the truth. In
the time of Anicetus, Polycarp came to Rome, and
showed a strong spirit of love and charity, which was
fully reciprocated by the Roman bishop. They dif-
fered in regard to the celebration of the day of pass-
over, but their differences did not interfere with their
love for each other. A special document describes the
martyrdom of Polycarp. There are good reasons for
doubting the minute accuracy of this work, but the
main circumstances have the appearance of being true.
A persecution had arisen in Smyrna against the Chris-
tians, and naturally a demand was made for Polycarp,
the chief of the Christians. At first he fled, but finding
that this was of no use, he allowed himself to be ap-
prehended and brought back. He was led before the
proconsul, and urged to swear by Caesar and revile
Christ. “Eighty and six years,” said Polycarp, “have
I served Him, and He has done me no ill, and how can
I blaspheme my King who has saved me?” The mul-
titude wished the Asiarch to expose the bishop to the
lions, but the Asiarch refused, as the time for lions was
over. So the people gathered wood and lighted a fire.
And Polycarp was placed in the fire, and ultimately
also stabbed. The date of his martyrdom has been
matter of keen discussion. Eusebius fixed it at 166 A.D.
Aarnabas.- There has come down to us a work
called the Æpistle of Barnabas. This work is unani-
mously ascribed to Barnabas, the companion of St. Paul,
by early Christian writers. Clemens Alexandrinus
quotes the letter seven times, and speaks of it as the
work of the apostle Barnabas. Origen, Eusebius, and
Jerome mention it. The internal evidence is conclusive
against its genuineness.
Aermas.- The Pastor Hermas is one of the most
interesting , books of Christian antiquity. The name
Hermas occurs several times in the work, and it was
therefore natural for the ancients to suppose that this was
the name of the author. The book at a very early pe.
riod became widely known in the East, and was regårded
as inspired. The work is fictitious in form, and there
is no good reason for supposing that he has introduced
any real characters into it. There is no clear indica-
tion of a date; but various circumstances lead to the
inference that it was written towards the end of the
reign of Hadrian, or the beginning of the reign of Anto-
minus Plus. Internal evidence points strongly to Italy
as the place in which it was written. It was very pop-
ular with the ancient church, and deservedly so. It
presents Christian truth in an attractive manner. . Its
tone is high and noble, and it breathes the spirit of the
gospel of love.
A POSTOLICI, or APOSTOLIC BRETHREN, a name
assumed by three different sects, which professed a close
adherence to the doctrines and practice of the apostles.
The earliest, known also as the Apotactici, were a
branch of the Encratites, and came into existence in the
3d century. According to Epiphanius, their principles
were communistic. The second sect of the name was
formed in the district surrounding Cologne about the
middle of the 12th century. Its members were zealous
reformers, rejecting the authority of the Pope and the
rites and ceremonies of the church. It is not certain
that they absolutely rejected marriage, though they pre-
ferred celibacy. Founding on the authority of St. Paul,
the celibates took spiritual sisters, with whom they
lived in concubinage. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote
against the sect, and some of its most prominent mem-
bers being brought before the archbishop of Cologne
were condemned to the flames. The third sect of Apos-
tolici in chronological order was founded by Gerhard
Segarelli, a mechanic of Parma, towards the close of the
13th century. Segarelli, who had sought admission
unsuccessfully to the Franciscan order, was much im-
pressed, it is said, by a picture of the apostles which
hung in the Franciscan chapel at Parma. Becoming
convinced that the much-needed reform of the church
could only be effected by a return to the apostolic prac-
tice, he sought to establish a community in which the
life of the apostles should be imitated as closely as
possible. By slow degrees he gathered a considerable
number of followers, chiefly from the lower orders, who
went about from place to place clad in white robes, with
long beards, dishevelled hair, and bare heads, accom-
panied by women whom they called their spiritual
sisters. Like the other two sects of the same name,
they established a community of goods. Though their
practice was thus peculiar, their doctrinal teaching did
not for a considerable period seriously diverge from the
orthodox standard. The arrest of their leader by the
bishop of Parma (1280), and condemnatory decrees issued
by Honorius IV. (1286) and Nicolas IV. (1290), changed
their position into one of open hostility to the Church of
Rome. Accepting the predictions of the Abbot Joa-
chim of Flora, they looked for the downfall of the
papacy, which they described as the Babylon of Script-
ure, and the establishment of a new and purer church
upon its ruins. Segarelli was accused of heresy in 1294,
but escaped for the time by recantation. In 1300,
however, he was condemned as a relapsed heretic to the
flames. His place was immediately taken by Dolcino
of Novara, the natural son of a priest, under whom the
sect became still larger and more formidable. He
seems to have been a man of Superior power to Sega-
relli in all respects, and especially to have had consid-
erable talent as a military leader, having succeeded in
carrying on a war for two years against Raynerius,
bishop of Vercelli. In 1307 he was defeated, taken
prisoner, and put to a cruel death at Vercelli. The
name of “Dolcinists,” frequently applied to the sect,
marks the extent of Dolcino’s influence, as does also an
allusion to him in Dante's Inferno. The sect of the
Apostolici maintained its existence in spite of continual
persecution until the beginning of the 15th century,
when it became extinct or was merged into other sects.
(See Muratori’s “Historia Dulcini,” in his Rerum. /tall-
carum Scriptores, ix. § 425, Mosheim’s Geschichte des
Apostelordens, 1748; Neander's Church. History, vol.
viii.; Mariotti's Fra Dolcino and his 7 imes, 1853; Mil-
man’s Latin Christianity, vol. vii.)
A POSTOLIUS, MICHAEL, a Greek theologian and
rhetorician of the 15th century.
APOTHECARY. This name is derived from a
Greek word used by Galen tos denote the repository
where his medicines were kept. In Scotland the term
is often applied to one who compounds and sells drugs,
but this class is now defined in the language of some
recent Act of Parliament as pharmaceutical chemists,
and chemists and druggists, both in England and Scot-
land. In England the name indicates a general practi-
tioner in medicine who supplies drugs to his patients.
The Apothecaries' Society of London is one of the
corporations of that city, and both by Royal Charters
and Acts of Parliament exercises the power of granting
licences to practice medicine. The members of this
society do not possess and never have possessed any ex-
clusive power to deal in or sell drugs; and until very
lately (1868) any person whatever might open what is
called a chemist’s shop, and deal in drugs and poisons.
In that year, however, the Pharmacy Act was passed,
which prohibits any person from engaging in this busi-
ness without being registered.
A POTHEOSIS, deification, the enrolment of a
mortal among the gods. In its most rudimentary form,
A P P
379
this practice may be regarded as an offshoot of the uni-
versal belief of primitive mankind in the existence of
disembodied spirits, and their continued agency in
human affairs. An invisible being thus invested with
beneficent or malefic attributes, and capable of being
offended' or propitiated, virtually becomes a local or
tutelary divinity. The cultus of such genii constitutes
a large part of the religion of most negro nations. In
China it takes the shape of a respectful veneration of
ancestors, accompanied by a species of liturgical service.
In India it is apparently excluded by the tenet of incar-
nation, according to which the individual either resumes
a rank previously held by him, or enters upon a cycle of
transmigrations admitting of no fixity of condition and,
consequently, of no absolute deification. The Egyptian,
Persian and Phoenician theologies seem to offer no trace
of the idea; but there is reason to expect that it will be
shown to have been a leading feature of the religions of
Assyria and Babylon. For perfectly unequivocal exam-
ples of its prevalence among a highly cultivated people,
we must resort to Greece and Rome. In Greece the
worship of deified heroes was universal. A distinction,
however, must be observed between the imaginary patri-
archs of the golden age, who, after their decease, accord-
ing to Hesiod, became by the counsel of Zeus beneficent
daemons, guardians of mortal men, but who seem to
have enjoyed only a vague and general veneration, and
the mythical heroes, definite objects of worship, who
may have been equally apocryphal, but whose legends
were none the less regarded as authentic history. The
reputed founders of cities were especially honored
with sacrifices by their descendants, and the practice ex-
tended to such indubitably historical personages as
Lycurgus, Brasidas, Harmodius, Aristogiton, and
Ptolemy Lagus. Instances of the origination of such
worship in the historical period are nevertheless rare,
and the veneration paid to the hero was in all cases
merely local. The religious honors subsequently
bestowed in their lifetime on Lysander, Alexander the
Great, and other illustrious persons, were merely the
extravagance of flattery, devoid of any influence on the
national theology. The same cannot be said of the
apotheosis of the Caesars, the germ of which already
existed in the veneration paid to the state, long the
object of his reverence. The people, says Suetonius,
fully believed in the divinity of Julius Caesar, hinting at
the same time that this was by no means the case with
the majority of the apotheoses subsequently decreed by
the senate. (jºul. Caºs. c. 88.) The honor was indeed
not only conferred upon almost every emperor who
transmitted the sceptre to his descendants, but frequently
upon deceased members of his family, or even his per-
sonal favorites, as in the case of Antinous. Sixty
persons altogether are recorded as having been thus
raised to divine honors from the time of Caesar to that
of Constantine.
APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS, the general name
given to a vast system of elevations in North America,
partly in Canada, but mostly in the United States, ex-
tending for 1,300 miles, from Cape Gaspé, on the Gulf
of St. Lawrence, south-west to Alabama. The whole
system may be conveniently divided into three great sec-
tions: the Northern, from Cape Gaspé to New York;
the Centra/, from New York to the valley of the New
River; and the Southern, from the New River onwards.
The first of these includes the Adirondacks, the Green
Mountains, and the White Mountains, and the irregu-
lar elevations towards the north; the central contains a
large portion of the Blue Ridge, the Alleghanies proper,
and a great number of lesser ranges; and the Southern
consists of the prolongation of the Blue Ridge, the Black
Mountains, the Smoky Mountains, and the Unaka
Mountains. The whole range, and especially the cen-
tral portion, is remarkable for the parallelism of the
various ridges, the uniform height of the summits in the
same part of the chain, the absence of a central axis of
elevation, and the presence, instead, of a central valley
or axis of depression. The typical arrangement of the
system—most distinctly visible in the central division—
might be represented in diagram thus: first, a stretch of
country, gradually sloping, with slight undulations and
irregularities, upwards from the Atlantic, and attaining
a height of 300, 500, or 1,000 feet; then, a lofty ridge
rising like a rampart, and succeeded by other ridges sep-
arated from each other by longitudinal valleys; next, the
great central valley or axis of depression; and lastly, a
new succession of ridges breaking off into table-land,
with transverse valleys and a gradual decrease of eleva-
vation. The Atlantic slope varies in breadth from 50
miles, as in New England, to 200 miles in the south, and
in the neighborhood of New York has almost altogether
subsided. The central valley may be traced from Lake
Champlaim in the north, along the course of the Hud-
son, down through the Cumberland Valley in Pennsyl-
vania, and the Great Valley of Virginia and Tennessee; it
varies in breadth from 15 miles in the north to 50 or 60
miles in the south. The elevation of the valley rises to-
wards the south in keeping with the elevation of the neigh
boring ranges. None of the summits of the system reach
the region of perpetual snow, but a large number of them
attain a considerable altitude. In the Adirondacks the
highest point, Mt. Tahawus or Mt. Marcy, reaches 5379
feet. In the White Mountains, Mt. Washington, in the
main chain, has a height of 6288 feet; Mt. Adams, 5794;
Mt. Madison, 5365; Mt. Jefferson, 57.14; Mt. Clay,
5553; Mt. Monroe, 5384; Lafayette, 5290; and a great
number of summits attain a height of more than 4ooo
feet. In the Green Mountains the highest point, Mt.
Mansfield, is 4430 feet; Lincoln Mount, 4078; Killing;
ton Peak, 4221; Camel Hump, 4088; and a number o
other heights upwards of 3000 feet. In the central di-
vision the hypsometric surveys are imperfect; but the
general elevation of the higher chains is from Iooo to
2500 feet. As we approach the south, the complexity
of the system and the altitude of the individual mount-
ains increase together, and the chains which have run
parallel and distinct begin, as it were, to gather and fold
themselves into an irregular coil. The peaks of Otter
in Virginia are about 4000 feet high; and in the Black
Mountains, the Black Dome (Clingmann), which is the
culminating point of the whole system, attains the
height of 6707 feet; Balsam Cone (also known as
Guyot, from the hypsometrical explorer of the region)
has 6671 ; Black Brother, 6619; and Mt. Hallback
(sugarloaf), 6403; besides a large number of summits
varying from 3000 up to 6000 feet. In the Smoky
Mountains we have Clingmann's Dome, 6660 feet high;
Guyot (in Tennessee), 6636; Mt. Alexander, 6447; Mt.
Leconte, 6612; Mt. Curtis, 6568; several others up-
wards of 6000, and a great many of more than 5000.
In the whole Appalachian system, Lake Champlain is
almost the only lake of any importance; but a multi-
tude of rivers, and some of them of considerable size,
find their sources in its recesses. The watershed does
not lie along any one continuous axis, but shifts its posi-
tion several times along the line. In the north it is
found in a stretch of country, called the Height of
Land, that lies between the White and the Green Moun-
tains, and gives birth to the Connetticut and a number
of smaller streams; next, it is formed by the Adirondack
Mountains, which supply the sources of the Hudson
River; and, further south, by the high plateaus of Penn-
Sylvania and New York, which give origin to the Dela-
ware and the Susquehanna, with their numerºus tribu-
38C
A PP
taries. These rivers, rowing south and east, have thus
to cut their way through the successive ridges of the
whole Appalachian range. The watershed is next
situated in the Alleghanies proper, which send a number
of affluents to the Ohio on the west, and give rise to the
James River on the east; and lastly, it runs along the
terminal cluster or coil composed of the Black, the
Smoky, and the Unaka Mountains. Here a tributary
of the Ohio, called the Red River, a number of the
affluents of the Tennessee, and various less important
streams, have their sources. The Appalachian Mount-
ains are a vast storehouse of mineral wealth. Mag-
netite, hematite, limonite, and other iron ores, are
found in great abundance. The first is best exhibited
in what is frequently called the Champlain Iron District,
where it is now largely manufactured; and it also attains
remarkable development in various parts of New York
and New Jersey. The extensive deposits of this ore in
Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, have hitherto
been turned to comparatively little account. It is fre-
quently contaminated by phosphate of lime, sulphur, and
titanium. Red hematite is found in New York, Penn-
Sylvania, Tennessee, and Georgia, and is usually known
as Clinton ore, from a place of that name in Madison
County, New York, while in Tennessee it is called Dye-
stone ore. It is of great commercial importance, though,
on account of the amount of phosphorus which it con-
tains, it is worthless for the manufacture of steel. Lim-
onite, or brown hematite, which, from its fusible char-
acter, is usually worked along with the more crystalline
ores, occurs in a series of beds all along the flanks of
the Appalachians, from Maine in the north to Georgia
in the South. The earthy carbonate of iron— “clay
ironstone ore,” “shell ore,” “kidney ore,”—is found in
most parts of the system in connection with the Carbon-
iferous strata, and has been very largely manufactured.
In the northern district alone—that is, in the eastern
part of New York, in New Jersey, and Eastern Penn-
Sylvania—the number of furnaces is about 200, and the
gross production of iron 900,000 tons per annum, or
one-third of the entire production of the United States.
This abundance of ore would have been almost useless
had it not been for the equally abundant supplies of
fuel; and the coal measures are among the most exten-
sive in the world, the bituminous coal alone covering an
area of 56,000 square miles, without counting the un-
rivalled beds of anthracite in Pennsylvania and New
York, which cover an area of between 400 and 500
miles. While the supply of gold, silver, copper, and
lead is of comparatively no importance, marble, lime-
stone, fire-clay, gypsum, and salt are extremely abundant.
Many of the ranges are richly covered with forest, and
yield large quantities of valuable timber, consisting chiefly
of sugar maple, white birch, beech, and ash, in the
north, and oak, cherry-tree, white poplar, white and
yellow pine, towards the south. The dark foliage of
the pines, balsam-firs, hemlock-trees, and cedars, gives
color and name to many of the districts. Rhododen-
drons, kalmias, azaleas, and other flowering shrubs,
often grow in almost impenetrable thickets; and in some
parts the botanist is at once delighted and bewildered by
the profusion and variety of the smaller plants. Bears,
“panthers,” wild cats, and wolves haunt the forests in
large numbers.
APPARITIONS, in the ordinary acceptation of the
word, can scarcely be better defined than in the terms
used by Defoe: “They are the invisible inhabitants of
the unknown world, affecting human shapes or other
shapes, and showing themselves visibly to us.” . In this
definition no account is taken of “spectral illusions,
involuntarily generated, by means of which figures or
forms, not present to the actual sense, are nevertheless
*
depicted with a vividness and intensity sufficient to
create a temporary belief of their reality.” Theories
of apparitions generally deal with these hallucinations,
and no doubt they are the foundation of many of the
stories of superstition, but they scarcely suffice to
account for the universality of the belief in the possible
appearance of disembodied spirits. These figures, kind
or threatening, are probably the first objects that meet
the vision of primitive men, when they begin to reflect
on the unseen powers around them, and “to explore
these coasts which our geographers cannot describe.”
Ghosts are almost the first guess of the savage, almost
the last infirmity of the civilised imagination; on these
forms, shadowy and unsubstantial, as they are, solid
superstructures of ritual and morality have been based,
and apparitions, with the consequences of the belief in
them, have a literature and a history of their own.
In the first place, the belief has had an immense effect
On the religious and moral development of our race.
Though it is as yet impossible to i. to its first ele-
ments the confused mass of fear and custom which makes
up the faith of Savages, there can be little doubt that
their religion, with the later and refined heathenism of
Greece and Rome, sprang in part from the propitiation
of the spirits of ancestors. Again, it would no longer
be true to Say, as Scott did forty years ago, that “the
increasing civilisation of all well-constituted countries
had blotted out the belief in apparitions.” The vision-
aries who found their religion on a pretended intercourse
with the dead, and who consider the highest function of
their clergy to be “the serving of tables” — tables that
rap and move — may be counted in America by millions.
Many causes have combined to bring about this return
to what a short time ago seemed a forlorn superstition.
First, there was that reaction against the somewhat
commonplace scepticism of the last century which took
in literature the form of Romanticism and of the Gothic
revival, and brought back in a poetical shape the fairies
and spectres of mediaeval fancy. Again, the lofty mo-
rality and pure life of Swedenborg (1688–1771) won a
hearing for his extraordinary visions, and minds influ-
enced by him were ready to welcome further additions to
the marvellous. . He declared that “the spirit of man is
a form; ” and added that it had been “given to him to
converse with almost all the dead whom he had known
in the life of the body.” Last of all came what is called
spiritualism, inspired by an impatient revolt against the
supposed tendencies and conclusions of modern science.
Inquirers who live in constant fear that science is trying
to demonstrate the truth of materialism, and to rob
them of their dearest hope, that of a future life in the
Society of their departed friends, turn eagerly to what
they think ocular evidence of another existence. There
is scarcely any literature, not even the records of trials
for witchcraft, that is more sad and ludicrous than the
accounts of “spiritual séances,” with the persistence of
the bereaved in seeking a sign. The attempt of the
Alexandrian Platonists to substitute the visions of trances
for the conclusions of intellect has been called the despair
of reason; and modern spiritualism, when it is not a
drawing-room amusement, is too often a moment in the
despair of faith.
It would be rash to say, with Mr. Herbert Spencer,
that the propitiation of the spirits of ancestors is the
first germ of all religion, and it would be premature to
deny that there may be races which have no conception
of the existence of the spirit after death. But it is safe
to assert that there are very few savage peoples who do
not believe that their dead ancestors appear to them in
dreams, and in what they think the clearer vision of
trances, and who do not prove their belief by sacrifice
of food, by prayers for help, by hymns, and by offerings
A PP
38 I
made to show love or deprecate anger. The wide-
spread graves of extinct races, with the weapons and
vessels buried along with the dead, demonstrate that
these nameless and vanished hordes also held that the
life of the dead persists, with its old needs and desires.
The literature of cultivated peoples shows clearly that
the Greeks and Romans held the same opinion, and
practised no very different rites.
Taking it for proved that the credence in the appari-
tions and the power of the dead is a fact as good as
universal in the beginning of thought, we must ask,
How was the notion arrived at P Discarding for the
moment the possibility that it was founded on actual
apparitions, we observe several causes which might,
indeed which must, have given rise to it. . The savage,
like the child, is full of questionings, and his reasonings,
are, so to say, perfectly rational. His hypotheses
colligate and explain the facts, as far as he knows them.
One of the earliest mysteries to him is the mystery of
death — how is he to explain the sudden and eternal
stillness of the warriors slain in battle P Now the
Savage philosopher knows of another state, namely;
sleep, in which he seems as quiet as the dead, but is
really active in dreams. He has then two selves 2
“When I sleep,” then the savage may conclude, “one
of my selves leaves the other to rest, and goes about its
business. And in death, also, one self flies away, but
it will not return—it is homeless, hungry, wandering.
Above all, its a very strange thing, and, as strange, to
be feared.” A priori reasoning goes as far as this, and
then confirmatory facts support the hypothesis. In
dreams he meets the dead warrior, and some of his
friends have the same experience. And there is one of
the tribe, the diviner or shaman, whose opinion they
revere in these matters. He is thus described by a Zulu
convert —“When he is awake he sees things which he
would not see if he were not in a trance.” He knows
how to produce trances by fasting, by inhaling the
Smoke of herbs, and by the use of strange oils. He
sees, things before they happen, and tells how, when
awake, he beheld the slain warrior, and promised to
appease his hunger with sacrifice of cattle. There can
Scarcely be any other conclusion from these facts, as far
as they are known to the savage, except that the dead
yet live, and appear to the living, and keep their old
passions and their old wants.
Now this belief in apparitions, thus stated, is capable
of much development. The favorite ancestral spirit of
the strongest tribe will tend to absorb the lion’s share
of Sacrifice and hymns, and to become such a hero as
Theseus was to the Athenians. Many other influences
produce a still higher religion, a circle of Olympian
gods, a philosophical and intellectual monotheism. The
family of the seer will perhaps become a sacred caste,
like the Eumolpidae at Athens. An early civilisation is
formed, with its philosophers, holding in secret a mono-
thesim of their own, with its city population pleased by
stately temples and hieratic splendors, but we must re-
member that all this time the pagani, the rural people
of the hills and the coast, come very little under the in-
fluence of philosophy or ritual. They still retain the
old dread of the ghosts of the departed, and still people
the woods and wells with wandering spirits. As slaves
and nurses they enter the cultivated families, their old
wives' fables impress the awakening imagination of
childhood, and the earliest of all forms of belief in the
supernatural finds its way back into the circle of culture.
At last there comes a time of decadence, when the ab-
stract notion of Deity seems too vague and distant,
when the Olympian gods are no longer credible, and
philosophy falls back in despair on the traditional ghosts
of the nursery and of the Oriental slaves. Thus Neo-
Platonism reinstated apparitions as demons, angels,
powers; and thus Henry More and Joseph Glanvil com-
bated the scepticism of the seventeenth century with
stories of haunted houses, and of the mysterious drum-
mer of Tedworth.
If this theory of the origin of the belief in appari-
tions be correct, it tends to explain what certainly is a
difficulty—the identity of ghost stories in all lands and
times, the conservatism of that great majority, the
dead. For the further we go back in the history of
civilization, as in the works of nature, the simpler, the
more identical, the more widely diffused are all its pro-
ductions. The earliest implements for lighting fires,
the earliest weapons, are not more alike than the earliest
guesses of speculation and the earliest efforts of fancy.
These oldest fancies dream of apparitions of the dead,
and are preserved below the level of advancing culture,
and insinuated into the ideas of the cultivated classes by
the classes which are unprogressive, unaffected on the
whole by religious or social changes. It is for this
reason that magical rites are everywhere the same, as
M. Maury has observed—that the Scotch witch had the
same spells as the Kaffir witch, that Balzac's descrip-
tion of a Parisian sorceress in Ze Cozaszze Pons might
Serve as an account of a Finnish wise woman. It is
not strange that superstition and ignorance should al-
ways tell the same baseless tale if they have always
treasured and still repeat the earliest and crudest fancies
of the race. Nothing shows more clearly the purity of
ancient culture than the absence of superstition in the
Greek as compared with our Teutonic classics.
Supposing the origin of the belief in apparitions, and
its identity in different peoples, to be thus accounted for,
it remains to ask if the surviving forms of the creed can
be traced back to a primitive source. In entering the
cloudland of folk-lore it is impossible to advance too
cautiously. This is a realm where nothing is fixed and
definite; where all is vague, floating, confused. He
who would call up and try the spirits here must not
place himself within too narrow a magic circle, but ex-
tend his view as far as possible to the beliefs of the most
alien and distant races. The apparitions of popular
superstition fall into classes which always tend to be
merged in each other, but which are not so indistinct
that they cannot be considered apart. No form is better
known than the belief in faries. All over Europe fire
side tradition tells of women who haunt lonely places,
where they are seen to dance, to spin, to comb their long
hair. The forests sheltered them when the fane of
Jupiter fell, and the house of Theseus became the church
of St. George.
It would be easy to trace the belief in brownies (lub-
ber spirits, who tend the house) to the lar, or hearth
spirit of the ancients. The domovoy, or Russian
brownie, “lives behind the stove; but he, or the spirits
of the dead ancestors whom he represents, were held to
be in even more direct relations with the fire on the
hearth.” *
We now come to almost the most universally credited
class of apparitions — namely, the subjective visions,
coinciding with real facts and events occurring at a dis-
tance, beheld by persons possessing the gift of second-
sight. The second-sight is described by a believer as
“a singular faculty of seeing an otherwise invisible
object without any previous means used by the person
that beholds it for that end.” The name of second-
sight is the Scotch one under which the reputed phe-
nomena excited the curiosity of Dr. Johnson, and “made
him wish to have some instances of that faculty well
authenticated.” In Scott's opinion, “if force of evi-
dence could authorise us to believe facts inconsistent
with the general laws of nature, enough might be pro-
382
A PP
duced in favor of the existence of the second-sight.”
All history, all tradition, abounds in instances. A well-
known anecdote tells how St. Ambrose fell into a
comatose state while celebrating the mass at Milan, and
on his recovery declared that he had been present at St.
Martin's funeral at Tours, where, indeed, reports from
Tours afterwards declared that he had been seen.
The apparitions which play a part in all the records of
trials for witchcraft admit of some explanation, though
scarcely an adequate one, in known laws of human
nature. It is easy enough to understand how in primi-
tive times the divinet who beheld spirits was also
believed to be able to command them to do his bidding
and to injure his enemies. The belief persisted under
the civilization of ancient Rome, and Apuleius tells avery
impressive story of how the apparition of “a woman of
hideous aspect, marked by guilt and extreme sorrow,
whose haggard face was sallow as boxwood,” was
evoked by a witch to slay her foe. No instance of the
survival of Savage superstitions is stranger than the fact
that men like Henry More and Glanvil, Bodin, the
great French publicist, Sir Thomas Brown, and Wesley,
could still maintain that disease and death might be
caused by such malevolent apparitions. We can only
say in their defence that the amount of concurrent evi-
dence and confession, corresponding as it did with the
prohibition of witchcraft in the Bible, constrained them
to share the cruel superstition of their age.
The species of apparitions we have discussed may all
be traced to the traditions of the non-progressive classes,
and connected with the earliest ideas about the super-
natural. But the spirits which are most familiar to us,
the spectres of ghost stories and fireside tales, rest their
claims to existence on the evidence of the eyes and ears
of people we meet every day. True, the evidence is of
the hearsay class; it is almost as rare to find a witness
who has seen a ghost as to encounter a person who does
not know some one who has had this experience. As a
rule, the deceased friend is said to have appeared at the
moment or about the time of his death to an acquaint-
ance at a distance. The belief is now more widely
spread and more firmly held among the educated classes
than it has been for centuries, and the arguments on
both sides are worth consideration. The sceptics do
not deny that people have been subjectively affected in
the same way as they would have been if a dead friend
had been objectively present. But they bring forward
several well-authenticated instances to prove that some
people have been subject to illusory appearances, of
which they could only test the reality by the attempt to
handle them. Perhaps the best known case is that of
Nicolai, a Berlin bookseller (1790), who repeated his
own hallucinations to the academy of Berlin.
A further explanation is given by Sir David Brewster,
who has remarked as a physical fact that, “when the
eye is not exposed to the impressions of external objects,
or when it is insensible to these objects in consequence
of being engrossed with its own operations, any object
of mental contemplation, which has either been called
up by the memory or created by the imagination, will
be seen as distinctly as if it had been formed from the
zision of a real object. In examining these mental im-
pressions,” he adds, “I have found that they follow the
motions of the eye-ball exactly like the spectral impres-
sions of luminous objects, and that they resemble them
also in their apparent immobility when the eye-ball is
displaced by an external force. If this result shall be
found generally true by others, it will follow that the
objects of mental contemplation may be seen as dis-
tinctly as external objects, and will occupy the same
Zocal position in the axis of z/ision as if they had been
formed by the agency of light.” This goes to the very
root of the theory of apparitions, all the phenomena of
which seem to depend upon the relative intensities of
the two classes of impressions, and upon the manner of
their accidental combination. In perfect health the
mind not only possesses a control over its powers, but the
impressions of external objects alone occupy its attention,
and the play of imagination is consequently checked,
except in sleep, when its operations are relatively more
feeble and faint. But. in the unhealthy state of the
mind, when its attention is partly withdrawn from the
contemplation of external objects, the impressions of its
own creation, or rather reproduction, will either over-
power external objects, or combine themselves with the
impressions of them, and thus generate illusions which
in the one case appear alone, while in the other they
are seen projected among those external objects to
which the eye-ball is directed, in the manner explained
by Dr. Brewster. To these physical causes of subjective
apparitions, the forces of the imagination, of long desire,
of strained attention, are supposed to contribute their
influence.
It may be added that hallucinations, or whatever we
are to call the impression of beholding objects of super-
natural horror, are not confined to the human race. A
remarkable example of superstitious horror shown by
a dog, at the moment of a supposed apparition to his
owner, is given in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgi-
cal journal, vol. lxiv., pp. 186–187. In the same way,
during the mysterious disturbances at the house of the
Wesleys, “the mastiff was more afraid than any of the
children.” Popular superstition has used this belief.
When the dogs howl in the Danish ballad, or in its Pro-
vençal counterpart, the cruel stepmother is afraid of the
apparition of the dead mother, and treats the children
kindly. In the same way, when Athene, in the Odyssey,
appears to Odysseus, Telemachus cannot see her, but the
dogs crouch and whine in fear. The case of Balaam’s
ass is sufficiently well known.
The latest and most important development of the
belief in apparitions is that known as spiritualism. The
believers in a religion based on pretended communications
from the dead are numbered in America by millions.
Their opponents say that their faith and practice help to
fill the lunatic asylums, to which they easily reply that
theirs is not the only creed that gives occasion to religious
madness. Men of sense and experience are numbered in
their ranks, and even in England it would be easy to
name persons of eminence in art and literature, and some
branches of science, who are puzzled by the phenomena
they suppose themselves to have witnessed.
Modern spiritualism arose from one of the commonest
superstitions in the world — the belief in haunted houses.
What the Germans call the Aoſtergeist (the noisy spirit
that raps and throws about furniture) is not peculiar to
any country. We find it in Japan (see Zales of Old
Japan), in Russia, in Egypt. Pliny tells of the haunted
house of Athenodorus, the philosopher, in Athens. In
Iceland the ghost of the dead thrall Glam raps on the
roofs in the Gretti's saga; and “the Dyaks, Singhalese,
and Siamese agree with the Esths as to such routing and
rapping being caused by spirits.” Such disturbances,
accompanied with apparitions, haunted the house inhab-
ited by Mrs. Ricketts, a sister of Earl St. Vincent. Scott
says in reference to this case that “no one has seen an
authentic account of the earl; ” but his sister’s report has
recently been published. Every one has heard of the
rappings in the house of the elder Wesley. Precisely
the same phenomena occurred in the house of a Mr. Fox,
in West New York, in 1847–48. It was discovered by
his daughter, Miss Kate Fox, a child of nine years old, that
the raps replied to hers. An alphabet was then brought,
the raps spelled out words by knocking when certain let-
A PP
383
ters were pointed to, and modern spiritualism was
born.
APPEAL, in its usual modern sense, is the act by
which a decision is brought for review from an inferior
to a Superior court. In Roman jurisprudence it was
used in this and other significations; it was sometimes
equivalent to prosecution, or the calling up of an ac-
cused person before a tribunal where the accuser ap-
pealed to the protection of the magistrate against injus-
tice or oppression. The derivation from the word
appello, naturally shows its earliest meaning to have
been an urgent outcry or prayer against injustice.
Hence it is inferred a superior power capable of pro-
tecting against petty tyranny. In its meaning of seek-
ing a higher tribunal for recourse against a lower, it
does not seem to have been a characteristic of the
Republic, where the magistrate was generally supreme
within his sphere, and those who felt themselves out-
raged by injustice threw themselves on popular protec-
tion by provocatio, instead of looking to redress from a
higher official authority. The Empire, however, intro-
duced grades of jurisdiction, and the ultimate remedy
was an appeal to the Emperor; thus Paul, when brought
before Festus, appealed unto Caesar. It must be un-
derstood that the appeal was actually dealt with by a
supreme judge representing the emperor, not by the
emperor in person.
When the progress of civilisation and the art of self.
government render judges no longer amenable to the
charge of tyranny or fraud, an appellate system changes
its character and objects. It in some measure certainly
tends to preserve that judicial integrity which renders it
unnecessary as the immediate refuge of the persecuted
suitor. But its ostensible object is the preservation of
uniformity in the law. The attainment of this object
renders it unfortunately necessary, in such a country as
ours, that no tribunal shall give, in the first instance, in
any important question, a decision which is not open to
appeal. The process has the double advantage, that it
has a tendency to bring every legal difficulty ultimately
to one tribunal, where a uniformity of principle may be
expected in the application of the law, and, at the same
time, stimulates the exertions of the subordinate judge,
who knowing that his proceedings will be revised, is
careful to bring them as close as he can to those uniform
principles of law, which he knows that the court of
appeal will apply. To accomplish this function of an
appellate system, it is right that the investigation of the
question at issue should have been exhausted in the infe-
rior court, and that the court of appeal should have noth-
ing before it which has not been there considered; for if
the inferior court decide on one representation of circum-
stances, and the court of appeal on another, the public
will lose the advantage of having the principle which
was applied in the inferior reversed or affirmed in the
superior tribunal.
The United States, in adopting the structure of the
English law, brought with it the practice of appeal and
writ of error, but the federal constitution and the
jealousy of central power have practically restricted the
operation of the system. By the constitution the Su-
preme Court of the United States is vested with
“appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with
such exceptions, and under such regulations, as Con-
gress should make.” It appears to have been held,
however, that this does not confer appellate jurisdiction,
but only authorises Congress to create it. In the words
of Mr. Kent, “If Congress had not provided any rule
to regulate the proceedings in appeal, the court could
not exercise an appellate jurisdiction: and, if a rule be
provided, the Court could not depart from it. In pur-
suance of this principle, the Court decided in Clarke v.
Bazadone, that a writ of error did not lie to that court
from a court of the United States territory northwest of
the Ohio, because the act had not authorised an appeal
or writ of error from such a court.”—(Commentaries,
i. 324.) It was urged that the constitution itself had
vested appellate jurisdiction in the Supreme Court, but
that Congress may introduce such exceptions as it thinks
proper. The action of Congress, it was said, is not
required to create the jurisdiction, but is sufficient at
any time to remove any part of it. The Court, how-
ever, has adhered to the view that its appellate jurisdic-
tion is limited by the judiciary statutes, which are to be
understood as making exceptions, and implying a nega-
tive on the exercise of such power in every case but
those in which it is affirmatively given.
APPENDINI, FRANCESCO MARIA, historian and
philologist, was born at Poirino, near Turin, on the 4th
Nov. 1768, and died in 1837. -
APPENZELL (for derivation see below), one of the
twenty-two cantons of the Swiss Confederation, is an
Alpine region, with an area of about 152 Square miles,
entirely surrounded by the canton of St. Gall. The
climate is cold and variable, but not unhealthy. Sub-
ject like the rest of Switzerland to the Franks in the
8th century, Appenzell gradually passed into the hands
of the abbots of St. Gall; in 1401 it rebelled against
what had become an ecclesiastical tyranny; and in 1513
it was admitted into the Swiss Confederation. The
violent struggles which followed the Reformation led to
its division, in 1597, into two parts—the Inner Rhodes,
in the south, being appropriated to the Roman Cath-
olics, and the Outer Rhodes, in the north, to the
Protestants. This distinction has continued to the
present day; the census of 1870 giving the number of
Protestants in the Catholic district as only 188, and of
the Catholics in the Protestant, 2358. Until 1848,
indeed, no Protestants, or even Catholic aliens, were
allowed to settle in Inner Rhodes. The chief town of
that division is Appenzell, and of the other, Trogen.
Each district has its own democratical constitution,
consisting of a General Assembly, where every freeman
above 18 years is bound to appear, and a Great Coun-
cil, chosen by the people, the members of which must
submit their acts to the general approval for their ratifi-
cation. Outer Rhodes sends two members to the
AVationalrath, or House of Representatives of the Con-
federation, and Inner Rhodes one, besides the two
members which the canton sends to the Standerath, or
Senate.
APPENZELL, the chief town of Inner Rhodes, in
the canton of Appenzell, derives its name (Abbatis
Cella Abtenzelle), like Bischofszell and St. Peterzell in
the same region, from its ancient ecclesiastical connec-
tion. It is situated in the beautiful valley of the Sitter,
and has a church with an old Gothic choir, two con-
vents, and a council-house. The Zandesgemeinde holds
its meetings in the open Square.
preserved a number of ancient banners, and among
them one captured from the Tyrolese, with the gro-
tesque inscription, Hundert Zausend Zeuſel. . The
inhabitants, who are almost entirely Roman Catholics,
are largely employed in the production of embroidery,
and number about 3700.
APPERLEY, CHARLES JAMES, a sportsman and
sporting writer, better known as “Nimrod,” the nom
de plume under which he publishes his works on the
chase and the turf, was born at Plasgronow, near
Wrexham, in Denbighshire, in 1777. About 1821 he
began to contribute to the Sporting Magazine, under
the pseudonym of “Nimrod,” a series of articles,
which from their racy character did the magazine
admirable service. Its circulation doubled within two
In the Archizy are .
*
384
A PP
#. and the º: Mr. Pittman, with great
iberality, kept for “Nimrod” a stud of hunters, and
defrayed all expenses of his tours, besides giving him
a handsome salary. The death of Mr. Pittman, how-
ever, led to a law-suit with the proprietors of the mag-
azine for money advanced to “Nimrod;” and the latter,
to avoid imprisonment, had to take up his residence
near Calais (1839), where he supported himself by his
writings. He died in London, 19th May 1843.
APPIA VIA, the most celebrated of the ancient
Roman roads, connecting the capital with Brundusium.
It was commenced by Appius Claudius Caecus (312 B.C.),
who carried it from the Porta Capena to Capua. Its
extension to Beneventum, and ultimately to Brundu-
sium, making its total length about 350 miles, was
completed before 30 B.C. The pavement, which rested
upon several prepared substrata, was formed by large
blocks of hard stone fitted to each other with great
exactness. Its breadth was from 14 to 18 feet, exclud-
ing the foot-paths. From a statement in Procopinus,
it appears that the road was in perfect repair in his
time (500–565).
APPIAN, an eminent writer of Roman history in
Greek under the reigns of Trajan and Adrian. He
was a native of Alexandria in Egypt, whence he went
to Rome, where he became a distinguished advocate,
and was chosen one of the procurators of the empire.
He did not treat of the history of the Roman empire
as a whole, but gave separate accounts of the various
provinces as they were attached to the empire. Of his
voluminous work there remains only what treats of the
Punic, Syrian, Mithridatic, and Spanish wars, with
those against Hannibal, the civil wars, and the wars in
Illyricum, and some fragments of the Celtic and Gallic
wars, –in all about one-half of the original twenty-two
books.
APPIANI, ANDREA, the best fresco painter of his
age, born in Milan in 1754, died in 1817. He was
made pensioned artist to the kingdom of Italy by
Napoleon; but having lost his allowance after the
events of 1814, he fell into poverty. He is also said
to have painted Napoleon and the chief personages of
his court. Among the most graceful of his oil paint-
ings are his “Venus and Love,” and “Orlando in the
garden of Armida.”
APPIUS CLAUDIUS. See CLAUDIUS.
APPLE. The apple is the fruit of Pyrus Malus,
belonging to the Sub-order Pomaceæ, of the Natural
Order Rosaceae. It is one of the most widely cultivated,
and best known and appreciated of fruits belong-
ing to temperate climates. In its wild state it is
known as the crab-apple, and is found generally-distrib-
uted throughout Europe and Western Asia, growing in
as high a latitude as Drontheim in Norway. The crabs
of Siberia belong to a different species, and are named
Pyrus baccata and P. prunifolia. The apple-tree as
cultivated is a moderate sized tree with spreading
branches, ovate, acutely serrated or crenated leaves, and
flowers in corymbs. The fruit is too well known to
need any description of its external characteristics. The
apple is successfully cultivated in higher latitudes than
any other fruit tree, growing up to 65° N., but notwith-
standing this, its blossoms are more susceptible of injury
from frost than the flowers of the peach or apricot. . It
comes into flower much later than these trees, and so
avoids the night frost which would be fatal to its fruit
bearing. The apples which are grown in northern
regions are, however, small, hard, and crabbed, the best
fruit being produced in hot summer climates, such as
Canada and the United States. Besides in Europe and
America, the fruit is now cultivated at the Cape of Good
Hope, in Northern India and China, and in Australia
and New Zealand.
The most esteemed of all apples is the American
Newtown Pippin, a globular, juicy, sweet, and highly
aromatic fruit; other American varieties of note are
Williams's Favorite, Astrakhan, and Gravenstein, and
for winter use the Baldwin, Spitzenberg, and Roxbury
Russet.
Many exotic fruits, having nothing in common with
the apple, are known by that name, e.g., the Balsam
apple, Momordica balsamina ; the Custard apple, Amozza
reticulata ; the Egg apple, Solanzem esculentzezn ; the
Rose apple, various species of Æugenia ; the Pine apple,
Azzamassa satiza, the Star apple, Chrysophyllum
Caimito ; and the apples of Sodom, Solazzum sodomeum.
APPLEBY, a market and borough town of England,
capital of Westmoreland, situated on the Eden, 13 miles
S.E. of Penrith. Population 1889, 2,575.
APPLETON, a thriving town of Outagamie county,
Wisconsin, is situated on the Fox river (which furnishes
an abundant and valuable water power); also crl the
Chicago and North-Western; Milwaukee, Lake Shore
and Western; and the Milwaukee and Northern rail-
ways, 119 miles from Milwaukee. The Fox river is
navigable for steamers. The manufactures are numer-
ous and important—boots and shoes, paper and pulp,
furniture, agricultural implements, machinery, hard-
ware novelties, lumber, woolens, crash, cordage, twine,
hubs, spokes, etc. The city contains two national banks,
one daily and four weekly papers, nine churches, graded
schools, Lawrence University (founded by the Methodists
in 1849), an opera house, several public halls, six hotels,
and many stores. The city and country tributary are
rapidly growing. Population (1890), II,825.
APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE, the county seat
of Appomattox County, Va., worthy of note as the scene
of the surrender of the confederate army, April 13, 1865.
APPRAISER, one who sets a value upon property,
real or personal.
APPRENTICE – APPRENTICESHIP. Appren-
ticeship (from apprendre, to learn) is a contract where-
by one person, called the master, binds himself to teach,
and another, called the apprentice, undertakes to learn
some trade or profession, and to serve his master for a
certain time. The contract is generally created by in:
denture, but any writing properly expressed and attested
will suffice.
So far as can be seen it arose in the Middle Ages, and
formed an integral part of the system of guilds and cor-
porations by which skilled laborers of all kinds sought
protection against the feudal lords, and the maintenance
of those exclusive privileges with which in the interests
of the public they were favored. In those times, it was
believed that the arts and sciences would not flourish
unless such only were allowed to practice, them as had
given proofs of reasonable proficiency and were formed
into bodies corporate, with certain powers of self-govern-
ment and the exclusive monopoly of their respective arts
within certain localities. -
It has sometimes been supposed that these mediaeval
corporations were confined to such occupations as are
now followed by artisans. This, however, is a mistake.
The word universitas is the correct Latin name for any
corporation whatsoever; and in mediaeval parlance it
was just as proper to speak of the university of smiths
or tailors, as of the university of Paris or Oxford.
Dr. Ádám Smith and most of his school strongly dis-
approved of apprenticeship, but only as it would seem
when applied to trade and manufactures. They urged
that the ‘institution interfered with the property which
every man has or ought to have in his own labor, and
interfered not only with the liberty of the workman,
A P R —
A PS 385
but with that of such as might choose to employ him,
and who were the best judges of his qualification. They
further argued, that such laws tended to restrain com-
petition to a much smaller number than would otherwise
enter a trade; that a long apprenticeship, or indeed any
at all, was unnecessary even for the micest mechanical
arts; that a few weeks or even days were sufficient to
enable a man to set to work in such trades as clock and
watch making; and that, if the workman was from the
outset paid the full price of his work, under deduction
of such materials as he might spoil from carelessness or
inexperience, he would learn his art more effectually,
and be more apt to acquire habits of attention and
industry, than by working under a master who had a
right to share in the produce of his labor. That there
is considerable truth in much of this reasoning is unde-
miable. . But taking all this in its worst view will hardly
justify the sweeping charges brought against the insti-
tution of apprenticeship. The abolition of the laws
which rendered apprenticeship compulsory has not, as
Dr. Smith and his followers thought, led to its disuse.
On the contrary, it or its equivalents have been volum-
tarily submitted to by such men as desired to exercise a
trade to profit; for the public were not long in discov-
ering that the regularly trained artisan was the only one
whose work could be relied on. It is also worthy of
notice that the rise of trades’ unions has been coincident
with the fall of the old trade corporations — thus indi-
cating that artisans feel the necessity for some more
powerful and orderly protection than the mere operation
of the blind principle of supply and demand. For these
and similar reasons, it is believed that few practical men
will in the present day deny the advantages of apprentice-
ship. No one would probably advocate the restoration
of the old guilds with their exclusive privileges; but
many would perhaps incline to advise the institution of
some order or degree by which, in certain trades, the
workman who has passed through a regular apprentice-
ship may be distinguished from the man who is not so
qualified.
APRICOT, the fruit of Przezus armeniaca (Linn.)
Armeniaca zizulgaris, according to others. Under the
one name it is a species of the genus to which the plums
belong, the other establishes it as a distinct genus of the
natural order Æosacea. The apricot is, like the plum, a
stone fruit, cultivated generally throughout temperate
regions, and used chiefly in the form of preserves and in
tarts. The French liqueur Eau de Woyaux is prepared
from bitter apricot kernels.
APRIES (A7tpims), the name by which Herodotus
and Diodorus designate Pharaoh-Hophra, the eighth
king of the twenty-sixth Egyptian dynasty.
APRIL was, in the old Roman reckoning, the second
month of the year, but is counted in the Julian calendar
as the fourth. In many countries of Europe, as Eng-
land, France, and Germany, the first of April has for
long been appropriated to a facetious custom, for which
no very satisfactory origin has been assigned. To send
an unsuspecting or ignorant person on some bootless
errand is the great endeavor of the day. In Scotland
the unfortunate subject of the trick is called a gowk —
which has now, though the words were probably at one
time different, the meaning both of “fool ’’ and
“cuckoo,” — and the mischievous errand-sending is
“hunting a gowk.” In France the dupe is called
poisson d'Azril, or April-fish. One remarkable theory
traces the custom to Noah, as sending out his dove on
such a quest; it is also referred either to the miracle
plays representing the sending of our Saviour from
Annas to Caiaphas and from Pilate to Herod, or to the
change, in France, in 1564, of New Year's day to the
first of January, which left the first of April destitute of
anything but a burlesque of its former festivities; and
more recently an identification has been attempted with
the Hindoo festival of Huli, which is celebrated in a
similar manner on the 31st of March.
A PRIORI and A POSTERIORI. The philo-
sophical distinction expressed by these terms is to be
explained by referring to the phraseology of Aristotle.
According to him there may be a double starting-point
in knowledge. When our individual progress in learn-
ing is chiefly considered, the things with which we are
first and best acquainted may be termed earlier and
Arior; whereas the truths of a more general, primary,
and fundamental character, to which we are subsequently
led, have a later and Zosterior position. But if we lose
sight of our personal interest in knowledge, then the
priority may i. more justly claimed by whatever is the
cause or principle from which something else springs.
In this sense the causal, original, and primary in the
objective world is by nature prior ; whilst the secondary
and derivative existence is posterior. Priority in the
first acceptation is only relative to us, and for general
purposes may be called accidental; in the second accept-
ation, the priority is absolute, and without qualifica-
tion. It is the second acceptation which Aristotle laid
down as the properly philosophical one, and which regu-
lates the usage of the phrases a priori and a posteriori
by the schoolmen. In that sense of the term there can
evidently be no a priori demonstration of first and
fundamental principles. According to Aquinas, for
example, there can be no a Żriori knowledge of God ;
because He, as uncaused and uncreated, cannot be
deduced from anything prior in causation to Himself,
and can only be apprehended rationally by means of that
which is consequent upon His action, viz., the creatures
of the natural world. In other words, our knowledge of
Him must be a posteriori. It is obvious that science in
the highest sense must be a priori, the knowledge must
spring from an insight into causes, which are the true
primaries. By an extension of this usage an argument
is said to follow an a priori path, when from the basis
of some conception it proceeds to evolve by analysis all
or some of the logical consequences; whereas, the mode
of reasoning, which endeavors to gather into a single
formula the various facts of observation, is described as
a posteriori. The argument of Anselm, which, from
the mere conception of God, proposes to deduce his
existence, is an example of a priori reasoning. An a
Ariori reasoner has to predict what is or will be, by con-
sidering what ought to be in accordance with certain
presuppositions. He tries by argument to assign before-
hand the place of a fact which may not yet have been
discovered by observation. From the analysis of certain
given conditions, or by constructing the total product
from some given elements, he seeks to anticipate experi-
ence. Of course, if the original conception be bad or
defective, the conclusions will be false or inadequate.
Often too, what claims to be the mere deduction from a
conception, is secretly and perhaps unconsciously supple-
mented by more efficient elements of proof. It is this
circumstance, that imperfect knowledge is taken as the
ground for further conclusions, which has brought a
Ariori reasoning into discredit.
APSE, the semicircular or polygonal termination to a
church. These forms were no doubt derived from the
concha or òema, in the classic and early Christian basil-
1C3.
APSHERON, a peninsula of Asia, in Georgia, ex-
tending from the eastern extremity of the Caucasus
range for about 40 miles into the Caspian Sea, and ter-
minating in Cape Apsheron. It produces naphtha, salt
and saffron in great abundance; and has long been cele-
brated among the fire-worshippers of Asia for the sacred
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386
A P T — A Q U
fires that issue from its soil On its southern coast is
the port of Baku.
APT, the Roman Apta julia, a town of France, in
the department of Vaucluse, situated on the left bank
of the Calavon, a tributary of the Durance, 30 miles
east of Avignon. It is surrounded by ancient and mas-
sive walls, and is well built, although several of its streets
are narrow and irregular. There are many Roman re-
mains in and near the town, including a fine bridge,
which is said to have been constructed by Julius Caesar.
APULEIUS, LUCIUs, celebrated as a philosopher
and a writer of romance, was born at Madaura in Nu-
midia, about 125 A.D. As the son of one of the princi-
pal inhabitants, he received an excellent education, first
at Carthage and subsequently at Athens. After leaving
Athens he undertook a long course of travel, principally
with the view of obtaining initiation into religious mys-
teries. On a journey to Alexandria he fell sick at CEa
(Tripoli), and was received into the house of Sicinius
Pontianus, a former fellow-student. The widowed
mother of Pontianus, Pudentilla, became enamored of
the handsome young philosopher, who, at her son's re-
quest, as he affirms, consented to marry her. The lady’s
wealth rendered this step distasteful to the other mem-
bers of her family, by whom, after the premature death
of Pontianus, Apuleius was indicted on a charge of hav-
ing gained her affections by magical arts. He easily es-
tablished his innocence, and his spirited, highly enter-
taining, but inordinately long defence, is our principal
authority for his biography.
There is little of Apuleius's own invention in the
work on which his ſame principally rests. The Meta-
morphos.'s or Golden Ass (which latter title seems not
to be the author’s own, but to have been bestowed in
compliment), was founded on a narrative in the Meta-
neorphoses of Lucius of Patrae, a work extant in the
time of Photius. From Photius's account, this book
would seem to have consisted of a collection of marvel-
lous stories, related in an inartistic fashion, and in per-
fect good faith. The literary capabilities of this par-
ticular narrative attracted the attention of Apuleius's
contemporary, Lucian, who proceeded to work it up in
his own manner, adhering very closely to the orig-
inal, but giving it a comic and satiric turn. Apu-
leius followed this rifaccimento, making, it, however,
the groundwork of an elaborate romance, interspersed
with numerous episodes, of which the beautiful story of
Cupid and Psyche is the most celebrated, and altering
the denouement to suit the religious revival of which he
was an apostle. The most famous and poetically beauti-
ful portion is the episode of Cupid and Psyche, adapted
from a popular legend of which traces are found in most
fairy mythologies, which explains the seeming incon-
gruity of its being placed in the mouth of an old hag.
The allegorical purport he has infused into it is his own,
and entirely in the spirit of the Platonic philosophy.
Don Quixote’s adventure with the wineskins, and Gil
Blas's captivity among the robbers, are palpably bor-
rowed from Apuleius; and several of his humorous epi-
Sodes, probably current as popular stories long before
his time, reappear in Boccaccio.
APULIA, the name applied to a district of southern
Italy, the limits of which were not very definitely or
É. marked. It is usually regarded as having
een bounded by the country of the Frentani on the N.,
Samnium on the W., Calabria and Lucania on the S.,
and the Adriatic on the E. The northern portion com-
prised the district sloping eastward from the Apennines,
but did not take in any part of the mountains them-
selves; while the southern portion was occupied by a
rocky off-shoot of the main chain, which left only a nar-
row but fertile strip of land along the sea. On the
northern part of the coast was the remarkable mount-
ain-mass of Garganus, forming an enormous promon-
tory. Apulia was watered by the Tifernus (Biferno),
the Frento (Fortore), the Cerbalus (Cervaro), the
Aufidus (Oſanto), and a number of intermittent mount-
ain streams. Reduced under Roman dominion in the
4th century B.C., Apulia for the most part continued
true to the Roman cause till the time of the second
Punic war, when it was greatly distracted and suffered
grievously from the hostile operations of both the bel-
ligerents. It belonged to the second region of Au-
gustus, and from the reign of Constantine was gov-
erned along with Calabria by a “Corrector.” For sev-
eral centuries after 476 it was alternately under the
power of the Lombards, the Goths, the Saracens, and
the emperors of the East; and about the Ioth century
was regularly governed by the last by means of a
“catapan" or deputy, who has left the designation of
his office, Catapamata, in the modern corruption Capi-
tamata, applied to the northern portion of the present
Apulia. It was conquered by the Normans under Will-
iam Bras-de-Fer, who took the title of Comes Apuliae in
IO42, was raised along with Calabria to a dukedom by
Robert Guiscard in IoS7, and in I 127 was united to
the Sicilian monarchy. The name Apulia is still em-
ployed as a geographical, but no longer as an ethnolog-
ical or political designation.
APURE, a river of Venezuela, formed by the conflu-
ence of the Orivante and the Sarare in and adjoining
the Orinoco, after a course of about 500 miles. Its
chief tributaries are the Caparo and the Portuguesa.
APURIMAC, or TAMBO, a Peruvian river which
rises in the lagoon of Villafro, near Caylloma, flows in
a generally northward direction, and, receiving the
waters of the Velille, the San Tomas, the Mamara, the
Pachachaca, the Pampas, the Mantaro, and the Perene,
falls into the Ucayali, an affluent of the Amazon. The
river formed by the Tambo — or Catonga, as it is called
in this part of its course — and the Mantaro receives
the name of Ene, and is joined by the Perene, a river
large enough for the passage of steamers. About 30
miles further down it forms a great cataract, which
breaks the navigation. After receiving the Muyupu
and the Vilcamayu or Urubamba, the stream, under
the name of Ucayali, flows north to join the other
head-streams of the Amazon near Nauta. The naviga-
tion of the Apurimac below the falls is greatly hindered
by its strong and rapid current. The whole length of
its course is about 600 miles.
AQUAMBO or AKUAMU, a country in the interior
of the Gold Coast of Africa, extending along both
banks of the Rio Volta or Aswada. The portion to the
west of the river is under British protection; and that
on the east, with the exception of a narrow strip along
the bank, is subject to the king of Dahomey.
AQUAPIM, a country of considerable extent in the
interior of the Gold Coast of Africa, immediately behind
Accra. It is watered by the Densu, Dinskoi, or Sec-
coom, and is finely diversified with cultivated valleys
and wooded hills of considerable elevation. The most
important place is Akropong. º
AQUARIANS, a name given to various sects of
Christians in the primitive church who substituted water
for wine in the communion service. This they did on
principles of abstinence and temperance, or because
they thought it unlawful under any circumstances to eat
flesh or drink wine. Entirely distinct from those Aqua-
rians upon principle, were others who used, water at
morning communion in order that they might not be
discovered by the smell of wine.
AQUARIUM. This word is used to denote a vessel,
or collection of vessels, in which marine or fresh water
AQUEDUCT.
Remains of AQUEDUCT ºf METZ. A-
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AQUEDUCT.
-
Autºmuctura-Anttutºm.
AqLEDUETarryºgos Cºnsººrinº.º.
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Remains or aqurutnºn-nºhalºlamä of Mºrtº.
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Arches of Roman Aqueducts





A Q U
387
animals may be kept, and in which marine or sweet
water plants may be grown. The invention or rather
growth of the modern aquarium cannot, in the absence
of precise data, be accurately traced. The aquarium,
as we find it at Hamburg or Brighton, has, like many
other things now in daily use, been elaborated from
small beginnings. It is known that more than two
centuries ago marine animals were, for the purpose of
study and observation, removed from the sea and kept
in confinement; and there is extant a drawing, of the
date of 1742, which represents the form of an aquarium
containing zoophytes. About the year 1839 a move-
ment was made towards the construction of aquariums
of a more elaborate description, which lasted for more
than twenty years, during which time a large number
were made, and many descriptive works published on
the subject. Agencies were during that period estab-
lished in London and elsewhere for the supply of ani-
mals; and some at the same time made it a business to
purvey sea-water—the obtaining of this, and keeping it
fresh, being with many persons who lived far from the
sea a great difficulty. Indeed the difficulty was so great
that an artificial compound was in numerous instances
resorted to for lack of genuine sea-water. A solution
of this difficulty came tardily, in 1841. Mr. Ward at
that time constructed in London a fresh-water aqua-
rium, in which aquatic plants were very successfully
grown for the purpose of keeping the water pure and
the animals healthy; and a year later, Dr. George
Johnston of Berwick-on-Tweed, accidentally discovered,
in the course of making an experiment for another pur-
pose, that the animal and plant life of the sea could also
be made to support each other. For a period of sixty
days he kept some animals in a jar without once chang-
ing the water, and thus solved the problem. Early in
1847 Mrs. Thynne of London successfully investigated
the problem, whether it was possible to keep the ani-
mals in good condition of health without changing the
water. In 1849 Mr. R. Warington, also of London,
and afterwards Mr. P. H. Gosse, conducted successful
experiments having for their object the balancing of
vegetable and animal life, which afterwards came to
be thoroughly recognised. Sea-weeds, however, do
not bear transplanting, but sea-water is so impregnated
with the seeds or germs of vegetable life, that when a
few stones or fragments of rock are taken from the
Ocean, marine vegetation speedily commences and pro-
ceeds. In 1853 a fish-house or aquarium of considera-
ble size was constructed by the Zoological Society of
London in their garden in the Regent's Park. This
erection gave such an impetus to the popular aquarium
movement as rendered it almost a mania, and for a year
or two these scientific toys, some of them of large size,
became much appreciated household ornaments.
It does not answer very well, even when an aquarium
is at the sea-side, to be constantly changing the water,
as the new supply is so disturbed and impregnated with
impurities as to be fatal to delicate animals, besides not
being in a proper state for exhibition. Some of the in-
Thabitants of an aquarium foul the water very much more
than others, notably the flat fish family, and provision has
to be made for this by putting such other animals in the
same tank as will aid in purifying the water. Various small
animals have of course to be provided as food for the larger
marine specimens ; others of them act as scavengers,
helping to keep the water constantly sweet and clean.
The light admitted to fish in the tanks is also a matter of
careful adjustment. As the animal life and vegetable life
mutually support each other, the kind of material neces-
sary for maintaining the “compensating system " must
be watchfully supplied. Mr. W. R. Hughes of Birming-
ham recommends the growth of Sea-lettuce (C//va ſatis-
sima) in tanks, as suitable both for oxygenating the water
and for food for the fishes; the stock plants being intro-
duced in the autumn months, when they are loaded with
spores. Now that such excellent aquariums as those at
Brighton, Manchester, Southport, and Sydenham are in ,
full working order, the construction of others will not be
difficult, even when projected on a larger scale. Dis-
tance from the Sea is of no consequence, as sea-water,
may be obtained by railway, and can be kept stored as
already suggested.
AQUEDUCT, a conduit or channel for the convey-
ance of water, but commonly a structure of masonry
erected to conduct water across a valley at a high level,
though structures of this kind would be more properly
termed aqueduct bridges. This distinction it is neces-
sary to bear in mind, more particularly when dealing
with the undertakings of this class carried out by the
Greeks and Romans respectively, because from the fact
of the former having apparently seldom if ever con-
structed aqueduct bridges, it has been usual to institute
a very unfavorable comparison between them and the
Romans, who, with imperial disdain of obstacles, fur-
nished the cities of their immense empire with a series
of constructions of this kind for the supply of water,
which still in their ruins excite our astonishment. True
to the difference in national genius the Greeks, follow-
ing the analogy of nature, in which in their own country
they saw the water collected in the hills passing for
miles along subterranean courses, and issuing in cool
fountains at the coast, adapted their system of conduits
to the physical formation of a district, cutting tunnels
and canals, rather than bridging over valleys, and as a
consequence no conspicuous monument of their system
now remains. But even if what they did was so little
as to justify Strabo in charging them with neglect in
this matter as compared with the carefulness of the
Romans, it is still clear from the records that they
accomplished much, and that in this, as in other respects,
they were the instructors of the Romans. It is here to
be premised that the term aqueduct applies only to the
conveyance of such water as was used for drinking or
other useful purposes, and not to the draining of
marshes, though in both cases the works may often have
been of the same kind. The insufficiency of water,
supplied by natural springs and cisterns hewn in the
rock, which in an early age had satisfied the small com-
munities of Greece, had become a pressing public ques-
tion by the time of the Tyrants, of whom Polycrates of
Samus and Pisistratus of Athens distinguished their rule
by extensive works to meet the exigencies of their states.
For this purpose the former obtained the services of
Eupalinus, an engineer celebrated for the skill with
which he had carried out the works for the water supply
of Megara, under the direction of the Tyrant Theage-
mes (circa 625 B.C.) At Samus the difficulty lay in a
hill which rose between the town and the water source.
Through this hill Eupalinus cut a tunnel 8 feet broad, 8.
feet high, and 4200 feet long, building within the tunnel
a channel 3 feet broad and 11 ells deep. The water,
flowing by an accurately reckoned declivity, and all
along open to the fresh air, was received at the lower
end by a conduit of masonry, and so led into the town,
where it supplied fountains, pipes, baths, cloacae, &c.,
and ultimately passed into the harbor. In Athens, under
the rule of Pisistratus (B.C. 560), a similarly extensive,
if less difficult, series of works was completed to bring
water from the hills Hymettus, Pentelicus, and Parnes.
From Hymettus were two conduits passing under the
bed of the Ilissus, and most part of the course cut in
the rock. Pentelicus, richer in water, supplied another
conduit, which can still be traced from the modern vil-
lage of Chalandri by the air shafts built several feet
388
A Q U
above the ground, and at a distance apart of 40–50
metres; the diameter of these shafts is 4–5 feet, and the
number of them still preserved is about sixty. Tribu-
tary channels conveyed into the main stream the waters
of the district through which it passed. Outside
Athens, those two conduits met in a large reservoir,
from which the water was distributed by a ramification
of underground channels throughout the city. These
latter channels vary in form, being partly round, partly
square, and generally walled with stone; the chief one,
that under the bazaar, is sufficiently high and broad to
allow two men to pass in it. Sometimes pipes of baked
clay were laid within them. The conduit from Mount
Parnes appears to have been reconstructed in later times.
Some of these aqueducts continue to supply Athens to
this day, and are described as marvels of enterprise and
skill. In Sicily, the works by which Empedocles, it is
said, brought the water into the town of Selinus, are no
longer visible; but it is probable that, like those of Syra-
cuse, they consisted chiefly of tunnels and pipes laid
under ground. The system of conduits in Syracuse
which Thucydides says (vi. Ioo), the Athenians partly
destroyed on the Sicilian expedition, still supplies the
town with an abundance of drinkable water; and at one
point, where the tunnel passes under the sea to the isl-
and of Ortygia, presents what has long been regarded as
a remarkable achievement for early times. An example
of what appears to have been the earliest form of aque-
duct in Greece has been discovered in the island of Cos,
beside the fountain Burinna on Mount Oromedon. It
consists of a bell-shaped chamber, built underground in
the hill side, to receive the water of the spring and
keep it cool; a shaft rising from the top of the chamber
supplied fresh air. From this reservoir the water was
lºya subterranean channel, 35 yards long and 2 yards
lgh.
Of the constructions for the conveyance of water in
Italy in early times, there is an example at Tusculum,
consisting of an oblong basin, divided into several
chambers, which received the water of a spring, and then
distributed it by pipes (tubi, fistulae) or canals. The
basin is built of blocks of stone, which, along the sides,
overlap each other, till they meet and forin a roof– a
principle of building which was afterwards supplanted
by vaulting, and which occurs also in the earliest Greek
masonry. The pipes were either of lead or baked clay.
When the course lay in soil, gullies were cut and con-
duits of masonry built within them. When rocky
ground intervened, tunnels were pierced, and in both
cases shafts were made at intervals of about 240 feet, to
admit light and fresh air. The inside of the walls of these
channels received a coating impervious to water, com-
posed of chalk and crushed fragments of tile. Where
the course was interrupted by an inequality in the
ground, a vertical pipe (zenter) was placed reaching to
the surface or above it. The water rushing up this pipe
was freshened by contact with the air, and again fell
back to the new course which it had to take. Works of
this kind, undertaken for the public convenience, were
paid for out of the public purse, a tax being levied for
the use of the water.
If, to obtain a proper decline, the water-course had
to be carried above ground, the simple plan was to sup-
port it on a stone wall, and in this case the conduit
itself was also built of blocks of stone, coated with a
stucco impervious to water. But since a solid wall
across a valley would have cut off the usual traffic, it
was found necessary to break up the wall, by means of
arches, into a series of pillars, and with this commenced
the system of aqueduct bridges, which have proved to
be the most striking monuments of the Roman empire.
As perhaps the best known instance of this double pur-
pose, of an archway under which traffic might pass, and
over which water might be conveyed, there is the Porta
Maggiore at Rome. The waters conveyed over it in
two separate channels, are the AQUA CLAUDIA and the
ANIO Novus, and from the three inscriptions above
the arches it appears (1.)—that the Emperor Claudius
had constructed the so-called Aqua Claudia Aqueduct
from the springs Caeruleus and Curtius, 45 miles from
Rome; (2.) that the same emperor had constructed the
so-called Anio Novus Aqueduct from the 62d milestone
from Rome; (3.) that the Emperors Vespasian and
Titus had restored these splendid undertakings of
Claudius. Both aqueducts had been begun by Caligula,
38 A.D., and were completed ten years after by Claudius.
The two springs from which the Aqua Claudia took its
rise were in the Sabine hills near the 35th milestone, on
the Via Sublacensis. It was augumented by part of the
Aqua Martia, famous for the goodness of its water,
and, owing to bends in the course, reached the length
of 45 miles, as stated in the inscription, 35 miles of it
being under and Io above ground. The Amio Novus,
so called to distinguish it from an older aqueduct, the
Anio Vetus, took its rise in the river Anio at the 62d
milestone, on the road just named, the water being first
collected in a large basin, where it was allowed to
purify itself. At the 32d milestone it was augumented
by the clearer water of the spring, rivus Aerculaneus.
The entire length of 62 miles was partly above and
partly below the ground. About 6 miles from Rome it
approached the Aqua Claudia, and from that point the
two waters travelled together to the city in two distinct
channels, one above the other, and supported by a
chain of arches, which at one place reached the height
of Io9 feet. But in height these arches must yield to
those of the aqueduct at Nismes, the ancient Nemausus,
erected in the time of Augustus, which rose to 180 feet.
The Pont du Gard, as the aqueduct at Nismes is now
called, consists of three rows of arches striding across
the valley of the river Gardon. In the lowermost row
are six arches, of which one has a span of 75 feet, the
others each 60 feet. In the second row are twelve
arches, each with a span of 75 feet. In the third row
are thirty-six smaller arches, immediately above which
was the water-course. As a bridge, the Pont du Gard
has no rival for lightness and boldness of design among
the existing remains of works of this class carried out in
Roman times.
Besides the two principal aqueducts at Rome already
described, there remain to be noticed twelve more which
assisted in the supply of water for the city. These are
(1.) AQUA APPIA, which took its rise at the foot of the
Alban mountains on the Praeneste road, between the
7th and 8th milestones, and measured from its source
to the Porta Trigemina II, 180 paces, of which II, 130
were below ground. It appears to have been the first
important enterprise of the kind at Rome, and was the
work of the old Censor Appius Claudius, from whom it
derived its name. The date of its construction was the
year of Rome 442, according to Frontinus, an overseer
of aqueducts under the empire, whose work De 44ttº-
duct urb. Roma we still possess. (2.) ANIO YETUS,
constructed forty years after the last-mentioned aque-
duct, by the Censór Manlius Curius Dentatus, with the
help of L. Papirius Censor, who finished it. Frºm its
source near Tivoli, on the left side of the Anio, it flowed
43,000 paces, of which 42,779 were below ground, and
231 above. At the distance of 2 miles from Rome
(Frontinus,) i. 21 it parted into two courses, one of
which led to the horti asiniani, and was thence distrib-
uted; while the other led by the temple of Spes to the
Esquiline gate, the site of which was near the modern
villa Negroni, where, in 1861, was found a subterra-
A Q U
389
nean conduit and an inscribed stone, which left no doubt
as to its having been one of the stones set up to mark
the distances of the Anio Vetus. (3.) AQUA MARTIA,
rising on the left side of the Via Valeria, traversed
61,710 paces, of which 54,247 were underground, and
the remaining distance carried partly on solid wall and
partly on arches. It was the work of Quintus Martius
Rex, and took its name from its constructor. Its waters
were celebrated for their coolness and excellent quality.
(4.) AQUA TEPULA, from its source in the district of
Tusculum, flowed Io, OOO paces, mostly above ground,
and on the same series of arches as carried the Aqua
Martia, but at a higher level. It was the work of the
Censors Cn. Servilius Caepio and L. Crassus Longinus,
and was completed in the year 126 B.C. Again, partly
on the same structure of arches, and with a still higher
channel, flowed — (5.) AQUA JULIA, from a source near
that of the last-mentioned aqueduct to within 7000 paces
of the walls of Rome, where the joint waters were re-
ceived in a reservoir, and thence distributed in various
channels to the city. Its entire length was 15,426
paces. It was constructed in the year 34 B.C. by Mar-
cus Agrippa, to whose zeal to meet public wants in this
direction were due the two other aqueducts — (6.) AQUA
VIRGo, and (7.) Aqua CRABRA or DAMNATA, the
former as well known for the goodness of its water as
was the latter for the inferiority which procured it the
designation of Damnata. The Aqua Virgo, from its
origin at a copious spring in a marsh on the Collatine
way, not far from the ancient Gabii, measured 14, IOS
paces, along which it was conveyed in pipes, partly un-
der and partly above ground, on a º substructure or
on arches. It was completed in the year 48 B.C. (8.)
AOUA ALSIETINA or AUGUSTA rose in Etruria, on the
Via Claudia, and travelled 22, 172 paces, of which 358
were on arches. It was the work of Augustus, whose
object was to furnish by it water for gardens and other
than drinking purposes. (9.) AQUA TRAJANA, rising
in Lake Sabatinus (Bracciano), was constructed by
Trajan. (10.) AQUA ALEXANDRINA, rising in the dis-
trict of Tusculum, was the work of Alexander Severus.
(11.) AQUA SEPTIMIANA seems to have been only a
branch led from the Aqua Julia to supply the baths of
the emperor from whom it takes its name, Septimius
Severus. (12.) AQUA ALGENTINA rose on Mount
Algidus; at whose instance it was made is unknown.
Of the fourteen aqueducts which supplied ancient Rome,
three remain in use at the present time, furnishing the
modern city with abundance of water. The first of the
three is the Aqua Virgo, now known as Fontana di
Trevi, supplying the best water in Rome. It was re-
stored by Pope Pius IV. The next is the Aqua Claudia,
known as the Aqua Felice or di Termini, which was re-
stored by Sixtus V. The third is the Aqua Trajana,
called, from the Pope who restored it, viz., Paul V.,
Aqua Paole.
At regular intervals along the course of an aqueduct
were built reservoirs (caste//a), to enable repairs to be
made at any point, and also to let off water for the
population of the district through which it passed. It
was the law that material necessary for repairs should
be supplied from the private property nearest to where
the damage was, and should be conveyed at the cost of
the owner of such property. Caste//a of smaller
dimensions were also required in many parts of the city.
«)f these, it was said, there were 247 in Rome. To
allow the water to purify itself before being distributed
in the city, large basins were built outside the walls.
For the process of purification salt was used. These
piscinae were covered in with a vaulted roof, and were
usually on a colossal scale, as in the example still pre-
served at Fermo, which consists of two stories, each
having three oblong basins communicating with each
other; or the Piscina Mirabile at Baiae, which is covered
in by a vaulted roof, supported on forty-eight pillars,
and perforated to permit the escape of foul air. Two
stairs lead by forty steps to the bottom of the reservoir.
In the middle of the basin is a sinking to collect the
deposit of the water. The walls and pillars are coated
with a stucco so hard as to resist a tool. The over-
sight of aqueducts was placed, in the times of the
republic, under the aediles and censors, though the
latter appear to have taken part in the work of this
kind rather from their financial interest in the matter.
Under the empire this task devolved on special officials.
The great waterworks that supply the city of Mar-
seilles with the water of the Durance, by a canal about
60 miles in length, are among the boldest undertakings
of the kind in modern times. This canal, begun in 1839,
and completed in 1847, is conveyed through three chains
of limestone mountains by forty-five tunnels, forming an
aggregate length of 8% miles, and across numerous val-
leys by aqueducts; the largest of which, the Aqueduct of
Roquefavour, over the ravine of the River Arc, about
5 miles from Aix, surpasses in size and altitude the
ancient Pont du Gard. The immense volume of water,
which passes at the rate of 198,000 gallons per minute,
is carried across as in the old Roman aqueducts by a
channel of masonwork. The height of this aqueduct is
262 feet, and its length 1287.
Within the last century, the invention and improve-
ment of the manufacture of cast iron has completely
changed the mode of conducting water into cities, by
the introduction of cast-iron pipes instead of the stone
conduits of former times. These pipes can now be
of almost any dimensions, and united together into a
continued series so closely as to prevent the escape of
the water even under a violent pressure, arising from the
altitude of the fountainhead. They enable us, there-
fore, to take advantage of and give effect to the funda-
mental principle of hydrostatics, that the fluid tends
continually to a level, even though it be confined in the
smallest or most complicated system of pipes; so that
however low it be carried in any valley, or to whatever
distance, still it will rise on the opposite side to the origi-
nal altitude of the fountainhead—a principle which is
most important indeed in such works, seeing that by it
we are not restricted, as the Romans were, almost to a
perfect level in the line of the conduit. We have seen
that, for the purpose of attaining this level or very
gentle declivity all along the conduit, they were under
the necessity of raising it by arcades continued in one
unbroken series, frequently 30 or 40 miles in extent; and,
in addition to this, they had often to prolong the length
of the track by a circuitous route, turning and winding
for miles out of its course, for the very purpose of
increasing its length.
But the use of pipes enables us to dispense with these
long arcades all raised nearly to the same level with the
fountainhead; because the conduit may be varied in its
level to any extent, and still will rise at last to its origi-
nal altitude. The pipes, therefore, are merely laid all
along the surface of the ground, with a cover of 2 or 3
feet of soil to place them beyond the reach of frost. To
prevent, however, the ſrequent or abrupt alternations of
rise and fall, any sudden inequalities in the ground are
equalised by cuttings and embankments, but not to any-
thing like the extent that would be required to raise the
whole to a level. This, therefore, forms a very great
improvement in the method of conducting water, the
greatest indeed which has ever been made in this impor-
tant branch of practical mechanics. That it was not
introduced by the Romans, is not to be ascribed, as
many have supposed, to their ignorance of the hydro-
390
A Q U
static principle that the fluid would rise to a level in the
opposite branches of the same train of pipes. They were
well acquainted with this principle, and a portion of a
leaden pipe, supposed to have been used in the baths of
Caracalla, has been found, which sets this matter at rest;
but, from the low state of the arts at that period, they
were unable to give effect to the principle. They had
not the means of fabricating pipes of such a magnitude
as would have been required for the enormous quantities
of water consumed in Rome, and at the same time, of
strength sufficient to withstand the pressure from the
fountainhead. Lead was the only material that could
be used by them for the purpose; and besides the enor-
mous thickness that so weak a material would have re-
quired, and the impracticability of their forming pipes,
and uniting them together endwise, they were too well
acquainted with the tendency of lead to render the water
unwholesome by its poisonous impregnation. The use
of cast iron was quite unknown. There remained,
therefore, no resource but in the aqueducts, which,
though attended no doubt with vast expense, and requir-
ing great enterprise, skill, and patience, were yet attain-
able by these means, and formed when completed a
simple and very perfect mode of effecting the object.
Now, however, when the manufacture of cast iron has
been brought to such perfection, and methods contrived
for uniting perfectly together all the pipes into one con-
nected train, this improved system has been universally
adopted.
Croton Aqueduct, Meze, York.
The Croton Aqueduct, by which the city of New
York is supplied with water, was justly regarded at the
time of its execution, from 1837 to 1842, as one of the
most magnificent works of the kind in modern times.
Its length from the Croton Lake to the receiving reser-
voir is 38% miles. The original reservoir, called Croton
Lake, is formed by an embankment across the Croton
Creek, a small stream of wholesome water falling into
the Hudson. It covered 400 acres, and contained about
500,000,000 gallons of water. To the valley of the Har-
lem River, a distance of 33 miles, the aqueduct is built
of stone, brick, and cement, arched over and under, 6
feet 3 inches wide at the bottom, 7 feet 8 inches at the
top, and 8 feet 5 inches high, and capable of discharg-
ing 60,000,000 gallons per day. It is carried over the
Harlem Valley in iron pipes, laid upon a magnificent
bridge 1460 feet long, constructed of arches I 14 feet
above high-water mark at Yorkville. These pipes passed
into a receiving reservoir capable of holding 150,000,000
gallons, and from thence the water was conducted for 2%
miles to a distributing reservoir, containing 20,000,000
gallons, by a double line of iron pipes, 3 feet in diameter.
From this reservoir the water was distributed to the city.
The Croton water was originally introduced into New
York in 1842, when the population was about 450,000
persons, and from that time to 1848, 18,000,000 gallons
per day gave an abundant supply. In 1872, with a pop-
ulation of 1,000,000 persons, the quantity required was
88,000,000 gallons per day. Thus, between 1848 and
1872, while the population little more than doubled, the
consumption of water increased nearly five times. This
fact, coupled with severe droughts in 1870 and 1871,
when the natural volume of the Croton River fell to
27,000,000 gallons per day, caused great anxiety, and
shewed the necessity of largely extended works. It was
estimated that the basin above the Croton Dam, 339
square miles in area, would give 300,000,000 gallons per
day on the average, if the water could be impounded,
and that, therefore, abundant water could be obtained
by increasing the number or capacity of the impounding
reservoirs. New reservoirs were therefore projected,
one of which, to contain 3,000,000,000 gallons, was
completed in the autumn of 1872. With this the gross
Storage was increased to the amount of 4,670,000,ooo
gallons, in addition to the daily produce of the Croton
river, which, at its minimum as stated, is 27,000,000
gallons per day. Another reservoir, the contents of
which when full is said to be 3,700,000,000 gallons, was
also projected, and is being constructed. To meet the
growing demand for water, the reservoirs were not only
increased as described, but the means of distribution
were largely extended, and in one part of the city six
lines of pipes four feet in diameter were laid side by side.
Moch Katrine Aqueduct, Glasgow.
The Loch Katrine Aqueduct of the Glasgow Water-
works is the modern aqueduct which has most prob-
ably attracted the largest share of public attention.
The appropriation of the beautiful waters of Loch
Katrine — rendered classical by Sir Walter Scott — the
romantic, rugged, and almost impassable Highland
country through which the aqueduct had to be con-
structed, and the distance from Loch Katrine to Glas-
gow, all contributed to lend a special interest to the
undertaking. It is, however, a very simple work in
itself, for, with but little artificial addition, Loch
Katrine, Loch Venachar, and Loch Drunkie were con-
verted into impounding reservoirs, the first for the sup-
ply of the city, and the two latter for compensation.
Vierzna Waterworks.
A still more recent work, consisting mainly of aque-
duct construction, is the enterprise for supplying the
city of Vienna with water. The water is obtained from
the springs of Kaiserbrunn and Stixenstein, both situ-
ated at the foot of the Styrian Alps, which separate
Austria from Styria. The Kaiserbrunn spring is situ-
ated II.46 English feet above the Danube at Vienna,
and the Stixenstein spring 996 feet. The water is con-
ducted by aqueduct to a receiving reservoir at Rosen-
hugel, 277 feet above the Danube, and distant 2 miles
from Vienna. The length of the aqueduct from Kaiser-
brunn to the receiving reservoir on the Rosenhugel, is
56% English miles. A branch of 3.9 English miles
conducts the Stixenstein spring to this aqueduct. The
gradients of the aqueduct vary much in the upper or
early parts; but towards the end they become more
regular. The gradients have been thus varied for the
purpose of keeping the canal as much as possible along
the level of the ground, so as to avoid high embank-
ments. In order to keep the water cool in summer,
and to secure it from freezing in winter, the water is
always 6 feet below the surface; and in places where
embankments were unavoidable, the aqueduct has been
covered to the same extent. The size of the aqueduct
varies from 4 feet 6 inches in height, by 2 feet 6 inches
in width, to 6 feet 6 inches in height, by 4 feet in width.
In order to facilitate the discharge, and to reduce fric-
tion, the inside of the aqueduct has been plastered with
a coating 2 inches thick of Portland cement and sand,
in proportion of one of cement to two of sand. This
coating was laid on in three layers, the last being a very
thin layer of pure cement, which, when hardened, was
rubbed with iron plates till it became perfectly smooth
and polished. The work was commenced in the winter
of 1869–70, and completed in the month of September
1873. The aqueduct is constructed for the purpose of
supplying about 3,200,000 cubic feet per day, 20,909,000
gallons. There are several important aqueduct bridges
along the line of works. . Of these the principal is the
aqueduct of Baden, which consists of forty-three large
arches, with spans varying from 5 klafters to 8% klaft-
ers, and the greatest height I5 klafters 5 feet 5 inches,
A Q U
39 I
or 96.6 English feet, from the foundation of the pier to
the top of the aqueduct. The arches are of brickwork,
as well as the vaulting of the canal. The piers, together
with the backing of arches and the sides of the canal,
are faced with ashlar, and filled up with rubble ma-
sonry. The canal is covered on the top with earth,
which is then covered with 9 inches of paving in rub-
ble masonry. .
AQUILA, a town of Italy, capital of the province of
Abruzzo Ulteriore II., beautifully situated on the Aterno
about 56 miles from Rome. It is a well-built place,
containing a citadel, which dates from 1534, a cathedral
(S. Bernardino du Siena), as well as numerous other
churches and religious establishments, a theatre, a fine
town-hall, and a number of ancient mansions, such as
the Palazzo Torres, with its picture-gallery, and the
Aalazzo del Governo, the residence of Margaret of
Austria. Its chief manufactures are paper, linen, and
wax; and it has a large trade in saffron, the principal
product of the surrounding district. Aquila was founded
about the year 1240, by the emperor Frederick II. who
peopled it with the inhabitants of the ancient Amziter-
num, the birthplace of Sallust, the ruins of which are.
still to be seen about 3 miles from the town. It soon
became a very flourishing city; but war, pestilence, and
especially earthquakes (1703, 1706), have done much to
reduce its importance. Population, 16,607.
AQUILA, a native of Pontus, who flourished about
130 A.D., celebrated for his translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures into Greek. This account, however, is more
than doubtful. Aquila’s version of the Scriptures was
exceedingly close and accurate, and is said to have been
used in place of the Septuagint in the synagogues.
Though the Christians generally disliked it, alleging
without due grounds that it rendered the Messianic pass-
ages incorrectly, Jerome and Origen speak in its praise.
AQUILA, CASPAR, the Latin name of Kaspar Adler,
a celebrated German theologian who espoused the cause
of the Reformation. He was born at Augsburg in
1488; and after studying there as well as at Berne and
Leipsic, and for several years in Italy, he was appointed
pastor of Jenga, a village near Augsburg. Here he
embraced the doctrines of Luther; but his boldness and
zeal in the cause of the reformed faith led the bishop of
Augsburg to order his arrest. Aquila passed the winter
of 1519–1520 in the prison of Dillingen, and was only
liberated through the influence of Isabella of Denmark,
sister of the emperor Charles V. From Dillingen he
went to Wittenberg, where he became personally
acquainted with Luther; and thence he went as tutor to
the family of Franz von Sickingen, in the castle of
Ebernburg. After a short stay at Eisenach, Aquila was
appointed professor of Hebrew at Wittenberg, where
he rendered valuable assistance to his colleague Luther
in his translation of the Old Testament. In 1527 he
became pastor, and the following year Protestant bishop
at Saalfeld; but his vehement opposition to the Zn/erian
of Charles V. in 1548, obliged him to flee from the
place, and accept the offer from the countess of Schwarz-
burg of a temporary asylum in her castle of Rudolfstadt.
He was appointed to the deanery of Schmalkalden in
1550, and restored two years after to his office at Saal-
feld, where, without further molestation, he continued
to discharge his duties till his death, 12th November
I 560. g
*UILA, SERAFINO DELL’, a famous Italian poet
and improvisatore, was born in 1466 at the town of
Aquila, from which he took his name, and died in the
year 1500. His principal patrons were the Borgias at
Rome, from whom he received many favors.
AQUILEIA, an ancient city, at the head of the
Adriatic, founded or at least colonised by the Romans
about 181 B.C., which, on account of its commanding
the north-eastern entrance into Italy, soon rose into
importance as a commercial centre and as a military
post. Connected by the AEmilian way with the capital
and the south, it was also the starting-place of the roads
to Rhaetia, Pannonia, Istria, and Dalmatia. The sur:
rounding territory was highly fertile, and yielded
abundance of wine; while gold was found in considera-
ble quantities in the neighborhood. . Aquileia was
chosen by Julius Caesar as headquarters for his forces in
Cisalpine Gaul, and was frequently the point d'appui of
imperial campaigns. It was strongly fortified by Mar-
cus Aurelius in 160, and was able in 238 to frustrate the
long-continued siege of Maximin. . About this time it
was one of the most important and flourishing cities of
Italy. It was recognised as the capital of Venetia, and
allowed to have the altogether exceptional privilege of a
mint. It is now a small fishing village of 1956 inhab-
itants, containing a number of interesting remains of its
ancient splendor, and often rewarding the researches of
the antiquary with relics of value.
A QUILLIUS, MANIUS, was Roman consul in Ior
B.C., and successfully reduced a revolt of slaves in Sicily.
In 88 B.C. he acted as legate against Mithridates, by
whom he was defeated and taken prisoner. Mithridates
treated him with great cruelty, and finally put him to
death by pouring molten gold down his throat.
AQUINAS, THOMAS [THOMAs of AQUIN OR
Aquino], was of noble descent, and nearly allied to
several of the royal houses of Europe. He was born in
1225 or 1227, at Rocca Sicca, the castle of his father
Landulf, count of Aquino, in the territories of Naples.
Having received his elementary education at the mon-
astery of Monte Cassino, he studied for six years at the
University of Naples, leaving it in his sixteenth year.
While there he in all probability came under the in-
fluence of the Dominicans, who were then the rising
order in the church, and were doing their utmost to
enlist within their ranks the ablest young scholars of the
age, for in spite of the opposition of his family, and
especially of his mother (an opposition which was over-
come only by the intervention of Pope Innocent IV.),
he assumed the habit of St. Dominic in his seventeenth
€21]".
y His superiors, seeing his great aptitude for theological
study, sent him to the Dominican School in Cologne,
where Albertus Magnus, the most famous thinker of his
age, lectured on philosophy and theology. In 1245
Albertus was called to Paris, and there Aquinas followed
him, and remained with him for three years, at the end
of which he graduated as bachelor of theology. In 1248
he returned to Cologne with Albertus, and was appointed
second lecturer and magister studentium. This year
may be taken as the beginning of his literary activity and
public life. Ere he left Paris he had thrown himself
with ardor into the controversy raging between the
University and the Begging Friars respecting the liberty
of teaching, resisting both by speeches, and pamphlets
the authorities of the University; and when the dispute
was referred to the Pope, the youthful Aquinas was
chosen to defend his order, which he did with such suc-
cess as to overcome the arguments of the celebrated
William of St. Amour, the champion of the University,
and one of the most celebrated men of the day. In the
year 1257, along with his friend Bonaventura, he was
created doctor of theology, and began to give courses of
lectures upon this science in Paris, and also in Rome
and other towns in Italy. From this time onwards his
life was one of incessant toil, and we marvel at the
amount of literary work he was able to do, when we
remember that during his short public life he was con-
tinually engaged in the active service of his order, was
392
A Q U – A R A
frequently travelling upon long and tedious journeys,
and was constantly consulted on affairs of state by the
reigning pontiff.
The writings of Thomas are of very great importance
for philosophy as well as for theology, for he is the
spirit of scholasticism incarnate, and has done more than
any other writer Save Augustine to fashion the theologi-
cal language of the Western Church. The mediaeval
spirit, in all its various manifestations, aimed at universal
empire by way of external and visible rule. Its idea of the
State was the Holy Roman Empire actually embracing
and dominating over all the countries in Europe; its idea
of the Church, that visible and tangible catholicity which
existed before the great Reformation ; and in the depart-
ment of knowledge it showed its characteristic quality
in its desire to embrace in one system, under one science,
the whole of human thought.
AQUITANIA. This was, in the time of Julius
Caesar, the name given to that part of Gallia which lay
between the Garumna and the Pyrenees, and was inhab-
ited by a race distinct from the Celtae. Though the
greater proportion of the Aquitanian tribes made submis-
sion to Caesar, it was not until 28 B.C. that the region was
fairly brought under the Roman yoke by M. Valerius
Messala. In the 3d century after Christ Aquitania was
divided into three parts. Aguitamia Prima consisted of
the eastern portion of the district between the Loire and
the Garonne; Aquitania Secunda, of the western part
of the same district; and Aguitamia 7ertia or Movem-
zopzz/ania, of the region between the Pyrenees and the
Garonne, or the original Aquitania. Like the rest of
Gaul, Aquitania absorbed a large measure of Roman
civilization which continued to distinguish the district
down to a late period. About the end of the 7th cen-
tury, an adventurer named Eudes or Eudon had made
himself master of the region. Attacked by the Sara-
cens, he inflicted on them a crushing defeat, but, on their
reappearance, was obliged to call in the aid of Charles
Martel, who, as the price of his assistance, claimed the
homage of his ally. He was succeeded by his son Hu-
nald, who, after carrying on a war against the aggressions
of Pepin the Short, retired to a convent, and left the
conflict and the kingdom to Guaifer (Waifer). For nine
years he strenuously maintained the hopeless strife, till
his assassination in 768. With him perished for a time
the national independence, but not the national individ-
uality, of the Aquitanians. The kingdom of Aquitania
was bestowed by Charlemagne on the infant Louis in
781; and from him it was transmitted to his son Pepin,
on whose death the Aquitanians loyally chose Pepin the
younger, but were opposed by Louis, who gave the
crown to Charles the Bald. Hence ensued a long period
of confusion and conflict, which resulted in the compara-
tive success of Charles, who granted the Aquitanians a
nominal separation from Neustria, and gave them his
son Charles, eight years old, to be their nominal king
(855)—nominal, not only because he was a child, but
because his kingdom was in a state of anarchy through
domestic faction and foreign invasion. On his death
(866), Louis the Stammerer succeeded to the titular sov-
ereignty. About 886 Guilhem (William) the Pious,
count of Auvergne, the founder of the abbey of Cluny,
obtained the title of Duke of Aquitania, and transmitted
it (918) to Guilhem II. He was followed in succession
by Raimond Pons, count of Toulouse (d. 950), Guilhem
Tête d’Etoupes, count of Poitiers (d. 963), Guilhem
Fier-à-Bras, whose sister was married by Hugh Capet
(970), and Guilhem the Great (977–1030), who had hard
work to maintain his ground, but at last changed his
title into an effective lordship. His duchy almost
reached the limits of the I. and II. Aquitania of the Ro-
mans, but did not extend south of the Garonne, that dis-
trict having been ever since the 6th century in the pos-
session of the Gascons. Guilhem refused the empire
offered him by the Italians, and died at Maillezais.
Meanwhile civilization and refinement were gradually
increasing. The names of Guilhem VI. (d. 1038), Guil-
hem VII., who joined Gascony and Bordeaux to his
duchy, and married his daughter to Henry the Black,
and Guilhem VIII. bring us down to Guilhem IX., who
Succeeded in Io&6, and made himself famous as a crusader
and troubadour. Guilhem X. (d. 1137) married his daugh-
ter to Louis VII. of France, and Aquitania went as her
dowry. On her divorce from Louis and marriage with
Henry II. of England (II.52), her possession passed to
her new husband, and from that time continued to follow
the fortune of the English territories in France. The
name Guienne, the modern corruption of Aquitania,
seems to have come into use about the Ioth century.
ARABESQUE, a term to which a meaning is now
commonly given that is historically incorrect. We apply
it to the grotesque decoration derived from Roman re-
mains of the early time of the empire, not to any style
derived from Arabian or Moorish work; the term is
therefore a misnomer. Arabesque and Moresque are
really distinct; the latter is from the Arabian style of
ornament, developed by the Byzantine Greeks for their
new masters, after the conquests of the followers of Ma-
homet; and the former is a term pretty well restricted to
varieties of cinquecento decoration, which have nothing
in common with any Arabian examples in their details,
but are a development derived from Greek and Roman
grotesque designs, such as we find them in the remains
of ancient palaces at Rome, and in ancient houses at
Pompeii. These were reproduced by Raphael and his
pupils in the decoration of some of the corridors of the
Loggie of the Vatican at Rome: grotesque is thus a bet-
ter name for these decorations than Arabesque.
We will first briefly describe the Saracenic, as the
elder sister of the two styles, which was ingeniously de-
veloped by the Byzantine Greek artists for their Arabian
masters in the early times of Mahometan conquest.
Every natural object was proscribed; the artists were,
therefore, reduced to making symmetrical designs from
forms which should have no positive meaning; yet the
Byzantine Greeks, who were Christians, managed to
work even their own ecclesiastical symbols, in a disguised
manner, into their tracery and diapers; as the lily, for
instance. The cross was not so introduced; this, of
course, was inadmissible; but neither was the crescent
ever introduced into any of this early work in Damascus
or Cairo. The crescent was itself not a Mahometan de-
vice till after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453
A.D. The crescent, as the new moon, was the symbol of
Byzantium; and it was only after that capital of the
Eastern empire fell into the hands of the Turks that this
symbol was adopted by them. . The crescent and the
cross became antagonistic standards, therefore, first in
the 15th century. And the crescent is not an element of
original Moorish decoration.
Such is the genuine Arabesque of the Arabs, but a
very different style is now implied by the term—the
Arabesque of the cinquecento, a purely classical orna-
mentation. This owes its origin to the excavation and
recovery of ancient monuments, and was developed
chiefly by the sculptors of the north, and the painters
of Central Italy; by the Lombardi of Venice, by Agos-
tino Busti of Milan, by Bramanti of Urbino, by Ra-
phael, by Giulio Romano, and others of nearly equal
merit.
ARABGIR, or ARABKIR, a town of Turkey in Asia,
in the vilayet of Sivas, situated in a deep ravine near a
small tributary of the Euphrates, 150 miles S.S.W. of
Trebizond.
A R A
393
ARABIA is a peninsula stretching from north-west
to south-east, between 30° and 12° 45' N. lat., and
between 32° 30' and 60° E. long. Its form is that of
an irregular parallelogram, almost a triangle indeed,
bounded on the W.; S., and E. by the Red Sea, the
Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf respectively; on
the N., where runs its narrowest limit, it joins on to the
mainland of Syria. Its correct boundary in this direc-
tion would be assigned by a line drawn transversely,
west and east, from Suez to the head of the Persian
Gulf. But some writers, Burckhardt included, add to
this extent all the Syrian desert behind Palestine, and
the valleys of the Jordan and Orontes up to the village
of Anah, on the Euphrates, 34° N. lat.; and then down
again by the right bank of that river to where, joined
by the Tigris, it takes the name of Shatt-el-Arab, and so
to the Persian Gulf again. Roman geographers make
Arabia the further present of Mesopotamia; and Abul-
Feda, an Aleppine of the 13th century, would even
bring its denomination so far north as to include Aleppo.
We will, however, accept the first-mentioned as the
most correct line of demarcation. According to this,
the extreme length of the Arabian peninsula, from the
head of the gulf of Akabah to the straits of Bab-el-
Mandeb would be about 1300 miles; its greatest
breadth, in 23° N. lat., from the Red Sea coast, west,
to Ras-el-Hadd, east, 1500 miles; and its apex, where
it joins on to the continent of Asia, rather under 900
miles.
The western coast is washed by the Red Sea. It
exhibits a range of low mountains, seldom exceeding
2000 feet in height, abrupt in outline, and generally
barren; between them and the sea is a narrow and
sandy strip fringed along the margin with coral reefs.
Its aspect from the sea is almost everywhere desolate in
the extreme. Nor does the entire coast-line present a
single harbor, properly , speaking, , where anything
larger than an ordinary schooner could find entry; only
roadsteads, the approaches to which are often rendered
difficult by shoals and reefs. The Arab side of the Red
Sea, especially in the southern half, is thickly studded
with small islands, some of which — Kotembel and
Pebel Tar in particular—are of volcanic origin. A few
fishermen inhabit some of them; but none — the island
of Perim, near the entrance of the Bab-el-Mandeb
straits, lately occupied by a British garrison, alone
excepted—are of any importance.
The south-eastern coast, extending from Bab el-Man-
deb up to Ras-el-Hadd, is not less dreary than that of
Hejaz in appearance, and, like it, presents a low and
barren mountain range, diversified only by jagged rocks
amid tracts of sand; but it possesses several good har-
bors — that of Aden in particular, now a British coaling
station, about Ioo miles east of Bab-el-Mandeb; that of
Dafar, further up; and that of Keshum; though the two
last, owing to the want of traffic with the interior, now
serve as mere ports of refuge. Along this shore lie sev-
eral islands, the largest being that of Mozeyrah, near
Ras-el-Hadd, but they are only the haunts of a few half
savage fishermen, or are wholly desert.
The third coast, reaching from Ras-el-Hadd to the
top of the Persian Gulf, is of a more cheerful character.
Its easterly half, from Ras-el-Hadd to Cape Musandam,
is in general fertile, well cultivated, and backed up by
the lofty forest-sprinkled chain of Jebel Akhdar, or, the
“Green Mountain.” Here is situated the excellent har-
bor of Mascat, one capable of admitting the largest ves-
sels to an almost land-locked shelter; besides other
smaller but secure ports. Passing Cape Musandam to
the west and north, the coast, though low and Sandy in
some places, is in others, palm-fringed and cultivated;
and the neighborhood of the shallow harbor of Kateef,
opposite Bahreyn, is especially fertile. Near the head
of the gulf is the harbor, a very good one, of Koweyt,
called also Grane. It furnishes the best ships and sailors
of these seas. Many islands stud the Gulf Ormuz, fa-
mous in Persian, and, later, in Portuguese history. Near
the narrow entrance, by Cape Musandam, not far off,
extends Iishm, a large and fertile island; higher up lie
side by side the sister islands of Bahreyn, Menaneh, and
Moharrik, where commence, and continue eastward
all along the neighboring coast of Katar, the most pro-
ductive pearl fisheries in the world. But countless shoals
and reefs render the navigation of the Persian Gulf
scarcely less dangerous than that of the Red Sea; storms,
too, often arise suddenly on its waters, and shipwrecks
are of frequent occurrence.
Arabia, taking it as a whole, cannot be called a fer-
tile country. Its general features are those of an ele-
vated table-land, backed up by low mountains to the
west, and gradually rising in the direction of the east
and south, where we find it bordered by a second and
loftier mountain range. The mountains, if we except
Jebel Akhdar in Oman, are almost wholly barren on
their sea side; but are occasionally fertile enough on their
inner ranges, especially in Yemen and the southerly dis-
tricts. Their outlines are rugged and precipitous to a
degree that, joined with the refraction of an over-heated
atmosphere, gives them from a distance the appearance
of being of a much greater height than they really are.
Behind them lies an uninterrupted ring of sterile desert,
broadest on the south and east, where it expands into a
huge waste of burning sand; narrower towards the west
and north, where it is more rocky in its character.
Within this belt rises a series of table-lands, undulating
in long slopes, and intersected with deep valleys; the
former rich in pasturage, the latter in field and garden
produce. This central plateau constitutes about one-
third of the total superficies of the peninsula; the desert
ring another third; the coast ranges make up the rest.
In describing Arabia, the ancients, whose knowledge
on the subject was slight, were accustomed to lay down
an imaginary tripartite division, founded on the natural
qualities of those districts with which they were more
or less acquainted; and accordingly portioned off Arabia
into Petraea, Deserta, and Felix, or the Stony, the
Desert, and the Happy; without, however, assigning
any very distinct boundaries to these regions. More
modern geographers, Eastern and European, have,
with better but still inadequate information, either
multiplied or confounded the main divisions of the pen-
insula. Much indeed of its surface is even now unknown
to us, except by the uncertain hearsay of Arab narrators.
However, the ground-plan laid down by Niebuhr, the
most accurate and painstaking of travellers, is substan-
tially correct, and has been so often confirmed, never
invalidated, by later discoveries, that we may safely
follow its indications.
Beginning from the north-west, the first district we
meet with is that of the Sinaitic peninsula, a small
triangle having its apex on the Red Sea, , its base on
Palestine, and its sides formed by the Gulf of Suez on
the west, and that of Akabah on the east. It is a mere
collection of naked rocks and craggy precipices, inter-
sected by long narrow defiles and sandy valleys, in
which tamarisk bushes, dwarf acacias, thorny shrubs,
and some kinds of euphorbia, are almost the only vege-
tation; in a few favored spots a cluster of wild date-
palms may occasionally be met with; and the scanty
soil after the spring rains becomes sprinkled over with
thin blades of grass that the summer suns soon wither.
The hot wells near Suez, called “Eyoon Moosa,” or
the “Fountains of Moses,” are well known ; as also are
those entitled “Hammam Pharaoon,” or the “Bath of
394
A R A
Pharaoh,” the waters of which resemble in their con-
stituents those of the Dead Sea.
The second geographical district is that of the Hejaz,
along the eastern shore of the Red Sea, and extending
inland for a distance varying from sixty to a hundred
and fifty miles. It consists of a continuation of the
Sherá mountain range, with a narrow sandy slip of level
ground towards the sea and a hilly plateau on the in-
land side, broken by bare and fantastic rocks.
The southernmost extremity of this region, marked
off as the “Haram,” or Sacred Territory. but in its
physical characteristics identical with the rest, contains
the town of Mecca.
With Hejaz we may also reckon, topologically speak-
ing, the oases of Jowf and Douma, situated to the north-
east, both formed by broad and abrupt depressions in
the inland plateau, and surrounded by a wide-spread
wilderness of rock and sand.
Of plants there is an endless variety, but insufficiently
known, for Arab botany has yet to be investigated.
“Samh,” a small mesembryanthemum, from the grain
of which the Arabs prepare a sort of porridge that
serves them in lieu of bread; “Mesaa,” a thorny bush
that bears a subacid berry not unlike a currant in appear-
ance and flavor; “Nebek,” the Rhamnus lotus of bot-
anists; many kinds of euphorbia, absinthium, and the
bitter colocynth, used by the Arabs for medicine, grow
wild everywhere. The tamarisk or “Talh,” the south-
ern larch or “Ithel,” the chestnut, the sycamore, and
several other trees, the wood of which is, however, too
porous and brittle for use as timber, are natives of
Hejaz ; so also is the wild dwarf date-palm, the almond,
the pomegranate, and the “gum-arabic” tree, a grace-
ful and delicate acacia. Fine grass, intermingled with
various aromatic herbs, springs up in patches between
the stones and among the sand; but the want of suffi-
cient rainfall and the dryness of the atmosphere prevent
any really profitable vegetation, except in the few oases
already mentioned. Taking it as a whole, the Hejaz is,
with the exception of the actual and recognized desert
alone, the most hopelessly sterile district in the whole
Arabian peninsula.
Following the Red Sea coast down to its southernmost
extremity at Aden, we have in view the third great geo-
graphical section, that of Yemen. It includes two
regions, sea-shore and inland, the former of which is
commonly called the “Tehamah.” This is a wide strip
of coast left by the mountain chain, which, continuing
on from the Hejaz, runs down as far as Aden, but here-
abouts recedes somewhat to the east, thus forming an
arc, in the curve of which lies the Tehamah. The
mountainous district extends far inland, and gives out sev-
eral branches, some of which reach about three hundred
miles to the east.
Tehamah is, as might be expected from its topical and
geographical conditions, a very hot region; it is one also
of but moderate fertility, though the soil, an agglomera-
tion principally of coral debris, is less absolutely barren
than that of Hejaz. The rains here are periodical, their
fall coinciding with the epoch of the Indian monsoon;
they give rise to numerous torrents, that traverse the
plains, and some of which hardly dry up throughout the
year. The coast-line is indented by several small har-
bors and roadsteads; intricate coral reefs render the
approach everywhere difficult, often dangerous.
Yemen, under which name the whole south-western
quarter of the peninsula is popularly included, possesses
many advantages, both of climate and soil, denied to the
greater portion of Arabia. It is a highland country,
formed by a labyrinth of precipitous hills and fertile
valleys. The air is pure and even cool; the seasons
are as regular as those of eastern India, and succeed each
other in much the same order. No accurate survey has
yet been made to determine the elevation of its mountains,
some of which have been roughly, but perhaps incorrectly,
estimated at five thousand feet in height; their general
direction is from north-west to south-east. The largest
plains, or plateaus, inclosed by them are that of Nejran
on the north, that of Sanaã to the south, and that of Mareb
on the east, on the frontier of the great desert. The
oasis of the southern Jowf, a basin-like depression
occurring in the sandy waste that reaches inland from
the high grounds of Yemen up to Oman, on the other
side of Arabia, may also be reckoned as belonging to
Yemen.
It is in this region that Arabian vegetation obtains its
most varied, as also its most valuable development. In
the neighborhood of Medinah commences the great date-
palm belt that crosses the peninsula, and extends south-
ward as far as lat. 23° in full vigor. A hundred and
more varieties of this tree are said to grow in the imme-
diate vicinity of Medinah alone: the quality of the fruit
varies for each kind, as also do its size, color, and flavor.
The poorest of all, the “sihamee" date, a yellow, stringy
fruit, is much eaten by the Bedouins; the “birnee" is the
red and succulent; the “jebelee,” an upland date, is a
staple article of export. Nejd is, however, the favored
land of date-palms: every valley that intersects its vast
plateaus waves with them, and the fruit, which often
attains a length of two inches, with a proportionate
thickness, far surpasses, the best products of Hejaz in
lusciousness as in size. Eaten fresh or stewed with but-
ter, they form the staff of Arab food; and the pulp,
after the kernels have been extracted, close-pressed and
half-dried, is exported under the name of aſ weh to
almost every part of the East.
Besides the date tree, the “doom,” a fan-leaved palm
bearing a large fibrous and Sweetish fruit, is not of un-
common growth in the central and southern districts;
while the cocoa-nut and betel are planted, though not to
such an extent as to reckon among the articles of ordinary
cultivation, along the southern and eastern coast. So are
also the banana, the papay, and the Indian fig; but all
these are of recent importation from the opposite coast
of India. Vines are cultivated throughout Arabia, and
have been so from time immemorial; and though since
the well-known prohibition of the Koran the grapes are
no longer pressed for wine, they are in great request as
an article of consumption, both fresh and dried. Senna,
an article much used by the Arabs in their rough medi-
cine, grows in the southern Hejaz and the Tehamah; so
also does the balsam tree, the best of which is indigenous
to the district of Safra, near Mecca; its gum is sold ever,
within Arabia itself at a high price.
But although the Arabs themselves consider the date-
palm the special pride and ornament of their country, 2.
more general verdict would probably be given outside of
Arabia itself in favor of the coffee plant. This shrub is
by some supposed to be indigenous to Abyssinia; it has,
however, for several centuries attained its most extensive
distribution and its highest standard of produce in Yemen,
where it is cultivated throughout about half of the upland
district, the best quality of berry being that which ripens
on the western slopes of the mountains in the neighbor-
hood of Sanaã.
Next to Yemen, and lying along the coast of the In-
dian Ocean, from Aden to Cape Ras-el-Hadd, a distance
of 1200 miles, are situated the provinces of Hadramaut
and Mahrah, the former mentioned in Genesis under the
name of Hazarmaveth, and more celebrated in ancient
Arab chronicles, and in the notices of Strabo and Ptol-
emy, than it has been in later times. This coast has
been visited and even partially explored by Captain
Wellsted and other navigators.
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395
From Ras-el-Hadd to the extreme northern limits of
Arabia, at the head of the Persian Gulf, the provinces
of Oman and Hasa complete the sea-coast. Oman is a
mountainous district, its principal range, that of Jebel
Akhdar, or the “Green Mountain,” so called from the
abundant vegetation that covers its sides, reaches an
ascertained height of 6000 feet; several other minor
chains run parallel with it and with the coast; the plains
beneath them are well watered and fertile, though, like
every other part of Arabia, destitute of running rivers
or streams, the want of which is here atoned by copious
wells and springs, running over into large pools, and
supplying an extensive system of irrigation.
Near Cape Musandam, at about 406 miles north-west
of Ras-el-Hadd, the mountains (which, averaging in this
promontory from 2000 to 3000 feet in height, come
down in precipices to the sea edge), are intended with
numerous deep creeks and bays, several of which afford
good anchorage and shelter, only they are cut off by
the steepness of the surrounding cliffs from inland com-
lmunication.
Owing to the rapid interchange of heat and cold occa-
sioned by the peculiar situation of the gulf between the
torrid levels of Arabia on the one side, and the high,
not infrequently snow-capped, mountains of Persia on
the other, the climate of this coast is remarkably
irregular in its seasons, and subject to sudden storms of
great violence, with heavy rains. It is also decidedly
unhealthy; and low fevers, sometimes of an intermit-
tent, sometimes of a typhoid type, are never absent from
the villages.
Indeed the whole of the Arabian sea-shore, which we
have now thus summarily surveyed, partakes more or
less of the same unhealthy character, one often noticed
by travellers, and experienced by some of them with
fatal effect. We have seen, too, that in general outline
it offers little variety, being mostly mountainous,
especially in its southern part, with a narrow and rarely
fertile shore-fringe; while the mountains themselves
vary in height and extent, being at their loftiest and
widest in Yemen and Oman, where their rich vegetation,
joined to a pure air, and a climate tempered by the
elevation, offers an agreeable contrast to the dissimilar
qualities of the coast itself, narrower and more barren
elsewhere.
We have now to consider the central plateau, or Nejd,
an important region, regarded by the Arabs themselves
as peculiarly their own — the stronghold of their vigor-
ous nationality, and the birthplace of their most cher-
ished traditions and institutions.
It is girded on every side by a broad desert belt, which
the traveller must of necessity cross before he reaches the
inner region. It is this very desert that, having been
often witnessed on its outer rim, but never traversed
from one side to the other by Greek or Roman, or
even, in the greater number of instances, by modern ex-
plorers, has given occasion to the belief that central
Arabia was itself a little better than an expanse of unin-
habitable waste — an idea expressed by the Arabia Des-
erta of the ancients, and often repeated by later writers.
This desert, on the north and north-east, where it ex-
tends from Syria and the Hejaz inwards, is a region of
hard gravelly soil, from which circumstance it has de-
rived the elastic title of “Petraea.” It is diversified here
and there by belts of sand, with occasional patches of
stunted bush and thin grass, indicative of moisture at
Some depth below; the sand, too, affords rooting for a
feathery euphorbia, the “ghada" of the Arabs, a favor-
ite browse of camels. The general height of this tract,
backed up as it is by the Syrian plateau on the north,
and the Sherá mountains on the west, appears to vary
from IOOO to 2000 feet above the sea. Eastward it
slowly slopes down to the level of the Persian Gulf. A
long serpentine depression, beginning in the Syrian ter-
ritory near Palmyra, traverses it in a south-easterly
direction; this is Wadi Seihan, or the “Valley of the
Wolf,” leading to the deep oval hollow of Jowf, with
its oasis of palms and gardens. A more extensive but
shallower depression to the west forms the oasis of Tey-
ma, known to Hebrew chroniclers. South of Jowf and
Teyma the desert changes its stony to a sandy character,
and its surface is heaped up by the winds into vast ridges,
called the Nefood or “passes,” not to be crossed without
some danger; for, besides the almost absolute want of
water, a few scanty and brackish wells of which, sepa-
rated from the other by intervals of 60 or more miles,
alone exist, it is here that the “simoon,” or poisoned
wind, often blows — a phenomenon entirely distinct
from the customary “shelook,” or sirocco, of the south,
much as a hurricane differs from an ordinary gale, though
the two have been occasionally confounded in popular
writings. The simoon is a peculiar condition of the
atmosphere, resembling in all essential points a cyclone.
As in the cyclone, the central space, or the simoon
itself, is calm, but is occupied by a gas unfit for respira-
tion; while around this is a centre, slowly travelling on,
there eddy violent gusts of heated air, like those of a
furnace, though it is not to them, but to the compara-
tive vacuum which they surround, that the simoon owes
its suffocating qualities. It approaches slowly amid the
whirl of air currents that precede it for some distance;
its violet color announces it when actually near. Dur-
ing its presence the only chance of preserving life till the
mephitic vapor has passed over, is found in covering the
face with a cloth and lying prome on the sand, thus to
inhale what little atmospheric air still exists in the upper
ground stratum, and thus to maintain the breath till the
period, varying from two to ten minutes, of the poison
column be gone by; meanwhile the feeling in the chest is
that of suffocation, and that in the limbs as if molten
iron were being poured over them. Camels instinctively
bury their muzzles in the sand during the simoon; but
horses are said not to possess the same preservatory in-
stinct, and to perish in consequence. The precise nature
of the phenomenon, and its origin, are subjects of con-
jecture; but its general character, that of an eddy of
heated atmosphere around a central space occupied by a
deleterious gas, the whole travelling at a slow rate, and
generally from South or east to north and west, is not to
be mistaken.
Beyond Hareek, or “Burning,” as the name means,
to the south, as also behind Wadi Dowasir and its
neighborhood, lies the great Arab desert or Dahna,
“The Red ” as the Arabs call it, - a vast extent of
sand, said to cover nearly 50,000 square miles, and
only jotted here and there at far intervals by a few
clustered bushes or dwarf palms, indicative of moisture
below the surface, else wholly desolate. Its surface is
ribbed into huge sand waves, the principal ones being
from north to south,<-that is at right angles to the pre-
vailing wind, which is here the east; but these main
waves are again crossed, intersected, and jumbled with
other less regular undulations, the work of more vari-
able breezes.
But neither here nor elsewhere in Arabia do these
clouds or columns of moving sand, the terror of cara-
vans, appear, that have been fabled by travellers and
poets. Tracks are indeed speedily covered and effaced,
to the great annoyance and occasional danger of the
wayfarer; but neither he nor his beast run the least risk
of being thus buried alive. Hunger, and, still more,
thirst, are sufficient guardians of a region, to which,
however, Arab fancy has attributed the additional pro-
tection of evil spirits and monsters of death.
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A R A
This greater desert, the “Roba el Khaliyeh" or
“Empty Space” of geographers—the “Dahna” or
“Crimson " of modern Arabs, so called from the pre-
vailing color of its heated sands,-extends to Yemen
and Hadramaut on the South-west, south, and south-
east, and to Oman on the east. It is separated, how-
ever, from the northern half of the waste-ring that
girdles Nejd by the continuation of Wadi Dowasir and
Shahran, up to the mountains of Tayef, near Mecca;
and this is the only line by which the plateau of Nejd
can be reached from the coast without actually crossing
the sandy or stony wilderness. Lying as it does on
or within the tropics, the heat of this great desert is
said to be fearful by day, and, owing to the general low
level, to be scarcely mitigated at night. But it is never
traversed in its full width, not even by Bedouins; and
little or no credit can be attached to the relations of
those who pretend to have explored it, and to have
found wonders in its recesses. -
Throughout the highlands of Nejd the climate, though
often hot by day, is cool and pleasant by night; the
spring and the autumn rains seldom fail in their seasons;
and the soil, where not artificially irrigated, produces
excellent pasture, where irrigated, it renders very tol-
erable garden produce and field crops. Storms of thun-
der and lightning are of rare occurrence, and the torna-
does that from time to time visit the Arabian coasts are
here unknown. The prevailing, as also the most
refreshing winds, are from the east and north-east; the
south and west winds are heated and unwholesome. Epi-
demic diseases are rare, and only one visitation, and that
not a severe one, of cholera is on record within Nejd.
Summing up, Arabia may roughly be divided, as to
its surface extent, into a third of coast-ring and mount-
ains, part barren, part either cultivated or susceptible
of being so; another third of central plateau, also tol-
erably fertile; and a third of desert circle, intervening,
with only one gap, that in the latitude of Mecca,
between the first and second. The central space,
whether plateau or desert, varying in height from IOOO
to 3000 feet above the sea, possesses three important
mountain ranges, two transverse, namely, Jebel Shomer
and Jebel Ared, and one vertical, that commences with
Toweyk, and is continued by the Akhaf, these latter
being the watershed of the peninsula, the general rise
of which is from west to east. The highest mountain
peaks—those, namely, of Jebel Akhdar in Oman —do
not apparently exceed 6000 feet.
In a description of the animals of Arabia the first
place is undoubtedly due to the horse, which, though
the opinion is unsupported by scientific evidence, has by
some been supposed to be indigenous to the peninsula.
As a fact, it is here that this animal attains its highest
perfection: not, indeed, that of size; for a true Nedjee
of the best and purest breed seldom reaches and never
perhaps exceeds fifteen hands in height; nor that of mere
speed, for a trained European racer would easily dis-
tance a thoroughbred Arab on any ordinary course; but
for perfection of form, symmetry of limb, cleanness of
muscle, beauty of appearance—for endurance of fatigue,
for docility, and for speed maintained to distances so
long as to appear incredible, the Nedjee horse acknowl-
edges no equal. The animal is too well known to
require minute description on the present occasion; but
it is important to have a clear idea of the principal divis-
ions of its race and kind, which have been strangely
and even injuriously confused by many writers.
Tradition assigns the origin of the present Arab stock
to Yemen, but historical records, dating as far back as
the 5th century, show that the best quality and the great-
est number of horses were then to be found exactly in
the same district where they now exist, namely, in Nejd.
Secondly, a few thorough-bred Nejdees have crossed
the frontier as presents. In this manner, Teysul, the
late monarch of Nejd, sent forty head from his own sta-
ble as an honorary tribute to the reigning Ottoman sul-
tan, Abdel-Azeez; and similar offerings have been now
and then made, as fear or other motives may have dic-
tated, to different other governments, and even to distin-
guished individuals. But mares are never given away
thus; only stallions.
Reared under an open shed, and early habituated to
the sight of men, to the sound and glitter of weapons,
and to all the accessories of human life, the colt grows
up free from vice and timidity, and even acquires a de-
gree of intelligence that surprises a stranger. Barley
and dates are the chief stall provender; but the grass of
the pasture-grounds, in the selection of which much care
is taken, is the ordinary nourishment of an Arab horse.
Of water the allowance is always kept purposely scant.
A good Nejdee will canter for four-and-twenty hours in
summer-time, and eight-and-forty in winter, without
once requiring drink. Raw meat, dried, is occasionally
given in small quantities when extra exertion is required;
lucerne grass is employed for lowering the tone. Geld-
ings are very rare. The color that most frequently oc-
curs is grey; then comes chestnut; then white and sorrel;
mottled grey and black are now and then to be found;
dark bay never.
Colts are ridden early — too early, indeed—in their
third or even second year, and are soon broken in to a
steady walk, to a canter, and to the ambling pace which
is a special favorite with Arab riders; racing, an Arab
amusement from time immemorial, and the game of
“jerzed,” a kind of tournament or mock fight with blunt
palm-sticks, highly popular throughout the peninsula,
complete the training both as to wind and pace. Sad-
dles are seldom used in Nejd, and stirrups never, but
both are occasionally employed in the Hejaz and Yemen.
So it is also with bits, the place of which is taken in
Nejd by halter-ropes, the real guidance of the animal
being almost wholly effected by the pressure of the rider's
leg and knee. Shoes, too, are of rare occurrence, nor
are they needed in the light and sand-mixed soil of the
central provinces; on the other hand, the hoofs are often
rubbed with grease, to counteract the drying effects of
the heated ground. Of all niceties of grooming, dock-
ing and clipping excepted, Arabs are masters; and
their natural kindness to animals, a quality which they
share with most Orientals, together with the care which
every reasonable man bestows on a valuable article of
property, ensures to an Arab horse a good treatment at
the hands of his owner. But Arab horses do not com-
monly enter tents, nor play with women and children,
nor, in a general way, do they share family meals, nor
are they habitually kissed and cried over, as the imagina-
tion or credulity of some narrators has suggested. An
Arab, flying for his life, has indeed been known to give
the only morsel of dry bread about him to his horse
rather than eat it himself,- an act in which self-preserva-
tion had probably as large a share as affection. Lastly,
the standing prohibition of horse-selling from Nejd has
really nothing more romantic in it than a narrow-minded
application of the principles of protected monopoly; in
other cases, reluctance to conclude a bargain simply indi-
cates that the offer made was considered insufficient.
Below the horse in popular estimation and market
value, but far above him in general utility so far as
Arabia is concerned, comes that eminently Arab animal
the camel. Of these there are many varieties: the best,
swiftest, slimmest in form, and most docile to guidance,
is the “hejeen,” or dromedary. It is almost exclusively
employed for riding, whereas the “ibl,” or ordinary
camel, readily distinguished from the other by a coarser
A R A
397
build, a slower pace, and a less tractable disposition, is a
beast of burden, and indeed is employed for all purposes.
This species is very commonly, too, kept and reared for
the sake of its flesh and milk, precisely as horned cattle
are elsewhere ; in fact, boiled camel's meat is the
most ordinary article of animal food throughout the
peninsula, – it is a flabby, tasteless dish, not unlike
the poorest sort of beef; any flavor that it may possess
is musky and disagreeable. The milk, on the contrary,
is excellent, equal in quality and in Sanitary properties to
that of the she-ass, but neither butter nor cheese are
made from it. The wool, which in the camels of Nejd
and Oman is remarkably soft and fine, serves for making
articles of dress, into which it is woven, sometimes alone,
sometimes mixed with wool; it is much superior to
sheep's wool in every respect. The ordinary color of the
animal in the northern Arab provinces is a reddish brown,
but in Nejd and throughout the south, lighter tints,
varying from grey to white, are more common; black is
extremely rare, and highly esteemed. The least valuable
breeds are those of the north and west, — that is, those
of the Jowf, of Shomer, of the Hejaz, and of Yemen;
in Nejd, which region, from the number of its herds, is
sometimes called “Omm-el-Ibl,” or “the Mother of
Camels,” the species improves; but all agree in assigning
the palm to the dromedaries of Oman. In fine, all over
Arabia, whether among the Bedouins or the villagers,
camels are the principal staple of traffic, the favorite
investment of wealth, and the ordinary standard of
property.
Camel or dromedary, the Arabian animal has only
one hump, which increases or diminishes in size according
to the general good or bad condition of the beast. On
this hump the saddle — called, if a riding one, “ghabeet; ”
if one for baggage, “shedah. ”—is placed ; a halter is the
only rein employed, though even this is more commonly
dispensed with by the Arabs, who simply direct the
animal by a kick of the heel or a blow about the neck
with the “mihjan,” a small crooked stick carried in the
rider’s hand. The average travelling pace, an amble
between five and six miles an hour, and this a good
dromedary will continue for fifteen hours out of the
twenty-four during a week together. Six days in the
summer, ten in the winter, form the longest period that
the dromedary can continue to pace without a fresh
supply of water ; and hence an “ashavee" or “tenner”
is the title given to the best of the kind. Two hundred-
weight is the average load of the Arab carrying camel.
No animal puts its owner to less expense for its keep:
the thorn of the desert, dry grass, cactuses, euphorbias,
nothing comes amiss to a camel’s appetite; a ball of
paste weighing about a pound, and made of barley-meal
and water, is given every evening when extra work has
to be done.
An average duration of a camel's life is thirty years,
that of a dromedary somewhat less; the price of either
varies from about 4.4 to £80, according to quality, those
of Oman commanding the best market. But although
the camel, whether as an article of use or of sale, is far
more important to Arabia than the horse, it is in intel-
ligence and docility immeasurably inferior to the latter
animal, never becoming attached to, or even, seemingly at
least, acquainted with its owner; and never obeying
except perforce and under protest.
Next to camels, sheep and goats form an important
item of Arab wealth. The best sheep are the piebald
and large-tailed ones of Yemen ; those of Nejd, too, are
in great request on account of their flesh, which is excel-
lent, though their wool is confessedly less fine in quality.
Some districts of Oman produce a silky-haired breed not
unlike that of Angorah. The least esteemed sheep are
those of Hejaz and the north ; but, in compensation, the
goats of these provinces are longer-haired and generally
better than those of the south ; they are black, with long
drooping ears. Spring is the shearing season in Nejd,
but the wool is seldom exported, being mostly bought up
for local use. From the milk of these animals butter
and a white insipid kind of cheese are made: both are
articles of daily consumption in Arab households.
Cattle are reared throughout Arabia, but owing to
the prevailing deficiency of deep and succulent pasturage
their number is not so considerable as that of the camel.
Cows and oxen, throughout Nejd, Oman, and Yemen,
bear on their shoulders a hump analogous to the well-
known one of the so-called “Brahminee " bull; the or-
dinary color is dun; their legs are slender, the horns
short, and the whole stature diminutive. The kine of
the northern provinces are stouter and yield more milk;
they have no hump. Buffaloes are also kept in the
marshy districts that occur in Yemen and Oman. They
differ in no respect from the Indian breed; but, unlike
oxen, these animals cannot be reckoned in the ordinary
list of Arab farm stock, as they exist only in exceptional
circumstances, whereas a few kine may be found in
almost every village, and the irrigation of the fields and
gardens is mostly done by means of oxen.
Like the horse, the ass attains its greatest excellence
in Arabia, where it is more often employed for riding
than for loads; indeed, in some provinces, especially in
Hasa, it is the usual mount even of the wealthy. The
best species is that reared in Hasa and eastern Nejd,
where these animals are generally of the purest white in
color, and stand from eleven to thirteen hands high.
In pace they scarcely yield to an average horse. They
are often exported and sold at high prices in Egypt or at
Constantinople, a single animal fetching from 440 to
480. They are ridden in Arabia with side-saddles.
Good asses are to be found also in the other districts of
Nejd, in Yemen, even in Hejaz; their ordinary color is
grey. The same animal runs wild in many of the
open and mountainous regions of Arabia, and is
hunted for the sake of its skin by the Bedouins; but
the onager or zebra of Cutch is not met with in this
peninsula.
Mules and hinnies, common throughont Syria and
Mesopotamia, are extremely rare in Arabia proper, where
a prejudice exists against their use.
The Arab dogs differ very little from a jackal in ap-
pearance as in habits; its muzzle is pointed, its color
sandy, and its long and somewhat bushy tail is curled
over the back. When domesticated, the breed improves,
approaching the European wolf-dog ; these animals, by
training, become very tolerable indoor and outdoor
guardians, both of flocks and herds and of dwellings, and
in this capacity they are to be found everywhere, both
in the towns and villages and in the open country, where
they are not less useful to their masters than annoying
to strangers. Another kind of dog, belonging to the
greyhound species, and evidently of exotic origin, is often
reared in Arabia; the swiftest and most enduring of this
kind are from the province of Hasa. They are in great
favor as harriers.
Arab cats differ in no respect from their congeners in
Europe except in being rather smaller. The house-mice
too are absolutely the same ; but the rat is more akin to
the old black species of England, now nearly extinct.
Wild animals are not very numerous in any part of
Arabia proper, a fact which is sufficiently accounted for
by the want of running streams and open pools, as also
by the thinness of cover and forest growth; yet the
records of the country make mention of the existence of
some kinds of beasts which have subsequently disap-
peared altogether. Thus the long-maned lion, and, it
would appear, a large kind of ape resembling the
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A R A
African gorilla, often mentioned by the early writers,
are no longer to be found in the peninsula. But a small
tiger, formidable from its ferocity even to man, is still
met in the wild hilly regions north of Nejran, and again
in the inland recesses of the Oman mountains; while the
“fahd,” or panther, belongs to no particular province ;
it haunts the neighborhood of villages, and devours the
smaller stock. Lynxes have been seen in the Hejaz and
Nejd ; wolves are common in the mountains, and some-
times descend to attack the flocks in the open plains.
There are foxes too, but small and greyish in color.
The Arab hyaena is large and fierce; it is said, when
F. with hunger, to be dangerous even to men, and
gures in many a story of Arab adventure. Jackals are
more numerous in the northern than in the southern dis-
tricts. , Small black-faced long-tailed monkeys are to be
met with by herds in Yemen, and even, though less
often, in Nejd. A pretty little beast, the “yerbooa,”
jerboa, or kangaroo-rat, burrows in the sand, and comes
out to look with great curiosity on passers-by ; its hind
legs, long, and provided with equally long feet and toes,
are out of all proportion to the shortness of its fore-
paws; its motion, especially when pursued, is like that
of the kangaroo, and is performed with the help of its
long Sinewy tail. Its color, partly fawn, partly white,
is very agreeable to the eye. The Arabs eat its flesh,
which resembles that of the rabbit.
Of the deer tribe the gazelle is the most common; it
abounds not only in the open grounds, but even among
the villages and near the towns. It is sometimes, but
not often, hunted by the natives. Chase is more often
given to the mountain goat, partly on account of its
flesh, which is excellent, partly for the sake of its long
recurved horns, which are like those of the Alpine stein-
bock, only larger. But the hare, which is coursed with
dogs, and which resembles the European animal in every
respect except size, for it is smaller, is the favorite game
of the Arabs, who, unlike the Persians and Turks, have
no scruple as to the use of the meat.
The ornithology of Arabia is copious, but has been
little studied. Birds of prey, grey eagles, vultures,
bustards, and sparrow-hawks, abound in the open lands;
while partridges, especially of the mottled kind called
“kata,” are to be seen crossing the desert in quest of
water by flocks; quails frequent the mountain districts
in immense numbers, so also do rock-pigeons, wood-
pigeons, and a species of wild guinea fowl; wild ducks
are met with in plenty along the coast. Cranes, larks,
sparrows, finches, and the like, frequent the cultivated
lands; so also does the hoopoe, a bird held in high
honor by the Arabs on account of its traditional services
as messenger between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba
or Belkeys. A large mottled thrush, also considered to
be of good omen, is seen everywhere. Flocks of swal-
lows, the flight of which is invariably from the east, pay
annual visits to Arabia, where they are very useful in
diminishing the swarms of locusts, their favorite food;
one species of this bird appears, however, to be indigen-
ous to Yemen. Peacocks and parrots are also found in
the Southern provinces, and in Nejd, Hasa, and Oman;
hawks are kept by many, and are carefully instructed for
the purpose of falconry.
But the most remarkable bird of Arabia, and the only
one which forms a regular object of chase among the
natives, is the ostrich. Its extreme timidity, joined to
the swiftness of its pace — for although it does not fly,
it assists its running by the movement of its extended
wings—renders it in vain for the hunter to attempt
overtaking it on horseback; he therefore seeks to ap-
proach it generally when on its nest by artifice, and
kills it by a long shot; sometimes he snares it by a run-
ning noose. The feathers, the best of which belong to
the male bird, are sold at Damascus or Baghdad; the
eggs are eaten, and the shells are used for ornament.
The finest ostriches are those of the neighborhood of
Shomer and the uplands of Toweyk; they are often to
be seen, but at a safe distance, scudding across the Sands
in a file of twenty or thirty at a time.
Reptiles, except those of the lizard species, are com-
paratively rare in Arabia, though serpents are occa-
sionally met with; but, except the “afai” and the
“rukta,” both snakes of the viper class, the former
brown and the latter banded, and considered the deadlier
of the two, none are venomous. Boa-constrictors, re-
sembling the Indian rock-snake, have been also seen, -
none, however, large enough to warrant the wonderful
stories told about them by the Arabs themselves, whose
love of the marvellous often leads them beyond the
limits of truth.
Insects are, however, numerous enough; little scor-
pions, scarce an inch in length, but capable of inflicting
by their sting extreme pain, swarm in the desert sands;
and large ones, four or even six inches long, infest the
houses. Centipedes, too, are common; wasps and wild
bees tenant the rocks; flies are troublesome everywhere,
and mosquitoes on the coast; ants of all kinds, some
enormous in size and venomous in bite, are to be found
here; and a very poisomous spider, called, for its double
pinchers, “aboo hanekein,” inhabits the crevices of old
walls on the western coast, and is much dreaded by the
natives. Scolopendras, too, are not rare. It is some
compensation, however, for these serious yet only oc-
casional inconveniences, that no fleas or bugs exist in
any part of Arabia. But—a serious drawback—the
“arda,” or white ant, the 7Termes fatalis of Linnaeus,
is hardly less troublesome and destructive in the southern
provinces than in India itself. Lastly, vast swarms of
locusts, larger and darker in color than those commonly
seen further north, often infest the peninsula, and com-
mit grave ravages, especially when, as too frequently
happens, their visit is in the spring or early summer.
Their course is usually from east to west. However,
the Arabs, by converting these insects into an article of
food, make up to themselves in some measure for the
damage suffered by the crops and pastures; indeed,
locusts, boiled and slightly salted, are a favorite article
of sale in every Arab market, but particularly in Nejd
and the eastern districts.
The soil of Arabia varies according to the character
of its rocky substratum. All round the coast, and to a
distance corresponding with the breadth of the girding
mountain chain to the interior, it is formed of volcanic
and metamorphic detritus, with patches here and there
of a calcareous character, due to the upheaval and de-
composition of old coral banks. . Such a soil cannot but
be tolerably fertile, and it would be more so were the
scantiness of rain made up for by a more systematic
artificial irrigation. A second inconvenience is caused
by the encroachments of sand, which is at times drifted
by the winds from the desert inland in such quantities
as to become seriously injurious to cultivation. Behind
the mountains the surface of the desert to the north and
west is that of gravelly expanse, thickly sown over with
flint and quartz; while to the east and south it is an al-
most unalloyed waste of fine sand. Everywhere the
rock underlies it, and there exists, of course, no possi-
bility of utilising a space like this. But the whole of
the central plateau—that is, of Nejd, Kaseem, Shomer,
Yemamah, and the adjacent lands—is covered with a
tolerably deep layer of calcareous earth, mixed with
loam, well adapted for cultivation; the best is naturally
to be found in the valleys and sheltered spots.
Whether, however, the soil be rich or poor, agricult-
ure is, all over Arabia, very primitive in its conditions,
A R A
399
and, above all, in its implements. The plough used by
the peasants is wholly of wood and without wheels, an
instrument fit for scratching rather than furrowing the
ground; while in many places the earth is merely
turned over with a pitchfork, which is sometimes
worked by two men at a time. More skill is shown in
irrigation, for whatever crop is intended, its success
cannot be safely entrusted to the uncertain rain supply
alone. Accordingly, the slope of the ground, whether
field or plantation, is carefully calculated, and the surface
divided into compartments and traversed by furrows,
each communicating with the other, and all with some
large well, or, in favored situations, cistern ; while in
still more fortunate but rarer spots a running stream is
turned to profit. But in far the greater number of
instances the irrigation is from a well, with an orifice
varying from six to twenty-five feet in diameter, whence
the water is drawn up in large leather buckets, to which
are attached ropes passing over pulleys, and worked by
mules or oxen; these buckets, on reaching a cross-
beam, turn over and empty their contents into a sloping
trough that runs down to the main channel of the field
or garden. Green crops, vegetables, and the like, are
watered, when it is possible to do so, twice a day;
date-palms only once: the porous soil soon absorbs
any superfluous liquid that may have overpassed the
bounds assigned to it. In ascertaining the right spot
for sinking a well, in digging and coating it, as also in
the construction of the small cisterns often connected
with the source, the Arab peasants have by long
practice acquired a not contemptible skill.
The crops most common in Arabia are, first, the date,
a fruit already sufficiently described; it may, however,
be remarked here that the fecundation of the female
trees from the male is usually perfected by art. The
produce is annual: the earliest dates ripen in May,
others not till July or even August. This fruit, and
the dishes made of it by pressure or with butter, are to
the Arabs what corn is to more northern or rice to
southern nations. Next in importance, though much
more limited in extent, is coffee : very little, and that
of inferior quality only, is cultivated out of Yemen.
This growth has also been already described in detail.
Next comes the following:—Wheat, a somewhat rare
and not a very remunerative crop; barley, also in small
quantity;- these two growths are hardly distinguish-
able the one from the other by the eye, the color and
shape of the ear and beard being almost identical in
each. Millet is, on the contrary, largely sown, and
gives an abundant return; there are several species of
it; the grain, coarsely ground, is made into a sort of
gruel, which appears as a daily dish in Nejd. Rice is
looked on as a delicacy: it does not grow in the central
uplands, but succeeds well enough in the watered
coast districts, especially Hasa, Kateef, and Oman.
Beans and pulse are favorite crops; they are reared in
almost every part of the peninsula. Other garden
plants — melons, gourds, cucumbers, salad, cabbages,
onions, garlick, parsley, cumin, and the like, - are
cultivated. Orchards are planted and tended in most
districts; but of pruning the Arabs have little idea,
though they are not unacquainted with grafting.
There being no true winter in any part of Arabia, the
crops, such as they are, succeed each other all the year
round; many lands bear twice, an early and a latter har-
vest, though of different produce. Of manuring, of the
scientific rotation of crops, of weeding even, and clean-
ing, the Arabs have little knowledge. Reaping is gen-
erally done with the sickle,_ in some places the ripened
grain is torn up by the hand; threshing is performed by
oxen,-winnowing by the wind, grinding by the hand-
mill. To sum up, though the agriculture of Arabia is
- - - -
sufficient to supply its comparatively scanty population
with food, it gives almost no surplus for traffic or export-
ation, that of coffee and dates alone excepted.
In pasture-land Arabia is, on the other hand, singu-
larly fortunate. The very desert supplies, through the
greater part of its extent, sufficient browse for camels;
while the pasture-grass for horses, kine, and above all,
for sheep, on the upper hill slopes, and especially in
Nejd, is first-rate. The only draw-back is the occa-
sional failure of the spring rains and autumn showers;
when this occurs great distress is the result, and no com-
moner cause of contention and bloodshed arises between
the Arab shepherds or “Bedouins " than the struggle to
obtain, each for his own herd, the use of some yet undried
well or exceptional oasis of green pasturage left fresh
among the brown and withered herbage around.
In mineral products of a valuable description the
Arabia of our days is singularly poor, so much so as to
suggest the idea that the Arabian gold and jewels, often
mentioned by classical writers, must have been brought
from Yemen as from a mart or depot, not a place of
production. Yet even so late as 600 A.D. the exiled
monarch of Sanaa, Seyf of Yezen, could in his interview
with the Persian despot Chosroes, describe southern
Arabia as “a land the hills of which are of gold and its
dust silver.” Nowadays nothing is found to justify or
even to account for such gorgeous statements. Agates,
Onyxes, Carnelians, and, though rarely, topazes alone are
to be met with; of gold mines and precious ores not a
trace. Lead is, however, more common. The richest
ore of this mineral comes from the mountains of Oman;
it is brought down to Mascat, and exported thence by
sea. A small quantity of silver is also extracted from the
same mines. Cinnabar and iron occur in the Sinaitic
peninsula, and sulphur has been observed here and there
in the long volcanic range that reaches from Palestine
to Mecca. Rock-salt is extracted from many parts of
the coast range; it exists, too, in the central districts of
the peninsula, where of metals, a little iron excepted,
not a vestige appears.
The Arab coasts are much frequented by fish, many
of unknown species. Mackarel, mullet, Sole, ray, and
perch swarm in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf; nor are
the sheltered spots on the long line that fronts the
Indian Ocean less well provided. Sharks, too, abound
along the coast, and are used as food by the poorer
classes; crabs and oysters occur almost everywhere.
Hence fishing forms the occupation of a large propor-
tion among the literal population, but ignorance of
salting and curing deprives its products of export value.
The pearl fisheries of Arabia alone add to the com-
mercial riches of the country. They commence at the
islands of Bahreyn, which lie immediately off the Arab
shore, near the centre of the Persian Gulf, and continue
east and south along the district of Katar for a distance
of nearly 200 miles, after which the banks are lost in
deep surroundings. . The most productive shoals are
those between the islands of Halool and the coast of
Katar; the fishing season commences with the spring,
and lasts all through the summer. . Most of the villages
along the coast are wholly inhabited by divers, Arabs
and negroes, who by long practice can remain under
water a space of two minutes at a time; the depth they
reach does not exceed fifteen fathoms, and generally
falls much short of it. The oysters are opened on
shore, and the pearls carefully sorted and counted by
officials stationed for the purpose, as a heavy duty,
equalling 20 per cent. of their value, is levied on the spot,
though no further dues are taken on exportation. Some
of the pearls are of great size and value. The total an-
nual produce is roughly estimated at about £250,000,
but probably exceeds that sum ; a portion goes to India;
4OO
A R A
another portion up the gulf to Baghdad, whence it is dis-
tributed over Syria, Turkey, and Persia. The divers
themselves are the worst off, as their occupation induces
various congestive diseases and premature old age.
Pearls are found, too, in other bivalve shells of these
seas, and are extensively sold though at a lower price
than those of the oysters. Mother-of-pearl is also com-
mon, and is an ordinary article of export, especially to
Syria and Egypt; so are also occasionally the corals
and ornamental shells with which these seas abound.
In mechanical arts the Arabs are, as a rule, extremely
deficient, though favorable exceptions exist in some
districts. The Bedouin or pastoral population know little
else than the tanning of leather and the weaving of
coarse fabrics, such as articles of overdress, tent cover-
ings (which the women generally make of goat-hair),
headbands, and the like. In most villages and towns
of Nejd, one or more blacksmiths, whose work is of the
rudest possible description, are to be found; occasion-
ally an armorer, a few sandal-makers and workers in
leather, with several weavers, none skilled. Through-
out the Hejaz these professions exist, but at a still lower
standard; but in Yemen greater nicety of workmanship
is to be met with; and gold and silver smiths, often,
however, not Arabs, but strangers by race, get a living
in the towns. Formerly Yemen was celebrated for its
woven stuffs; this manufacture is now, however, in
anything approaching to excellence, the exclusive pride
of Oman. . In this last-named province, weaving, silk
and gold thread embroidery, silver work, gold filigree,
and even steel implements, are wrought to a degree of
perfection seldom attained by the workmen even of
Damascus or Baghdad; and the labors of the Oman
loom or forge, when exported, as they are, though not
in large quantities, are eagerly purchased abroad. But
even here the extreme simplicity, or rather rudeness, of
the tools employed, and the deficiency of mechanical
contrivance, dwarf the results of patient and otherwise
ingenious labor into comparative insignificance.
In wood the Arabs are not unskilful artificers; and
their drinking-bowls and platters, manufactured chiefly
from the “ithel” or larch tree, and studded with small
silver knobs, make a good appearance. As masons
they deserve little praise; their constructions are clumsy
and unstable, the details coarse and ill-fashioned. There
is not a single building, public or private, built by the
Arabs themselves, of any merit either in regard of utility
or of beauty, within the whole of Arabia.
Backward in manufacture, and even showing, on the
whole, little capacity for it, the Arabs are singularly
alive to the advantages of commerce and trade, and fond
of exercising them. No Arab undertakes a journey,
were it only from one village to another, without taking
with him some object for exchange or sale; and he will
Sooner chaffer away the handkerchief on his head or the
camel on which he rides, than return without having
effected something in the way of business. In this
respect, Bedouin and townsman, rich and poor, are all
alike; and their history shows that this propensity is no
less ancient than universal in the race. Owing, how-
ever, to the want of variety in its productions, and the
remarkably uniform habits of its inhabitants, combined
with the scarcity of local manufactures, the trade of
Arabia, whether export or import, is soon catalogued.
Camels and sheep, hair and wool, come first on the
export list; next coffee; then dates, then horses; a very
little rice and a few cloaks from Yemen or Oman close
the chapter of commerce so far as land produce is con-
cerned; pearls sum up that of the sea. Nor is the
import much more diversified or extensive. Cotton
cloth, Indian prints, sugar, a little hardware, a few arms,
powder and shot, and trinkets of no great value — such
are the customary requisitions of the land. Nor has
any single Arab, the Imam or Prince of Mascat
alone excepted, sufficient available capital for extensive
traffic, out or in; while the Mahometan prohibition of
interest, and consequently of credit, joined to the
illegality of insurance, would, even in a richer land,
restrict enterprise within very unsatisfactory bounds.
It is owing, indeed, to these narrow-minded laws, intro-
duced by the Koran and co-existent with its observance,
that what commerce exists at the seaports of Hejaz,
Tehamah, and Yemen, has mainly fallen into the hands
of Jews and Banians — that is, Indian merchants;
though in Oman, where a more liberal spirit prevails,
Arab merchants of considerable capital and with exten-
sive connections are to be found. The custom-duties in
the ports of Oman and the Persian Gulf, whether export
or import, are IO per cent., except on pearls; in the
harbors of Yemen they are capricious, and often very
high. The shereef or governor of Mecca used formerly
to carry on, through Jiddah, a trade hardly inferior to
that of the Imam of Mascat himself; but the devasta-
tions committed by the Wahhabees, and in later times
the oppression of the Egyptian and Turkish govern-
ments, have considerably reduced this source of Arab
income.
The origin of the Arab race, like that of most others,
can only be matter of conjecture; no credit can be at-
tached to the assertions, evidently unbased on historical
facts, of those authors who, building on the narrow
foundation of Hebrew records, have included the entire
nation under the titles of Ishmael and Joktan; and
Mahometan testimony on these matters can have no
more weight than the Jewish, from which it is evidently
derived.
Once established on the same soil, the two branches
would naturally early manifest a tendency, to unite,
sufficient in time to produce a tolerable identity both of
language and usages: while the superinduced modifica-
tions of character and manners may well have originated
the rivalry and even enmity between the Arabs of the
north, or “Keysees,” and those of Yemen, which,
under various forms, has never ceased down to our own
time.
At present, however, the most important, as also the
best known division of the Arab race is that which
separates them into “Ahl Bedoo,” or “dwellers in the
open land,” whence the common appellation of
Bedouin; and “Ahl Hadr,” or “dwellers in fixed local-
ities.” The former class, living under tents, and occu-
pying the waste country which lies in a vast circle
between the coast and the central plateau, while to the
north it joins on to the Syrian desert, are the best
known to European travellers, with whom they often
come in contact, and by whom they have sometimes
been described with considerable cxaggeration both as to
their numbers and in other respects. The most trust-
worthy authorities regarding them are Niebuhr and
Burckhardt.
The Bedouins, then, are shepherds and herdsmen, re-
duced to an out-of-doors and roving life, partly by the
intrinsic nature of their occupations, partly by the
special characteristics of the country they belong to.
For, while land, unsuited to all purposes except pasture,
forms an unusually large proportion of the surface in
the Arabian territory, the prolonged drought of sum-
mer renders considerable portions of it unfit even for
that, and thus continually obliges the herdsmen to
migrate from one spot to another in search of sufficient
herbage and water for their beasts. The same causes
also involve the Bedouins in frequent quarrels with each
other regarding, the use of some particular well or
pasture-ground, besides reducing them not unfrequently
A R A
4O I
to extreme want, and thus making them plunderers of
others in self-support. Lastly, the loneliness of the
desert, far removed from the vigilant control of fixed
law, order, or police, has, combined with the other cir-
cumstances, continued during generation after genera-
tion to leave a peculiar impress on a naturally bold,
hardy, and enterprising race, till the terms Bedouin and
brigand have, in the opinion of many, become synony-
IIl OllS.
This opinion is, however, unjust. Professionally,
and in the ordinary course of their lives, Bedouins are
only shepherds and herdsmen: their raids on each
other, or their exploits in despoiling travellers and cara-
vans, are but occasional, though welcome and even
exciting, exceptions to the common routine. Besides,
their wars or forays among themselves,—for they very
rarely venture on a conflict with the better armed and
better organised sedentary population,-are rarely
bloody; the object being most often with the one party
to carry off, and with the other to protect, a flock of
sheep or a herd of camels: booty is aimed at, not
slaughter.
Instances are, however, not wanting in Arab history
of fiercer and more general Bedouin conflicts, in which
the destruction, or at least the complete subjugation, of
one tribe has been aimed at by another, and when
great slaughter has accordingly taken place. Such were
the wars of Pekr and Thagleb in the 6th century, of
Kelb and Howazin in the 8th, of Harb and Oteybah in
the 18th, with others. But these are comparatively
rare events.
The Bedouins regard the plundering of caravans or
travellers, whether on business or otherwise, simply as
a supplementary measure that takes the place of pass-
ports or custom dues exacted elsewhere. The land is
theirs, they say, and trespassers on it without leave
must pay the forfeit.
Nominally Mahometan, most of the Bedouins pay
slight attention to the ceremonial precepts of the Koran;
among the remoter and wilder tribes sun-worship, tree-
worship, and no worship at all, are not uncommon.
Some clans even omit the rite of circumcision alto-
gether; others, like the tribe of Hodeyl, south of
Mecca, perform it after a fashion peculiar to themselves.
Nor are the social and moral injunctions of Islam better
observed. Marriages are contracted without any legal
intervention or guarantee; the consent of the parties,
and the oral testimony of a couple of witnesses, should
such be at hand, are all that are required; and divorce
is equally facile. Nor is mutual constancy much ex-
pected or observed either by men or women; and the
husband is rarely strict in exacting from the wife a
fidelity that he himself has no idea of observing.
In person most Bedouins, men or women, are rather
undersized, the result probably of hardships endured
through uncounted generations; their complexion,
especially in the south, is dark: their hair coarse,
copious and black; their eyes dark and oval; the nose is
commonly aquiline, and the features well formed; beard
and moustache are apt to be somewhat scanty. The
men are active, but not strong; the women rarely
otherwise than plain.
Their dress is simple enough; that of the men con-
sisting in a long cotton shirt, open at the breast, and
often girt with a leathern girdle; a black or striped
cloak of hair is sometimes thrown over the shoulders; a
handkerchief, folded but once, and generally black, more
seldom striped yellow and red, covers the head, round
which it is kept in its place by a piece of twine or a
twisted hairband. To this costume a pair of open san-
dals is sometimes added. No other article of dress is
worn,-- neither trousers nor turban; but under the
shirt, round the naked waist, a thin strip of leather plait
is wound several times, not for any special object, but
merely out of custom. In his hand a Bedouin almost
always carries a slight crooked wand, commonly of
almond-wood; with this he guides his camel when on the
road, and amuses himself by playing with it at other
times. Among the Bedouins of the south a light wrap-
per takes the place of the handkerchief on the head, and
a loin-cloth that of the shirt.
A woman’s attire is hardly more complicated; wide
loose drawers, though these are sometimes dispensed
with; next a long shirt, and over it a wide piece of dark
blue cloth enveloping the whole figure, the head
included, and trailing on the ground behind. Boys, till
near puberty, usually go stark naked; girls up to six or
Seven.
On a journey a Bedouin invariably bears with
him a light sharp-pointed lance, the stem of which
is made Persian or African cane; the manner in which
this is carried or trailed often indicates the tribe of
the owner. The lance is the favorite and character-
istic weapon of the Arab nomade, and the one in the
use of which he shows the greatest skill, throwing it, at
need, to a considerable distance with unerring aim.
Frequently, too, he girds on, or rather suspends from a
kind of shoulder-belt, a sword, straight or crooked as
may be; the blade is often of little value, rusty, and not
over sharp; the scabbard of wood. . The weapon which
comes third in frequency is a gun; this is still in almost
every instance a matchlock, clumsy, and foul, taking
from five to ten minutes to load and fire, when, indeed,
it can be fired at all, which is not always the case. Yet
with such wretched implements at his disposal, a Bedouin
is seldom other than a good marksman. Flint-guns
may here and there be met with now-a-days; but per-
cussion or breach-loaders never. Nor are pistols any
part of a Bedouin's war equipment. But whether in
peace or war, he is seldom without a knife: this in the
north is only a large clumsy clasp or sheath knife; but
in Yemen, Oman, and the intervening regions it develops
into a broad and crooked dagger, a truly formidable
weapon, on the ornamentation of which the Bedouin of
the south bestows what skill or wealth he may happen
to possess. -
From the Bedouins, or “Ahl Bedoo,” we now turn
to the “Ahl Hadr,” or the dwellers in fixed abodes.
These constitute about six-sevenths of the population
of Arabia proper, and it is from them alone a just ap-
preciation of the Arab character and customs can be
formed. - -
Though the clan and the family form the basis and are
the ultimate expression of the civilised Arab society,
they do not, as is the case among the Bedouins, sum it
up altogether; local feelings and duties, the consequences
of settled life, having deeply modified the character alike
of the individuals and the race among all Arabs, town
or country. Still, blood is the first thing taken into ac-
count; and, indeed, the possession of written records,
and habits of order and reflection, enabled the settled
Arabs to acquire and retain a more accurate knowledge
and nicer distinction of pedigree and race than could be
expected or found among the unreflecting and half-
barbarous Bedouins. * e
Throughout the peninsula, but especially on the west-
ern side, the family of Koreysh is even yet regarded as
the noblest of Arab races; indeed of the world; and its
members, on the strength of their connection with the
Prophet, all bear the title of “Shereef,” sometimes also,
as in Yemen, that of “Seyyid,” or “lord.” Besides the
advantages which naturally follow popular respect, they
hold in several districts of Arabia — in Mecca itself, for
exemple, in Aboo-Areesh, and in some parts of Yemen
26 A
4O2
A R A
— the positions and emoluments of local hereditary gov-
ernors. But they do not assume any regular distinctive
mark, like the green turban so often worn in Turkey or
Persia; nor in private life do they enjoy any immunity,
either explicit or prescriptive, from the ordinary obliga-
tions of law.
“Sheykh,” or elder, “Emeer,” or ruler, “Imam,” or
preceder, and “Sultan,” or monarch, are personal
* often, though not necessarily, hereditary titles of
IſāIlk.
Emeer is a higher title, restricted to a governor of a
district or province, especially in Shomer, Nejd, and the
rest of the central region. An ameer is in most respects
nothing but a magnified sheykh; he has, however, the ad-
vantage of drawing a considerable portion of his income
from the country he administers.
The title of “sultan,” or king, one of doubtful
antiquity, has been assumed by the hereditary Wahhabee
ruler of Riad, the capital of Nejd; it is often also
applied to the sovereign of Oman, and to some petty
princes in the south of the peninsula. In practice it
adds little or nothing to the dignity of emeer, but
implies a larger territorial range of authority.
Where the Wahhabee doctrines have definitely estab-
lished themselves, as in Nejd, Yemameh, Hareek, Aflaj,
and Jabel Aseer, the Mahometan code, as laid down in
the Koran, is observed more strictly perhaps than in any
other part of the Eastern World. Besides the princi-
pal mosque, or “iamiá,” for Friday prayers, indispen-
sable in every town or village, smaller praying-places, or
mesjids, are erected in every quarter. These buildings
are mere oblong rooms, flat-roofed, supported on numer-
ous rough pillars placed close to each other, and with
no architectural or decorative beauty whatever; but are
kept scrupulously clean, and laid down partly with mats,
partly gravel. In most cases there is no minaret
attached, the times of prayer being merely announced
by the “mtieddin,” or crier, from the roof itself.
Except in a few places on the west coast long exposed
to Egyptian, Turkish, and Indian influences, no der-
wishes are to be met with, or are even tolerated, in
Arabia proper. The Wahhabees all hold them in the
utmost contempt and abhorrence. Nor are Arabs,
generally speaking, superstitious in other respects: of
dreams and omens they make little account; nor does
the apprehension of ghosts, spectres apparitions, demons,
and the like often disquiet their hours of loneliness or
darkness; stories of such a character, though embodied
here and there in Arab literature, in the Zhozasazza! and
One AWights for example, are less frequently of Arab
than of foreign origin, generally Persian. Nor do Arabs
often seek to convert others, except it be their own pur-
chased negro slaves, a facile acquisition, to Mahometan-
ism, or molest those of other religions. Jews exist
undisturbed in great numbers near Teyma and in the
south; Hindoos worship cows and burn their dead
without interference in Oman; only old custom, it would
seem, and the memory of long and bitter wars, pro-
hibits the practice of the Christian religion in Arabia
proper, Aden alone, of course, where the British flag
proclaims absolute tolerance, excepted.
Slavery is still, as of old times, a recognized institution
throughout Arabia; and an active traffic in blacks is
carried on along the coasts of the Persian Gulf and the
Red Sea, but especially the former.
The slaves themselves are chiefly brought from the east
African coast districts down as far as Zanzibar, and from
the Galla tribes in the interior; a few Abyssinians, too,
are sometimes imported. Slaves are usually employed
in Arabia as herdsmen or as domestic servants, rarely in
agricultural works; they also form a considerable portion
of the bodyguards with which Eastern greatness loves to
surround itself. Like their countrymen elsewhere, they
readily embrace the religion of their masters, and become
zealous Mahometans, though rarely according to knowl-
edge. Arab custom enfranchises a slave who has accepted
Islam at the end of seven years of bondage ; and when
that period has arrived, the master, instead of exacting
from his slave the price of freedom, generally, on giving
him his liberty, adds the requisite means for supporting
himself and a family in comfort. Further on every im-
portant occasion, such as a birth, circumcision, a mar-
riage, or a death, one or more of the household slaves
are sure of acquiring their freedom. Hence it comes
that Arabia is densely sprinkled with a free black popu-
lation; and these again, by intermarriage with the whites
around, have filled the land with a mulatto breed of
every shade, till, in the eastern and southern provinces
especially, a white skin is almost an exception. This has
taken place all the more readily that in Arabia there
exists no prejudice against negro alliances; no social or
political line separates the African from the Arab. A
negro may become a sheykh, a kadee, an emeer, or what-
ever his industry and his talents may render him capable
of being. This occurs frequently, particularly in Nejd,
Yemen, and Hadramaut; in the Hejaz and the north, on
the contrary, a faint line of demarcation may be observed
between the races.
An Arab town, or even village, except it be the
merest hamlet, is invariably walled round; but the ram-
parts are low, and seldom of any stronger material than
dried earth; they are occasionally flanked by towers of
like construction, such as befit a country where cannon
are unknown and fire-arms are yet at the matchlock
stage. A dry ditch often surrounds the whole. The
streets are utterly irregular—some broad, some narrow,
all tortuous ; the houses are of one or two storeys, very
rarely of three, with flat mud roofs, little windows, and
no external ornament. If the town be large, the expan-
sion of one or two streets becomes a market-place,
where are ranged a few shops of eatables, drugs, coffee,
and, very rarely, cottons or other goods. Many of
these shops are kept by women. The chief mosque is
always near the market-place; so is also the governor’s
residence, which, except in size and being more or less
fortified Arab fashion, does not differ from a private
house. Drainage is unthought of; but the extreme
dryness of the air obviates the inconvenience and disease
that under other skies could not fail to ensue, and which
in the damper climates of the coast make themselves
seriously felt. But the streets are roughly swept every
day, each householder taking care of what lies before
his own door. Whitewash and color are occasionally
used in Yemen, Hejaz, and Oman; elsewhere a light
ochre tint, the color of the sun-dried bricks, predomi-
nates in an Arab town or village, which looks at a
distance like a large dust-heap in the centre of the
bright green ring of gardens and palm-groves all around.
Baked bricks are unknown in Arabia, and stone build-
ings are rare, especially in Nejd. Palm branches and
the like, woven in wattles, form the dwellings of the
poorer classes in the southern districts. Many Arab
towns possess watch-towers, like huge round factory
chimneys in appearance, built of sun-dried bricks, and
varying in height from 50 to IOO feet, or even more.
Indeed, two of these constructions at the town of Birket-
el-Mawj, in Oman, are said to be each of 170 feet in
height, and that of Nezwah, in the same province, is
reckoned at 140; but these are of stone. Some of these
watch-towers are so built as to serve also for citadels or
places of refuge; and none could offer a minute’s resist-
ance to any kind of artillery, though formidable obstacles
to men whose only means of attack are lances and
matchlocks.
A R A
4O3
The principal feature in the interior of an Arab house
is the “kahwah,” or coffee-room, as from its destination
it is commonly called. It is a large apartment spread
with mats, and sometimes furnished with carpets and a
few cushions. At one extremity is a small furnace or
fire-place, for preparing coffee. In this room the men
congregate; here guests are received, and even lodged;
women rarely enter it, except at times when strangers
are unlikely to be present. Some of these apartments
are very spacious, and supported by pillars; one wall is
usually built transversely to the compass direction of the
kāabeh; it serves to facilitate the performance of prayer
by those who may happen to be in the kahwah at the ap-
pointed times. The other rooms are ordinarily small,
and appropriated to the use of the females of the family
and to domestic life. ;
In hospitality the Arabs of our time have in no de-
gree degenerated from their former reputation, though
Shomer, Nejd, Yemamah, and Hasa excel in this respect
the other provinces. A stranger’s arrival is often the
occasion of an amicable dispute among the wealthier
inhabitants as to who shall have the privilege of receiv-
ing him; and though three days are often popularly
spoken of as the limit of such entertainment, practice
sets no precise bounds to its length; and an Arab host
always carefully abstains from putting any question to
his guest as to when he is going, or where. Indeed, iſ
the guest be discreet and acceptable in his manners, he
will soon find himself on the footing of one of the family;
and even the women of the house will come in to sit and
converse with him not less freely than they would with
their own relations.
Arab cookery is of the simplest. Roughly-ground
wheat cooked with butter; bread, in thin cakes, prepared
on a heated iron plate or against the walls of an open
oven; a few vegetables, generally of the leguminous
kinds; boiled mutton or camel's flesh, if the circumstances
of the host allow of such luxuries; dates and fruits, –
this is the menu of an ordinary meal. Roast meat,
fried, stewed — in a word, anything but boiled — is
rarely seen, such dishes exceeding the skill of the cooks,
who, as a rule, are the women of the household. Rice
is eaten in wealthy houses, and fish is common on the
coasts. Among the Bedouins, millet-cakes, half-cooked
din ashes, or a broth prepared from the gritty seeds of
the “Samh " (a species of Mesembryanthemum), often
take the place of bread; and their meat cookery is
‘equally wretched. Game, such as venison, partridge,
and hare, is served up on rare occasions. Camel meat
is a favorite, but to a stranger a very insipid dish, in
southern Nejd, Yemamah, Hareek, and Aflaj. Spices
are freely employed in town cookery; butter much too
largely for a European taste. ,
After eating, the hands are always washed with soap,
or some substitute for it, commonly the ashes of an
alkaline plant. A covered censer with burning incense
is then passed around, and each guest perfumes his
hands, face, and sometimes his clothes; this censer
serves also on first receptions, and whenever special
honor is intended. In Yemen and Oman scented water
often does duty for it. Coffee, without milk or sugar,
but flavored with an aromatic seed brought from India,
is served to all. The wealthier townsmen prefer long
pipes with large open bowls; but the most frequent use
is made of the water-pipe, or “narghileh,” of which
implement every form, kind, and dimension imaginable
may be found in Arabia. The tobacco smoked is
generally strong, and is either brought from the neigh-
borhood of Baghdad or grown in the country itself.
The strongest quality is that of Oman; the leaf is
broad and coarse, and retains its green color even when
Adried; a few whiffs have been known to produce abso-
lute stupor. The aversion of the Wahhabees to tobacco
is well known; they entitle it “mukhzee,” or “the
shameful,” and its use is punished with blows, as the
public use of wine would be elsewhere.
In dress much variety prevails. The loose cotton
drawers, girded at the waist, which in hot climates do
duty for trousers, are not often worn, even by the upper
classes, in Nejd or Yemamah, where a kind of silk
dressing-gown is thrown over the long shirt; frequently,
too, a brown or black cloak distinguishes the wealthier
citizen; his head-dress is in its character the same as
that of the Bedouins—namely, a handkerchief fastened
around the head by a band—only of better materials.
But in Hejaz, Yemen, and Oman, turbans are by no
means uncommon; the ordinary color is white; they
are worn over one or more skull-caps—sometimes
fifteen—till the head is rather burdened than protected.
Trousers also form part of the dress in the two former
of these districts; and a voluminous sash, in which a
dagger or an inkstand is stuck, is wrapped round the
waist.
In person the Arabs are a remarkably handsome
race,— tall, lithe, well-formed, dark-eyed, and dark-
haired. Deformed individuals or dwarfs are rare among
them; nor, except leprosy, of which frequent instances
may be met with throughout the peninsula, does any
disease seem to be hereditary among them. The fre-
quency of ophthalmia, though not in the virulent Egyp-
tian form, is evidently attributable to the nature of the
soil and climate. They are scrupulously clean in their
persons, adding to the prescribed ablutions of the
Mahometan code frequent supererogatory washings of
their own; and take special care of their teeth, which
are generally fine, though toothache is by no means un-
known in Arabia. Simple and abstemious in their hab-
its, they often reach an extreme yet healthy old age;
nor is it common among them for the faculties of the
mind to give way sooner than those of the body. To
sum up, physically and morally they yield to few races,
if any, of mankind; mentally, they surpass most, and
are only kept back in the march of common progress by
the remarkable defect of organising power and inca-
pacity for combined action which they share with many
other nations of the East, and some, it would seem, of
the West also.
Of the revenues of Arabia it would be difficult to form
anything like a correct estimate. Palgrave has stated
the yearly receipts of the Nejdean treasury, inclusive of
the tribute then (1862) paid into it by Bahreyn and the
west of Oman, to be nearly 4. Ioff,ooo sterling—no very
large sum.
The revenues of Oman itself, then in a comparatively
prosperous condition, are estimated by the same author
at nearly ten times the amount, but may possibly have .
been overrated by him, as those of Yemen were perhaps
by Niebuhr. Certainly the general condition of these
provinces—the restricted character of the cultivation
and the evident poverty (not absolute want, indeed, for
that is rare) of the greater number of the inhabitants—
do not convey to the visitor the idea of large national
wealth or extensive resources. There can, however, be
no doubt that both the coast districts of Arabia, in their
varied and valuable products, and the central plateau,
with its palm-groves, well, irrigation, and wide pasture-
lands, might, under a judicious administration, become
the sources of much greater revenues, both public and
private, than is now the case. The mines, too, in the
metamorphic districts of Yemen and Oman, remain yet
to be properly worked. As for the desert proper,
which, as we have seen, occupies about one-third of the
peninsula, it must, like the ocean of Childe Harold, re-
main what it is to the end of time.
4O4.
A R A
In the 7th century Arabia sent forth armies that
attacked and conquered nearly half the then known
world. But the secret of her conquests lay not in the
number of her warriors, but in a resolute purpose, a
unity of aim, and an enthusiasm which concentrated in
itself and intensified every motive of human action. In
later ages she has been reduced to the defensive, and has
shown herself not always equal even to that : witness
her conquest by the Turks in the 16th, and by the
\ºgyptians in the present century. Once only, at the
moment when Wahhabee union and zeal half restored
for a few years the energy of early Islam, did her armies
go forth to invade the neighboring territories of Mesopo-
tamia and Syria ; but it was to plunder rather than to
conquer, and the results lasted no longer than the inva-
sions themselves.
Yet on the defensive Arabia had much in her favor,
and that from many causes. The first is, that there is
little to defend, since, the coast of Yemen and the dis-
tricts of Bahreyn and Oman excepted, there is very little
to excite the cupidity of an invading, and nothing to
satisfy the exigencies of an occupying force. The
second is, that the mountainous nature of Yemen and
Oman, themselves, and the narrowness of their labyrin-
thine defiles added to the extreme heat of the climate,
and the scarcity of available provisions, would make
even those provinces hard to attack, harder to retain.
A third cause is in the broad strips of desert that gird
the central districts as with a moat of sand, and send
long arms of barrenness here and there into the heart of
the cultivated or pastoral regions, so as to render mili-
tary operations on a large scale in the interior almost
impossible. A "fourth and a very serious obstacle to
invasion is the character of the inhabitants. Personal
courage, wonderful endurance of privation, fixity of pur-
pose, and a contempt of death rare even in the bravest
Europeans, are qualities common to almost every race,
tribe, and clan that compose the Arab nation; and
though their undisciplined troops are unfitted to meet a
better trained enemy in a regular battle, in skirmishing
and harassing they have few equals, while at close quar-
ters their individual impetuosity often disconcerts the
more , mechanical fortitude of organized regiments.
To this our own troops gave testimony in the engage-
ments of Shenaz, 1810, and of Ras-el-Hadd, 1819 and
182O, when, with swords and spears alone, the Arabs of
Oman maintained a desperate struggle against guns and
bayonets, neither giving nor receiving quarter. Nor
are they wholly ignorant of tactics, their armies, when
engaged in regular war, being divided into centre and
wings, with skirmishers in front, and a reserve behind,
often screened at the outset of the engagement by the
camels of the expedition. These animals, kneeling, and
ranged in long parallel rows, form a sort of entrench-
ment, from behind which the soldiers of the main body
fire their matchlocks, while the front divisions, opening
out, act on either flank of the enemy. This arrange-
ment of troops may be traced in Arab records as far
back as the 5th century, and has often been exemplified
during the Wahhabee wars in our own day.
The military contingent of Nejd, including that of all
the adjoining provinces that constitute central Arabia,
Jebel Shomer excepted, is reckoned by Palgrave at
47,300 from among the settled, and at about 8ooo from
among the nomade inhabitants. That of Shomer is
estimated by the same authority at 14,000 of the first,
and at about 16,000 of the second category. Oman, in-
cluding the neighboring and allied districts, is said to
supply about II2,000, all from towns or villages.
We thus obtain a total of about 197,300 fighting men
for what represents a full half of the Arab peninsula.
If, therefore, we calculate the entire military force of
the land from Suez to Aden, and from the Red Sea to
the Indian Ocean, at 400,000 fighting men, we shall
probably be not far from the truth. But while remem-
bering, on the one hand, that this is no standing army,
nor composed of regular and disciplined soldiers, it
should not be forgotten that, in case of invasion, their
energy, and, it may be, their numbers, would be
doubled by the enthusiasm of patriotism; and that not
every male only, but every woman would, in the excite-
ment of the struggle, take part in the national defence.
Indeed, at all times Arab women have distinguished
themselves by their bravery hardly less than Arab men.
Records of armed heroines occur frequently in the chron-
icles or myths of the pre-Islamitic time; and in authen-
tic history the Battle of the Camel, 656 A.D., where
Ayeshah, the wife of Mahomet, headed the charge, is
only the first of a number of instances in which Arab
amazons have taken, Sword in hand, no inconsiderable
share in the wars and victories of Islam. Even now it
is the custom for an Arab force to be always accompa-
nied by some courageous maiden, who, mounted on a
blackened camel, leads the onslaught, singing verses of
encouragement for her own, of insult for the opposing
tribe. Round her litter the fiercest of the battle rages,
and her capture or death is the signal of utter rout; it is
hers also to head the triumph after the victory of her
clan.
There is little education, in our sense of the word, in
Arabia. Among the Bedouins there are, of course, no.
schools, and few, even of the most elementary char-
acter, in the towns or villages. Where they exist, little
beyond the mechanical reading of the Koran, and the
equally mechanical learning of it by rote, is taught. On
the other hand, Arab male children, brought up from
early years among the grown-up men of the house or
tent, learn more from their own parents and at home
than is common in other countries; reading and writing
are in most intances thus acquired, or rather trans-
mitted; besides such general principles of grammar and
eloquence, often of poetry and history, as the elders
themselves may be able to impart. To this family
schooling too are due the good manners, politeness, and
self-restraint that early distinguish Arab children. In
the very few instances where a public school of a higher
class exists, writing, grammar, and rhetoric sum up its
teachings. Law and theology, in the narrow sense that
both these words have in the Islamitic system, are
explained in afternoon lectures given in most mosques;
and some verses of the Koran, with one of the accepted
commentaries, that of El-Beidawee for example, form
the basis of the instruction.
Great attention is paid to accuracy of grammar and
purity of diction throughout Arabia; yet something of
a dialectic difference may be observed in the various
districts. The purest Arabic, that which is as nearly as
possible identical in the choice of words and in its
inflections with the language of the Koran, is spoken
in Nejd, and the best again. of that in the province of
Sedeyr. Next in purity comes the Arabic of Shomer.
Throughout the Hejaz in general, the language, though
extremely elegant, is not equally correct; in . Hasa,
Bahreyn, and Oman, it is decidedly influenced by the
foreign element called Nabathaean, that removes it still
further from its original character. In Yemen, as in
other southern districts of the peninsula, Arabic merges
by insensible degrees into the Himyaritic or African
dialect of Hadramaut and Mahrah. The Arabic spoken
by the nomade or Bedouin tribes, especially those of the
north, is tolerably correct, but the pronunciation is
often inexact.
The entire population of Arabia proper has been vari-
ously estimated; some authors make it reach 12,000,000,
A R A
4O5
others reduce it to 7,000,000. Taking the approximate
statistics above given, we find for the whole of central
Arabia, includ...g. Jowf, Shomer, and Nejd, about 1,500,-
OOO settled inhabitants, with 500,000 Bedouins or
nomades; thus 2,000,000 may perhaps fairly represent
the complete number. The east coast —Hasa, Bahreyn,
Oman, and their adjoining districts—furnishes 2,500,ooo
more. Yemen is said to contain over 1,000,ooo:
Hadramaut and Mahrah cannot be very populous: the
Hejaz certainly is not. 3,000,000 is the maximum
estimate of both taken together, nomades or villagers.
To these must be added the tribes of the Sinaitic
peninsula, and of the northern frontier. These may
possibly bring the sum of the Arab population to 8,500,-
OOO, or even 9,000,000, with a quota of about one-fifth
Bedouin to four-fifths of settled Arabs; to such small
numerical proportions has the nation shrunk that once
ruled by land and sea from the Indus to the Atlantic,
and that even now, by its religion and institutions, gives
the law to one-eighth of the human race.
Arabia proper is singularly destitute of antiquities, in
the ordinary sense of the word, the northern or “Adsci-
titious ” Arabs having been, so long as they remained in
their own territory, a remarkably unconstructive race,
and the “pure” or southern Arabs not much better in
this respect.
It is true that in addition to the non-constructive
character of the early Arab race, account must be taken
of the destructive policy, aggravated by iconoclastic
zeal, pursued by the conquering Mahometan tribes of
the north, who within their own territory, even more
than in the acquired lands of Egypt, North Africa, and
elsewhere, carried out the plan of establishing their own
Ireligion and system, not merely on the ruins, but, so far
as possible, on the effacement of whatever had preceded
it. Hence, of the old idol temples which once covered
Arabia, nothing now remains except the megalithic ves-
tiges of an enormous stone circle, resembling those
found in some parts of Europe, and consisting of large
boulders, each about 14 feet high, placed on end, and
originally crowned by a similar horizontal series. This
was visited by Palgrave when travelling in the province
of Kaseem, near Bereydah; two others are reported to
exist in the same district. Nor, the Meccan relics apart,
had any of the numerous idols once worshipped through-
out the peninsula been discovered till the Swiss Mun-
zinger, three years since, found among the heaps of a
deserted village near Aden a small bronze statiſe repre-
senting a naked hermaphrodite figure, over the head of
which rises an ornament resembling the Egyptian Ashent.
But if poor in architectural, Arabia is superabund-
antly rich in literary monuments. Passing over as of
more than doubtful authenticity the verses ascribed to
kings and heroes of Yemen, especially at dates of a thou-
sand years or more before the Christian era, we find un-
<leniable specimens, at least two full centuries before
Mahomet, of poems which in vigor and polish yield to
few ever composed in the Arab or any other language.
To give at length the names and stories of the authors,
many of them men, and even women, no less distin-
guished in their day by the Sword than by the pen, would
be, in a brief review like this, merely to note a dry and
unmeaning catalogue. Suffice it that, even at this early
date, we find the metrical and rhythmical laws, simple
yet susceptible of the highest art, which have ever since
regulated Arab poetry, already laid down in their com-
pleteness, and exemplified, the former by a scansion of
almost Horatian elegance and variety, the latter by a se-
vere nicety that Pope himself might have admired, but
could hardly have imitated. Divided into sixteen
classes, each class including several variations, the me-
tres are based, like the Greek and Roman, on long and
short vowels, irrespective of accent, but admitting cae-
sura, elision, and every prosodiacal delicacy. Some are
adapted to gay, some to serious topics, love, war, de-
scription, moral precepts, philosophical speculation,
elegy, satire—all find here their appropriate expression.
The rhyme, which often involves not one but two sylla-
bles, is in every piece determined by that of the open-
ing line. . Alternate rhymes, choruses, and accentuated
instead of quantitative metre, did not appear till later,
and were imitated from extra-Arab models. *
Written prose up to the date of Mahomet's appear-
ance there was absolutely none; and spoken eloquence,
though always highly esteemed and diligently cultivated
among the Arabs, had never been embodied in the per-
manence of writing.
But if unsuccessful in prose, the Arabs were not so
in poetry. This, even before the era of the prophet,
had, as we have seen, attained no ordinary degree of
excellence; and it reached its highest point during the
following century, under the Ommiade dynasty, when
Omar Ebn Rabeeyah, of the tribe of Koreysh; Jameel,
of the Benoo Adhrah; Jareer and Farazdak, both of
Tameem; and Noseyyeb, a negro by birth — the first
and second masters of erotic, the third and fourth of
satirical, and the fifth of descriptive poetry — with a
cloud of lesser celebrities, lived and sang in the sunshine
of the Damascene court. The 8th and 9th centuries,
agitated by civil dissensions or oppressed by the tyranny
of the Abbasides, were less favorable to the Muses, till
the reaction of the Greek and Persian minds, with
which the Arab spirit was now yearly brought into
more intimate contact, gave rise to a new and brilliant
school, less true to the simplicity of nature or the purity
of Arab diction, but richer in imagery and deeper in
philosophic thought, illustrating, too, the transition
from the objective to the subjective which has accom-
panied and half veiled decline in the literature af every
nation, turn after turn.
History proved from first to last an effort beyond
Arab skill, which contented itself with the less intellect-
ual task of multiplying chronicles to an almost unpar-
alleled amount.
In mathematics the Arabs based themselves on what
they had acquired from the Greek and Indian originals;
the former gave them geometry, the latter algebra.
Satisfied at first with translations of Euclid, Apollonius,
and others, they ultimately left their masters behind.
They reached in the Ioth century the limits of spherical
trigonometry, and solved quadratic and even cubic
equations. In these studies the astronomers Geber and
Ebn-Moosa chiefly distinguished themselves. Optics,
too, and hydrostatics were investigated by the professors
of Baghdad; but no special progress or remarkable
discoveries are recorded as having been made in these
sciences. In mixed as well as in pure mathematics the
leading-strings of the Greek became the fetters of the
Arab mind. The practical application, however, , of
hydraulics in the construction of wells, water-works,
reservoirs, sluices, canals, and the like, does them great
credit; and of this peculiar skill ample traces, ill main-
tained by succeeding governments, remain in Spain,
North Africa, Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. º
Debarred by religious scruples from the representation
of animated forms in sculpture or painting, Arab decora-
tors (for they are no more) found themselves restricted
to vegetables or fantastic patterns and color combina-
tions, and in these, as the Spanish Alhambra and other
buildings can testify, showed themselves no mean
proficients. * &
More mildly recognized, however, are the Arab claims
to proficiency in medicine, an art which Mahomet him;
self appears to have dabbled in, showing himself, if
4O6
A R A
tradition speaks true, by no means so good a physician
as he was a preacher. Under the caliphs, however,
regular schools of the therapeutic science were established
in Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo, where the works of
Hippocrates and Galen, translated from their originals
in Greek, were adopted as the basis of instruction.
Botany was chiefly studied as subsidiary to medicine;
nor did chemistry ever attain the dignity of a separate
science; as, however, an adjunct to the old herbal phar-
macopoeia, it received close and not unsuccessful attention.
The principal mercurial and arsenical preparations of the
materia medica, the sulphates of several metals, the
properties of acids and alkalies, the distillation of alcohol,
—in fine, whatever resources chemistry availed itself of
up to very recent date—were, with their practical
application, known to Er-Razi and Geber, already men-
tioned. In fact, the numerous terms borrowed from the
Arabic language—alcohol, for instance, alkali, alembic,
and others—with the signs of drugs and the like, still
in use among modern apothecaries, have remained to
show how deeply this science is indebted to Arab
research.
Industrious and enterprising, the Arabs led the way
by their invention and skill to most of the more com-
plicated manufactures of our own times. In metallurgy,
their art in tempering and enamelling has become justly
famous; nor did any Sword-blades ever rank higher than
those of Damascus, nor any coppersmiths excel those of
Baghdad, or gold and silver workmanship that of Oman.
Specimens of their skill in porcelain yet remain in Spain
and Syria; while the popular words “morocco” and
“cordovan ’’ attest their cleverness in preparing and
dyeing leather. The pendulum and the semaphoric tele-
graph, if not invented, as some think, by the Arabs,
were certainly introduced by them into Europe, as was
also the manufacture of silk and of cotton, and an
invention of the highest value — the mariner's compass.
As early as 706 A.D. writing-paper was made at Mecca,
whence it spread through all the Arabian dominions,
and ultimately reached the Western world. In the dis-
covery or use of gunpowder, so far back as the 11th
century, the Arab claim to priority is contested by the
Byzantines alone.
In a word, the literature, arts, and sciences of the
Arabs formed the connecting link between the civilisa-
tions of ancient and modern times; and the culture
which they introduced into the countries they conquered
has in almost every instance outlasted the rule of the
conquerors themselves. To them directly and indirectly,
we owe the revival of learning and philosophy in West-
ern Europe, and the first awakening of the critical and
inquiring spirit that has in great measure rescued Europe
from the lethargy of monkish ignorance and ecclesiastical
bigotry; to them also, at least indirectly and by deduc-
tion, are due most of the useful arts and practical inven-
tions laboriously perfected by later nations. Wide-
spread as was the empire of the Arab sword, it has been
less extended and less durable than the empire of the
Arab mind.
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY owed to Arabia Hittle
more than its name and its language. It was a system
of Greek thought, expressed in a Semitic tongue, and
modified by Oriental influences, called into existence
amongst the Moslem people by the patronage of their
more liberal princes, and kept alive by the intrepidity
and zeal of a small band of thinkers, who stood suspected
and disliked in the eyes of their nation. The Arabian
philosophers have but a secondary interest in the history
of their own lands. Their chief claim to the notice of
the historian of speculation comes from their warm re-
ception of Greek philosophy when it had been banished
from its original soil, and whilst Western Europe was
still too rude and ignorant to be its home. In the an-
nals of philosophy the period from the beginning of the
9th to the close of the 12th century may be styled the
* Flight into Egypt.” During these four centuries free
thought found a refuge under Mahometan princes until
her oppressors were dead. In the course of that exile
the traces of Semitic or Mahometan influence gradually
faded away ; and the last of the line of Saracenic thinkers
was a truer exponent of the one philosophy which they
all professed to teach than the first. The whole move-
ment was little else than a chapter in the history of
Aristotelianism. That system of thought, after passing
through the minds of those who saw it in the hazy light
of an Orientalised Platonism, and finding many laborious
but narrow-purposed cultivators in the monastic schools
of heretical Syria, was then brought into contact with
the ideas and mental habits of Islam. But those in
whom the two currents converged did not belong to the
pure Arab race. Of the so-called Arabian philosophers
of the East, Al-Farabi, Ibn-Sina, and Al-Ghazāli were
natives of Khorassan, Bokhara, and the outlying prov-
inces of north-eastern Persia; whilst Al-Kendi, the
earliest of them, sprang from Basra, on the Persian
Gulf, on the debatable ground between the Semite and
the Aryan. In Spain, again, where Ibn-Badja, Ibn-
Tofail, and Ibn-Roshd rivalled or exceeded the fame of
the Eastern schools, the Arabians of pure blood were
few, and the Moorish ruling class was deeply intersected
by Jewish colonies, and even by the natives of Christian
Spain. Thus, alike at Baghdad and at Cordova,
Arabian philosophy represents the for a time victorious
reaction of exotic ideas and of subject races against the
theological one-sidedness of Islam, and the illiterate sim-
plicity of the early Saracens. º
Islam had, it is true, a philosophy of its own. There
were Schoolmen amongst the believers in the Koran,
not less than amongst the Latin Christians. At the
very moment when Mahometanism came into contact
with the older civilisations of Persia, Babylonia, and
Syria, the intellectual habits of the new converts created
difficulties with regard to its very basis, and showed
themselves a prolific source of diversity in the details of
interpretation. The radical questions on which these
disputes turned were two. The first dealt with the
possibility of ascribing manifold attributes to God — to
a Being who was absolute unity. The other referred to
the bearing of God's omnipotence upon the freedom of
the human will. Ere the second century of the Hegira,
sturdy adherents of the literal truth of the Koran taught
a gross anthropomorphism, applying to the Creator the
very bodily attributes of his creatures. These were the
Sefatites, or partisans of the attributes. Another sect
represented Mahomet as the teacher of an unqualified
fatalism. Opposed to these narrow-minded exponents.
stood the comparatively liberal sect of the Mota-
zalites, the Dissidents, who first appeared about 750.
As they maintained, on one hand, that man was in some
degree a free agent, and on another, elevated the unity
of the divine nature far above the diversity of attributes,
they came to be styled the partisans of justice and unity.
It was with them that the Mussulman theology—the
science of the word (Calim) — first came into existence.
Its professors, the Motecallemán (known in Hebrew as:
Medabberim, and as Zoquentes in the Latin versions),
may be compared with the scholastic doctors of the
Catholic Church. Driven in the first instance to Specu-
lation in theology by the needs of their natural reason;
they came, in after days, when Greek philosophy, had
been naturalised in the Caliphate, to adapt its methods.
and doctrines to the support of their views. . They em-
ployed a quasi-philosophical method, by which, accord-
ing to Maimonides, they first reflected how things ought
A R A
4O7
to be in order to support, or at least not contradict,
their opinions, and then, when their minds were made
up with regard to this imaginary system, declared that
the world was not otherwise constituted. The dogmas
of creation and providence, of divine omnipotence,
chiefly exercised them; and they sought to assert for
God an immediate action in the making and the keeping
of the world. Space they looked upon as pervaded by
atoms possessing no quality or extension, and time was
similarly divided into innumerable instants. Each
change in the constitution of the atoms is a direct act of
the Almighty. When the fire burns, or the water
moistens, these terms merely express the habitual con-
nection which our senses perceive between one thing
and another. It is not the man that throws a stone
who is its real mover; the supreme agent has for the
moment created motion. If a living being die, it is
because God has created the attribute of death, and the
body remains dead, only because that attribute is un-
ceasingly created. Thus, on the one hand, the object
called the cause is denied to have any efficient power to
produce the so-called effect; and on the other hand, the
regularities or laws of nature are explained to be direct
interferences by the Deity. God is the sole cause or
agent in the universe: it is He who, directly, or by
the mediation of His ministering angels, brings every-
thing to pass. The supposed uniformity and necessity
of causation are only effects of custom, and may be at
any moment rescinded. In this way, by a theory which,
according to Averroes, involves the negation of science,
the Moslem theologians believed that they had exalted
God beyond the limits of the metaphysical and scientific
conceptions of law, form, and matter; whilst they at
the same time stood aloof from the vulgar doctrines,
attributing a causality to things. Making the uniform-
ity of mature a mere phantom due to our human cus-
tomary experience, they deemed they had left a clear
ground for the possibility of miracles.
But at least one point was common to the theological
and the philosophical doctrine. Carrying out, it may
be, the principles of the Neo-Platonists, they kept the
sanctuary of the Deity securely guarded, and interposed
between him and his creatures a spiritual order of
potent principles, from the Intelligence, which is the
first-born image of the great unity, to the Soul and Na-
ture, which come later in the spiritual rank. Of God
the philosophers said we could not tell what He is, but
only what He is not. The highest point, beyond which
strictly philosophical inquiries did not penetrate, was
the active intellect, — a sort of soul of the world in Aris-
totelian garb—the principle which inspires and regu-
lates the development of humanity, and in which lies
the goal of perfection for the human spirit. In the.
ological language the active intellect is described as an
angel. The inspirations which the prophet receives by
angelic messengers are compared with the irradiation of
intellectual light, which the philosopher wins by con-
templation of truth and increasing purity of life. But
while the theologian incessantly postulated the agency
of that God, whose nature he deemed beyond the pale
of Science, the philosopher, ſollowing a purely human
and natural aim, directed his efforts to the gradual ele-
vation of his part of reason from its unformed state, and
to its final union with the controlling intellect which
moves and draws to itself the spirits of those who pre-
pare themselves for its influences. The philosophers in
their way, like the mystics, of Persia (the Sufites) in
another, tended towards a theory of the communion of
man with the spiritual world, which may be considered
a protest against the practical and almost prosaic defi-
niteness of the creed of Mahomet.
Arabian philosophy, at the outset of its career in the
9th century, was able without difficulty to take posses-
sion of those resources for speculative thought, which
the Latins had barely achieved at the close of the 12th
century by the slow process of rediscovering the Aristo-
telian logic from the commentaries and versions of Boé-
thius. What the Latins painfully accomplished, amid
many senseless disputations and blind gropings after
light, owing to their fragmentary and unintelligent ac-
quaintance with ancient philosophy, was already done
for the Arabians by the scholars of Syria. In the early
centuries of the Christian era, but within and without
the ranks of the church, the platonic tone and method
were paramount throughout the East. Their influence
was felt in the creeds which formulated the orthodox
dogmas in regard to the Trinity and the Incarnation.
But in its later days the Neo-Platonist school came more
and more to find in Aristotle the best exponent and in-
terpreter of the philosopher whom they thought divine.
It was in this spirit that Porphyry, Themistius, and
Joannes Philoponus composed their commentaries on the
treatises of the Peripatetic system which, modified often
unconsciously by the dominant ideas of its expositors,
became in the 6th and 7th centuries the philosophy of
the Eastern Church.
The energy of the Monophysites, however, began to
sink with the rise of the Moslem empire; and when phi-
losophy revived amongst them in the 13th century, in the
person of Gregorius Barhebraeus (1226–1286), the re-
vival was due to the example and influence of the Ara-
bian thinkers. It was otherwise with the Nestorians.
Gaining by means of their professional skill as physi-
cians a high rank in the society of the Moslem world,
the Nestorian scholars soon made Baghdad familiar with
the knowledge of Greek philosophy and science which
they possessed. But the narrow limits of the Syrian
studies, which added to a scanty knowledge of Aristotle
some acquaintance with his Syrian commentators, were
soon passed by the curiosity and zeal of the students in the
Caliphate. , 1)uring the 8th and 9th centuries, rough but
generally faithful versions of Aristotle's principal works
were made into Syriac, and them from the Syriac into
the Arabic. The names of some of these translators,
such as Johannitius (Homein ibn-Ishak), were heard
even in the Latin schools. By the labors of Honein
and his family the great body of Greek science, medical,
astronomical, and mathematical, became accessible to
the Arab-speaking races. But for the next three cen-
turies fresh versions, both of the philosopher and of his
commentators, continued to succeed each other.
To the Arabians Aristotle represented and summed up
Greek philosophy, even as Galen became to them the
code of Greek medicine. They adopted the doctrine
and system which the progress of human affairs had
made the intellectual aliment of their Syrian guides. It
was a matter of historical necessity, and not an act of
deliberate choice. Just as the early poets of Rome,
when they tried to naturalise the drama, reproduced the
works of Euripides, the popular tragedian of their time,
so the Arabians, when the need of scientific culture
awoke amongst them, accepted Aristotle. From first
to last Arabian philosophers made no claim to origi-
mality; their aim was merely to propagate the truth of
Peripateticism as it had been delivered to them. In
medicine and astronomy, as well as in philosophy, they
entertained an almost superstitious reverence for their
Greek teachers. It was with them that the deification
of Aristotle began ; and from the belieſ that in him
human intelligence had reached its limit passed to the
later school-men. The doctrine is fixed : truth has
been ascertained : all that is needed is a faithful and skil-
ful interpreter. Hence, their perpetual labor of exposi-
tion and illustration; their epitomes and paraphrases of
4O8
A R A
Aristotelian doctrine. The progress amongst the
Arabians on this side lies in a closer adherence to their
text, a nearer approach to the bare exegesis of their
author, and an increasing emancipation from control by
the tenets of the popular religion.
Secular philosophy found its first entrance amongst
the Saracens in the days of the early caliphs of the
Abbaside dynasty, whose ways and thoughts had been
moulded by their residence in Persia amid the influences
of an older creed, and of ideas which had in the last
resort sprung from the Greeks. The seat of empire had
been transferred to Baghdad, on the highway of Orien-
tal commerce; and the distant Khorassan became the
favorite province of the caliph. Then was inaugurated
the period of Persian supremacy, during which Islam
was laid open to the full current of alien ideas and cul
ture. The incitement came, however, not from the
people, but from the prince: it was in the light of court
favor that the colleges of Baghdad and Nisabur first
came to attract students from every quarter, from the
valleys of Andalusia, as well as the upland plains of
Transoxiana. Al-Mansir, the second of the Abbasides,
encouraged the appropriation of Greek science; but it
was Al-Mamūn, the son of Harān al-Rashid, who
deserves in the Mahometan empire the same position of
royal founder and benefactor which is held by Charle-
magne in the history of the Latin schools. In his
reign (813–833) Aristotle was first translated into
Arabic. Legend told how Al-Mamûn had been induced
to send the Byzantine emperor for Greek books on
philosophy, in consequence of a vision in which a ven-
erable personage, who made himself known as Aristotle,
had excited without gratifying the curiosity of the caliph.
Orthodox Mussulmans, however, distrusted the course
on which their chief had entered, and his philosophical
proclivities became one ground for doubting as to his
final salvation.
Unquestionably the most illustrious name amongst the
Oriental Moslems was Avicenna (980–1037.) His fame
in Europe rested more upon his medical camon than on
his philosophical works; but even in logic and meta-
physics his influence on the West was considerable.
With him the encyclopaedic tendencies of the school of
Baghdad reached their culmination. He was followed
by Algazel (Abou-Hamed Mohammed ibn-Mohammed
al-Ghazāli), whose name was the last that attained a
European reputation. Born near Tús in IoS8, he
studied there and at Nisabur; and having left his native
province of Khorassan at the age of 36, he was ap-
pointed to a high educational post at Baghdad. There,
as well as at Damascus, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, his
lectures attracted crowds of eager listeners. Suddenly
he withdrew from active life, assumed the habits of the
Sufite mystic, and devoted himself to contemplation of
religious truth; and although he was persuaded to re-
Sume for a while his duties in the college of Baghdad, he
soon returned to seclusion, and passed his last days in a
monastery which he had himself founded at Tús (1111).
The 12th century exhibits the decay of liberal intel-
lectual activity in the Caliphate, and the gradual
ascendency of Turkish races animated with all the intol-
lerance of semi-barbarian proselytes to the Mahometan
faith. Philosophy, which had only sprüng up when the
purely Arabian influences ceased to predominate, came
to an end when the sceptre of the Moslem world passed
'away from the dynasty of Persia. Even in 115o Bagh-
dad had seen a library of philosophical books burned by
command of the Caliph Mostandjed; and in 1192 the
same place might have witnessed a strange scene, in
which the books of a physician were first publicly cursed,
and then committed to the flames, while their owner
was incarcerated.
The same phenomena were repeated in Spain under
the Mahometan rulers of Andalusia and Marocco, with
this difference, that the time of philosophical develop-
ment was shorter, and the heights to which Spanish
thinkers soared were greater. The reign of Al-Hakem
the Second (961–976) inaugurated in Andalusia those
scientific and philosophical studies which were simul-
taneously prosecuted by the Society of Basra. From
Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, and Alexandria, books both
old and new were procured at any price for the library
of the prince ; 27 free schools were opened in Cordova
for the education of the poor; and intelligent knowl-
edge was perhaps more widely diffused in Mahometan
Spain than in any other part of Europe at that day.
The mosques of the city were filled with crowds who
listened to lectures on science and literature, law and
religion. But the future glory thus promised was long
postponed. The usurping successor of Hakem found
it a politic step to request the most notable doctors of
the sacred law to examine the royal library; and every
book treating of philosophy, astronomy, and other for-
bidden topics, was condemned to the flames.
Arabian philosophy, whilst it promoted the exegesis
of Aristotle and increased his authority, was not less
notable as the source of the separation between theol-
ogy and philosophy. Speculation fell on irreligious
paths. In many cases the heretical movement was due
less to foreign example than to the indwelling tenden-
cies of the dominant school of Realism. But it is not
less certain that the very considerable freedom of the
Arabians from theological bias served indirectly to in-
tensify the prevailing protest against Sacerdotalism, and
prepared the time when philosophy shook off its eccle-
siastical vestments. In the hurry of first terror, the
church struck Aristotle with the anathema launched
against innovations in philosophy. The provincial coun-
cil of Paris in 1209, which condemned Amalricus and
his followers, as well as David of Dinant's works, for-
bade the study of Aristotle's Natural Philosophy, and
the Commentaries. In 1215 the same prohibition was
repeated, specifying the Metaphysics and Physics, and
the Commentaries by the Spaniard Mauritius (i.e.,
probably Averroes). Meanwhile Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas, accepting the exegetical services of
the Arabians, did their best to controvert the obnoxious
doctrine of the Intellect, and to defend the orthodoxy
of Aristotle against the unholy glosses of infidels. But
it is doubtful whether even they kept as pure from the
infection of illegimate doctrine as they supposed. The
tide meanwhile flowed in stronger and stronger. In
1270 Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, supported by
an assembly of theologians, anathematised thirteen
propositions bearing the stamp of Arabian authorship;
but in 1277 the same views and others more directly
offensive to Christians and theologians had to be cen-
sured again. Raymond Lully, in a dialogue with an
infidel thinker, broke a lance in support of the orthodox
doctrine, and carried on a crusade against the Arabians
in every university; and a disciple of Thomas Aquinas
drew up a list of the several delusions and errors of
each of the thinkers from Alkindius to Averroes.
Strong in their conviction of the truth of Aristotelian-
ism, the Arabians carried out their logical results in the
theological field, and made the distinction of necessary
and possible, of form and matter, the basis of conclu-
sions in the most momentous questions. They refused
to accept the doctrine of creation because it conflicted
with the explanation of forms, as the necessary evolu-
tion of matter. They denied the particular providence
of God, because knowledge in the divine sphere did not
descend to singulars. . They excluded the Deity from
all direct action upon the world, and substituted for a
A R A
4O9
cosmic principle the active intellect— thus holding a
form of Pantheism. But all did not go the same length
in their divergence from the popular creed.
ARABIAN SEA, the name applied to the large sheet
of water, really a portion of the Indian Ocean, bounded
on the E. by Hindustan, on the N. by Beloochistan, on
the W. by Arabia and the Gulf of Aden, and on the S.
by an imaginary line stretching between Cape Guarda-
ſui, in the N. E. of Africa, and Cape Comorin in Hindu-
stan. This is the Arabian Sea proper, but under the
name Gulf of Aden it penetrates between Africa and
Arabia, connecting itself with the Red Sea through the
Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb; while on the N. W. the
Gulf of Oman, with its continuation the Persian Gulf,
separates Arabia from Beloochistan and Persia. Be-
sides these larger ramifications, there are the Gulfs of
Cambay and Cutch in the N. W. of India. An interest
and importance belong to this sea as forming part of
the chief highway between Britain and India. The
islands it contains are few and insignificant, the chief
being Socotra and the Laccadives.
ARABICI, a sect originating about the beginning of
the 3d century, which is mentioned by Augustine (/)e
A/aeres., c. 83), and called also 7%metopsychița: by Johan-
nes Damascenus (/)e Aſares., c. 99). Its founder is
unknown, and its history brief and obscure. Its dis-
tinctive doctrine was a form of Christian materialism,
showing itself in the belief that the soul perished and
was restored to life along with the body. According to
Eusebius, the Arabici were convinced of their error by
Origen, and renounced it at a council held about 246
A. D.
ARACATI, a town of Brazil, in the province of Ceara,
situated on the Jaguaribe, about IO miles from its mouth.
It is well built, and carries on a considerable export
trade in hides and cotton. The population is stated at
26,000.
ARACHNIDA.— The Arachnida, or, popularly
speaking, the Spiders and their allied forms, constitute a
well-defined group within the great branch “Articulata.”
of the animal kingdom, though on one side its boundary
lines melt almost insensibly into the Annelides, through
the family of acarids — Pentastomides. Linnaeus and
others of the older systematists included all Arachnids
(as then recognized) under the class Ansecta, Lamarck
first separating them into a distinct class. A few
general remarks, therefore, on the branch Articulata,
and its subordinate groups, may be useful, to show the
general relation of that under consideration.
As distinguished from the Vertebrata, the animals of
the branch Articulata may be characterized generally as
having (besides the marked and uniformly different
position of the chief organ of circulation and the nervous
chords) an external skeleton, the different parts of which,
of more or less Solid consistency, are articulated, or
jointed to each other, and contain within their hollows
the vital and other organs. Internally, threads of
nervous matter, springing from enlargements or knots
gang/ia) upon two or more central longitudinal nervous
chords on the ventral side of the body traverse the
different parts of it ; these chords, however, end in one
special mass, corresponding to the brain in the Verte-
Arata; and the nervous systems composed by these
ganglia vary considerably in their special structure and
arrangement in the different subordinate groups.
This being the distinctive plan of structure in the
Articulata, a review of the whole group shows us that
this plan is carried out in two well-marked leading ways
— first, without, and secondly, with, articuſated legs,
or organs of locomotion and touch. Those without
articulated limbs constitute the Amne/ides of Lamarck,
which for our present purpose, it is sufficient to charac-
terise as having the articulate plan of structure carried out
in the general form of a more or less cylindrical, length-
ened body, composed of a number of rings, segments,
or transverse folds, of which the first forms the head,
&ut destitute of articulated Zimbs. Those with artic-
ulated legs constitute the Condylopa of Latreille, , or
the Znsecta of Linnaeus; but the term In recta being
now in general use to define a subordinate group, it will
be better to adopt here the name given by Latreille.
In the “Condylopa,” then, the articulated plan of
structure is carried out in the form of a more or less
hard body composed of different pieces, of which one,
two, three, or more, are generally leading ones; to this
body (in general to the anterior portion of it) are
attached arzicze/aze orgazes of locomotion various in
number, but never, or at least vary rarely, less than six.
The organs of sight (when present) are always in the
head, and vary in number, position, and . kind. To
these two leading divisions of the branch Articulata—
the Anne/ides of Lamarck, and the Condylopa of
Latreille — we may give the designation of CLASSES,
since they are each respectively composed of animals
which thus primarily and markedly differ in the way in
which their common articulate plan of structure is
carried out.
Leaving now the class Annelides, to which has been
given the name “Anarthropoda,” and confining our at-
tion to the “Condylopa,” or “Condylopoda” (equiva-
lent to the “Arthropoda” of more modern authors),
we find that the latter contains the four following groups
—“Insecta, ’’ “Myriapoda,” “Arachnida,” and
“Crustacea.”
These all agree in the way which, as above explained,
their general articulated plan of structure is carried out,
but they differ in the further modifications of this plan,
that is to say, in the number, division, and size (both
absolute and relative) of the different articulations of the
body (including the organs of locomotion, of manduca-
tion, and of touch), and in the respective value and re-
lation of these to each other, as well as in the modifica-
tions of their respiratory and other internal systems,
and also in other important points. Differing thus from
each other, these four groups, usually (three at least of
them) ranked as distinct classes, yet appear to be en-
titled only to the rank of sub-classes, being each merely
ºnly subordinate group of the class “Condylo-
Oda.”
p The four sub-classes of Condylopoda (or articulate-
legged Annulosa) may be separately and briefly charac-
terised thus:
Sub-class I.-INSECTA: subject in general to metamor-
phosis, more or less complete, during the progress to
maturity; organs of locomotion, six; body divided
into three principal parts—caput, thorax and abdomen;
respiration wholly tracheal.
Sub-class II. — MYRIAPODA: not subject to metamor-
phosis, properly so-called; organs of locomotion above
six in number (twenty-four and more) developed by
degrees, and affixed to the abdominal as well as to
the other (numerous) segments into which the body is
divided. Although occasionally some of the anterior
segments coalesce, and the head is stated to be formed
by five or more modified segments, yet no one or
more parts of the body can be said to be principal
ones; respiration is tracheal.
Sub-class III.-ARACHNIDA: not subject to metamor-
phosis, properly so-called, though as with the Myria-
poda, some portions of structure among certain
acarids, and to a small extent even among the Ara-
neidea, are progressively developed at the various
moultings of the skin. Organs of locomotion, eight;
body in general divided into two principal parts, ce”-
4 IO
A R A
alo-thorax and abdomen ; , but where (as in some
groups) the abdomen is divided into more or less dis-
tinct segments no organs of locomotion are ever at-
tached to them; respiration, where distinct organs
exist, is either tracheal, pulmo-branchial, or the two
co-existent.
Sub-class IV.-CRUSTACEA: without metamorphosis;
organs of locomotion various in number (not less than
eight or ten), and attached to some or all of the many
segments, abdominal as well as others, into which the
body is divided; although in numbers of crustaceans no
one part of the body can be called a principal part,
yet in some very large and leading groups, the por-
tion covered by the carapace (corresponding to the
cephalo-thorax in Arachnids) may well be termed the
one principal part; the abdomen being in this case
more or less rudimentary or subordinate. Respiration
in the Crustacea, where distinct organs are present, is
branchial:
In this view the following diagram shows the relative
positions of the several leading groups of the Articu-
lata ;
ANIMAL KINGDOM.
| |
Branch I. Radiata. II. Mollusca.
|
Class I. Annelides or Anarthropoda.
|
III. ARTICULATA. IV. Vertebrata.
II. CONDYLOPODA or ARTHROPODA.
Suð-class I. Insecta. II. wºn
In this diagram the Myriapoda are placed, in the
position ordinarily assigned to them, between the Insects
and Arachnids; but perhaps a more natural position
would be after the Crustacea, for they appear to connect
the Insecta and Crustacea more than they do the Insecta
and Arachnida. The point, however, of the special
position of any large group in a linear series is tolerably
unimportant. A linear arrangement is of course the
only one possible on paper, but it cannot express the
numerous cross relationships that become evident when
the affinities of special groups are closely studied. By
placing the Myriapoda after the Crustaceans, we seem
to get an ascending series in respect to the organs of
locomotion: in the Insecta, six— always attached to the
thoracic segments; in the Arachnida, eight—almost
always attached to the thoracic segments; in the Crus-
tacea, eight, ten, and upwards—frequently attached to
the abdominal as well as the thoracic segments; in the
Myriapoda, twenty-four and more—always attached to
the abdominal as well as other segments. The relation
of the Myriapoda to the Crustacea through the attach-
ment of limbs to the abdominal segments is thus
expressed; and by the meeting of the two ends of the
line, the always acknowledged affinity of the former to
the Insecta is also expressed.
Having thus briefly explained the most obvious rela-
tionships of the Arachnida, let us now proceed to a more
detailed, though still general, diagnosis of this group.
And first, in respect to their external organisation,
Arachnids are articulate animals, with eight articulated
legs, each in general consisting of seven joints; the head
and thorax are soldered together into one piece (cephalo-
thorax), from which with few exceptions the legs invariably
spring. In one group of the Arachnida (Soløugidea) the
cephalo-thorax is separately segmented, as it is also in
one family of the Thelyphonidea (Tartarides); the rest
of the body forms also one more or less homogeneous
piece (abdomen). The abdomen is always more or less
closely attached to the cephalo-thorax; in some instances
it is soldered to the thorax, and forms with it one un-
divided piece, in other cases it is only joined to it by a
narrow pedicle. At times, also, the abdomen constitutes
a simple unsegmented portion, at other times a seg-
mented or annulate portion of the body, occasionally, as
in the true Scorpions, prolonged into a segmented tail: in
one small but very distinct group (The/iphon idea), the
abdomen is prolonged into either a simple button, a short
jointed, or a more or less long setiform tail; in another
large group (Araneidea) the abdomen terminates with
compound eyes of insects.
III. ARACHNIDA. H.V. Crustacea.
organs (spinners and spinnerets) for spinning threads.
The eyes (when present) are simple, always sessile, and
placed on the fore part of the cephalo-thorax ; they
seem to represent the simple ocelli of the Insecta ; the
large compound eyes of that order having here no repre-
sentation, the caput of Arachnids appearing to begin at
a point posterior to that which bears the antennae and
In Arachnida the number of
eyes varies from two to twelve. In front of and articu-
lated beneath the fore part of the cephalo-thorax, and
moving in different planes in different groups, are two
independent, variously modified, organs for seizing and
compressing the insects and other substances on which
Arachnids in general prey; these organs are often called
mandibles, but more generally, and very appropriately,
falces: these are considered by some systematists to be
the true homologues of the antennae in insects, and to
have been derived from those portions of the insect or-
ganisation by long and unceasing modification; when,
however, the caput of an Arachnid (scorpion or spider,
for instance) is compared with that of a coleopterous or
hymenopterous insect, in which the mandibles are well
developed, there seems far more reason to conclude that
the antennae of the insect have no homologue at all in
Arachzeid (Claparède, Z.c. post), but that the falces of
the latter are the true representatives of the mandibles
of the former. Behind the falces (and also used in man-
ducation) are two other large movable portions of struc-
ture called maxillae; these vary in shape and size, and
form in fact lateral and hinder boundaries to the mouth,
as well as an apparatus for comminuting and Squeezing
the food substances; from each of these maxillae, on the
outer side springs a palpus of four or five joints, varying
in structure and use. Between the maxillae most Arach-
nids have also a fixed piece (labium) of various form,
completing the hinder limits of the mouth organs, and in
Some (perhaps in most) there is, within the parts already
named, another portion (tongue), not yet sufficiently ob-
served either in regard to its form or use, but probably
acting so as to hinder choking. In some Arachnidans
these different parts of the mouth are soldered together
and form a tolerably simple sucking apparatus, analo-
gous to the mouth of some insects (Aſemiptera, &c.) As
observed above, Arachnids are not, in a proper Sense,
subject to metamorphosis: in most of them there is little
real change after they leave the egg; though, in some of
the lowest forms, indeed, there are after-changes by
moultings of the skin, which approach the incomplete
metamorphoses of some insects.
' A R A
4 II
With respect to the internal organisation of the
Arachnida, it might perhaps be enough here to refer to
the more detailed accounts given further on, where the
separate orders are under consideration; but the following
summary will probably make our general view of the
whole sub-class more complete.
AMuscular System.— Of this it is enough to say that
it is similar to that of the rest of the Articulata, con-
sisting of flexor and extensor muscles, situated within
the hollows of the limbs, besides groups of fibres by
which the epidermis and parts within it are connected
and held together. On the outer surface these groups
frequently show, at their points of union, boss-like marks
or foveae, or impressed spots of various forms and sizes,
often presenting by their position distinctive peculiarities
of form; it is probable that many others of the external
specific markings are dependent on the course and posi-
tion of the muscular fibres, as well as of the heart and
other organs.
Circulatory System.— The vital fluid is circulated by
means of an elongated muscular vessel or heart, varying
in form, and, instead of being placed, as in the Verte-
brata, on the ventral side of the body, extending along
the back of the abdomen. This vessel is often divided
into chambers or compartments by valves, having also
valvular orifices on its upper side for the flowing in of
the fluid (Newport), and giving off vessels (arteries) for
its distribution to the rest of the body. In the lower
forms, however, of Arachnids (among the Acaridea) no
such principal muscular vessel is found, the vital fluid
being in such cases supposed to circulate generally in the
body, and to be distributed irregularly into different por-
tions by the muscular movements of the intestinal canal.
A'espiratory System. — Arachnids breathe by means
of trachede (spiracular tubes, as in the Insecta), as well
as by Aulmo-branchia, said to be a kind of compound
of the gill of fish and the lung of mammals, though in
reality there seems better reason to consider the pulmo-
branciae as merely peculiarly modified trachae; both these
Qrgans have external orifices (stigmata) variously situ-
ated, but commonly in some part of the abdomen. In
some Arachnids (certain groups of the Araneidea) respir-
ation is effected by both of the above organs; while in
others (certain of the Acaridea) no distinct organs of
respiration exist.
Zigestive System. — Digestion is effected by a simple
alimentary tube or canal running from the mouth to the
amus. This tube is various in its form, as well as in the
intestines issuing from it; in some groups, as the Ara-
neida and Acaridea, the above canal has large lateral
caecal appendages; in others (Scorpiomides and 7%e/y-
A/ionides) the alimentary canal has no such lateral en-
largements. In some Arachnids there have also been
found a liver (or mass of substance in the abdomen exer-
cising the functions of a liver), an organ performing the
part of kidneys, and salivary glands, often of large
size, while in others no distinct organs of digestion
eX1St.
AVerzous System.—This consists of ganglia or nerve-
knots, formed by enlargements of longitudinal nervous
cords (generally two in number), differing in position and
in the nerves issuing from them. In one large group
(Acaridea) where the abdomen usurps, as it were, the
place of all the rest of the body, there is no longitudinal
nerve cord; a single nerve mass occupies the interior of
the abdomen, and sends forth nerves to the various sur-
rounding parts.
Generative System.— Generation is effected by two
distinct and separate sexes, the single exception known
being the Pardigrada, a group of Acaridea approach-
ing nearly to the Entozoa, and said to be hermaphrodite.
In females the parts of generation consists of two sacs
larly known as “Harvest-men.”
(ovaria), one on each side of the alimentary canal.
These have a common external orifice (vulva), various
in its shape, beneath the anterior extremity of the abdo-
men; and connected with this opening there is frequently
an epigyne, or ovipositor, often of some length, and of
characteristic form. In males (except among the phal-
angids and Scorpions) there is no intromittent organ,—
the generative parts consisting of two long tubes, simi-
larly situated to the ovaria in females, in which the
seminal fluid is secreted; these tubes end in a simple ex-
ternal, very minute orifice, in a similar situation to the
vulva of the female.
Arachnids are either oviparous or ovo-viviparous.
As before observed, they undergo no proper metamor-
phosis, but as growth takes place there are more or fewer
successive moultings of the skin; and complete develop-
ment of all the parts does not occur until the last moult,
when the creature becomes adult, and so fitted to per-
petuate its kind.
With regard to the position held by Arachnids in the
great scheme of nature, it seems, from the considerations
shortly entered into above, undeniable that they are
very closely linked to the rest of the Articulata by much,
both of external and internal structure, common to the
whole branch. The office they subserve is evidently the
keeping down of the superabundant supply of the insect
world; some even operating to check the too rapid
advance of higher animals. -
Assuming that the operation, in some shape or other,
of evolution has brought the different groups of Articu-
lata to the varied forms and conditions they now respect-
ively present, it is plain that the higher, at least, of the
arachnidous orders must, in all probability, have been
modified from some one or more of the other groups,
perhaps in the main from the Insecta and Myriapoda, -
certainly not the Insecta, for instance, from the Arach-
mida. Thus, we should define Arachnids, generally, to
be insects modified for the purpose of preying upon their
congeners; while some of the lowerforms of Arachnids,
such as Demodex, Zardigrada, and Pentastoma, carry
us back to the remote past, before the branch Articu-
lata, in any of its great groups, had attained more than
a very slight progress towards its present dignified and
highly organised forms. *
The above being a general summary of the external
and internal organisation of the Arachnida, an examin-
ation of the whole group shows us that their different
characters, and the ways in which their articulated plan
of structure is carried out, are variously correlated and
modified, forming structural complications of several
marked kinds, whence we get the different orders, being
the next subordinate groups, into which Arachnids are
divided. These orders are seven in number, and form so
many well-defined groups, but of very different extent.
Advancing from the more simple to the more highly
organised, we begin with the Acaridea, comprising the
mites and ticks, and including also the 7'ardigradides,
Aeratastomides, as well as Demodex. The second order
is that of the Pycnogonidea, marine parasites, which, in
a certain plane, appear to connect the Acaridea with the
next or third order, Phalangidea ; these last are popu-
Next to them, and
forming the ſourth order, come the So/pugidea, a small
but very distinct group, constituting a link in one plane
between the Phalangidea and Scorpion idea, which last,
including the Chelifers, or False Scorpions, form the
fifth order. Not far removed from these is the sixth
order, Thelyphonidea, comprising groups which partake
of the characters both of the Scorpionidea and of the
next — the seventh and last — order, Arazzeidea, or true
Spiders.
4. I2
A R A
Sub-Class.--ARACHNIDA.
Orders.—I. Acaridea. II. Pycnogonidea. III. Phalāngidea. IV. Solpugidea. V. Scorpionidea.
VI. Thelyphonidea. VII. Araneidea.
The following abstract shows the chief ordinal char-
acters of these seven groups of Arachnids:—
Order I. ACARIDEA.—Cephalo-thorax and abdomen
united so as to form one piece, generally without
mark of union ; palpi and falces variable in structure;
the several parts of the mouth often united ; legs
terminating variously, generally eight in number,
sometimes only six in the immature state, and in one
or two instances but four, even when adult; eyes,
when present, variable in number (2 to 6), and placed
on the cephalo-thorax ; respiration, when proper
organs for it exist, wholly tracheal; nervous matter
gathered into one large mass, or ganglion ; repro-
duction ovo-viviparous as well as oviparous. Maturity
is reached by quasi, or imperfect, metamorphoses in
some of the groups.
{}rder II. PycNogoNIDEA.—Cephalo-thorax segmented,
linear; abdomen rudimentary, forming merely a small
terminal segment to the cephalo-thorax; the mouth
consisting of the termination of a tubular article
forming the head, sometimes accompanied by some
more or less distinct parts; legs eight, multi-articulate;
in females a supernumerary pair, between the first two
and used for bearing ova; organs of respiration, none;
metamorphosis imperfect, as in the last order.
80rder III. PHALANGIDEA.—Cephalo-thorax and abdo-
men of tolerably equal size, and united throughout
their whole breadth, but the junctional line evidently
marked; abdomen annulate or segmentate, caused by
transverse folds in the epidermis; falces two-jointed,
didactyle; legs in general inordinately long, and very
slender; the two terminal joints multi-articulate, and
ending with claws; eyes two, on the vertex of cephalo-
thorax; respiration tracheal; reproduction oviparous;
no metamorphosis of even an imperfect kind.
‘Order IV. Solpug IDEA.—Cephalo-thorax distinct from
the abdomen and segmented, the first segment form-
ing the head; abdomen annulate; falces one-jointed,
didactyle; palpi terminating with a capsule containing
a peculiar organ, the use of which is not yet known;
eyes two, on a small eminence at the fore part of the
head in the medial line; respiration tracheal; legs
terminating with two curved fingers; manner of pro-
gressive growth unknown.
Order V. Scorpion IDEA.—Cephalo-thorax formed of
one undivided piece, united to the abdomen through-
out its entire breadth; abdomen annulate, prolonged
(in one of the families) into a segmented tail, ending
with a poison bulb armed with a sharp perforated
point, through which the poison, is emitted; falces
didactylous; palpi terming with a didactyle claw; eyes
variable in number, two to twelve, variously grouped
on the fore part of the cephalo-thorax; respiration, in
one family, tracheal, in another, pulmo-branchial;
ganglia several, distributed along the nervous chord;
reproduction, in some oviparous, in others ovo-vivi-
parous; organs for spinning beneath the fore part of
the abdomen in one family; no metamorphosis.
Order VI. THELYPHONIDEA.—Cephalo-thorax undi-
vided, but its segmental structure generally visible in
grooves and furrows, following the course of the sol-
dered joints; abdomen annulate, joined to the cephalo-
thorax by a pedicle; palpi very strong, didactylous (in
a modified form); falces monodactylous; legs of the
first pair excessively long, antenniform, the last joints
very fine, multi-articulate, and devoid of a terminal
cław; eyes, when present, eight, disposed in three
groups on the fore part of the cephalo-thorax; abdo-
men either terminating with a button-like segment, a
short two-jointed tail, or a multi-articulate Setiform
one; respiration pulmo-branchial; manner of progressive
development unknown. In one family, ganglia two,
closely united; in others unknown.
Order VII. ARANEIDEA.—Cephalo-thorax undivided,
but traces of segmentation commonly more or less
visible, united to the abdomen by a narrow pedicle;
abdomen without segments or annuli, ending with
organs for spinning; falces monodactylous; palpi more
or less filiform in males, with the last joint more or
less complicated in structure, and used in copulation,
terminating in females (but not invariably) with a claw
or claws, sometimes pectinated; legs terminating with
two or three curved claws, and, except the third (which
is rarely so), generally more or less pectinated; ganglia
two or three in number; respiration tracheal, as well
as pulmo-branchial; reproduction oviparous.
The last order of Arachnids or true spiders consists,
like others of the sub-class Arachnida, of a body divided
into two parts—cephalo-thorax and abdomen; , but
these are united only by a slender pedicle, and neither
is segmented, ringed, or articulated, nor (in respect to
the abdomen) covered with horny plates, except in two
instances — Ziphistius desultor (Schiódte) and (but par-
tially only) 7etrablemma medioculatum (Cambridge),
both exceedingly rare and remarkable species. The
cephalo-thorax, though undivided, yet shows by its
various, and more or less strongly marked, converging
grooves and indentations, that it is composed of the
ordinary cephalic and thoracic segments soldered
together; and although these segments form but one
undivided portion of structure, it is necessary to speak
of it frequently by the names of its two portions—
caput and thorax. The caput is almost always easily
traced, forming a kind of wedge shaped portion,
jammed (as it were) into the first of the thoracic seg-
ments, and giving one the idea, in most cases, of
its fore part having been to a greater or less extent
truncated or lopped off. Similarly the last of the
four thoracic segments has the appearance of having
been driven in to meet the caput, all the segments thus
converging, on the upper side, towards a common
fovea, or more or less deep central indentation, and on
the under side forming a sternum (or sternal plate),
in which, however, no appearance of segmentation is
generally visible beyond small eminences opposite to
the articulation of the legs, with which the number of
the thoracic segments, as seen above, agrees. The
integument of the cephalo-thorax is either hard, horny,
or coriaceous, generally more or less clothed with hairs
and bristles, and sometimes, though more rarely, with
tubercles and spines; occasionally it is perfectly smooth
and glabrous. The eyes, when present, are , two,
four, six, or eight, and are very variously, but always
symmetrically, disposed on the fore part of the caput.
The number and general position of the eyes form
valuable characters for the formation of genera.
The legs, eight in number, are articulated to the
sternal plate (mentioned above) which forms the under
side of the cephalo-thorax; in one genus, however
(Miagrammopes, Cambr.), found in Ceylon and Aus-
tralia, no sternum properly so-called exists, the legs be-
ing articulated to the continuous under side of the
cephalo-thorax. . Except in one or two species the legs
are seven-jointed, and variously furnished. with hairs,
bristles, and spines. Many spiders have & kind of pad of
closely set papillae-form hairs beneath the extremity of
the tarsi of some or all the legs, and often extending
along the whole of the under side of the joint. This
A R A
4 I 3
pad enables the spider to run over smooth vertical sur-
faces, acting as a kind of sucker, partly by atmospheric
pressure, and partly (Mr. Blackwall thinks wholly) by
means of a viscid secretion from the papillae-form hairs.
Each tarsus ends with either two or three more or less
curved or bent claws, commonly (but not always) pecti-
nate or finely denticulated; these (with other opposed
serrated claws, in some groups) are used in traversing
their web, and as hooks to give a tension to the line of their
snaresby alternately pressing and straining upon them; the
spines and bristles are used also in many cases in the
actual construction of the silken snares in which spiders
entrap their prey. The spines on the legs of some
spiders which excavate cylindrical holes in the earth
(lined with silk and closed with a hinged lid) are very
strong and well suited for digging out the soil. The
males of some species, again, have a curious row of
short, closely set, curved, spiny bristles along a portion
of the upper side of the metatarsi of the fourth pair of
legs; the use of this row of bristles (called the ca/amis-
£rum) is alluded to further on. The length of the legs
in spiders (both actual and relative) is very various; and
the differences between them, as well as their armature
and terminal claws, furnish valuable characters, often
generic, and always important in the determination of
species. dº -
The falces, two in number, are articulated immedi-
ately before the low margin of the caput; their direction
is various, ranging from a line parallel to the plane of
the cephalo-thorax to one perpendicular to it; they are
in general opposed to each other, and in most cases are
armed with teeth on their inner surface, especially to-
ward their extremities; each also terminates with a mov-
able curved fang, which, when not in use, is (according
to its mode of articulation) folded down either across the
inner side of the extremity of the falx, or (as in one ex-
tensive family, Theraphosides) backwards alongits length;
by means of these ſangs, which are internally channelled
and perforated at their extremities, a poison secreted
within the caput is instilled into the wound made by
them, proving, no doubt, fatal to the spider’s prey, and
often nearly so to human beings. Not to dwell upon
the, probably exaggerated, accounts of the Tarantula,
there are well-authenticated instances of recent date in
regard to the very deadly nature of the poison of quite a
small spider, Zathrodectus Katipo (Ll. Powell), found
in New Zealand Trans. AV. Z. Instit. iii. p. 56; also /d.
ii. p. 81, and iii. p. 29). A larger European species of
the same genus, Z. oculatus (Walck.), also bears the
reputation of being venomous.
The maxilla are a conspicuous, as well as important,
portion of structure in the Araneidea; they are two
strong pieces situated immediately behind the falces,
exceedingly varied in ſorm and strength, and articulated
to the fore side of the sternum between the basal joints
of the first pair of legs. Their real direction is always
divergent, i.e., outwards from each other, but as in most
cases the inner extremity is produced into an apophysis
of greater or less size (sometimes following the direction
of the maxilla, sometimes curved so that its extremity
almost touches that of the opposite maxilla), the maxilla
itself often seems lost in the part which projects from it.
Owing to this, the pulpus which springs from each
maxilla, although really always springing from its
extremity, appears more frequently to issue from its
outer side; and, in fact, it can hardly in those cases be
described (without leading to some confusion) as issuing
in any other way. The form of the maxillae, together
with the apparent point of palpal issue, constitutes one
of the most valuable characters for the establishment of
genera.
The palpi, issuing from the maxillae as just described,
are two (in both sexes of many and in the female sex of
most species, leg-like) limbs, of five or (counting the basal
joint—maxilla—to which each is articulated) six joints;
in the female spider the palpi generally end with a
single, and sometimes denticulate, curved claw; in some
instances, however, there is no terminal palpal claw;
but in the mate, the third (cubital) and fourth (radial)
joints of the palpi are (the former often, the latter
always) characterized by prominences, spiny apophyses,
or protuberances, which furnish some of the strongest,
as well as most tangible, specific characters of that sex;
the last (or digital) joint of each palpus (in the male
spider) is generally more or less concave, and always
includes, either within its concavity or articulated to its
under side, a (frequently complex) congeries of corneous
lobes, spines, and spiny processes, in some instances
articulated to each other so as to be capable of being
opened out as by hinges. These are not developed
until the spider arrives at maturity. Up to that period
the digital joint has a tumid and somewhat semi-diapha-
nous appearance, and, although commonly smaller,
bears the same general form that it has after maturity.
These processes, or, as they are called, pa/pal organs,
are connected with the process of reproduction—the
fecundation of the female. This subject, however, we
shall have occasion to refer to again. The palpi are
generally furnished more or less with hairs, bristles, and
spines, like the legs; and like them also, are reproduced
after accidental loss.
The Zabium is also another important portion of
structure; it is situated at the fore extremity of the
sternum, between and in front of (or rather beneath)
the maxillae; it is of varied form and size, and stopping
the gap between the maxillae, it completes with them the
inferior and lateral boundaries of the mouth, the falces
forming its upper limits. The labium is always present,
except in a new and very remarkable Brazilian spider,
Aphantochi/zes Rogersii (Cambr.), in which the labium
is wanting, and yet not wanted, because the maxillae, in
this instance, close up to each other, leaving no gap be-
tween them.
Between the labium and falces is another portion of
structure, the tongue; it is, no doubt, by the aid of this
that the act of Swallowing the juices of insects, when
expressed by the ſalces and maxillae, is effected; that, in
fact, the spider eats without being choked. No use
hitherto has been made of the tongue in spiders for
purposes of classification, but the form of the Začizum is
very useful for the characterisation of genera. These
parts — falces, maxillae, labium, and tongue — thus
complete the mouth-parts of a spider.
The stern um has already been mentioned; its form
varies from oval to heart-shaped, and sometimes some-
what pentagonal; its convexity also varies considerably;
its use in classification is rather limited, but with its
clothing of hairs, bristles, or pubescence, or its some-
times glabrous nature, it generally has some specific im-
portance. In one known genus only, as mentioned
above, is the sternum wanting.
The abdomen is exceedingly varied in form in different
families; it is united to the cephalo-thorax by a short
narrow pedicle, and generally terminates with organs
for spinning; in one species, Zéphistius desultor (?)
(Schiódte), the spinners are placed near the anterior part
of the under side of the abdomen; and in another,
Mutusca mammosa (Cambr.), one pair only are so
placed, the rest occupying the ordinary position. The
number of spinners varies — two, four, six, or eight;
they are placed in pairs, and when a fourth pair is pres-
ent it is, usually as a single one, united throughout its
length (but with often a line of division visible), and oc-
cupying a tranverse position in front of the rest. It is
4I4.
A R A
'but very lately that spiders have been observed with two
spinners only; see “Spiders of Palestine and Syria,” O.
P. Cambridge, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1872, p. 26o; Ann, and
Mag. AV. A. 1870, pp. 4I4–417, Zbid.
The spinners consist of from one to three joints, and
vary greatly in size and structure, as well as in number,
tout their use in classification has not hitherto been as
great as might have been expected; generally they are
separate, but in 7 etrablemma (Cambr.) they are
enclosed in a kind of corneous sheath. Those of the
fourth pair when present (which they are in both sexes)
are correlated, but in general only in the female sex,
with the calamistrum, or double series of curved bristles
before mentioned, on the metatarsi of the fourth pair of
legs. The function of the calamistrum has been proved
by Mr. Blackwall to be the carding, or teasing and
curling, of a peculiar kind of silk, secreted and emitted
from the fourth pair of spinners; when thus prepared
this silk becomes adhesive, from its minutely divided
and elastic fibres; and, disposed about the lines of the
spiders’ snares, it renders more easy the entanglement
and capture of their prey. Immediately above the
-spinners is a small nipple-like prominence which indi-
cates the anal orifice.
The abdomen is covered with a continuous integu-
ment neither annulate nor segmentate; in one species,
however (before mentioned), Ziphistius desultor
(Schiódte), the upper side has a longitudinal series of
transverse corneous plates, like those of the Phrynides;
and something of a similar kind, but less marked, is
observable in Tetrablemma medioculatum (Cambr.), a
very rare and remarkable little spider found in Ceylon.
The epidermis of the abdomen is of various kinds and
consistency in different groups, sometimes excessively
thin and tender, at other times tough and coriaceous,
and sometimes hard and horny, with a varied armature
and clothing of hairs, bristles, pubescence, tubercles,
and spines, sometimes being, however, perfectly bare
and glabrous; its colors, also, and the patterns pro-
duced by their distribution, vary exceedingly. Under-
neath the fore extremity of the abdomen are placed the
external openings to the respiratory organs; these
apertures consist of a narrow slit or orifice under the
fore edge of round or oval scale-like plates, placed on
each side of the median line; such plates are in some
spiders four in number, but for the most part only
two. Other spiracular openings also exist in many
spiders, both at the anterior part of the under side
and near the spinners (Siebold), but these are usually
far less perceptible than the others before mentioned,
and often discoverable with great difficulty. The ordi-
nary pair of spiracular plates are in general very con-
spicuous, commonly differing in color from the
surrounding surface, and sometimes slightly pubescent.
They occupy each side of the median line at the extreme
fore part of the under side of the abdomen; and be-
tween them is, in the male spider, a very minute orifice
which leads to the seminal organs; while in the same
situation in the female is an aperture usually rather
conspicuous, always of characteristic form, and often
furnished with a corneous process of greater or less
development. This aperture is the vulva, and the
process (when present) probably has the function of an
ovipositor. The form and structure of this aperture is
of great use in the determination of species, but until
the female spider attains maturity no aperture at all is
visible. The orifices to the breathing organs are fringed
with hairs or lashes, and open and close by an internal
muscular arrangement. The other pair of spiracular
plates, when present, are in some cases close behind those
above mentioned, but more commonly at some distance
further towards the hinder extremity of the abdomen.
On the upper side of the abdomen may be seen in
many spiders several impressed spots or dots, differing in
number and position in different genera and species, but
always placed symmetrically. These, considered by
Treviranus as stigmatic openings, are probably indicated
points of fixture for muscles beneath the integument,
being apparently imperforate. Smaller puncture-like
marks are also visible on the under side, and are per-
haps similarly caused. The hairy clothing of the abdo-
men (as well as of the cephalo-thorax and other parts),
variously tinted and colored, gives the specific pattern
to the spider from its diversified distribution; and when
such clothing is absent, the pattern is often equally dis-
tinct and varied, arising in such cases from a pigment in
the coats of the integument itself.
INTERNAL ORGANIZATION.—The Muscular System
of spiders is very similar to that of the rest of the Artic-
ulata. The muscles are formed of numerous parallel
fibres traversed by very marked striae; these muscles are
attached to the different portions of the tegumentary
system, and move the various parts of the body by the
contraction of their fibres. Those which set in motion
the falces, the maxillae, and the coxae of the legs, are
attached to the thorax, and radiate to all these parts
from a centre, marked externally by what has been
before spoken of as the thoracic 2ndentation, or foxea.
The other joints of the legs move, one after the other,
by means of small and exceedingly fine muscles, of the
two kinds ordinarily known as extensors, to raise the
joint, and flexors, to lower it. All these muscles act
with rapidity, and enable the legs to move in every
direction according to the mode in which the various
joints are articulated. The differences in the relative
strength and volume of the muscles are very great;
those, for instance, by which the fangs of the falces are
moved are exceedingly powerful; the abdomen being
generally soft, its integument does not furnish such firm
points of attachment as that of the thoracic region, and
yet the spider can move its abdomen with the greatest
ease in every direction. Beneath the integument, at the
fore part of the under side, two ligaments are attached
to a membraneous plate, situated under the branchial
operculum, and at the hinder part, round the ring which
encircles the spinners and the anus. The fore half of
these ligaments is cartilaginous, while the hunder half is
composed of contractile muscular fibres, and by means
of those muscles the spider moves its abdomen. Two
other pairs of muscles may also be particularly men-
tioned,— one pair inserted under the membrane in the
junctional pedicle, the other leading round the respira-
tory organs: the office of these is to open or close the
branchial opercula, and to draw the sexual organs back-
wards or forwards. The spinners are moved by spe-
cial muscles similar to those of the legs.
Before concluding our remarks on the internal struct-
ure of the Araneidea, two of their special properties
must be shortly noticed—the secretion of the poison in-
jected into the wounds made by the fangs of the falces,
and the secretion of the matter emitted as silken
threads through the spinning organs.
The poison is secreted in two small elongated Sacs
(one for each of the falces) situated within the cephalo-
thorax on either side of the alimentary canal; the Sacs
are connected with a membraneous channel in each of the
falces, the channel running completely through the fang,
from an orifice near the end of which the poison is
pressed out by the spider in the act of wounding its
rev.
p †ie external spinning organs have been mentioned
above; they are usually called spinners, and are various
in size, both actual and relative, in form and in struct-
ure, as well as in number. From the extremity of each
A R A
4I 5
of these organs the silk matter issues through numerous
movable papilla, or sp?zzzzerets, which are similar to hol-
low bristles with enlarged bases; the papillae vary both
in form and number in different species, and from each
spinneret or papilla issues an exceedingly fine thread;
this, uniting with threads from all the other papillae,
forms the ordinary silk line, which though to ordinary
observation simple, is composed of numberless threads
from some one, or all, of the spinners. The matter
from which the silk is formed is secreted in organs (silk-
glands) situated within the ventral surface of the hinder
part of the abdomen. These glands vary in number,
size, and form in different species; they differ also in size
and shape in the same species, for the secretion of dif-
ferent qualities of silk-matter; and each gland has a dis-
tinct duct terminating at the extremity of the spinners.
The emission of silk matter appears certainly to be a
voluntary act on the part of the spider; but it is a dis-
puted question, among arachnologists, whether spiders
have the power to forcibly expel it, or whether it is
merely drawn from the spinnerets by some external force
or other.
The white flake-like flocculi often seen floating in the
air on a calm autumnal afternoon are composed of spider
silk emitted by numerous immature spiders, of many
Species and genera, passing through the air on their
lines, which, being so much lighter than the atmosphere,
serve to bear them away with every breath of wind.
The flocculi appear to be agglomerations of fine lines,
adhesive from their fineness and fibrous nature. In
this respect they differ from the ordinary gossamer
lines, which are merely the threads left by small and
immature spiders (chiefly of one or two families) as they
pass from blade to blade and plant to plant. It seems
probable that nearly all spiders leave a line or lines,
which proceed from one or more of their spinners,
whenever and wherever they move about; and the
setting in of fine weather being the signal for a spon-
taneous restlessness, we can hence better understand
the almost sudden appearance of myriads of lines
stretching over the surface of the earth, and often ex-
tending high up into the air. Numerous papers have
been written on gossamer, chiefly by German and
French writers, with the latter of whom the subject has
ibeen sometimes treated on the basis of the marvellous
and superstitious. These lines are called by them ſi/s
de la Vierge.
The geometric spiders (Orbitelaria) are almost the
only ones whose method of forming a snare have been
at all minutely recorded. When the situation for the
snare has been chosen, the area intended to be filled up
by it is enclosed by various circumferential boundary
lines, fixed to adjacent objects, the exact shape of the
area being influenced by the situation and surrounding
circumstances. A diagonal thread is then spun across
it, and from about a central point of this thread
another is carried to the marginal line; returning to the
central point along the line just spun from it, the spider
carries another line to the margin, and fixes it at a short
distance from the first. In this way the whole area is
gradually filled up, the spider always returning to the
centre along the last line spun, and starting again thence
fixes a ſresh one to the boundary line of the snare. The
• form of the snare is now that of a wheel; the next
operation is to cross the radii of the wheel with ladder-
like lines; this the spider does, beginning from the
centre and working towards the circumference, with a
single spiral line, which is fixed, or glued, with a minute
portion of viscid matter, to each of the radii as it grosses
by an application of the spinners; at some distance
from the centre this spiral line is discontinued and
another is begun; this is formed of quite a different kind
of silk matter, being viscid, and retaining its viscidity
in the form of “minute dew-like globules closely stud-
ding the line.” It appears that when the viscid lines,
intended for the capture of its prey, are completed, the
spider cuts away the first, or unadhesive line, which is
of no service in the entanglement of insects, its office
appearing to be chiefly to strengthen the snare while the
viscid line is being spun, and to enable the spider to
traverse the parts with greater ease. Modifications of
the above method are, no doubt, adopted by some
species, but, substantially, it is believed that most orbic-
ular snares are thus constructed.
GENERAL REMARKS.— Spiders are to be found more
or less abundantly in every part of the world and in
almost every conceivable position ; even subterranean
caves, such as those of Adelsberg and the Island of
Lesina, are tenanted by species, peculiarly adapted by
the absence of eyes to their dark and gloomy abodes.
Less repulsive and forbidding in appearance than most
others of the Arachmida, the Araneidea are often ex-
tremely interesting in their habits. Being almost exclu-
sively feeders on the insect tribes, they are consequently
endowed with proportionate craftiness and skill ; this is
shown remarkably in the construction of their snares
and dwellings. The “trapdoor spider” has always been
one of note in popular works on spiders' habits, and
certainly the details of several different types of the
trapdoor tubular nest with the habits of the several
species to which they belong, lately published by Mr.
Traherne Moggridge, are of the greatest interest and
importance. The typical trapdoor nest is a cylindrical
hole in the earth excavated by the spider itself, lined
with silk and closed by a lid, which fits like a valve or
cork into the opening at the surface and opening by a
strong elastic silken hinge, the spring of which closes it
again with some slight force. Many spiders, however,
live a vagabond life, and capture their prey without the
aid of a snare, by springing on it unawares, or, in some
cases, running it fairly down in open view; yet craft and
skill are equally apparent, whatever be their mode of
life and subsistence.
To say that spiders are less repulsive and forbidding
in appearance than other Arachnids, is to do them but
Scanty justice, for numbers of species of various genera
— notably among the Salticides, or jumping spiders—
are unsurpassed by insects of any order, in respect both
to brilliancy of coloring and the designs formed by its
distribution. Some of the curious and delicate little
species of the genera Argyrodes and Ariamnes are per-
fect marvels of metallic brilliancy and beauty. These
little spiders are found living as quasi parasites, in the
outskirts of the webs of the larger exotic epeirids, and
appear to live on the smaller insects caught in them ;
probably also spinning irregular snares of their own
among the lines of the larger snare. In external appear-
ance the young of spiders do not differ greatly from the
adults, except in being generally more distinct in color
and marking; in some species the characteristic mark-
ings can seldom be traced except in immature examples.
The cocoons or nests in which some spiders deposit their
eggs are very beautiful, as well as varied and character-
istic in form ; that of Æro variegata (Bl.), a little spider
not uncommon in England, would arrest the attention
of even an indifferent person; it is of an elegant pear
shape, formed of a yellow-brown silk network, and
attached by a long elastic stem, of the same material, to
stalks of dead grass, Sticks, or other substances, in shady
places. Another, made by a larger spider, Agroëca
brunnea (Bl.), is of a truncated pear shape, ſormed of
a continuous white silk fabric, and attached to blades and
stalks of living grass and rushes, by a short pedicle; it
must, however, be seen soon after it is made, for the
416
A R A ,
maker, as if prescient of the attraction of such a beau-
tiful little object, hastens to daub it over thickly with a
coat of mud or clay, which completely conceals its struc-
ture and beauty. '
Spiders vary greatly in their relative fertility; proba-
bly many species are rare owing to a limited fecundity.
The egg sac of Agroëca brunnea (Bl.) contains about
forty or fifty eggs, that of Xysticus claveatus (Walck.)
about twenty, that of Æro variegata (Bl.) not so many,
while that of Oomops pulcher (Templ.) contains usually
no more than two. Some spiders, however, perhaps
most, construct more than one cocoon.
From their mode of life spiders attain (as we should
naturally suppose) their largest size, and are found in
their greatest profusion, in the tropical regions; while
in more temperate climates, where the members of the
insect tribe are smaller and their species fewer, we find
spiders in general of comparatively smaller dimensions
and less numerous in species. One of the largest known
spiders, Æury?elma A/ugii (Koch), - Fam. Therapho-
Šides – found in Brazil, measures upwards of two and a
half inches in length, with legs nine inches and upwards
in Span; while the smallest known Spider, Walckenaëra
dºceros (Cambr.), found in England, is but oth of an
inch in length. Tropical countries, however, although
Some of their spiders are giants, have numbers of small
size. Numerous species have been procured from Cey.
lon measuring no more than from ºth to goth of an
inch in length.
Spiders, besides being skilful and crafty, are very
cleanly; one of our common Saltici, AEpiółema histri.
Ønica (Koch), may often be seen brushing and cleaning
its forehead and eyes with its hairy palpi, as a cat uses
its paws for a similar purpose. Probably most spiders,
like the Crustacea, have the faculty of reproducing a lost
limb. Instances of this are numerous, but a repro-
duced limb is seldom or never equal to the original one
in size; this accounts for the frequency of examples cap-
tured with one or more legs, or a palpus, of dwarfed and
stunted dimensions. Many spiders show great attach-
ment to their eggs and young. The female Lycosa will
seize her egg sac again and again if it be taken from her,
only relinquishing it at last when apparently convinced
of the hopelessness of retaining it. A pretty little
spider, not rare among weeds and garden plants, The-
ridion carolanum (Walck.), carries its egg cocoon
within its legs, and searches for it anxiously if compelled
to drop it. Many also of the genus C/ubioma, as well
as others brood over their eggs and tend upon their
young until they disperse to find their own means of
subsistence. The food of very young spiders is probably
wholly derived from the moisture of the atmosphere.
Spiders are great drinkers, and suffer severely from
drought.
In speaking of the better qualities of spiders, their
attachment to their young, and the frequent fondness
for each other evidenced by the apparently happy life of
the male and female of some species in the same web,
we must not overlook the other side of the picture. It
has been well authenticated that in some species of
Epeirides the female will seize and devour the male
even immediately after the exercise of his natural office,
which indeed he has to undertake with great circum-
†. and care to be able to accomplish at all. From
this propensity of the female, we may account for the
gradual lessening in size of some male spiders in com-
parison with that of the females, by a kind of sexual
selection, since it is obvious that the smaller the male
the better his chance of escape. *
The voracity of spiders is well known, and the pro-
pensity above noticed of the female to devour the male
is but one instance of general voracity; but though
thus voracious, spiders can endure extreme fasting with.
impunity. A small spider enclosed in a glazed case,
lived and appeared healthy for eighteen months with-
out food; if it had any nourishment at all during this
time, it could only have been the very slight moisture
that might exude from the skin of a lately stuffed bird
in the case, Zoologist, 1853, p. 3766. Other instances
are also on record of fasts, almost or quite as long, and
borne equally well.
ARAD, OLD, a city of Hungary, in the county of
Arad, situated on the Maros, 145 miles S.E. of Pesth.
Al{AFAT, or ORPHAT, a mountain near Mecca, a
visit to which constitutes a necessary part of the great
Mahometan pilgrimage.
ARAGO, FRANCOIS JEAN DOMINIQUE, one of the
most popular physicists belonging to the first half of the
present century, was born on the 26th February 1786, at
Estagel, a small village near Perpignan, in the depart-
ment of the Eastern Pyrenees. His father was licen-'
tiate in law, and, being appointed treasurer of the mint
for the department, removed with his family to Perpig-
man about the beginning of the century. Arago has.
left an autobiographical sketch, drawn with great
vivacity, though touched occasionally with somewhat
high coloring; and to this we are indebted for the inci-
dents of the earlier portion of his life. From boyhood
he had decided military tastes, inspired by constant con-
tact with troops at his native village, which was a halting
station for soldiers on their way to Perpignan, or to the
army of the Pyrenees. François was sent as an out-
door pupil to the municipal college of Perpignan, and
began to study mathematics with an eye to the entrance
examination to the Polytechnic school. Here he was
Soon beyond the depth of his master’s knowledge; but,
with that undaunted spirit which carried him through
many hardships and difficulties in after life, he sent to
Paris for the works of Legendre, Lacroix, and Garnier,
and studied them assiduously in private. Within two
years and a half he had mastered all the subjects pre-
scribed for examination, and a great deal more.
Towards the close of 1803 he entered the Polytechnic
School, with the artillery service as the aim of his
ambition. In 1804, through the advice and recommen-
dation of Poisson, with whom he had become very inti-
mate, Arago received the appointment of secretary to the
Observatory at Paris, a valuable post for a young man
of science, as it brought him in contact with the most
eminent philosophers of the day. He now became
acquainted with Laplace, and he had as fellow-worker
in the laboratory the celebrated Biot. Through the
influence of Laplace with the Government, Arago and
Biot were commissioned to complete the meridional
measurements which had been begun by Delambre, and
interrupted since the death of Méchain in 1804. The
object of this survey was to determine, with as great
nicety as possible, the ten-millionth part of a quadrant
of the meridian through Paris, which had been agreed
upon by the National Convention as the standard unit
of length, and named the mêtre. To measure an actual
quadrant from the north pole was, of course, an impos-
sibility; but the plan adopted was to measure the arc of
the meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona, and from their
known difference of latitude to deduce the length of the
quadrant. For this purpose they left Paris in 1806, to.
commence operations among the mountains of Spain—
operations attended with the greatest personal priva-
tion, fatigue, and danger. Biot returned to Paris after
they had determined the latitude of Formentera, the
southernmost point to which they were to carry the
survey, leaving Arago to make the geodetical connec-
tion of Majorca with Ivica and Formentera.
The adventures and difficulties of the latter were now
A R A
4. I 7
only beginning. The political ferment caused by the
entrance of the French into Spain extended to these
islands, and the ignorant populace began to suspect that
Arago's movements and his blazing fires on the top of
Mount Galatzo were telegraphic signals to the invading
army. They became ultimately so inſuriated that he
was obliged to cause himself to be incarcerated in the
fortress of Belver, in June 1808. On the 28th July he
managed to escape from the Island in a fishing boat, and
after an adventurous voyage he reached Algiers on the
3d August. Under the disguise of a strolling merchant
he procured a passage in a vessel bound for Marseilles.
A journey, however, of eleven months was before him
ere he was destined to reach that port, for the vessel
fell into the hands of a Spanish corsair on the 16th
August, just as it was nearing Marseilles. With the
rest of the crew, Arago was taken to Rosas, and
imprisoned first in a windmill, and afterwards in the
fortress of that seaport, until the town fell into the
Ilands of the French, when the prisoners were transferred
to Palamos. After fully three months' imprisonment
they were released on the demand of the Dey of Algiers,
and again set sail for Marseilles, on the 28th Nov., but
when within sight of their port they were driven back
by a southerly wind to Bougia on the coast of Africa.
Transport to Algiers by sea from this port would have
occasioned a weary stay of three months; and with his
usual courage, Arago set out for it by land under con-
duct of a Mahometan priest, reaching it on Christmas
day, after encountering many perils from lions, and
having uncomfortable squabbles with natives on the way.
A six months' stay in Algiers gave him opportunity to
note the manners and habits of the people, of which he
gives some amusing and graphic accounts. Once again,
21st June 1809, he set sail for his native land; and, as
by some strange perversity of fortune, he had to undergo
a monotonous and inhospitable quarantine in the Lazar-
etto at Marseilles before his difficulties were over. The
first letter he received while in the Lazaretto, was from
Humboldt, at Paris, sympathising with him, and con-
gratulating him on the termination of his laborious
and perilous enterprise; and this was the origin of a con-
nection which, in Arago’s words, “lasted over ſorty
years without a single cloud ever having troubled it.”
Through all the vicissitudes of this long campaign
Arago had succeeded in preserving the records of his
survey; and his first act on his return home was to de-
posit them in the Bureau de Longitude at Paris. As a
reward for his adventurous conduct in the cause of
science, he was shortly aſterwards (17th of Sept. 1809)
voted a member of the Academy of Sciences, in room of
the deceased Lalande, at the remarkably early age of
twenty-three, being, to the vexation of Laplace, elected
by a large majority of votes over his friend Poisson.
Before the close of the same year (1809) Arago was
chosen by the council of the Polytechnic school to suc-
ceed M. Monge in the chair of analytical geometry; and
about the same time he was named by the emperor one
of the astronomers of the Royal Observatory, which
was accordingly his residence till his death. He was
also made one of the examiners in connection with the
A.cole d’Application for engineers and artillery at Metz.
In all these situations he rapidly attained very great
popularity, gaining the esteem of his pupils by the
charming clearness of his style in lecturing and the per-
sonal interest he showed in their progress.
In 1816, along with Gay-Lussac, Arago commenced
a monthly journal of science, the Annales de Chimze et
de Physique, which soon acquired that high scientific
reputation which it has always maintained. In the
same year the two philosophers visited England and
made the personal acquaintance of some of the most
eminent men in that country, meeting among others
Dr. Thomas Young, a memoir of whom was afterwards
written by Arago. In 1818 or 1819, Arago proceeded
along with Biot to execute, on the coasts of France,
England, and Scotland, the geodetic operations which
the Board of Longitude had directed. They also meas-
ured the length of the seconds' pendulum at Leith, and
in Unst, one of the Shetland isles; the results of the
observations being published in 1821, along with those
made in Spain. He was elected a member of the
Board of Longitude immediately afterwards, and proved.
a valuable addition to the Society, contributing to each
of its Annuals, for about twenty-two years, most im–
portant scientific notices on astronomy and meteorology,
and occasionally on civil engineering, as well as inter-
esting memoirs of members of the Academy.
After his appointment to the Observatory, Arago had
commenced, at the request of the Board of Longitude,
a series of popular lectures on astronomy, which were
continued from 1812 to 1845. His success as a lecturer
was almost unparalleled, and can only be compared to
that of Faraday. All ranks flocked to hear him, fasci-
nated by his graceful eloquence and his crystalline clear-
ness of explanation. Hs used to remark, what many
lecturers often forget, that “clearness is politeness ame
public speakers.” His manner in lecturing is said to
have been to fix his eye on some one of his audience,
whose intellect had apparently the minimum of develop-
ment, and to keep it fixed till the face should brighten
up with intelligence.
When Buonaparte's hopes of empire in Europe had
begun to wane, and he was turning to America as a land
of refuge, where he might still have scope for his ambi-
tion, he suggested to M. Monge that, with a scientific
guide, he should explore the new continent from Canada.
to Cape Horn, study the great physical wonders of that
territory, and leave behind him works and discoveries
worthy of himself. Monge named Arago as the proper
associate and assistant in the enterprise, and had even
negotiated with Napoleon for a handsome allowance to
be granted to Arago, and for a fund to be devoted to
the purchase of a complete set of astronomical and
physical instruments. But Arago would not for a mo-
ment entertain the proposal. He pointed the emperor
to the march of the English and Prussian armies on his
capital as a matter demanding more pressing considera-
tion, and declined to leave the Old World to study sci-
ence in the New, “when France might perhaps lose its
independence and disappear from the map of Europe.”
Subsequent events prevented a renewal of Napoleon’s.
Scientific negotiations and projects.
After the Restoration Arago took no very prominent
part in the politics of the day, though he at all times.
maintained with boldness and ardor liberal opinions of
the extreme republican type. By the revolution of 1830,
however, he was summoned from the studies of the ob-.
servatory and the laboratory to the field of political.
strife in the Chamber of Deputies, and in the Municipal
Council of Paris. Elected a member of the Chamber of
Deputies for the Lower Seine, he employed his splendid.
gifts of eloquence and scientific knowledge in all ques-
tions connected with public education, the rewards of
inventors, and the encouragement of the mechanical and,
practical sciences. Many of the most creditable na-.
tional enterprises, dating from this period, are due to the
advocacy of Arago—such as the reward to Daguerre for
his wonderful invention of photography, the grant for
the publication of the works of Fermat and Laplace,
the acquisition of the museum of Cluny (one of the sights
of Paris), the development of railroads and electric tele-
graphs, the improvement of the navigation of the Seine,
and the boring of the Artesian wells at Grenelle.
27 A
418
A R A
The year 1830 was a remarkable epoch in his life on
account of several other offices to which he was
appointed. He now received the chief direction of the
Observatory, and from his position in the Chamber of
Deputies he obtained grants of money for the rebuilding
of part of the Observatory and for the addition of mag-
Inificent instruments, which raised it to be a model, in
place of a public disgrace, as it had been before. In
the same year, too, his zeal in the cause of science was
rewarded with the highest honor any philosopher might
aspire to — the perpetual secretaryship of the Academy
of Sciences, in room of the distinguished Fourier. On
the 7th June (1830) he was elected by 39 out of 44 votes.
This appointment inspired new life into the Academy.
Arago threw his whole soul into its service, and by his
pleasing faculty of securing friendship and life-long
attachments, he gained at once for himself and for the
Academy a world-wide reputation. As perpetual secre-
tary it fell to him to pronounce historical éloges on the
decease of resident or foreign members of the Academy;
and for this duty his rapidity and facility of thought, his
happy piquancy of style, and his extensive knowledge
peculiarly adapted him. Some of his éloges are master-
pieces of elegant biography. When M. Flourens pro-
nounced Arago’s own funeral eulogy, he said, “In the
eulogies of the eloquent secretary are found all the
qualities of his spirit, d'une zerve brilliante, de la
zigueur, de l'elan, un certain charme de bonhomie.”
In 1834 Arago visited England for the second time, to
attend the third meeting of the British Association, held
that year in Edinburgh. From this time till the stirring
events of 1848, Arago led a life of comparative quiet,-
not the quiet of inactivity, however, for his incessant
labors within the Academy and the Observatory pro-
duced a multitude of contributions to all departments of
physical science, which make him one of the most
voluminous of authors in this subject. But the change
‘Came. Louis Philippe, having failed to satisfy the
extreme republican party, and to grant them those social
advantages that they imagined a republic alone could
yield, was swept from his throne, and Arago left his
laboratory to join in forming an extempore government.
His popularity was so great that he was entrusted with
the discharge of two most important functions, that had
never before been united in one person, viz., the
Ministry of War and of Marine. Energetically and
faithfully the philosopher of forty years’ standing
applied himself to his new duties; and however igno-
aminious may have been the ultimate failure of the
Provisional Government, there can be little question
that Arago struggled honestly in the cause of social
Tiberty and improvement. While Minister of Marine
lie effected some salutary reforms, such as the improve-
ment of rations in the navy and the abolition of flogging;
he abolished political oaths of all kinds, and, against an
array of moneyed interests, he succeeded in procuring the
abolition of negro slavery in the colonies.
During the insurrection of June, Arago’s courage was
conspicuously displayed in his entreaties to the mob to
stop, their murderous outrages. For the first time in
his life Arago failed, and he himself narrowly escaped
with his life. . With his mental and physical energies
shattered by fatigue and disappointment, he terminated
here his active political career, though he continued to
the last to take an interest in the affairs of his country,
and to watch for the dawn of a brighter future. Failing
eye and trembling hand could now be of little use in the
service of science; but warned by the disease (diabetes)
that had attacked him, he determined to occupy his few
remaining years in preparing for the press some MSS.
of original researches which his political duties had pre-
wented his communicating to the Institute.
In the beginning of May 1852 proclamation was made
that the oath of allegiance to the Government of Louis
Napoleon would be required from all its functionaries,
including the Board of Longitude. Arago peremptorily
refused, choosing to sacrifice his office and home of
nearly half a century rather than violate the dictates of
his conscience, which he would be doing if he complied,
seeing that, as a member of the Provisional Government
of 1848, he contributed to the abolition of all political
oaths. In a letter to the Minister of Public Instruction,
he intimated his resignation of his post as astronomer
at the Bureau de Longitude, at the same time stating
the services he had rendered to his country in the cause
of science, and the grief which this separation from the
scene of his labors of so many years would impose. To
the credit of the Prince President, he respected the sen-
timents so boldly declared by the half-blind old philoso-
pher, and made “an exception in favor of a servant
whose works had thrown lustre on France, and whose
existence his Government would regret to embitter.”
The tenure of office thus granted did not prove of
long duration. Arago was now on his death-bed, under
a complication of diseases, induced, no doubt by the
hardships and labors of his earlier years. In the sum-
mer of 1853 he was advised by his physicians to try the
effect of his native air, and he accordingly set out for
the Eastern Pyrenees, accompanied by his affectionate
niece, Madame Bangier. But the change was unavail-
ing, and he returned to Paris to die. After a lingering
illness, in which he suffered first from diabetes, then
from Bright’s disease, and lastly ſrom dropsy, he .
breathed his last on the 2d Oct. 1853, at the age of 67.
The day before his death he had been visited by Lord
Brougham, his old and intimate friend, and the inter-
view had excited him much. M. Biot also had an inter-
view with him only three hours beſore his death. Arago
said to his veteran colleague and collaborateur, “I
intend to resign my situation of perpetual secretary to
the Academy, since I can no longer discharge its duties.”
Biot's reply must have smoothed the pillow of the
dying savant, “If you do, we will all come to you in a
body to bring it back to you, and reproach you for your
ingratitude.” A public funeral was, with good taste,
decreed to Arago by the emperor, notwithstanding his
refused allegiance to the Imperial Government, and it
took place on the 5th Oct. with all the pomp and
parade of an Imperial act. A beautiful and eloquent
eulogy was pronounced over his tomb by the dis-
tinguished M. Flourens, who succeeded him as perpetual
secretary of the Academy, while M. Barral performed
the duty entrusted to him by the young philosophers of
the public schools of the metropolis of giving utterance
to their last adieu.
Thus closed perhaps the most singular career in the
annals of science. Of Arago’s moral character it is
difficult to form a true estimate, extolled as it is on the
one side by his countrymen, and too severely criticised as
it often is on the other side by British writers. Allow-
ance must be made for the Spanish blood that flowed in
his veins. The ardor of his temperament, his quick and
far darting intellect, the powerful love of country which
his youthful vicissitudes had only intensified, all com-
bined to produce a consciousness of power, which, in
the Academy of Sciences or in the management of the
Observatory, might stamp his bearing as dictatorial, and
which, in questions of national priority of invention,
might render his judgment partial. ... With the imperious-
ness, perhaps, of a powerful intellect, Arago, was free
from that selfishness that has so often been exhibited by
men who have enjoyed such high offices of trust during
times of national disorder. He cared for money only
as it supplied the wants of his experimental researches
; A R A
4 IQ
and the means of educating his family; he lived a simple
and a frugal life; his income never exceeded 4,500 a
year; and, refusing to accept any reward for his four
months’ services as Minister of Marine, he sacrificed
fortune for the sake of his country and of Science.
ARAGON, a captaincy general, or, as it is usually
called by the Spaniards, a kingdom, of Spain, is bound-
ed on the N. by the Pyrenees, which separate it from
France, E. by Catalonia and Valencia, S. by Valencia,
and W. by Navarre and the two Castiles. It has an
area of I4,726 English square miles, and a population
of 925,773 — calculated for 1867 on the basis of the
census of 1860. It is divided by the river Ebro, which
flows through it in a south-easterly direction, into two
nearly equal parts, known as 7% ans-ibero and Cis-ibero.
The north is occupied by a portion of the Pyrenees,
which here attain in Monte Perdido, or as it is variously
called Mont Perdu, Las Tres Sorores, almost their
highest altitude (II,430 feet); and in the south and
west are various sierras of considerable elevation. The
whole surface, indeed, is very irregular. The
large and fertile plain in the middle, bordering on the
Ebro, is broken by offshoots from the north and south,
while the mountain ranges, on the other hand, are in-
terrupted by numerous valleys of great beauty. The
central pass for carriages over the Pyrenees is on the
line between Saragossa and Pau, and bears the name of,
Port de Confranc. The Ebro is the principal river, and
receives from the north in its passage through the
province, the Arba, the Gallego, and the united waters
of the Cinca, the Essera, the Noguera Ribagorzana,
and the Noguera Pallaresa — the last two belonging to
Catalonia; and from the south the Xalon and Xiloca
and the Guadalupe. The Imperial Canal of Aragon,
which was commenced by Charles V. in 1529, but re-
mained unfinished for nearly two hundred years, ex-
tends from Tudela almost to Sastago, a distance of 80
miles; it has a depth of 9 feet, and an average breadth
of 69, and is navigable for vessels of about 80 tons'
burthen. The Royal Canal of Tauste, which lies
along the north side of the Ebro, was cut for pur-
poses of irrigation, and give fertility to the dis-
trict. Two leagues N.N. E. of Albarracin is the remark-
able fountain called Cella, 3700 feet above the sea, which
forms the source of the Xiloca; and between this river
and the Sierra Molina is an extensive lake called Gallo-
canta, covering about 6000 acres. The climate of
Aragon is, as might be supposed, of a very varied char-
acter, rigorous in the north and among the sierras, but
mild and even oppressive in the south, especially towards
the Mediterranean. Its vegetable products are neces-
sarily affected by a similar variety. The hills are clothed
in many places with oak, pine, and beech, which, if
utilised, would furnish a good supply of timber. The
flora is exceedingly rich, but has been slightly explored.
Wheat, maize, rice, wine, oil, flax, and hemp, of fine
quality, are grown in considerable quantities; as well as
saffron, madder, liquorice, Sumach, and a variety of
fruits. Swine and sheep are reared in considerable
numbers, the merino wool supplied by the latter being
one of the chief productions of the province; but little
attention is paid to other descriptions of cattle. The
manufactures are comparatively insignificant, being in a
great measure supplementary to the agricultural and
pastoral pursuits of the people. The silk manufacture
has declined, and woollen and linen cloth is only pro-
duced in small quantities. The mineral resources of the
country consist of iron, lead, copper, Sulphur, cobalt,
asphalt, lignite, alum, rocksalt, jet, marble, and jasper,
which are all found in abundance, but they are very
inadequately wrought. Aragon is divided into three
provinces, HUESCA, TERUFL, and SARAGOSSA, ac-
and its breadth, from east to west, about 145.
counts of which will be found under these headings.
The capital is Saragossa, and the other towns of im-
portance are Jaca, Huesca, and Barbastro to the north
of the Ebro, and Tarazona, Calatayud, Daroca, Cala-
mocha, Albarracin, Montalban, Teruel aud Alcañiz to
the south. Saragossa is an archbishopric, and Huesca,
Tarazona, Barbastro, Jaca, Teruel, and Albarracin are
episcopal sees.
ARAGONA, a town in Sicily, 7% miles N. N.W. of
Girgenti.
ARAGUAYA, or ARAGUIA, a river of Brazil which
rises in the Sierra Sciada, and flows north between the
provinces of Matto Grosso and Goyaz till it joins the
Tocantins at San João das duas Barras. It divides into
two branches, and unites again, thus forming the large
island of Santa Anna or Bannanal. The eastern
branch, called the Furo, is the one principally navigated.
The most important tributaries are the Cristalino, the
das Mortes, and the Caja, on the west, and the Claro,
the Vermelho, the Cruxas, and the Chavantes, from the
east. The whole course of the river is about 1,000
miles, and it is navigable a long way up.
ARAHAL, a town in Spain, 7 miles from Seville.
ARAKAN, a division of British Burmah, and within
the jurisdiction of the chief commissioner of that prov-
ince. It consists of a strip of country running along
the eastern seaboard of the Bay of Bengal, from the
Näf estuary, on the borders of Chittagong, to Cape Ne-
I allS.
g ARAL, a vast lake or inland sea, in the west of Asia.
It was known to the Persian geographers as the Sea of
Khuwärizm or Khwarezm, from the neighboring district
of the Chorasmii, and derives its present name from the
Kirghese designation of Aral Denghis, or Sea of Is-
lands. Its length, from north to south, is 265 miles,
It is the
greatest body of water in the steppes of Asia, next to
the Caspian Sea, and is one of the largest lakes in the
world. Its level is 117 (or, according to recent explora-
tions, which, however, require verification, 250) feet
above the Caspian, which is 84 feet above the Black
Sea. It is bounded on the N. by the Ural steppes; on
the W. by the rocky plateau of the Ust-Urt, which sep-
arates it from the Caspain; on the S. by the alluvial
district of Khiva; and on the E. by the Kysyl-Kum, or
Red Desert, and the Kara-Kum, or Black Desert. The
Sea abounds with fish of various kinds, as the sturgeon,
Silurus, carp, and especially a species of herring; thus
agreeing in its ichthyology with the Caspian, from which
it is distant 150 miles. The water is only slightly brack-
ish. During winter the northern portion is completely
frozen, but towards the south it is very seldom that ice
is formed to any extent. The Aral has no visible out-
let; and to account for there being no visible increase in
its size, it was supposed that there might be a subterra- .
neous communication with the Caspian Sea or the Sea
of Khuzar; but the evaporation is so great as not only
to maintain an equilibrium, but even, it has been
thought, to produce, as in the case of the Caspian, a
gradual diminution.
ARAM, EUGENE, was born of humble parents at
Ramsgill in Yorkshire, in 1704. He received little edu-
cation at school, but manifested an intense desire for
learning. While still young, he married and settled as
a schoolmaster at Netherdale, and during the years he
spent there, he taught himself both Latin and Greek.
In 1734 he removed to Knaresborough, where he re-
mained as schoolmaster till 1745. In that year a man
named Daniel Clark, an intimate friend of Aram, after
obtaining a considerable quantity of goods from some
of the tradesmen in the town, suddenly disappeared.
Suspicions of being concerned in this swindling transac-
A2O
A. R. A
tion fell upon Aram. His garden was searched, and some
of the goods found there. As, however, there was .#
evidence sufficient to convict him of any crime, he wa
discharged, and soon after set out for London, leaving
his wife behind. For several years he traveled through
parts of England, acting as usher in a number of schools,
and settled finally at Lynn, in Norfolk. During his
travels he had amassed considerable materials for a work
he had projected on etymology, to be entitled, a Come-
Aaratize Zexicon of the AEnglish, Zafizz, Greek, He-
brew, and Celtic Zanguages. In February 1759 a
skeleton was dug up at Knaresborough, and some suspi-
cion arose that it might be Clark's. Aram's wife had
more than once hinted that her husband and a man
named IIouseman knew the secret of Clark’s disappear-
ance. Houseman was at once arrested and confronted
with the bones that had been found. He affirmed his
innocence, and, taking up one of the bones, said, “This
is no more Dan Clark’s bone than it is mine.” His
manner in saying this roused suspicion that he knew
more of Clark's disappearance than he was willing to
admit. He was again examined, and confessed that he
had been present at the murder of Clark by Aram and
another man, Terry, of whom nothing further is heard.
He also gave information as to the place where the body
had been buried in St. Robert's Cave, a well-known
Spot near Knaresborough. A skeleton was dug up
here, and Aram was immediately arrested, and sent to
York for trial. Houseman was admitted as evidence
against him. Aram conducted his own defence, and did
not attempt to overthrow Houseman's evidence, although
there were some discrepancies in that; but made a skil-
ful attack on the fallibility of circumstantial evidence in
general, and particularly of evidence drawn from the
discovery of bones. He brought forward several in-
stances where bones had been found in caves, and tried
to show that the bones found in St. Robert’s Cave were
probably those of some hermit who had taken up his
abode there. He was found guilty, and condemned to
be executed on the 6th August, three days after his trial.
While in his cell he confessed his guilt, and threw some
light on the motives for his crime, by asserting that he
had discovered a criminal intimacy between Clark and
his own wiſe. On the night before the 6th August he
attempted to commit suicide by opening the veins in his
arm; but he was discovered before life was extinct, and
suffered the last penalty of the law. The story of
Eugene Aram has been made the subject of a powerful
ballad by Hood, Zhe Dream of Eugene Aram, the
A/urderer, and of a romance by Bulwer Lytton, entitled
Augene Aram.
ARAMAIC LANGUAGES are so called from Aram,
a geographical term, which in old Semitic usage desig-
nates nearly the same districts as the Greek word Syria.
Aram, however, does not include Palestine, while it
comprehends Mesopotamia (Heb. Aram of two rivers),
a region which the Greeks frequently distinguish from
Syria proper. Thus Aramaic languages may be geo-
graphically defined as the Semitic dialects originally cur-
rent in Mesopotamia and the regions extending S. W.
from the Euphrates to Palestine. Philologically these
dialects form a distinct group of Semitic languages
(North Semitic), separated by grammatical and lexical
peculiarities alike from the middle Semitic (Hebrew,
Phoenician) and from the South Semitic (Arabic, Ethi-
opic). Babylonia is not part of Aram, and the Semitic
language of the Assyrian and Babylonian arrowhead in-
scriptions is not Aramaic.
All Aramaic dialects are characterized by poverty of
vowels, by the disappearance of many of the forms of
internal declension so characteristic of the original ge-
nius of Semitic speech, and by a tendency to analytical
construction by the aid of relative particles in place of
the earlier usage of the construct state. Along with
these marks of degradation they retain some antique
features lost in Hebrew and Arabic, and in particular,
generally present the oldest consonantal forms, having
mutes instead of sibilants and aspirates, in a way quite
analogous to the relation of Low to High Dutch. A
special Aramaic peculiarity is the enclitic use of the ar-
ticle as in modern Danish. r
The tribes of ancient Aram never possessed political
unity, their settlements being intersected by strips of
desert with Arabian population. Thus, there must have
been from an early time considerable diversity of dialect
within the group, and apart from differences due to the
very various ages of the extant literature, we are able to
divide Aramaic into two main branches, commonly
known as Chaldee and Syriac respectively, and distin-
guished partly by differences of pronunciation and vocab-
ulary, but more conclusively by differences of grammat-
ical flexion, especially in the verb. In comparison with
the great age of this branch of Semitic, the whole Ara-
maic literature is of comparatively late date, and pre-
sents the languages in an advanced and in some sense
exhausted stage of development.
ARAN ISLANDS, SouTH, three islands of carbon-
iferous limestone, which lie across Galway Bay, on the
west coast of Ireland, in a south-easterly direction,
forming a kind of natural breakwater. They are called
respectively—beginning with the most northern — Inish-
more (or Aranmore), the Great Island; Inishmaan, the
Middle Island; and Inisheer, the Eastern Island.
ARANDA, PEDRO PABLO ABARCA Y BOLEA, Count
of, a descendant of a noble family in Aragon, was born
at Saragossa, 21st Sept. 1718. He served for several
years in the army, and, after retiring with the rank of
lieutenant-colonel, spent some time in travelling through
France, Italy, and Prussia. He seems to have fallen
under the displeasure of Ferdinand VI., but on the
accession of Charles III. in 1759, he was appointed
ambassador to the court of Poland, an office which he
held for several years. On his return he took command
of the army sent against the Portuguese, and gained
Some success. He was then appointed captain-general
of Valencia, from which place, two years later, in
1765, he was summoned to Madrid, to assist in quel-
ling an insurrection. His success was rewarded by
the appointment to the Presidency of the Court of Cas-
tile. While holding this office he induced the king to
give his consent to an order for the banishment from
Spain of all the Jesuits. His further intention of abol-
ishing the Inquisition was premalurely disclosed, and
great indignation was excited against him. He was dis-
missed from the presidency of the council, and sent as
ambassador to Paris. Here he was instrumental in
bringing about peace between Spain and Britain. The
presidency from which Aranda had been dismissed was
held for a short time by his political adversary, Grimaldi,
who was succeeded by the count of Florida Blanca. On
the dismissal of the latter in 1792, Aranda was recalled
to his former position, but from it he was again quickly
driven by the influence of Godoy, the queen's favorite.
Soon after he obtained permission to retire to his own
estates, where he died in 1799.
ARANJUEZ, a town in Spain in the province of
Madrid, situated 1640 feet above the sea, in a beauti-
ful valley on the left bank of the Tagus, near its junc-
tion with the Jarama, 28 miles S.S.E. of the capital
and 22 E.N.E. of Toledo, and united by rail with both,
these cities.
ARA RAT. This name, originally designating a
whole district of Asia has long been appropriated by the
uniform usage of Europeans to the lofty Armenian
A R A —
A R B 42 I
mountain which stands on the confines of the Russian,
Turkish, and Persian dominions, in lat. 39°42' N.,
long. 44° 35' E., known to the Armenians as Mars,
to the Turks as AAE-Pagh, and to the Persians as
A u/i-i-AWuh, or Noah’s Mountain. Whether the
tradition, which makes it the resting place of the ark, is
of any historical value or not, there is at least poetical
fitness in the hypothesis, inasmuch as this mountain is
about equally distant from the Black Sea and the Cas-
pian, from the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
Another tradition — accepted alike by Christians and
Mahometans — fixed on Mount Judi, in the south of
Armenia, as the ark's resting-place. There so-called
genuine relics of the ark were exhibited, and a mºnastery
and mosque of commemoration were built ; but the
monastery was destroyed by lightning in 776 A.D., and
the tradition has declined in credit. Mount Ararat is
the culminating point of the Armenian plateau, which
reaches at its base a height of 3ooo feet. From this it
rises in a graceful isolated cone (having at its side the
more perfect but less lofty cone of Little Ararat) far
into the region of perennial snow. It was long believed
by the Armenian monks that no one was permitted to
reach the “secret top" of Ararat with its sacred remains.
The summit, however, has been frequently reached in
the course of this century.
A RAS, the ancient Az-axes (Turk. and Arab. Ras,
Armen. Brash, Georg. Æashki), a river which rises
south of Erzeroum, in the Bingöl-Dagh (Mountain of
the Thousand Wells), and flows east through the pro-
yince of Erzeroum and . Russian Armenia, passing
between Mount Ararat and Erivan, till it joins the Kur
(Cyrus) coming from the north, and falls with it into
the Caspian Sea. Its separate course is about 500 miles
long, and it receives a number of tributaries, of which
one of the chief is the Zenghi, which passes by Erivan
and drains lake Goukcha or Sivan.
A RATUS, one of the rulers of Sicyon, was born in
that city, 27 I B.C. His father, Clinias, was slain by
Abantidas; and Aratus, then seven years of age, only
escaped a similar fate through the kindness of Soso, the
sister of Abantidas, who had him conveyed secretly to
Argos. At the age of twenty he regained without
bloodshed his native city of Sicyon, and induced the
citizens to join the Achaean League. He obtained assist-
ance in money from Ptolemy, whom he visited, and soon
after (245 B.C.) he was elected general of the League.
Two years later, when again general, he took Corinth
from the Macedonians, and united it to the League.
About the same time he defeated the AEtolians at Pellene,
and his success drew many other cities into the League,
which, under the careful management of Aratus, was
rapidly becoming a powerful confederation. Its power,
however, roused the jealousy of Cleomenes of Sparta,
and in 226 war broke out between the Spartans and
Achaens. Cleomenes was victorous at Lycaeum, Megal-
opolis, Hecatombaeum, and Dyme, and completely broke
the power of the League. As a last resource, Aratus entered
into negotiation with Antigonus of Macedonia, and, by
promising to deliver up Corinth, secured his assistance.
Antigonus was made general of the League, and in 222
totally defeated Cleomenes in the battle of Sellasia.
The general peace which now ensued was broken by the
turbulent AEtolians, who invaded Achaea. Aratus hav-
ing marched against them, suffered so severe a defeat at
Saphae that he was accused and tried for mismanagement;
his former great services alone saved him from suffering
the penalty of failure. Philip of Macedonia, who was
then called in to the assistance of the Achaeans, suc-
ceeded in establishing peace, but his ambition was roused
by the hope of obtaining supremacy in Greece. The
counsels of Aratus became distasteful to him, and Plu-
market
tarch does not hesitate to ascribe the death of Aratus, a
few years later (213 B.C.), to poison administered by the
command of his royal master. The body was conveyed
to Sicyon, where a monument was erected as a memorial
of his services. Aratus is one of the few great names
in later Greek history. He had an intense hatred of
tyrants, and devoted his whole life to the attainment of
liberty for Greece. His talents as a statesman were
great, but their effect was marred by his incompetence
and want of success as a general.
ARATUS, a Greek poet, was born at Soli in Cilicia.
The date of his birth is uncertain, but it is known he
lived about 270 B.C., and as he was court-physician to
Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedonia, he must have
been contemporary with several of the great Alexandrian
writers, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Aristarchus, and
Theocritus.
ARAUCANIA, a territory of South America. It is
bounded on the N. by the river Biobio, which separates
it from Chili, S. by the Valdivia, E. by the Andes, and
W. by the Pacific Ocean. See AMERICA, vol. i. p. 701,
and PATAGONIA. -
ARAUCARIA, a genus of Coniferous trees included
under the tribe Abietineae, and the sub-tribe Araucariae.
ARAVALLI HILLS, a range of mountains in India,
running for three hundred miles in a north-easterly direc-
tion through the Rājpuatán states and the British dis-
tricts of Mairwārā and Ajmír. They consist of a series
of ridges and peaks, with a breadth varying from 6 to 60
miles, and an elevation of IOOO to 3000 feet, the highest
point being Mount Abu, rising to 5655 feet, near the
southwestern extremity of the range. (See ABU.)
ARBACES, the founder of the Median empire in 876
B.C., was one of the generals of Sardanapalus, king of
Assyria, and had command of the contingent from the
province of Media. He conspired with Belesys, a Chal-
dean priest, who commanded the troops from Babylon,
and having gained over several other officers of the king,
they revolted. After a short contest Sardanapalus was
defeated, and committed suicide. The dynasty founded
by Arbaces lasted till its overthrow by Cyrus, 559 B.C.
This account of the Median empire rests on the authority
of Ctesias, as given in Diodorus (ii. 24, 34), and cannot
be reconciled with what is stated by Herodotus, who
is probably referring to another event. Arbaces, the
Mede, is to be distinguished from the satrap of the
same name who commanded a division of the army of
Artaxerxes in his war with his brother Cyrus.
ARBELA, now Arbil or Erbil, a small town in the
province of Shehrezur, situated to the west of the Tigris,
in the plain between the Greater Zab and the Lesser
Zab, and on the route between Mosul (AVīneveh) and
Baghdad, about 40 miles from the former. -
ÁRBITRAGE (derived in its turn from the primary
sense of arbitrating disputes) is a term that is applied
both to a calculation and to a trade: Ist, to the calcu-
lation of the relative simultaneous values at any par-
ticular moment of any particular merchandise, on one
market, in terms of the quotations on one or more other
markets, taking, of course, the exchanges into account;
and 2d, to the business founded on such calculations,
of buying (or zice versä), wholesale in the cheapest
for the time being, and simultaneously
reselling (or vice versá) equal amounts in the dearest
market, or if not simultaneously, at least as nearly
simultaneously as post and telegraph will permit. Ar-
bitrage proper is a separate, distinct, and well-defined
business, with three main branches. Two of these, viz.,
arbitrage or arbitration in bullion and coins, and arbi-
tration in bills, also called the arbitration of exchanges,
fall within the businesses of bullion dealing and banking
respectively. The third, arbitrage in stocks and shares,
422
A. R. B
is arbitrage properly so called, and so understood,
whenever the word is mentioned without qualification
among business men, and it is strictly a Stock Exchange
business. A few of the great financial firms outside the
Stock Exchange combine the three arbitrations; they
are dealers in bullion, in bills, and in stocks and shares
all over the world ; but, as a rule, the arbitrage properly
known as such, is the business of an arbitrageur, who
is almost always a member of a Stock Exchange or
“Bourse,” and his arbitrations with very few exceptions
are neither in bullion nor in bills, but in Government
and other stocks and shares. In this strict and accurate
sense, arbitrage may be defined to be a traffic, consisting
in the purchase (or sale) on One Stock Exchange, and
simultaneous or nearly simultaneous re-sale (or re-
purchase) on another Stock Exchange, of the same
amount in the same stocks or shares, which at any
moment are found, on telegraphic or other advices, to
be quoted and negotiable on two or more markets at a
difference in price (arising from whatever temporary
cause), sufficient to cover the cost of transmission,
commission, interest, insurance, and leave an adequate
profit over and above to be divided by the operators at
both ends.
ARBITRATION, a term derived from the nomen-
clature of the Roman law, and applied to an arrange-
ment for taking, and abiding by, the judgment of a
selected person in some disputed matter, instead of car-
rying it to the established courts of justice. Arrange-
ments for avoiding the delay and expense of litigation,
and referring a dispute to friends or neutral persons, are
a natural practice, of which traces may be found in any
state of society; but it is to the Justinian jurisprudence
that we owe it as a system which has found its way into
the practice of European nations in general, and has
even evaded the dislike of the English common lawyers
to the civil law. The eighth section of the fourth book
of the Pandects is devoted to this subject. Almost all
the advantages, as well as the defects of the system in
modern practice, seem to have been anticipated by the
Roman jurists. Some of the civilians make a distinction
between the arbitrator, the name applicable to a person
voluntarily chosen by parties to decide disputes, and the
arbiter, an officer to whom the praetor is supposed to
have remitted questions of fact as to a jury. In this
sense arbiters appear to have been employed as a substi-
tute for jury trial in some of the old provincial laws of
France; and hence, perhaps, it comes that, by a very re-
markable provision in the French code of commerce, all
questions between partners touching, the partnership
must be referred to arbitration. In the code of civil
procedure the title des arbitrages is treated so fully and
minutely, as very forcibly to convey the impression of a
separate system of voluntary jurisdiction, being created
for performing what ought to be accomplished by the
ordinary tribunals in a well-regulated judicial system.
In Scotland the practice of arbitration has been imported
from the Roman law without requiring, as in England,
statutory intervention. It is one of the advantages of
the Scottish system of registration that the decree-
arbitral, or decision of the arbiter, when recorded in
pursuance of the consent of the parties in their contract.
of arbitration or submission, can be enforced as the de-
cree of a court.
ARBITRATION, in International Law, is one of the
recognised modes of terminating disputes between
independent nations. Vattel calls it “a reasonable and
natural mode of deciding such disputes as do not
directly interest the safety of a nation.” Heffter men-
tions six cases in which the judgment of the arbitrators
would not be binding on the contending parties, viz.,
when the agreement has been insufficient, when the
arbitrators have been incapable, when they have acted
on bad faith, when the parties have not been under-
stood, when the award is in excess of the reference,
and when it is contrary to natural justice. Arbitration
is sometimes spoken of as a universal substitute for
war, but hitherto there has been no inclination, on the
part of independent states, to submit any but secondary
questions to the decision of neutral parties. The king
of Prussia acted as arbitrator between England and
France in 1843, in what were known as the Portendic
claims. In the case of the “General Armstrong”
privateer, between the United States and Portugal, the
president of the French Republic (afterwards the
Emperor Napoleon) acted as arbitrator. The most
formal experiment in arbitration, however, was the
Geneva Convention in 1872. The United States hav-
ing for many years urged upon England the settlement
of what were called the “Alabama” claims, a treaty
was concluded by which the case was referred to five
arbitrators named by England, the States, the Swiss
Republic, the king of Italy, and the emperor of Brazil,
respectively. Three new rules were at the same time
drawn up for the arbitrators to follow in deciding on
the liability of England. The award was in favor of
America, and the English representative (Lord Chief-
Justice Cockburn) was the only dissentient.
Arbitration is frequently employed to settle differences
not of a legal character, e.g., disputes between masters
and workmen as to the rate of wages, hours of labor,
&c.
ARBOGA, an ancient town in Sweden, in the govern-
ment of Westerås, 30 miles S.W. of Westerås, on a
river of the same name as itself, near its junction with
the canal which joins the Malar and Hielmar Lakes.
AR BOIS, a town in France, in the department of
Jura, and arrondissement of Poligny, situated in a deep
valley, on the Cuisance, 940 feet above the level of the
sea. It has long been famous for its wines, which, as
early as 1493, were exempt from taxation in Burgundy
and the German empire by Maximilian I.
ARBOR VITAE (7%ree of Zife), is a name applied to
species of Thuja and Biota. The name was given by
Clusius, and its origin is uncertain. The plants belong
to the Coniferous order, and have been placed in the
tribe Abietineae and the sub-tribe Cupressineae (Cypresses),
in which the anthers are 3 to 5, rarely 2; scales of the
cones 4 or more; usually placed opposite to each other
in a decussate manner, persistent (not falling off), seeds
having usually 2 to 3 wings; cotyledons 2. Thuja or
Thuya occidentalis (L), is the Western or American
Arbor Vitae. It is a native of North America, and
ranges from Canada to the mountains of Virginia and
Carolina. It is a moderate sized tree, and, in its native
country, it attains a height of about 50 feet. The leaves
are small and imbricate, and are borne on flattened
branches, which are apt to be mistaken for the leaves.
When bruised the leaves give out an aromatic odor.
The resin obtained from the plant has been used as a
remedy in rheumatic affections. . The flowers appear
early in spring, and the fruit is ripened about the end of
September.
ARBORICULTURE comprises all that relates to the
culture of trees, and is one of the great divisions of
agriculture; it is a branch of rural economy of much
more recent date than either the culture of grain and
herbage plants, or the breeding and rearing of cattle.
The culture of those plants which supply the food of
man or nourish the domestic animals must have exclu-
sively occupied his attention for many ages; whilst the
timber employed in houses, ships, and machines, or for
fuel, was found in the native woods. Hence, though
the culture of fruit-trees, and occasionally of ornamental
A R B
423
trees and shrubs, was practised by the Egyptians,
Greeks, and Romans, the cultivation of timber-trees on
a large scale only took place in modern times. In the
days of Charlemagne, the greater part of France and
Germany was covered with immense forests; and one
of the benefits conferred on France by that prince was
the rooting up of portions of these forests throughout
the country, and substituting orchards or vineyards.
Artificial plantations appear to have been formed in
Germany sooner than in any other country, apparently
as early as the 15th century. In Britain planting was
begun, though sparingly, a century later. After the
extensive transfers of property on the seizure of the
church lands by Henry VIII., much timber was sold
by the new owners, and the quantity thus thrown into
the market so lowered its price, as Hollingshed informs
us, that the builders of cottages, who had formerly em-
ployed willow and other cheap and common woods, now
built them of the best oak. The demand for timber
constantly increased, and the need of an extended sur-
face of arable land arising at the same time, the natural
forests became greatly circumscribed, till at last timber
began to be imported, and the proprietors of land to
think, first of protecting their native woods, afterwards
of enclosing waste ground, and allowing it to become
covered with self-sown seedlings, and ultimately of sow-
ing acorns and mast in such enclosures, or of filling
them with young plants collected in the woods,- a
practice which exists in Sussex and other parts of En-
gland even now. Planting, however, was not general
in England till the beginning of the 17th century, when
the introduction of trees was facilitated by the inter-
change of plants by means of Botanic Gardens, which,
in that century, were first established in different coun-
tries. . Evelyn’s Sy/va, the first edition of which ap-
peared in 1664, rendered an extremely important service
to Arboriculture; and there is no doubt that the orna-
mental plantations, in which England surpasses all
Other countries, are in some measure the result of his
enthusiasm. In consequence of a scarcity of timber for
naval purposes, and the increased expense during the
war of obtaining supplies from other countries, planting
received a great stimulus in Britain in the early part of
this century. Since the peace of 1815 the rage for plant-
ing with a view to profit has subsided; but there is a
growing taste for the introduction of trees and shrubs
from foreign countries, and for their cultivation for
ornament and use. The profusion of trees and shrubs
planted around suburban villas and country mansions,
as well as in town squares and public parks, shows how
much arboriculture is an object of pleasure to the peo-
ple. The progress of the Arboricultural Society of
Scotland, founded in 1854, and now containing 600
members, is a further indication of the national taste.
Again, it may be remarked, that while isolated trees and
old hedgerows are disappearing before steam cultiva-
tion, the advantages of shelter from well-arranged plan-
tations are more fully appreciated; and more attention
is paid to the principles of forest conservancy both at
home and abroad. In all thickly peopled countries the
forests have long ceased to supply the necessities of the
inhabitants by natural reproduction; and it has become
needful to form plantations either by Government or by
private enterprise, for the growth of timber, and in
some cases for climatic amelioration.
Trees differ from one another in regard to magnitude;
slowness or rapidity of growth; suitableness for par-
ticular soils, and for elevated exposed situations, or low
and sheltered places; texture, color, and durability of
the timber; delicacy or hardiness; ease or difficulty of
propagation and rearing; production of showy flowers
or fruits; and in other respects. In regard to magni-
tude, those trees which, in Britain, and in the same
parallels of north latitude attain the greatest height,
are the spruce and silver fir, the larch, and Scotch pine;
and these also are the trees which, in most parts of
Britain, produce the greatest quantity of timber in their
trunks relatively to that contained in their branches,
and in the shortest time. Poplars, willows, and some
species of elm, are rapidly-growing trees; their timber
is rarely contained in one straight trunk, as in the case
of pines, a considerable proportion being distributed
among the branches. Hence, where the speedy pro-
duction of timber is the main object, pines are the pref.
erable trees for planting. Where landscape effect is
more desired than the production of timber, some of
the poplars and elms, the Huntingdon willow, in some
situations the birch, and in others, such as on the sea-
shore, the Sycamore and tamarisk, are suitable trees.
Where the object is to clothe a sterile surface of dry
sand, the birch, Scotch, Austrian, and cluster pines
are among the best trees we have ; and if the situation
be exposed to the sea-breeze, the common and the Nor-
way maple may be substituted; in the warmer parts
of the island, the evergreen Oak; and for the marshes.
of the warmer parts, Taxodium distichum or decidu-
ous cypress. For moist soils which cannot be drained,
the white, trembling, and Ontario poplars have the
property of sending their roots along the surface of the
ground. Some species of willow and some poplars
will grow near water in situations where their roots
can enter into it, but will not grow in undrained soil.
All the known species of trees and shrubs may be suc-
cessfully grown in almost any kind of soil not beyond
the average moisture, dryness, or tenacity. In some
soils, however, they thrive better than in others, and
the timber produced generally varies in quality accord.
ing to the soil. Thus, a rich soil, while it contributes.
to the rapid growth of the coniferous tribe, renders
their timber less durable; and the same law holds,
more or less, with every other species of tree.
The influence of climate on trees is much greater than
that of soil; for, whilst many trees grow on any soil,
every tree may be said to have its particular climate; that
is, a climate in which, the soil and other circumstances
being suitable, it will produce the largest and most en-
during timber. Hence, when we take the geograph-
ical range of any species, we find what may be called a
central climate, where it attains its largest size; and as it
recedes from this climate, by latitude or elevation, into
one either colder or hotter, it gradually diminishes in
size, till it at last appears in the form of a shrub. Thus
the common oak, which in Britain attains its largest size
in Sussex and Hampshire, dwindles into a shrub on the
mountains of Scotland and in the north of Africa; its
degeneracy, being occasioned in the one case by ex-
treme cold, and in the other by extreme heat.
Even within Britain the absolute character of trees.
relative to climate, is obvious. The English or nar-
row-leaved elm, supposed to be a native of Asia Minor
and of China, attains a large size near London, produ-
cing a great bulk of timber in a short period, and ripen-
ing its seeds; while in Scotland it is considered only an
ornamental tree. The Lombardy poplar, which in the
central counties of England attains 125 feet in height in
fifty years, is seldom seen of timber size in Scotland.
The Sweet chestnut and walnut, cultivated both for fruit
and timber in many parts of England, can rarely be
grown with profit for either purpose north of Newcastle.
Climate may be considered in regard to the average
yearly and monthly temperature, and thé degree of atmos-
pheric moisture. A high annual temperature is no proof
that a climate is suitable for trees; but a high summer
temperature is suitable for many kinds, though the winter
424
A R B
temperature may be very low. Thus the oaks and other
trees of North America, attaining there a prodigious size,
survive a winter as cold as that of St. Petersburg, where
no native oaks are found; but North America enjoys a
very high temperature during summer, which rapidly de-
velops the foliage, and matures the young shoots, ena-
bling them to withstand the most rigorous winter. The
much larger rainfall of that portion of America, as com-
pared with St. Petersburg, has doubtless important bear-
ings on the question. In England the average temper-
ature of the year is as great as that of the oak countries
of the United States; but summers in the former country
are comparatively cold, moist, and more cloudy; and
though its winters are much milder than those of the lat-
ter, the Spongy, unripened young shoots are always more
or less injured by frost. Again, in a mild climate, the
trees of those countries which have a severe winter come
into leaf earlier in the spring than the indigenous trees,
and frost often occurring at that season, they are liable
to injury. º
Evergreen trees form an important division of the
vegetable kingdom; and of these there are two classes,
distinct relatively to climate and temperature. The first
comprises the conifers, which endure a degree of cold as
great as that in which any deciduous tree thrives; and
the second, the broad-leaved evergreen trees, such as the
holly, box, laurustinus, laurel, evergreen oak, cork-tree,
and the evergreen magnolia, trees of comparatively
mild climates, and always indigenous on islands or on
continents at low elevations, and at no great distance
from the sea: hence the large number of evergreen trees
which grow well in Britain, compared with those which
survive the winter in the same latitude on the continent.
TREES SUITED FOR PARTICULAR PURPOSES.
I. Conifers or resinous trees; 2. Hard-wood trees,
and 3. Soft-wood trees.
I. Conifers.
Coniferous trees are characterized by straight, erect
Trunks, with branches in regular tiers, which do not
acquire the size of timber. They never send up shoots
from the stool when cut over at the ground. The leaves
are generally linear or needle-shaped, without veins, and
evergreen. The seeds are produced in cones, and the
whole plant is more or less resinous. They belong to
the Gymnosperms, a family of the Dicotyledons.
The LARCH (Larix europaºa, D.C.) produces the
most valuable timber, which is of great durability.
Young larches 6 or 8 feet high are useful for sheep
stakes, rustic palings or dead fences. Young trees from
Io to 15 feet in height are found to form excellent hop-
oles.
p The Scotch PINE (Pinus oylz’estris, L.) is, next to
the larch, the most valuable coniferous tree grown in
Britain. It furnishes the yellow deal of the Baltic and
Norway, which is unequalled by any other pine in
Europe or North America. The best grown in Britain
is produced in the native Highland forest; but there is
reason to believe that artificial plantations, in similar
soils and situations, would produce timber of nearly
equal value. This tree is readily increased from seeds,
which, unfortunately, are produced in the greatest abund-
ance on stunted or inferior trees. It is very desirable to
select seeds from the best varieties, as is now systematic-
ally done by nurserymen. The Highland variety with
horizontal branches is that of highest repute. The
Scotch fir is a native of Europe and Asia, but not of
America.
The CLUSTER PINE (Pinus Pimaster, Sol.) is not
adapted for general culture in Britain, and therefore
scarcely merits to be ranked among British timber-trees.
In some parts of the east coast of England, however,
plantations of this tree have been raised; and in deep
Sandy soil it produces a considerable bulk of timber in a
short time, thriving better when exposed to the sea-
breeze than any other pine. The wood is not so durable
as that of the Scotch pine; but it may be employed in
the joinery of ordinary apartments. In general, how-
ever, it is not sufficiently strong for the roofing, joists,
and other carpentry of dwelling-houses. In France, and
particularly in the neighborhood of Bordeaux, it is ex-
tensively grown on the sandy wastes, for the production
of resin, tar, and pitch, which are obtained by incisions
in the trunk, and by subjecting the wood to the action
of fire. The seeds are ripened in England. The young
plants require more care in transplanting than those of
most other pines, being furnished with a stronger tap-
root. The cluster pine is a native of the south of
Europe and Algeria.
The SPRUCE FIR (Abies excelsa, D.C.) is, as a British
timber-tree, next in value to the Scotch pine. The
young plants and the spray are durable; and the trunk
grows straighter, more erect and slender, than the larch.
The trunk is seldom sawn into boards; the great value
of the tree being for poles of every kind, from those fit
for the hop up to masts for smaller ships. It is often
used with the bark on for poles or fence-wood. In most
parts of Europe, the poles used in the scaffolding em-
ployed in erecting buildings are formed of this tree, the
wood being light and elastic. The spruce firripens seeds
abundantly in Britain, from which plants are as easily
raised as the Scotch pine and the larch. It prefers a
rather moist soil, and only attains a great height in shel-
tered situations; but it grows anywhere to a size fit for
hop-poles or fencing in a short time. Like the Scotch
pine, it is subject to few diseases. The spruce is a
native of Germany, Sweden, Russia, and Norway, but
not of Britain or of North America.
The SILVER FIR (Abies pectinata, D.C.) the largest
of the European conifers, in various soils and situations
produces a great bulk of timber in a comparatively short
period; the timber is considered less strong and durable
than that of the spruce fir or the Scotch pine, but it does
not warp, and is adapted for all kinds of carpentry.
The timber is white, and when not exposed makes excel-
lent flooring. The tree is of slow growth for the first
ten or twelve years; nevertheless, even in the north of
Scotland it attains the height of Ioo feet in sixty or
seventy years. It ripens seeds in Britain, but more
sparingly than the spruce fir, and plants are easily raised.
It is in general healthy, but its cultivation is more
difficult than that of the spruce, as the shoots of young
trees are liable to be killed by frost. This species is
also very subject to the attacks of an insect, Æriosoma,
which often causes the death of the tree. The silver fir
is a native of Central Germany, and of the mountains of
Italy and Spain. Nearly allied is the Abies balsamea,
balm of Gilead fir, a native of North America, which
produces the Canada balsam, but it cannot be recom-
mended for cultivation, as it is short lived.
Many conifers might be mentioned which, though not
producing timber in Britain, are worthy of cultivation.
Of the American pines we have the Pinus Strobus, L.,
Weymouth pine, which furnishes the white, wood of
American commerce. Several Californian pines have
been introduced; of these Abies Douglasii is the most
promising. Cupressus Zawsoniana is a beautiful tree,
and also Sequoia gigantea, the mammoth tree, a general
favorite in pleasure grounds, but a considerable period
must elapse before we can judge of their being adapted
for general culture as timber trees in this country. Of
Asiatic conifers, Cedrus Deodara Zibani are much
grown for ornament. Pinus excelsa, which resembles
the Weymouth pine, and Abies Smithiana and Web-
A R B
425
&iana grow fairly in many parts of Britain; the Smith-
lan pine being apparently the best adapted to the
climate.
The YEw TREE (Taxus baccata, L.) attains its full
perfection in this its native country; but on account of
its slow growth it cannot be recommended to the planter,
whose main object is profit.
Aroad-leaved 7 rees in contradistinction to needle-
leaved, are classed, according to their timber, in two
subdivisions, hard and soft wood trees. They are char-
acterized by large trunks and widely spreading, woody
branches, and broad leaves with branching veins; they
send up shoots from the stool when cut over by the
ground ; and they are deciduous. They belong to the
Dicotyledons.
2. Affard-zºyood 7 rees.
The hard-wood Timber-trees are characterised by the
comparative hardness and durability of their wood, and
comprise the oak, ash, elm, beech, Sweet chestnut, wal-
nut, and A’obinia or false acacia. The wood of the
oak is the strongest and most durable of British timber-
trees; but on account of the slowness of its growth it is
not always the most eligible for planting. Oak planta-
tions are more valuable than others when in a young
state, on account of their bark. From the demand for
oak as ship timber, the price of trees fit for that pur-
pose is always considerable; but the largest trunks
employed in naval architecture do not afford an adequate
return for the number of years they have stood on
the ground. Accordingly, we find that the Governments
both of France and England grow this description of
timber largely in national forests. The wood of the
oak is applicable to a greater number of uses than that
of most other trees. Houses, ships, furniture, and
machines may be formed almost entirely of oak, and
consequently there is a ready sale for this timber almost
everywhere. Hence there is more inducement to plant
it in Britain than any other hard-wood tree. It is easily
raised from acorns, which ought to be collected from the
most vigorous trees. The British oak is a native of
most parts of Europe, but not of Asia, Africa, or
America.
The ASH (Fraximus excelsior, L.) is in Britain next
in value to the oak as a timber-tree. It requires a good
deep loom with gravelly subsoil, and a situation natur-
ally sheltered, such as the steep banks of glens, rivers,
or lakes; in cold and wet clay it does not succeed. As
the value of the timber depends chiefly on its toughness
and elasticity, it is best grown in masses where the soil
is good ; the trunk is thus drawn up free from large
side-branches. The tree is a native of Central Europe,
and is easily propagated from Seeds. It throws up
strong root shoots. The ash requires much light, but
grows rapidly, and its terminal shoots pierce easily
through thickets of beech, with which it is often associa-
ted. Unmixed ash plantations are seldom satisfactory,
because the foliage does not sufficiently cover the ground;
but when mixed with beech it grows well, and attains
great height and girth. Coppice shoots yield excellent
hop-poles, crates, hoops, whip-handles, &c. The timber
is much used for agricultural implements, and by coach-
builders and wheelwrights. The supply of this valuable
timber is annually becoming more limited on account of
the decreasing use of hedgerow trees.
Of the ELM there are two species, the common or
narrow-leaved elm (Ulmus campestris, L.), and, the
Wych or broad-leaved elm (Ulmus montana, L.)
There are many varieties, such as the Dutch elm and
the smooth-leaved or Huntingdon elm, the latter much
valued for its timber. The narrow-leaved elm is not
very common in Scotland, but in the central districts of
England it becomes a handsome tree; and the timber is
used for important purposes in shipbuilding, as well as
in the construction of machines and agricultural build-
ings. The Wych elm is a hardy tree, of rapid growth ;
but, unless planted in masses, it seldom produces a
straight handsome trunk. It strikes from layers with
great facility, and when a branch touches the ground it is
sure to take root. Few trees are more difficult to uproot
than Ulmus montana, and it is rare to see it thrown
over by the wind. It has a wide-spreading head, often
sloping to one side, and lashing its neighbors with such
force that it is sometimes interdicted in mixed planta-
tations. Its timber is more durable than that of the
English elm, or of any of the hybrids. It is much
used in agricultural carpentry, in rural machinery, and
in household furniture. The Wych elm produces
abundance of seeds, which, if sown as soon as they are
gathered, often come up the same year; but the English
elm and the hybrids produce seeds sparingly, and are
usually propagated by layers or by grafting on the Wych
elm. One remarkable difference between the English
and Wych elms may be noticed, viz., that the latter
never throws up suckers from its roots; and it is there-
fore peculiarly valuable as a stock for the English elm,
and for those varieties that do throw up suckers. There
are other species and varieties of European elms, and
several kinds of American elms, but none are deserving
of culture in Britain as timber trees. The elm is sub-
ject to the ravages of several insects, especially Scolytus
destructor.
The BEECH (Fagus sy/vatica, L.) is one of the
largest British trees, particularly on chalky or sandy
soils. It is a handsome tree in every stage of its growth,
but is more injurious to plants under its drip than other
trees, so that shade bearing trees, as holly, yew, and
thuja, suffer. Its leaves, however, enrich the soil. In
England and America the beech has a remarkable power
of holding the ground where the soil is congenial, and
the deep shade prevents the growth of other trees. It
is often and most usefully mixed with oak and Scotch
fir. The timber is not remarkable either for strength
or durability. It was formerly much used in mill-work
and turnery; but its principal use at present is in the
manufacture of chairs, bedsteads, and a variety of
minor articles. It is a native of the south of England,
and of various parts of the continent of Europe. There
are some varieties, particularly the purple and weeping
beech ; and there are one or two species natives of
North America, but none of them deserve notice as
timber-trees. It is propagated by its mast, which is
produced plentifully in fine seasons.
The Sweet CHESTNUT (Castamea z/u/garis, Lam.) is
a large, long-lived, deciduous tree, of rapid growth
while young, and attaining a vast size in South Europe
(e.g., the renowned chestnut of Mount Etna). It was
early introduced to England, and is one of its most or-
namental trees. The timber bears a striking resem-
blance to that of the oak, which has been mistaken for
chestnut; but it may be distinguished by the numerous
fine medullary rays. Unlike oak, the wood is more
valuable when young than old. When not more than
fiſty years old it forms durable posts for fences and
gates; but at that age it often begins to deteriorate,
having ring-shakes and central hollows. In a young
state, when the stems are not above 2 inches in diameter
at the ground, the chestnut is found to make durable
hoops for casks and props for vines; and of a larger
size it makes good hop-poles. It is a native of Asia,
North Africa, and North America. In Spain and Italy
it is grown for its fruit, in Britain, for ornament. In
the south of England in warm seasons it ripens its fruit,
from which plants are easily raised.
426
A R B
THE COMMON SYCAMORE or false plane (Acer Pseudo-
Platanus, L.), the plane-tree of Scotland, is a large
tree, though seldom attaining the height of those already
mentioned. It withstands the sea and mountain breezes
better than most other timber trees, and is often planted
near farm-houses and cottages in exposed localities for
the sake of its dense foliage. Its wood is valued in
turnery, for cups, bowls, and pattern blocks. It pro-
duces abundance of seeds, and is easily raised, but it re-
quires good and tolerably dry soil; it will not thrive on
stiff clays nor on dry sands or chalks. The Norway
maple (4., Alatazzoides, L.) is a hardy tree, used as a
breakwind in exposed situations on the east coast; but
neither it nor the other species from Europe or America
seems to deserve cultivation for the sake of its timber.
The Sugar maple (A. saccharinzemz, L.) forms extensive
forests in North America. It has been introduced into
Britain for a century, but is rather tender, and requires
a dry sheltered situation. It is propagated by imported
seeds, and it is doubtful if it can be profitably cultivated
in this country.
The COMMON BIRCH (Betula alba, L.) is a tree of the
Second rank, worthy of culture in inferior soils and situa-
tions, especially as coppice-wood. The spray, in some
parts of the country, is sold to the besom-maker, and
gives a fair return. The tree seeds freely, and is easy of
management. It is often planted in poor soil as a nurse
for oak and sweet chestnut. It yields excellent fuel. The
wood is used for carving, furniture, and agricultural im-
plements, and in the Highlands of Scotland and Sweden
for building material. The bark, covered with a layer
of earth, is used in roofing, and baskets and boxes are
made of it. The weeping birch forms one of the most
beautiful features in Highland scenery. None of the
American or Himalayan birches have yet been planted
with a view to profit as timber-trees, though cultivated
for many years.
The COMMON WALNUT (jºuglans regia, L.), is sup-
posed to have been introduced by the Romans. It
grows well, and ripens its fruit in the southern and mid-
land counties of England ; but large trees may be seen
as far north as Ross-shire in sheltered places. The tim-
ber is excellent, and held the first place for the manu-
facture of furniture till the introduction of mahogany,
and on this account the tree merits more attention. It
is raised from the nuts, like horse chestnuts; the seed-
lings should be protected from frost during the first
winter. The rate of growth is not rapid, and a deep
soil is essential to success. If cultivated for the fruit, the
seedlings should be transplanted once or twice.
The ROBINIA or false acacia (Robinia Pseud-Acacia,
L.) is a tree of unquestionable beauty, and much has
been written of the value of its timber. It was intro-
duced from North America in the 17th century, and
has been extensively cultivated as an ornamental tree.
In 1825 Cobbett strongly recommended the planting of
it for its timber. It has been used largely in England
for hop-poles, and in France for vine-props. In America
it is much used for trenails or wooden pins for bolting
ship timbers. The tree is readily produced from im-
ported seeds, and occasionally from suckers, which are
abundant. It should be planted in sheltered situations
in dry friable loam.
3. Soft-wood Zºrees.
The soft-wood trees are remarkable for the rapidity
of their growth, the lightness and whiteness of the
wood, and often for their early decay. Among those
worthy of cultivation for timber, are the poplar, willow,
alder, lime, and horse chestnut; the two first being
ſº that are generally recommended with a view to
profit.
ROADSIDE TREES AND HEDGES.
Little attention is paid to the planting of trees along
roadsides, and in such situations healthy or well-shaped
ones are seldom seen. A pit should be made of suffi.
cient size (2 to 3 feet square), and filled with good soil
mixed with rotten dung. The plants require to be
fenced, and for the first summer occasionally watered,
and the earth dug and kept clear of weeds. In forming
avenues and boulevards, the trees should be planted 30
feet apart, and if space allows of it, there should be a
double row to form a shady arch for pedestrians. The
oversight of these is sometimes given to a surfaceman,
or to a man appointed for the purpose, and it should be
his duty to maintain the avenues complete. Trees,
especially in or near large towns, are subject to injuries
which disfigure their appearance or retard their growth.
and not infrequently destroy the plants. To prevent
this it is customary to surround the stem with a cradle,
or matting, or thorny branches.
Hedge-2/ants are of great importance both for shel-
ter and protection of plantations. By far the best for
outside hedges are the common hawthorn and the wild
crab. The sloe or black thorn makes an excellent
hedge; but it throws up many suckers, and requires
constant attention to keep it within bounds. It forms.
however, an excellent barrier for picturesque planta-
tions, where it is allowed to spread itself in every direc-
tion. -
PROPAGATION AND CULTURE IN THE NURSERY.
AWursery Culture.—A nursery is a plot of ground de-
voted to the propagation and rearing of trees; it should
as far as possible be exempt from the influence of frost,
which prevails in low situations, and it ought to con-
tain a variety of soils. As a general principle, all seeds
will germinate in any soil provided it contains vegetable
matter, and is friable, free of stones, and well drained,
with a convenient supply of water. If a nursery there-
fore contains the three leading soils, sand, loam, and
peat, it will suffice for all required purposes. With re.
gard to climate, all deficiencies which occur in Britain
may be met by glazed frames for raising the more ten-
der kinds. It is the interest of the nurseryman to have
his nursery in a fine climate, and in deep fertile soil,
that he may raise large vigorous plants in the shortest
period; but it is the interest of the purchaser to have
the plants reared in a climate and soil inferior to that
into which they are to be transplanted, because, when
this is done, instead of the plants receiving a check, as
is usually the case, they will be improved by transplant-
ing. The strength of a plant and its suitableness for
successful transplanting consist in all its parts being
developed, in the thorough ripening of its wood, and
in the dormant state of its fibrous roots. If by any
mode of culture these requisites can be obtained, to-
gether with the long and thick shoots which are pro-
duced by growing the plants in deep rich soil, so much
the better; but in the climate of Britain trees reared in
nurseries with inferior and unmanured soil are likely to
prove most hardy. Those who plant in mountainous
districts will always find it better to have their nurseries
on the sides of mountains than in the valleys.
Propagation. —Trees are chiefly propagated by seeds,
but also by cuttings, layers, budding, and grafting-
The timber-trees of all countries are raised from seeds,
with a few exceptions, such as the poplar and willow,
which are raised from cuttings, and some species of elm,
lime, and a few others, which are raised from layers or
by grafting. Most ornamental trees are raised by some
of these artificial methods, because in this country they
seldom ripen seeds. Thus, all the American oaks may
A R B — A R C
427
be grafted on the common British oak. Most of the
foreign maples and birches are raised by layers, most of
the ornamental thorns by budding and grafting, and
willows and poplars by cuttings. All plants which do
not ripen seeds readily are propagated artificially, and
that mode is preferred by the nurseryman, which expe-
rience has proved will produce the largest and most
vigorous plants in the shortest time. Thus, though
more suitable plants would be produced by raising the
plane and poplar from cuttings, because in that case na-
ture would adjust the tops to the power of the roots, yet
as much larger plants are produced by layers, that mode
is preferred in commercial nurseries. The lime tree and
English elm ripen their seeds in Britain, but large
plants are much more rapidly produced in the first case
by layers, and in the second by grafting; the mode by
which the largest plants are most rapidly produced need
not always give way to the slower method; but in most
cases, it would be advantageous to the purchaser that
the slower mode should be adopted. According to
some writers, seedling plants are of greater durability
than those raised in any other way; but though this
may be true in some cases it is not universally applica-
ble, as we know that a bud produces as perfect a plant
as a seed; the only difference being that the bud seems
more fully imbued with the peculiarities of the individ-
ual which produced it than the seed. The poplar,
willow, vine, &c., have been propagated by cuttings
from time immemorial, and appear to possess respect-
ively the same properties now that they did in the days
of the Romans. Seeds should be collected when ma-
ture from the best specimens; and should either be
sown immediately, or preserved in a place where they
will undergo few atmospheric changes till the proper
sowing season, which in most cases will be the follow-
ing spring. Nature, it may be observed, sows all her
seeds soon after they are matured; that is, they drop
from the tree upon the ground in autumn or the begin-
ning of winter, or, in the case of some trees, such as
the conifers, not till spring; but when seeds are thus
left to sow themselves many are destroyed by animals,
many fall in unfavorable positions for germination, and
only a small proportion produce plants. It is for the
arboriculturist to study nature’s mode of sowing, and to
imitate only her favorable features. The greater num-
ber of seeds may be stored till the following spring,
that is, till February or March, and then be committed
to the soil. Poplar and willow seeds, however, ripen
early, and when sown immediately on dropping from
the tree, often come up in the course of a few weeks;
whereas, if they are kept till spring, the greater number
do not come up at all; and seeds which lie two years
in the ground before coming up, such as those of the
hawthorn, the holly, &c., may be kept till the second
spring before they are sown.
AR BROATH, or ABERBROTHOCK, a seaport and
manufacturing town in Scotland, in the county of For-
far, 17 miles N.E. of Dundee, and 6o N.N.E, of Edin-
burgh.
ARBUTHNOT, John, a celebrated physician, wit,
and man of letters of the age of Queen Anne, was born
at Arbuthnot, near Montrose. His father was a clergy-
man of the Scotch Episcopal Church, who was com-
pelled by the Revolution to resign his charge, and whose
family were consequently dependent on their own exer-
tions. Young Arbuthnot studied at the University of
Aberdeen, where he took the degree of M.D. He pro-
ceeded soon after to London, and for a time supported
himself there by teaching mathematics. His first pub-
lished work was a translation, with considerable addi-
tions, of a treatise by Huyghens, called Of the Zaws of
Chance, or a Method of Calculation of the Hazards of
Game, 1692. About this time there was much specula-
tion concerning the geological formation of the earth,
and Dr. Woodward published an Essay towards a
natural history of the earth, in which some curious
views were propounded with regard to the deluge. This
essay Arbuthnot attacked with great success in his
Axamination of Dr. Woodward’s Account of the
Aeluge, &c., London 1695. By this work he was
brought into prominent notice, and not only gained
means to extend his practice, but at the same time brought
himself into connection with the circle of wits and lit-
erary men who formed the chief glory of the age. He
followed up the work on Dr. Woodward by another on
the usefulness of mathematical learning, and contributed
to the Royal Society an interesting memoir, called An
Argument for Divine Providence drawn from the
Zgual Number of Births of both Sexes, which pro-
cured him, in 1704, admission as a Fellow to the Royal
Society. About this time a happy accident introduced
Arbuthnot to Prince George of Denmark, who was seized
with sudden illness when on a visit to Epsom. Arbuth-
not, who chanced to be there at the time, was called in,
and ever afterwards continued to be physician to the
prince. In 1705, at the especial request of the Queen,
he was made her physician extraordinary, and four years
later he became Royal Physician in ordinary. In the
same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College
of Physicians. He was now in the very centre of the
literary society of the time, and in it his great talents,
massive learning, and brilliant wit enabled him to take
a prominent place. He was on terms of close intimacy
with Pope, Swift, Gay, and Parnell, and quickly became
one of the foremost literary men of the Tory party.
In 1712 appeared the celebrated political allegory, called
the History of Şohn Bull. The object of this admir-
able piece of satire was to throw ridicule on the duke of
Marlborough, and to excite among the people a feeling
of disgust at the protracted war then being carried on
against Louis of France.
The death of the Queen in 1714 was a severe blow to
Arbuthnot. He lost his post as court physician, and
was much impaired in his means. He appears about
this time to have paid a short visit to Paris, and on his
return took up his residence in Dover Street. His
correspondence shows that after the Queen’s death he
was at first disposed to be despondent and gloomy, but
he soon recovered his natural buoyancy of spirits, and
entered with eagerness into the proposed work of the
Scriblerus Club. The principal members of this club
were Pope, Gay, Swift, Arbuthnot, Parnell, Harley,
Atterbury, and Congreve. The work projected by
them, a comprehensive satire on the abuses of human
learning, was never completed. One brilliant fragment,
the first book of the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus,
published in Pope's Works, is undoubtedly the work of
Arbuthnot, though it is not improbable that some por-
tions are due to Pope and Swift. It is an admirable
combination of wit and learning, and is certainly one of
the finest pieces of sarcastic humor, in the English
language. Arbuthnot still continued practice as a
physician, and attained great eminence in his profession.
In 1723 he was made one of the censors of the Royal
College of Physicians, and in 1727 had the honor of
delivering the Harveian oration. In 1731 he published
an AEssay concerning the Aſature of Aliments, which has
been frequently republished, and has been translated
into German. In 1733 he wrote an Essay on the AEffects
of Air on Human Bodies. He died in February 1735.
ARC, JoAN OF. See JOAN OF ARC.
ARCADE, in street architecture a covered way or
passage, either open at the side with a range of pillars,
or completely covered over. The finest arcades of this
428
A R C
description are to be found in Paris. Some have open
sides, such as those in the Rue de Rivoli, Palais Royal,
and old Place Royal; others, such as the Passages des
Panaromas, Jouffroy, and de Princes, are covered
passages, and form convenient thoroughfares. A few,
like the Passages Choiseul and de l’Opera, are favorite
lounges. They are all more or less lined with elegant
shops. There are two specimens of covered passage-
arcades in London, the Burlington and Lowther, but
they are very inferior in style to those in Paris. The
arcade which runs round three sides of the Square of
St. Mark at Venice is the finest of its kind. In Gothic
architecture the term signifies a range of arches, sup-
ported on columns or piers, and either open or attached
to a wall.
ARCADIA, an inland and mountainous country of
ancient Greece, bounded on the N. by Achaia, on the
W. by Elis, on the S. by Messenia and Laconia, and on
the E. by Argolis, and almost shut in from the neigh-
boring states by a natural rampart. Its most important
heights were Cyllene, the birth-place of Hermes, in the
north-east, Erymanthus in the north-west, Artemisium
and Parthenium in the east and Maenalus and Lycaeus
in the south. It was watered by the Alpheus, the
largest river of the Peloponnesus, the Helisson, the
Ladon, the Erymanthus, and a number of smaller
streams which cut their way, in many cases by under-
ground passages, through the limestone rocks. In the
east there were several lakes, as those of Orchomenos
and Stymphalus; and in the north-east, near Nonacris,
was the great waterfall of the Styx, which produced
such a deep impression on the ancient Creek mind.
Arcadia seems to have been inhabited flººm the earliest
times of Grecian history by the same race of people,
which down to the days of Roman dominion continued
to be distinguished from the neighboring states by
greater simplicity and inertness of life. The most im-
portant towns in Arcadia were Tegea, Stymphalus,
Cleitor, Pallantium, Pheneus, Carayae, Nonacris, Methy-
drium, Heraea, Mantinea, Lycosura, according to
Pausanias, the most ancient town in Greece, and
Megalopolis, one of the most recent. -
ARCESILAUS, a Greek philosopher, and founder
of the New or Middle Academy, was born at Pitane in
AEolia, about 316 B.C. . He received careful training in
his youth from the mathematician Autolycus, and then
proceeded to Athens, where for some time he studied
under Theophrastus. He was gained over to the Acad-
emy by Crantor, with whom he continued to live on
terms of the closest intimacy. After the death of Cran-
tor, Arcesilaus continued to study under Polemo and
then under Crates, whom he succeeded as leader of the
schöol. There is a little doubt as to the philosopher's
mode of life. According to some, he lived in extrava-
gant, even profligate style, and Diogenes Laertius tells
us that he died in his 75th year of excessive drinking.
But the testimony of others, e.g., Cleanthes, seems to
show that he practised extreme moderation; and some
of his practical precepts tend to confirm this view. He
was much beloved and respected by the Athenians, and
is celebrated for his acuteness, eloquence, and learning.
ARCH, in building, a portion of mason-work dis-
posed in the form of an arc or bow, and designed to
carry the building over an open space. The simplest
and oldest expedient for supporting a structure over a
door-way is to use a single stone or lintel of sufficient
length. On account of the difficulty of procuring stones
Jf great size, this expedient can only be used for mod-
erate apertures; nor can it be applied when there is to
be a heavy superstructure, because the weight resting on
the lintel would cause a compression of the upper, and a
distension of the under side. . Now, no kind of stone
can bear any considerable distending strain, and thus
stone-lintels are liable to fracture. The ancient Greek
temples afford instances of the use of horizontal lintels of
considerable sizé, but these architraves carry only the
cornice of the building. The employment of a colon-
made with flat architraves to support an upper story is
contrary to sound principles, and, even in the case of
ordinary houses, we see that the builder has been fain to
relieve the pressure on the lintel by means of a con-
cealed arch. In stone-work we must depend on com-
pression alone. ***
When a lintel had been accidentally broken in two, we
may suppose that the masons had set the ends of the
halves upon the door-posts, and brought the broken
ends together. In this way there would be formed a
support for the upper building much stronger than was
the stone when entire ; only there is a tendency to thrust
the door-posts asunder, and means must be taken to re-
sist this out-thrust. The transition from this arrange-
ment to that of three or more wedge-shaped stones fitted
together was easy, and thus the gradual development of
the arch resulted.
So long as such structures are of small dimensions no
great nicety is required in the adaptation of the parts,
because the friction of the surfaces and the cohesion of
the mortar are sufficient to compensate for any impro-
priety of arrangement. But when we proceed to con-
struct arches of large span we are forced to consider
carefully the nature and intensity of the various strains
in order that provision may be made for resisting them.
Until the laws of the equilibrium of pressures were
discovered, it was not possible to investigate these strains,
and thus our knowledge of the principles of bridge-build-
ing is of very recent date; nor even yet can it be said to
be perfected. The investigation is one of great difficulty,
and mathematicians have sought to render it easier by
introducing certain pre-supposed conditions; thus, in
treatises on the theory of the arch, the structure is re-
garded as consisting of a course of arch-stones resting on
abutments, and carrying a load which is supposed to
press only downwards upon the arch-stones. Also cohe-
sion and friction are put out of view, in other words, the
investigation is conducted as if the stones could slide
freely upon each other. Now, if the line of pressure of
one stone against another cross their mutual surface
perpendicularly, there is no tendency to slide; and if this
condition be adhered to throughout the whole structure,
there must result completestability, since the whole of the
friction and the whole consistency of the cement con.
tribute thereto. But if, in any case, the line of pressure
should cross the mutual surface obliquely, the tendency
to slide thereby occasioned must be resisted by the cohe-
sion, and so the firmness of the structure would be im-
paired. Hence an investigation, conducted on the sup-
position of the non-existence of cohesion, must neces-
sarily lead us to the best possible construction. But we
can hardly say as much in favor of the hypothesis that
the load presses only downwards upon the arch-stones.
In order to place such a supposition in accordance with
the facts of the case, we should have to dress the inner
ends of the arch-stones with horizontal facets for the
purpose of receiving and transmitting the downward
ressure. But if, as is usually the case, the inner Sur-
aces be oblique, they cannot transmit a vertical press-
ure unless in virtue of cohesion, and then this hypothesis
of only downward pressure on the arch-stones is not in
accordance with the fundamental principle of stability.
In a thorough investigation this hypothesis must be set
aside, and the oblique pressure on the inner ends of the
arch-stones must be taken into account. Since the depth
of the arch-stones is small in comparison with the whole
dimensions of the structure, and since the line of the
A R C
429
pressure transmitted from one to another of them must
always be within that depth, it is admissible to suppose
for the purpose of analysing the strains, that the arch-
stones form an exceedingly thin course, and that their
joints are everywhere normal to the curve of the arch.
Eventually, however, the depth of the arch-stones must
be carefully considered.
In every possible arrangement of the details, the hori-
zontal thrust at the crown of the arch is transmitted to
and resisted by the ultimate abutments. The only
effect, in this respect, of varieties in the form of con-
struction is to vary the manner of the distribution of
that strain among the horizontal courses. Hence one
great and essential element of security,+ the first thing,
indeed, to be seen to, - is that the ground at the ends
of the proposed bridge be able to resist this out-thrust.
Another, and not less important one is, that the arch-
stones be able to withstand the strains upon them. In
this respect much depends on the workmanship; it is
all important that the stones touch throughout the whole
surfaces: if these surfaces be uneven the stones must
necessarily be subjected to transverse strains, and so be
liable to fracture. The practice, too common among
house-masons, of cheaply obtaining an external appear-
ance of exactitude, by confining their attention to a
chisel-breadth around the outside, is not permissible
here, nor should any reliance be placed on the layer of
mortar for making up the inequalities.
The ability of a substance to resist a crushing pres-
sure is generally measured by the length of the column
which it is able to support, without reference to the
horizontal section; but it may be questioned whether
this mode of estimation be a sound one, for it does seem
natural to suppose that a block three inches square
should bear a greater load than nine separate blocks each
one inch square, seeing that the centre block in the en-
tire stone is protected on all sides; and thus it is possi-
ble that we under-estimate the greatest practicable span
of a stone arch. This difficult subject belongs to the
doctrine of “Strength of Materials.”
ARCHAEOLOGY, from ancient, and a description.
The term Archaeology, like that of Antiquities, has
been employed, until a very recent period, in a sense so
restricted and arbitrary as strikingly to contrast with
the latitude admissible according to the original deriva-
tion of the word. Literally it signifies the study of an-
tiquity or ancient things; but its precise significance has
been determined from time to time by the range of study
and research most in favor. To some extent it has
always been recognized as embracing whatever pertained
to the early history of any nation, but in its details it
was applied almost exclusively to the study of Greek and
Roman art, or of classical antiquities generally. The
progress of geology, and the application of sound prin-
ciples of induction to the study of primitive antiquities,
have wrought a great revolution, and few studies now
rival archaeology in comprehensive interest.
In looking at the succession of strata of the earth's
crust it was assumed till recently that the student of
man and his remains is limited to the latest superficial
formation of post-tertiary strata. To the palaeontolo-
gist was assigned all ancient animal life of the fossilif-
erous strata, while the archaeologist treated of man and
his works as things essentially distinct. The diverse
functions of the two sciences are still clearly recognized;
but the archaeologist is no longer supposed to be excluded
either from quaternary or tertiary strata in his search
not only for the remains of human art, but for the oste-
ological evidences of man’s presence contemporaneous
with the fauna of such geological periods. One class of
archaeologists, accordingly, confidently anticipate the
recovery not only of works of art, but of the fossil
remains of man himself, in the pliocene, or even the
miocene strata. So far, however, as any reliable evi-
dence can guide opinion, it scarcely admits of question
that neither has hitherto been found in older deposits
than the later tertiary, or quaternary.
The actual remains of man, the specific form of his
Osseous structure, and above all of his skull, now
receive the minutest attention; and the department of
anthropology to which such investigations are specially
assigned "has latterly acquired a fresh interest from the
inquiries suggested by novel theories as to the possible
evolution of man from lower animal organisations.
Nevertheless, the researches of the palaeontologist and
of the archaeologist are based on essentially distinct
evidence. The life of geological periods is investigated
by means of the fossil bones and teeth which alone sur-
vive. Or if to these have to be added such illustrations
of habits, food, and structure as are furnished by means
of footprints, coprolites, and the like subsidiary evi-
dence, still all are traceable, directly or indirectly, to
the living organism. Man, on the contrary, in times
altogether preceding history, is chiefly studied by
means of his works. Archaeology thus forms the in-
termediate link between geology and history, though
the reaction, at the revival of learning in the 16th cen-
tury, which tended for a time to subordinate arts and
science alike to classical authority, reduced it within
greatly narrower limits. Nevertheless, the fitness of
the term for the most comprehensive definition in rela-
tion to all which pertains to the past could not be
entirely overlooked, and it is even employed repeatedly
by Dr Prichard as nearly synonymous with palaeon-
tology. In this, however, he has not been followed,
and the name is now universally adopted to designate
the science which deduces the history of man from the
relics of the past. So comprehensive a subject neces-
sarily admits of great subdivision. The most important
general division will be treated of separately in the
article on CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY (p. 436, sqq.), while
interesting branches of the study will be reviewed
under the heads of Egyptian, Etruscan, Assyrian,
Mexican, and Indian antiquities. Numismatics, pot-
tery, heraldry, hieroglyphics, palaeography, and other
subdivisions in like manner deal with important details,
and help to illustrate the comprehensiveness of the
subject.
The innate cravings of the human mind for an insight
into the future have shaped themselves into many forms
of divination and astrology. But this desire is not more
universal than that which prompts man to aim at a re-
covery of the secrets of the past. The question Whence?
even more than that of Whither? is found to give shape
to the mythic legends of the rude barbarian, and to con-
stitute an important element in the poetry and mythol-
ogy of every nation’s oral and written history. With
the progress of society such indices of the past are sub-
jected anew to critical analyses; and we accordingly find
abundant traces of an archaeological spirit in the litera-
ture of every civilised nation. . The influence of the
same craving for a mastery of the past is seen adapting
itself to the spirit of the age at every epoch of great
progress. The revival of art and letters in the 14th and
15th centuries was signalised by a new appreciation of
Greek and Roman models; and while the progress of
opinion in the 16th century was accompanied by an
abandonment of mediaeval for classic art, the tendency
of Europe in our own day, amid many elements of prog-
ress, has been singularly consentaneous in the return
not merely to mediaeval art, but to mediaeval modes and
standards of thought, and in the attempt to attain a
higher excellence than has been yet achieved by a more
perfect development of the ideal of the middle ages.
43O
A R C
The alliance of archaeology with geology, and the
direction of geological research to the evidences of the
antiquity of man, have largely contributed to its expan-
sion, until in its comprehensive unity it embraces the
entire range of human progress from the infantile stage
of primeval arts to the earliest periods of written
records. It has thus been developed into a systematic
science, by which the intelligent investigator is enabled
to pursue his researches with the aid of evidence older
than all written chronicles, and to recover chapters of
national infancy and youth heretofore deemed beyond
recall. The geologist, with no aid from written records,
follows out his inquiries through successive periods of
the earth’s history, and reveals the changes it has
undergone, and the character of the living beings which
animated epochs of the globe ages before man was
called into being. Beginning with the traces of life in
the primary fossiliferous strata, he passes on from sys-
tem to system, disclosing a vast succession of long ex-
tinct life, until in the latest diluvial formations he points
to the remains of animals identical with existing species,
and even to traces of human art—the evidence of the close
of geological and the beginning of archaeological periods.
Here archaeological science ought to be ready to take up
the narrative, and with a more comprehensive minute-
ness of detail and greater certainty as to the conclusions
arrived at. Such, however, until very recently, has not
been the case. The geologist himself long confused the
records of the transitional by his mistaken reference of
all diluvial traces to the Noachian deluge; and when,
pausing, as he thus believed, at the dawn of the historic
period, he turned to the archaeologist for the subsequent
chapters of the history of life on our globe, it was only
to receive a record of Roman traces at best but meagrely
supplementing the minuter details of the historian.
Nearly the same was the case with all historic antiquity,
with the single exception of the wonderful monuments
of Egypt, which preserve to us the records of a civiliza-
tion in which we can recognize the origin of arts, let-
ters, and all else to which the culture of the oldest his-
torical nations may be traced.
Nevertheless, the evidences of the primitive arts, and
the traces of a native civilization originating among the
prehistoric races of Europe, had long been familiar to
the antiquary, though he failed to form any intelligent
conception of their significance as historical records.
Their interpretation on an intelligent and systematic
principle is mainly due to the archaeologists and ethnol-
ogists of Denmark and Sweden, who from their very
geographical position were happily freed from the con-
fusing element of classical prejudices, and were com-
pelled to seek in other than Roman sources an origin
for the abundant traces of metallurgic art. Zealous
British coadjutors speedily caught the hint, and freed
themselves from the trammels which had so long mar-
rowed their aim; the remains of primitive art were re-
ferred to true sources, or at least arranged under an
intelligent system of chronological sequence; and thus
the desultory and often misdirected labors of the anti-
quary have given place to researches characterized by
scientific accuracy.
The system of primitive archaeology thus introduced
has since been modified and carried out into ampler
details, as the fruit of more extended discoveries, chiefly
effected in France and England; but the three primary
divisions, the Stone, the Bronze, and the Iron Periods,
are still retained. The arrangement is warranted alike
by evidence and by its practical convenience, though
later research has given to the stone period a compre-
hensiveness undreamt of before, and so led to its subdi-
vision into two ages of prolonged duration, with
distinctive characteristics of primitive art.
(I.) The
Stone Period, as the name implies, is that in which the
rude aboriginal arts, which the commonest necessities
of man call into operation, are assumed to have been
employed entirely on such available materials as stone,
horn, bone, &c. (2.) The Bronze Period may in like
manner admit of subdivision, though the term is con-
veniently employed, in its most comprehensive sense,
for that era of progress in which the metallurgic arts
appear to have been introduced and slowly developed —
first, by the simple use of native copper, followed by
the application of fire, the construction of moulds, and
the discovery of such chemical processes as the alloying
of copper and tin, and the consequent production of
the beautiful and useful alloy which gives name to this
the earlier metallurgic era. (3.) The Iron Period
marks the era of matured metallurgic arts, and the
...; progress consequent on the degree of
civilisation which is the inevitable concomitant of such
a state of things. While, however, those divisions hold
good in their general application, they must not in every
case be applied too rigidly. The archaeologist is con-
stantly recalled to the distinction between the researches
of the palaeontologist, as dealing with the traces of
organic life, and his own study of the works. of a
rational being marked by all the diversities traceable to
the reasoning and volition of the individual workman.
Local facilities have also modified the arts of primitive
man in various ways. In some localities, as in North
America, pure native copper abounds; while on the
other hand, in certain districts of Africa iron occurs in
such a condition that it appears to have been wrought
by the primitive metallurgist from very remote times.
1 ll those periods embrace eras concerning which no
contemporary written records exist; and in relation to
most of them nearly as little is known directly as of the
older periods with which the geologist exclusively deals.
It need not therefore excite surprise that the process of
induction established on this basis has been challenged
by historical writers of high standing, but whose ex-
clusive labors on the records of periods admitting of
documentary evidence and charter proof render them
little disposed to sympathise with a course of reasoning
relative to the history of man, such as has, in the hands
of the geologist, revealed so much in relation to more
ancient life. The further, however, that research is
pursued, alike into the habits of living races of savages,
and into the characteristics of the oldest traces of prim-
itive art, the more clearly does such a process of devel-
opment, from the first rude working in stone to the
highest arts of the skilled metallurgist, become manifest.
The Australians, the Maories of New Zealand, and
the whole widely scattered races of the Polynesian
Islands, the Caribs and other natives of the American
archipelago, with all the nomade tribes of the New
World, from Patagonia to the Arctic circle, were, when
first discovered, without any knowledge of the metals as
such, and supplied their wants by means of implements
and weapons of stone, shell, bone, or wood. The civ-
ilized Mexicans and Peruvians, on the contrary, when
first visited by the Spaniards in the 16th century, were
familiar with the working of copper as well as of gold,—
though totally ignorant of iron, and also retaining for
common purposes many of the primitive stone weapons
and implements, only substituting the abundant obsidian
of their volcanic region for flint. Greece passed from
its bronze to its iron age within the period embraced in
its literary history; and the mastery of the art working
the intractable iron ore is traceable with tolerable clear-
ness in the early history of Rome, not very long before
it came in contact with the trans-Alpine barbarians.
Among most of the Germanic and Celtic tribes iron
appears to have been already known when they first
A R C
43 I
came in contact with the aggressive civilisation of the
South; and ſrom one of them, the Norici (in whose
Country, in the Austrian valleys of the IDanube, this
metal is still wrought with the highest skill), there is
reason to believe that the Romans acquired the art of
making steel.
If history is only to begin, as that of Britain has
been made to do, with the date of the first 'collision
with invading Rome, then, no doubt, stone and bronze
periods are as meaningless as are eocene and miocene
periods to the geologist who assigns the Mosaic deluge
as the source of the earliest phenomena of his science.
To those, however, who are willing to follow inductive
reasoning to its legitimate conclusions it must be ap-
parent that it is no visionary theory, but a system
founded in well-established truth, which arranges the
archaeological records of primitive history and the re-
mains of human art into stone, bronze, and iron periods.
Even here, however, an important distinction in the
employment of such materials as a basis of inductive
reasoning indicates the greatness of the revolution in-
yolved in the introduction among the living creatures
inhabiting this earth of a being endowed with intelli-
gence, and supplementing the natural resources of
animal life by arts even of the most primitive kind. It
must indeed be borne in remembrance that geological
and historical chronology are very different things, and
that the idea implied in the contemporaneousness of
strata bears a very slight approximation to the coinci-
dence of contemporaneous events and productions of
an historical era. The doctrine of geological continuity
is indeed challenged in certain respects; but on the
whole, the geological formations, with their included
organic remains, may be assumed to obey a natural and
unvarying, order; and so, within the compass of geo-
logical periods, to be of contemporaneous origin. But,
notwithstanding certain extreme assumptions, based on
the theory of evolution, and involving the consequent
existence of man in remote geological eras, so far as all
actual evidence can yet guide us, it is correct to say
that, geologically speaking, the entire history of man
is embraced in one period. But in the works of art,
which form the basis of archaeological induction, a new
element— that of mind, or the reasoning faculty, along
with the imitative and social arts—is introduced, and
greatly complicates its subdivisions. The stone period
of Britain or Denmark, is analogous to that of the
Polynesian Islands. So closely do their tools and
weapons resemble each other that it requires a practised
eye to distinguish the stone axe or flint lance-head
found in an ancient British barrow from implements
brought by some recent voyager from the islands of the
Southern Ocean. Nor could the most experienced
archaeologist undertake in every case to discriminate
between the flint arrow-head dug from some primitive
barrow of undated centuries before the Christian era,
and the corresponding weapon brought by some recent
traveller from Tierra del Fuego or regions beyond the
Rocky mountains. The inference is therefore legiti-
mate, that in those Polynesians, Fuegians, or Indians
of the North-West, we have examples of tribes in the
same primitive stage as were the aborigines of Europe
during its stone period. Chronologically, however,
the stone period of Europe and that of the Pacific
islands or the American continent are separated by
thousands of years. In like manner, the bronze age
of Mexico was undisturbed by all later elements when
first brought into contact with the matured civilisation
of Europe in the 16th century, while the close of that
of Britain preceded the 1st century of our era. The
same rule is applicable to the primitive archaeology of
all centuries; and a fertile source of error and miscon-
ception has already had its rise in the assumption that
because Greece and Italy, Germany, Gaul, Scandinavia,
and Britain, have all had their primitive stone and
bronze periods, therefore the whole must have been
contemporaneous. It cannot therefore be too strongly
enforced as one of the most essential points of variance
in the reasoning of the geologist and the archaeologist,
that the periods of the latter, though synonymous, are
not necessarily synchronous; but that, on the contrary,
nearly all the phenomena which pertain to the natura/
Aistory of man, and to the historic development of the
race, may be witnessed in their various stages in con-
temporary races of our own day— from rudimentary
barbarism, and the absence of all arts essential to the
first dawn of civilisation, to a state of greatest advance-
ment in the knowledge and employment of such arts.
Some progress has already been made in an approxi-
mation to certain chronological data of such importance
relative to such primitive periods of the history of
nations. But the archaeologist, as well as the geologist,
is learning to deal with periods of time which cannot
always be measured either by years or centuries, but
rather must be gauged by those chronological stages in
the history of our planet in which epochs and periods
take the place of definite subdivisions of solar time.
Nevertheless, geological evidence of changes which are
known to have occurred within the historic period sup-
plies an important key to the approximate duration of
certain eras characterised by traces of human art; and
while by the intelligent observation of such remains in
the superficial strata, mingling with the fossil evidences
of extinct and familiar species of animal life, the link
is 8-pplied by which man takes his place in an unbroken
chain of creative existence, sweeping back into so
remote a past, the evidences of matured art pertaining
to periods unrecorded by history supply later links of
the same chain, and reunite the present with all former
ages.
The system of primitive archaeology which is found
applicable to British antiquities so closely corresponds in
all its essential features to that of Europe prior to the
era of authentic history, that the purpose of such an
abstract as this will be most conveniently accomplished
by presenting its leading points as examples of the
whole, illustrating these in passing by the analogous
remains discovered in other countries. The apparent
simplicity of a primitive stone period has been consider-
ably modified by recent research; and the careful study
of the remains of ancient art, in their relation to accom-
panying geological phenomena, or of the evidences of
artificial deposition in caves, barrows, chambered
cromlechs, cairns, or other sepulchral structures, sug-
gests the subdivision of prehistoric archaeology into a
succession of epochs included within the period of non-
metallurgic arts.
But before defining the archaelogical subdivisions of
time it is indispensable to glance at the palaeontological
elements of the question, and the evidences they supply
in relation to comparative chronology. One of the
most remarkable phenomena affecting the conditions of
life in Europe in recent geological epochs is the exist-
ence of a period, of long duration throughout the
northern hemisphere, of a temperature resembling that
of the Arctic regions at the present time. After a
period more nearly approximating in its conditions the
heat of the tropics at the present day, though otherwise
under varying states towards the end of the tertiary
epoch the temperature of the whole northern hemis-
phere gradually diminished, until the mountainous
regions of Scotland and Wales — then probably of a
much higher elevation — resembled Greenland at the
present time; and this Arctic temperature gradually
4.32
A R C
extended southwards to the Alps and Pyrenees. The
glaciers formed under the influence of perpetual frost
and snow descended from those and other mountains
into the valleys and plains over the greater portion of
Central Europe and Northern Asia; and this condition
of things, pertaining to what is known as the glacial
period, was one of greatly prolonged duration.
After some partial modifications of this low tempera-
ture, and a consequent advance and retrocession of the
glacial influences in France and elsewhere, along what
was then the border lines of a north temperate zone, the
glacial period drew to a close; a gradual but persistent
rise of temperature carried the lines of ice and perpetual
snow further and further northward, excepting in regions
of great elevation, as in the Swiss Alps. This was
necessarily accompanied by the melting of the vast
glaciers accumulated in the mountain valleys throughout
the protracted period of cold. The broken rocks and
soil of the highlands were swept into the valleys by tor-
rents of melted ice and snow; the lower valleys were
hollowed out and re-formed under this novel agent; and
the landscape received its present outlines of valley,
estuary, and river-beds from the changes wrought in this
di/zzzian epoch. The enormous power of the torrents
thus acting continuously throughout a period of pro-
longed duration, and the vast deposits of sand, gravel,
and clay, with the embedded remains of contemporane-
ous animal and vegetable life with which they every-
where covered the plains, were viewed till recently solely
in relation to the Mosaic narrative of a universal deluge,
and were referred implicity to that source. But recent
though the epoch is when compared with older geologi-
cal periods, its antiquity is enormous in relation to his.
toric chronology; and instead of being the product of a
sudden cataclysm of brief duration, it represents pheno-
mena which required a period of long protracted cen-
turies for their evolution.
Within this late tertiary, or quaternary, period are
found the remains of animal life contemporary with
primeval man and his earliest arts. The very character-
istics of some of the fossil animals of the period, so
diverse from all that we have been accustomed to asso-
ciate with man, help to suggest ideas of even an exag-
gerated antiquity for the era to which they are assignable,
and to relegate it to the remotest conceivable antiquity
consistent with all other evidence of the oldest traces of
man or his arts seemingly contemporaneous with them.
Of those now wholly extinct, the mammoth or Ælephas
Arimigenius, the Ælephas antiquus, the Rhinoceros
£ichorizettº, the Aſºzłopotamus major, and such great
cave carnivora as the Ursus spe/aeus and the Felis
spelaea, are most noticeable for their great size, and in
Some cases for their enormous destructive powers, in
striking contrast to the seemingly helpless condition of
primitive man. Yet even some of those formidable
mammalia probably owed their extinction fully as much
to the presence of man as to any change in temperature
and consequent alteration in the required conditions of
climate and habitat. We are accustomed to regard the
lion, tiger, leopard, panther, and others of the great
Felidae as pertaining exclusively to tropical countries.
They are in reality limited to tropical jungles and uncul-
tivated regions of great extent, where the abundance of
wild vegetable-feeding animals supplies their food. The
existence of neither is compatible with the presence of
man in any great numbers; but in his absence those
beasts of prey greatly extend their range. The Indian
tiger not only follows the antelope and deer in the
Himalayan chain to the verge of perpetual snow, but
the tiger, leopard, panther, and cheetah hunt their prey
beyond that mountain range, even into Siberia.
The influence of man in the extirpation of the wild
fauna is illustrated by another class of extinct animals of
many historical regions, which yet survive in more favor-
able localities. The discovery of abundant evidence of
a period in the history of central and southern France
when the reindeer (Cervus terandus) formed one of the
chief sources both for the food of man and for the
materials from which his weapons and implements were
made, seems to carry us back to an era, inconceivably
remote, when central France was in the condition of
Lapland in mediaeval or still earlier centuries. But the
climate of North Britain is not even incompatible with
the existence of the reindeer, and its favorite moss
abounds in many parts of the Highlands. It need not
therefore surprise us to learn that traces of the reindeer
are by no means rare in Scotland; and numerous
examples of its horns have recently been recovered in
more than one Caithness locality, with the marks of
sawing and cutting for artificial use, and lying among
other remains in stone-built structures of a primitive
population of North Britain. How old they are may
not be strictly determinable, but they helped us to the
acceptance of a very modern date for the presence of the
reindeer there; for Torfaeus states that so recently as the
twelfth century the Jarls of Orkney were wont to cross
the Pentland Firth to chase the roe and the reindeer in
the wilds of Caithness. At the same date also we find
the skin of the beaver rated for customs duties amongst
articles of Scottish export specified in an Act of the reign
of David I.
Another very characteristic animal pertaining to the
pre-historic era of European man is the Megaceros
Hiberzzicus, or gigantic Irish elk. Its bones occurred
with those of the AElephas primigenius, the A'Ainoceros
tichorizeus, the Ursus spelaeus, and other extinct mam-
mals, alongside of human remains and works of art, in
the famous Aurignac cave of the Pyrenees, and in the
recently-explored Brixham cave, on the Devonshire coast,
similar remains of the fossil rhinoceros, horse, and
reindeer, as well as of several extinct carnivora, lay
embedded in the same breccia with flint knives. And
not only have the horns and bones of the Megaceros
Aſiberizicus been recovered from Irish bogs and marl-
pits, with marks of artificial cutting, but a rude Irish
lyre, found in the moat of Desmond Castle, Adare, has
been pronounced by Professor Owen to be made from the
bone of this extinct deer.
So is it with the ancient Bovidae, not only adapted
for the chase, but suitable for domestication; such as
the Bos primigenius, the Bos longifrons, and the
Bason priscus. Their remains have been found in sub-
marine forests, or mingling in the drift or cave deposits
with the Ælephas Arimigenius, the Felis spelaea, and
others of the most gigantic fossil mammals; while abun-
dant traces reveal their existence not merely contem-
poraneous with man, but within definite historical
periods.
The great alluvial valley of the river Forth has yielded
another class of relics connecting the gigantic fossil mam-
malia of a prehistoric epoch with man. The disclosures
of the Carse of Falkirk have repeatedly included remains
of the Elephas primigenius: and in at least one case
its tusks were found in such perfect condition as to be
available for the ivory-turner, though lying embedded at
a depth of 20 feet in the boulder clay. . But in the
neighboring valley of the Forth the fossil whale (Balaen-
optera) has not only been repeatedly found far inland,
buried in the alluvial soil, at levels varying from 20 to
25 feet above high-water mark, but in at least two in-
stances the rude lance or harpoon of deer's horn, lay
alongside of the skeletons; and near another of them
were found pieces of stag's horn, artificially cut, and one
of them perforated with a hole about an inch in diameter.
A R C
433
Flint implements, an oaken quern, and other ingenious
traces of primitive art, recovered from the same alluvial
soil, all tell of a time when the British savage hunted
the whale in the shallows of a tide at the base of the
Ochil hills, now between 20 and 30 feet above the high-
est tides and 7 miles distant from the sea.
There is no doubt that the disappearance of the whale
from the British shores, like the reindeer from its north-
ern valleys, is due far more to the presence of man than
to any change of temperature so greatly affecting the
conditions of life as to involve their extinction. Never-
theless it is convenient to recognise in the disappearance
of such emigrant species from the historic areas the close
of the palaeontological age. The Urus, the Aurochs,
the Pos Zoſzgifrons, or native ox of the Roman period,
and others of that important class of animals which man
first began to turn to account for domestication, have
also ceased to exist among European fauna ; but this is
clearly traceable to the destructive presence of man.
Within three or four centuries the Urus (Bos primi-
genius) was still known in Germany; the Aurochs (Bos
Ariscus) is even now preserved under special protection
in Lithuania ; and herds of British wild cattle in Cadzow
forest, Lanarkshire, and at Chillingham Park, Northum-
berland, perpetuate varieties otherwise extinct.
Reverting, then, to the classification which prehistoric
archaeology admits of, in the light of its most recent
disclosures, it appears to be divisible into four distinct
epochs, of which the first two embrace successive
stages of the age of stone implements.
I. The Palaeo/ithic Aeriod is that which has also
been designated the Drift Period. The troglodytes, or
cave-dwellers, of this primitive era were to all appear.
ance contemporaneous with the mammoth, the woolly-
haired rhinocerus, and the great cave carnivora already
named. In England, France, Belgium, and other
countries of Europe, numerous caves have been ex-
plored which were undoubtedly the habitations and
workshops of men of this period. These caverns vary
in character and dimensions according to the geological
features of the localities where they occur; but all ,
alike involve the simple feature of recesses, more or
less ample, affording comparatively dry and commodi-
ous shelter, and so being resorted to as places of habi-
tation alike by wild animals and by man himself. But
the most valuable for the purposes of the archaeologist
are a class of caverns which occur in limestone districts,
and which, from the combined mechanical action of the
water operating on a rock easily eroded, and its chemi-
cal action when charged with a certain amount of car-
bonic acid in dissolving the calcareous rock, are found
expanded into long galleries and chambers of large
dimensions. There the same chemical agents, acting
under other circumstances, have dissolved the lime-
stone rock, and sealed up the ancient flooring at suc-
cessive intervals, thereby furnishing a test of the dura-
tion of long periods of alternate action and repose, and
yielding evidence of the most indisputable kind as to
the order of succession of the various deposits and their
included bones and implements.
In Belgium, at Dordogne, and in some parts of the
south of France, the caves and rock-recesses are of a
much simpler character. Yet there also ſavoring cir-
cumstances have preserved contemporary deposits of
the ancient cave-dwellers, their works of art, the re-
mains of their food, and even their cooking hearths.
The caves of the drift period accordingly present
peculiarly favorable conditions for the study of the post-
pliocene period. . Some of these caverns were evi-
dently first occupied by the extinct carnivora of that
period, as in the case of the famous Kent's Hole Cave
of Devonshire, of which the lowest deposit is a breccia
of water-worn rock and red clay, interspersed with
numerous bones of the Orsus spelaeus, or great cave-
bear. Over this a stalagmitic flooring had been formed,
in some places to a depth of several feet, by the long-
protracted deposition of carbonate of lime held in solu-
tion in the drippings from the roof. Above this ancient
flooring, itself a work of centuries, later floods had
superimposed a thick layer of “cave-earth,” in some
cases even entirely filling up extensive galleries with a
deposit of drift-mud and stones, within which are
embedded the evidences of contemporaneous life—
bones and teeth of the fossil elephant, rhinoceros,
horse, cave-bear, hyaena, reindeer, and Irish elk; and
along with these, numerous weapons and implements
of chipped flint, horn, and bone — the unmistakable
proofs of the presence of man. These, again, have
been sealed down, in another prolonged period of rest,
by a new flooring of stalagmite ; and thus the peculiar
circumstances of those cave deposits render them
specially favorable for the preservation of a coherent
record of the period. Here are the evidences of the
animal life contemporaneous with the men of the caves
during the drift period; here also are many of their
smaller flint implements—the flint-cores and the chips
and flint-flakes, showing where their actual manufact-
ure was carried on ; and the lances, bodkins, and
needles of bone, which could only have been preserved
under such favoring circumstances.
But besides the actual deposits in the caves, the
river gravels of the same period have their distinct
disclosures. The spear-heads, discs, scrapers, and
other large implements of chipped flint are of rare
occurrence in the cave breccia. Their size was suffi-
cient to prevent their being readily dropt and buried
beyond reach of recovery in the muddy flooring of the
old cave dwelling; and the same cause preserved them
from destruction when exposed to the violence involved
in the accumulation of the old river drifts. In the
north of France, and in England from Bedfordshire
southward to the English Channel, in beds of ancient
gravel, sand, and clay of the river valleys, numerous
discoveries of large flint implements have been made –
from the year, 1797, when the first noted flint imple-
ments of the drift were discovered in the same stratified
gravel of Hoxne, in Suffolk, in which lay the bones of
the fossil elephants and other extinct mammalia. The
characteristics of the river-drift implements, as well as
of the whole art of the stone age, have been minutely
described and illustrated in various works, but especially
in Evans's Ancient Stone /mp/ements, Weapons, and
Ornaments of Great Britain. It is sufficient, there-
fore, to refer to such authorities for details.
But besides the numerous specimens of the manu-
factures in flint, horn, and bone, illustrative of the
mechanical ingenuity of this primitive era, special atten-
tion is due to the actual evidences of imitative and
artistic skill of the sculptors and draughtsmen of the
Same period.
2. This first or palaeolithic period, with its character-
istic implements of chipped flint, belonging to an epoch
in which man occupied central Europe contemporan-
eously with the mammoth, the cave-bear, and other
long-extinct mammals, was followed by the second or
AWeo/ithic A'eriod, or, as it has been sometimes called,
the Surface-Stone Period, in contradistinction to the Drift
Period, characterised by weapons of polished flint and
Stone. The discovery and exploration of the ancient
/2/a/./baufen or lake villages of Switzerland and other
countries, including the crannoges of Ireland and Scot-
land, and of the 47%en-möddings or refuse-heaps of
I)enmark, Scotland, and elsewhere, have greatly extended
the illustrations of this period, and given definiteness to
28 A
434
A R C
the evidences of its antiquity. But while it thus includes old American Indian villages, and primitive pottery so-
works of a very remote epoch, it also embraces those of
later regular sepulture, with the sepulchral pottery of
rudest type, the personal ornaments and other remains
of the prehistoric races of Europe, onwald to the dawn
of history. It even includes the first traces of the use of
the metals, in the employment of gold for personal
adornment, though with no intelligent recognition of its
distinction from the flint and stone in which the work-
men of this neolithic period chiefly wrought.
Elaborately-finished axes, hammer-heads, cups, and
vases of the late neolithic era serve to illustrate the high
stage to which the arts of a purely stone period could
be advanced, in the absence of any process of arrest-
ment or change. But long before such a tendency to
development into ornamental detail and symmetrical
regularity of construction could be brought to bear on
the megalithic architecture of the same era, the metal-
lurgic sources of all later civilisation had begun to
supersede its rude arts. To such remote eras we strive
in vain to apply any definite chronology. At best we
work our way backwards from the modern or known
into the mysterious darkness of remotest antiquity,
where it links itself to unmeasured ages of geological
time. But by such means science has been able to add
a curious chapter to the beginnings of British and of
European story, involving questions of mysterious inter-
est in relation to the earliest stages in the history of
man. The very characteristics which distinguished him
in his rudest stage from all other animals have helped
from remotest times to perpetuate the record of his
progress.
The source of change in Britain, and throughout
Europe, from this rude state of barbarism, is clearly
traceable to the introduction of metals and the discovery
of the art of smelting ores. Gold was probably the
earliest metal wrought, both from its attractive appear-
ance, and from its superficial deposits, and the condition
in which it is frequently found, rendering its working an
easy process. Tin also, in the south of Britain, was
wrought at the very dawn of history: and, with the cop-
per which abounds in the same district of country, Sup-
plied the elements of the new and important compound
metal, bronze.
3. This accordingly indicates the transition from the
later stone age to the third or Bronze AEeriod, which,
beginning apparently with the recognition of the native
copper as a malleable metal, and then as a material
capable of being melted and moulded into form by the
application of ores so as to extract the metal, and that
of mixing metals in diverse proportions so as to prepare
an alloy of requisite ductility or hardness, according to
the special aims of the artificer.
Along with the full mastery of the working in copper
and bronze the skill of the goldsmith was correspond-
ingly developed; and the ornaments of this period, in-
cluding tarques, armlets, beads, and other personal
decorations and insignia of office, wrought in gold, are
numerous, and often of great beauty. The pottery of
the same period exhibits corresponding improvement in
material, form, and ornamentation; though, consider-
ing the mimetic and artistic skill shown in the drawings
and carvings of the remotest periods, it is remarkable
that the primitive pottery of Europe is limited, alike in
shape and decoration to purely arbitrary forms. This
in its crudest conventionalism consists almost ex-
clusively of varieties of zigzag patterns scratched or in-
dented on the soft clay. This primitive ornamentation
seems so natural, as the first aesthetic promptings of the
human mind, that it is difficult, if not in some cases im-
possible, to distinguish between the simple pottery of
comparatively recent origin, recovered on the sites of
tained from British barrows pertaining to centuries long
prior to the Christian era. But the fictile ware exhibits
an improvement in some degree corresponding to that
of the metallurgic art, which everywhere throughout
Europe furnishes weapons, implements, and personal
ornaments of the bronze period, characterised by much
grace and delicacy in form, and by an ornamentation
peculiar in style, but not unworthy of the novel forms
and material.
In reviewing the characteristics of this bronze period,
the disclosures of native art on the American continent
supply some singularly interesting and suggestive illus-
trations. There, throughout the whole northern region
of the North American continent and in the ruder areas
of South America, as well as in the West Indian archi-
pelago, a population was found consisting exclusively of
rude nomad hunters, in a pure stone period of primi-
tive savage art. Nor does it at all conflict with this that
they were to a certain extent familiar with the resources
of the rich copper regions of Lake Superior, where
that metal is found in enormous masses in a malleable
state. This they procured, and not only themselves
employed it in the manufacture of weapons, imple-
ments, and personal ornaments, but distributed it by
barter far down the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and
eastward to the great lakes, to the St. Lawrence valley,
and to the Hudson river. Silver and lead are also found
in the same rich mineral region in metallic crystals, and
were not unknown to the native tribes. But every-
where those metals were cold-wrought, as a mere mal-
leable stone capable of being hammered into any de-
sired shape, but in total ignorance of the influence of
fire or the use of alloys.
But wholly distinct from its rude Indian tribes, North
America had its semi-civilised Mexicans and South
America its more highly civilised Peruvians, who had
learned to mine and smelt the ores of the Andes, and
make metallic alloys wherewith to fashion for them-
selves bronze tools of requisite hardness for quarrying
and hewing the solid rock. With these they sculptured
the statues of their gods, and reared palaces, temples,
and pyramids, graven with elaborate sculptures and
hieroglyphics by a people wholly ignorant of iron,
which have not unjustly suggested many striking anal-
ogies with the megalithic art of ancient Egypt. The
/...uacas, or tombs of the Incas of Peru, and also their
royal depositories of treasure, have disclosed many re-
markable specimens of elaborate metallurgic skill, -
bracelets, collars, and other personal ornaments of
gold; vases of the same abundant precious metal, and
also of silver; mirrors of burnished silver, as well as
of obsidian ; finely-adjusted silver balances; bells both
of silver and bronze ; and numerous common articles
and tools of copper, or of the more efficient alloy of
copper and tin, – all illustrative of the arts and civilisa-
tion of a purely bronze age.
4. The fourth or Iron Period is that in which the art
of smelting the ores of the most abundant metal had at
length been mastered ; and so iron superseded bronze
for arms, Sword-blades, spear-heads, axes, daggers,
knives, &c. Bronze, however, continued to be applied
to many purposes of personal ornament, horse furniture,
the handles of swords and other weapons; nor must it
be overlooked that flint and stone were still employed
for lance and arrow-heads, sling-stones, and other com-
mon purposes of warfare or the chase, not only through.
out the whole bronze period, but far into the age of
iron. The discovery of numerous arrow-heads, or
black flint, on the plain of Marathon, has been assumed
with good reason to point to the use of such rude
weapons by the barbarian host of Darius; and the infer-
A R C
435
ence is confirmed by the facts which Herodotus records,
that Ethiopian auxiliaries of the army of Xerxes, ten
years later, were armed with arrows tipped with stone.
The essential change resulting from the maturing of
the iron period lies in the unlimited supply of the new
metal. Had bronze been obtainable in sufficient quan-
tity to admit of its application to the endless purposes
for which iron has since been employed, the mere
change of metal would have been of slight significance.
But the opposite was the case. The beautiful alloy
was scarce and costly; and hence the arts of the neolithic
period continued to be practised throughout the whole
duration of the age of bronze. But iron, though
So abundant in its ores, requires great labor and intense
heat to fuse it ; and it needed the prolonged schooling of
the previous metallurgic era to prepare the way for the
discovery of the properties of the ironstone, and the
processes requisite to turn it to account. Iron, more-
over, though so abundant, and relatively of compara-
tively recent introduction, is at the same time the most
perishable of metals. It rapidly oxidises unless pro-
tected from air and moisture, and hence few relics of
this metal belonging to the prehistoric period have
been preserved in such a state as to illustrate the skill
and artistic taste of the fabricators of that last pagan
era, in the way that the implements of the three
previous periods reveal to us the habits and intellectual
status of those older times.
But the iron is the symbol of a period in which pot-
tery, personal ornaments of the precious metals, works
in bronze, in stone, and other durable materials, supply
ample means of gauging the civilisation of the era, and
recognising the progress of man in the arts, until we
come at length to connect their practice with definite
historical localities and nations, and the names of Egypt
and Phoenicia, of Gadir, Massilia, the Cassiterides, and
Noricum, illuminate the old darkness, and we catch the
first streak of dawn on a definite historical horizon.
Thus, with the mastery of the metallurgic arts is seen
the gradual development of those elements of progress
whereby the triumphs of civilisation have been finally
achieved, and man has advanced towards that stage in
which the inductive reasonings of the archaeologist are
displaced, by records more definite, though not always
more trustworthy, as the historian begins his researches
with the aid of monumental records, inscriptions, poems,
and national chronicles.
Within the later iron period, accordingly, we reach the
era of authentic history. There is no room for doubt
that, whatever impetus the Roman invasion may have
given to the working of the metals in Britain, iron was
known there prior to the landing of Julius Caesar. Within
this archaeological period, however, the examples of
Roman art and the influence of Roman civilisation
begin to play a prominent part. To this period succeed
the Saxon and Scandinavian eras of invasion, with no
less characteristic peculiarities of art workmanship, as
well as of sepulchral rites and social usages. In these
later periods definite history comes to the aid of archaeo-
logical induction, while those intermediate elements of
historical re-edification, the inscriptions on stone and
metal, and the numismatic series of chronological records,
all unite to complete a picture of the past, replete with
important elements for the historian.
That man has everywhere preceded history is a self-
evident truth. So long as no scientific evidence seemed
to conflict with a long-accepted chronology in reference
to the antiquity assigned to the human race, it remained
unchallenged, though the like computation had been uni-
versally rejected in reference to the earth as the theatre
of his history, and we were content to regard the pre-
historic era of man as no more than a brief infancy of the
race. But the investigations and disclosure of recent
years in reference to the whole prehistoric period have
involved of necessity a reconsideration of the grounds on
which a definite antiquity of comparatively brief dura-
tion has been assigned to man; and the tendency at pres-
ent is rather to exaggerate than diminish the apparent
antiquity of the race. The nature and extent of the
evidence which has thus far rewarded intelligent re-
search have been sufficiently indicated above; and as it
is still far from complete, the student of archaeology will
act wisely in pushing forward his researches, and accu-
mulating and comparing all available evidence, without
hastily promouncing any absolute verdict on the ques-
tion. But, without attempting to connect with any
historic chronology the men of the English drift, or the
troglodytes of the mammoth or reindeer periods of
France, it may be useful, in concluding summary of
primitive archaeology, to glance at the origin of civiliza-
tion, and the evidences of antiquity of what appear to
constitute its essential elements.
Everywhere man seems to have passed through the
same progressive stages: First, that of the savage or
purely hunter state: a condition of precarious instabil-
ity, in which man is most nearly in the state of a mere
animal subsisting on its prey. It is the condition of no-
mad life, incompatible with a numerous or settled popu-
lation; exhausting the resources of national being in the
mere struggle for existence, and therefore inimical to all
accumulation of the knowledge and experience on which
human progress depends. In this primitive state, man
is disclosed to us by the evidence with which the archae-
ologist now deals. He appears everywhere in this first
stage as the Savage occupant of a thinly-peopled conti-
ment, warring with seemingly inadequate means against
gigantic carnivora, the contemporary existence of which
is known to us only by the disclosures of geological
strata or ossiferous caves, where also the remains of still
more gigantic herbivora confirm the idea of man’s ex-
haustive struggle for existence. The nearest analogy to
such a state of life is that of the modern Esquimaux,
warring with the monstrous polar bear, and making a prey
of the gigantic cetaceae of Arctic seas. Through how
many ages this unhistoric night of European man may
have preceded the dawn of civilization it is at present
vain to speculate. But this is noticeable, that there is
no inherent element of progress in a people in the condi-
tion of the Esquimaux. To all appearance, if uninflu-
enced by external impulse, or unaffected by any great
amelioration of climate, they are likely to prolong the
mere struggle for existence through unnumbered centu-
ries, armed, as now, with weapons ingeniously wrought
of bone, ivory, and stone, the product of the neolithic
arts of this 19th century.
To this succeeds the second or pastoral state, with its
flocks and herds, its domesticated animals, and its ideas
of personal property including in its earlier stages that
of property in man himself. It pertains to the open
regions and warmer climates of the temperate zone, and
to the elevated steppes and valleys of semi-tropical
countries, where the changing seasons involve of necess-
ity the wandering life of the shepherd. This accord-
ingly prevents the development of the arts of settled
life, especially those of architecture; and precludes all
idea of personal property in the soil. But the conditions
of pastoral life are by no means incompatible with fre-
quent leisure, reflection, and consequent intellectual
progress. Astronomy has its origin assigned. to the
ancient shepherds of Asia; and the contemplative pas-
toral life of the patriarchs Job and Abraham has had
its counterpart in many an Arab chief of later times.
The third or agricultural stage is that of the tillers
of the soil, the Aryans, the ploughers and lords of the
436
A R C
earth, among whom are developed the elements of set-
tled social life involved in the personal homestead and
all the ideas of individual property in land. The pro-
cess was gradual. The ancient Germans, according to
the description of Tacitus, led the life of agricultural
nomads; and such was the state of the Visigoths and
Ostrogoths of later centuries. But this was in part due to
the physical conditions of trans-Alpine Europe in those
earlier centuries. Long ages before that, as the ancient
Sanscrit language proves, the great Aryan family, of
which those are offshoots, had passed from the condition
of agricultural nomads to that of lords of the soil
among a settled agricultural people. They had fol-
lowed up the art of ploughing the soil with that of ship-
building and “ploughing” the waves. They were
skilled in Sewing, in weaving, in the potter’s art, and in
masonry. Their use of numbers was carried as high at
least as a hundred before they settled down from their
nomad life. They had domesticated the cow, the
sheep, the horse, and the dog; and their pasu or feeders
already constituted their pecies, their wealth, before the
Aecuzzia assumed its later forms of currency. They had
also passed through their bronze and into their irozz
period; for their language shows that they were already
acquainted with the most useful as well as with the
most valuable grains.
The whole evidence of history points to the seats of
earliest civilisation in warm climates, on the banks of
the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, and the
Ganges. The shores of the Mediterranean succeeded in
later centuries to their inheritance, and were the seats of
long-enduring empires, whose intellectual bequests are
the life of all later civilisation. But trans-Alpine
Europe, which is now yielding up to us the records of
its prehistoric ages, is entirely of modern growth so far
as its historic civilisation is concerned, and wherever it
extends toward the northern verge of the temperate zone
it is even now in its infancy. Here, then, we trace our
way back to the first progressive efforts of reason, and
find man primeval, in a state of nature, in the midst of
the abundance pertaining to a genial and fertile climate,
which rather stimulates his aesthetic faculty than en-
forces him by any rigorous necessity to cultivate the arts
for the purposes of clothing and building. Thus em-
ploying his intellectual leisure, he begins that progressive
elevation which is as consistent with his natural endow-
ments as a rational being as it is foreign to the instincts
of all other animals. He increases and multiplies,
spreads abroad over the face of the earth, clears its for-
ests, drains its Swamps, makes its rivers and seas his
highways, and its valleys and plains his fertile fields and
pasture-grounds. Cities rise, with all the fostering in-
fluences of accumulated wealth and settled leisure, and
with all the stimulating influences of acquired tastes and
luxurious desires. The rude pictorial art — not ruder
on the graven ivory of the troglodytes of the Madelaine
cave than on many a hieroglyphic drawing of the cata-
combs and temples of Egypt— employed in picture-
writing, passes by a natural and inevitable transition
from the literal representations of objects to the symbolic
suggestion of ideas, to a word-alphabet, and then to
pure phonetic signs. The whole process is manifest
from the very infancy of Egyptian picture-writing, as
crude as that with which the Indian savage still records
his deeds of arms on his buffalo-robe, or carves the
honors of the buried warrior on his grave-post. Letters
lie at the foundation of all high and enduring civilisa-
tion, yet we can thus trace them back to their infantile
origin; and so onward in their slow transformations, as
in the mingled pictorial and phonetic writing of the Ro-
setta stone hieroglyphics of the age of the Ptolemies.
Through Phoenician, Greek, and Roman modifications,
they have come down to us as the arbitrary symbols
of Sounds which the voice combines into articulate
speech.
And as it is with letters so it is with man’s arts, his
drawing, carving, sculpture, architecture, weaving, pot-
tery, metallurgy; and so with his science,— his astrol-
ogy, astronomy, geometry, alchemy, and all else. The
beginnings of all of them lie within our reach. We can
trace back the measurements of solar time to the crudest
beginnings of more than one ancient nation, with
a year of 360 days. This, corrected to the definite
approximation to the true solar year of a period of 365
days, became the vague year of the Egyptians, with the
great Sothiac cycle of 1460 years, clearly pointing to a
system of chronology which could not have been per-
petuated through many centuries without conflicting
with the most obvious astronomical phenomena as well
as with the recurring seasons of the year.
Man is, after all, according to the boldest speculations
of the geologist, among the most modern of living
creatures. If indeed the theory of evolution from lower
forms of animal life is accepted as the true history of his
origin, time may well be prolonged through unnum-
bered ages to admit of the process which is to develop
the irrational brute into man. But regarding him still
as a being called into existence as the lord of creation,
endowed with reason, the demonstration of a prolonged
existence of the race, with all its known varieties, its
diversities of language, and its wide geographical dis-
tribution under conditions so diverse, tends to remove
greater difficulties than it creates. No essential doc-
trine, or principle in morals, is involved in the accept-
ance or rejection of any term of duration for the human
race; and the idea of its unity, which for a time was
scornfully rejected from the creed of the ethnologist, is
now advocated by the evolutionist as alone consistent
with the physical, mental, and moral characteristics
common to savage and civilized man, whether we study
him amid the traces of palaeolithic osteology and arts,
or among the most diverse races of living men.
The process of research and inductive reasoning thus
applied by the archaeologist to the traces of primitive art
and the dawn of civilisation, is no less applicable to all
#: The songs and legends of the peasantry, the
half-obliterated traces of ancient manners, the fragments
of older languages, the relics of obsolete art, are all
parts of what has been fitly styled “unwritten history,”
and furnish the means of recovering many records of
past periods which must remain for ever a blank to those
who will recognise none but written or monumental
evidence.
Proceeding to the investigation of this later and, in
most of the higher requirements of history, this more
important branch of historical evidence, the archaeolo-
gist has still his own special departments of investigation.
Tracing the various alphabets in their gradual develop-
ment through Phoenician, Greek, Roman, and other
sources, and the changing forms which followed under
the influences of Byzantine and mediaeval art, a com-
plete system of palaeography has been deduced, calcul-
ated to prove an important auxiliary in the investiga-
tion of monumental and written records. Palae-
ography has its own rules of criticism, supplying an ele-
ment of chronological classification altogether independ-
ent of style in works of art, or of internal evidence in
graven or written inscriptions, and a test of genuineness
often invaluable to the historian.
Architecture, sculpture, and pottery have each their
historical value, their periods of pure and mixed art,
their successions of style, and their traces of borrowed
forms and ornamentation, suggestive of Indian, Assyrian,
Egyptian, Phoenician, Punic, Greek, Etruscan, Roman,
A R C
437
Arabian, Byzantine, Norman, or Renaissance influences.
Subordinate to those are the pictorial arts combined with
‘Sculpture and pottery, from earliest Egyptian, Greek, or
Etruscan art to the frescoes and paintings of mediaeval
centuries; and the rise of the art of the engraver, trace-
able through ancient chasing on metals, mediaeval niello-
work, graven Sepulchral brasses, and so on to the wood
blocks, whence at length the art of printing with mov-
able types originated. And as in the Old World so in
the New, the progress of man is traceable from rudest
arts of stone and copper to the bronze period of Mexico
and Peru, where also architecture, sculpture, and pottery
preserve for us invaluable materials for the elucidation
of that prehistoric time which only came to an end there
in the year 1492 A.D.
Heraldry is another element by means of which arch-
geology provides trustworthy canons of criticism in re-
lation to written and unwritten mediaeval records. The
Seals and matrices, sepulchral sculptures, and engraved
brasses, along with an extensive class of the decorations
of ecclesiastical and domestic architecture, all supply
evidence whereby names and dates, with confirmatory
collateral evidence of various kinds, are frequently re-
coverable. From the same sources also the changing
costume of successive periods can be traced, and thus a
new light be thrown on the manners and customs of past
ages. The enthusiastic devotee is indeed apt at times to
attach an undue importance to such auxiliary branches
of study ; but it is a still greater excess to pronounce
them valueless, and to reject the useful aids they are
capable of affording.
No less important are the illustrations of history, and
the guides in the right course of research, which numis-
matics supplies, both in relation to early and mediaeval
times. But on this and other sections into which the
study of antiquities is divided, the requisite information
will be found under the several heads of research. On
many of those points the historian and the archaeologist
necessarily occupy the same field; and indeed, when that
primitive period wherein archaeology deals with the
whole elements of our knowledge regarding it, as a
branch of inductive science, and not of critical history,
is past, the student of antiquities becomes to a great ex-
tent the pioneer of the historian. He deals with the
raw materials: the charters, deeds, wills, grants of land,
of privileges or immunities, the royal, monastic, and
baronial accounts of expenditure, and the like trust-
worthy documents; by means of their palaeography,
seals, illuminations, and other evidence, he fixes their
dates, traces out the genealogical relationships of their
authors, and in various ways prepares and sifts the evi-
dence which is to be employed anew by the historian in
revivifying the past. Architecture and all departments
of the fine arts, in like manner, supply much evidence
which, when investigated and systematised by a similar
process, adds valuable materials to the stock of the
historian, and furnishes new sources for the illumination
of past ages. Such is a sketch of the comprehensive in-
vestigations embraced under the name of archaeology,
which, carried on by many independent laborers, and in
widely varied fields of research, have contributed im.
portant chapters of human history, and revivified ages
long buried in oblivion, or at best but dimly seen through
distorting media of myth and fable.
CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY..—The province of classi-
cal archaeology is to investigate and determine the
results of artistic activity among the Greeks and
Romans, so far as that activity manifested itself in works
of form and substance as opposed to the artistic expres-
sion of thought by unsubstantial means, as in the case
of poetry or music. It ranges from the Greek temple
as the highest form of artistic expression in this sense to
the other extreme of the simplest object shaped for a
purpose by human hands. A stone, rudely hewn with
some design, an artificial tumulus, and common clay
utensil, each represent in a humble fashion, a thought
artistically expressed in substance, and each reflect more
or less accurately the artistic spirit of the time at which
they were made. It ranges also from the earliest
examples of workmanship down through the historical
periods of development and decline. So far classical
archaeology may properly be called a section of the
general history of art. It owes its independent position
entirely to the peculiar circumstances under which its
investigations are conducted. For example, when called
upon to determine the date of an inscription from the
forms and disposition of its letters, which, as works of
art, must reflect the taste of the period in which they
were incised, it has to bring to bear on the question a
knowledge of palaeographical eccentricities. Or when
the date of a coin has to be fixed, the standard on
which it has been struck and the historical circumstances
connected with it must be taken into consideration.
Such, at least, is the practice of journals and societies
devoted to classical archaeology. On the other hand,
recent writers desire to confine these collateral inquiries
to within the narrowest possible limits. They have
agreed to dismiss altogether mythological researches,
which in Gerhard's time formed one of the principal
occupations of archaeologists. Most of them consent to
epigraphy being classed under philology. With regard
to numismatics, however, opinions are still divided as to
whether it should be included under archaeology, on the
ground of the immense importance of coins as monu-
ments of art, or whether, on account of their historical
value, the study of them should be classed under phil-
ology. A similar question has been raised regarding
topography.
The discovery of Herculaneum in 1720 and of Pom-
peii in 1748 opened a new era in the history of
archaeology. The antiquarian spirit gave way to an
historical and scientific method, of which Count Caylus
may be regarded as the forerunner, and Winckelmann
(1717–1768) as the actual founder.
The rapid and vast accumulation of new material
after the time of Winckelmann required a new informing
spirit. The first to assume this function was Thiersch,
in three articles, “Ueber die Epochen der bildenden
Kunst unter den Griechen,” 1816, 1819, 1825, in which
he endeavored to prove the influence of the Egyptians
and Phoenicians on early Greek art. Against him
appeared K. O. Müller, denying altogether an exoteric
influence, and comparing the development of Greek art
to the organic development of plants, its various periods
being coincident with the marked periods of political
history.
Aºzzº Aeriod.
The oldest remains of workmanship in Greece, if we
except the series of stone implements discovered within
the last few years in various localities, are the ruined
walls of Tirynth and several other ancient citadels, the
stupendous masonry of which, together with the primi-
tive manner of construction by means of unhewn polyg-
onal blocks of immense size, led the later Greeks to
believe that they had been the work of a mythical race
of giants, Cyclopes, and to designate such masonry as
Cyclopean. Instead of the unsatisfactory Cyclopes,
the Pelasgians, who preceded the Greeks in the occu-
pation of the soil, are now, accredited the authors of
this primitive masonry, to which accordingly the much-
abused term Pelasgic is applied. Pausanias (i. 28, 3)
describes the oldest part of the walls of the Acropolis
at Athens as the work of Pelasgic settlers there. In
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what relation of blood this race may have stood to the
Greeks who succeeded them cannot be determined, but
it is known that the Greeks adopted from them, among
other religious beliefs and rites, those of Dodona; and
since even this primitive style of masonry commended
itself to them for a time, the Pelasgians must be
regarded as having in Some degree assisted in the artistic
progress of their successors. The walls of Mycenae
furnish an example of the fine skill with which the
Greeks afterwards employed the Pelasgic construction,
the blocks of stone being carefully jointed and hewn on
the outer surface, while the interior of the wall is filled
up with mortar and small stones. Mycenae claimed to
be one of the very oldest towns of Greece, and its walls
may fairly be regarded as the oldest known monument
of Greek workmanship.
Of the connection which is assumed to have existed
between the earliest monuments of Greek art and the con-
temporary art of Assyria, evidence is cited from remains
of undoubtedly early workmanship in the countries
of Asia Minor, Lycia, Lydia, and Phrygia, of which
the two latter were intimately associated with the
oldest traditions and religious beliefs of Greece. The
peculiar feature of Lycian art is its tombs cut in the
rock, of which the oldest class are direct imitations of
wooden structures such as we may conceive the primitive
temples of an Oriental race to have been. In Phrygia
we have another class of rock-cut tombs of very remote
antiquity, of which that of Midas (Semper, Der Stål,
i. p. 429) is the best preserved example. Here the style
of decoration is obviously derived from Assyrian tapes-
try. In Lydia we have tombs again, but they are in the
form of immense tumuli, -as, for instance, that of
Alyattes near Sardis, which astonished Herodotus by its
size, being 1300 feet in diameter at the base, and over
250 feet high. Similar tumuli occur among the old
Chaldeans.
With the immigration of the Dorian race commenced
the development of an independent style of architecture
in Greece, the first step apparently being the invention
of a house supported by columns as the design for a
temple. About the same time originated also, it is Sup-
posed, the Ionic order, which though presenting a cer-
tain Asiatic richness of ornament strongly opposed to
the severe simplicity of the Doric, was still a pure Greek
invention. With the new movement in architecture a
fresh impetus was given to the art of sculpture. At first
the reports sound somewhat fabulous, – as, for example,
that in which Butades the Corinthian potter is described
as having hit on the idea of modelling a face in clay and
baking it along with his vases. Butades himself, how-
ever, is an historical person, and Corinth is known to
have been a flourishing seat of potters and other artists
as early as the time of the tyrant Cypselus (650 B.C.),
through whose oppression it is said the artists, Eucheir,
Diopus, and Eugrammus emigrated to Etruria, which
afterwards became celebrated for its sculptures in terra-
cotta. But the most remarkable specimen of early
sculpture, presumably Corinthian, was the chest in which
the infant Cypselus was concealed, and of which a de-
tailed description is given by Pausanias. . The chest,
itself of cedar, was ornamented with a wealth of figures
in gold and ivory, arranged in parallel horizontal bands,
and representing heroic legends and scenes from daily
life, the names of the individual figures being inscribed
in the manner characteristic of early times, and in what
Pausanias calls very ancient letters. Glaucus is said to
have discovered the art of welding iron (692 B.C.), the
substitute for which had previously been nails. At this
period we have frequent mention of splendid metal uten-
sils, as, for instance, the enormous cauldron, with pro-
jecting gryphons’ heads and a support formed of kneel-
ing figures, seven ells in height. As the oldest example
of sculpture in bronze which he had seen, Pausanias
describes a statue of Jupiter at Sparta, the work of
Clearchus of Rhegium, whom some called a pupil of
Daedalus. It was made of plates of bronze, beaten out
to express the whole figure, and then fastened together
with fine nails, the arts of soldering and of casting being
still unknown. Of sculpture in this manner we possess
only one example, the bronze bust found at Polledrara,
near Vulci, and now in the British Museum.
Secozza! Aeriod.
Until the invention of casting in bronze the Greek
sculptors continued to work in relief except when im-
ages were required for the purposes of worship, and that
in these cases, whether the figure was of wood, stone or
bronze, the rude helpless form of ancient times was pre-
served. Stimulated, it may be supposed, by the
achievements of the newly-invented art, Sculptors now
began to look to the possibility of producing in marble
also a resemblance to the human figure in its substantial
roundness. The scene of the first success in this direc-
tion was Chius, where a family which for three genera-
tions (Melas, Micciades, and Archermus) had been cele-
brated for its workers in marble, was at this time repre-
sented by the brothers Bupalus and Athenis.
The school of Chius had a rival in that of Magnesia
on the Maeander, at the head of which was Bathycles,
whose fame is associated with the reliefs and figures on
the colossal throne of Apollo at Amyclaº. He and a
number of his pupils or assistants had been purposely
invited to the task, and what they accomplished was
probably the best that could then be dome, however
short of the standard of later times it may have fallen in
the eyes of Pausanias. One noticable fact is, that after
completing their work, they left behind portraits of
themselves, and this, in connection with the portrait of
Hipponax, may serve to show that sculptors had already
begun to direct their attention to the individual features
of the human face.
The new phase of art thus entered on, according to
tradition, by the Ionians, was now taken up vigorously
by the Doric sculptors, among whom the first to attain
distinction were Dipoemus and Scyllis, natives of Crete,
and members of the ancient guild of sculptors there,
which took its name from the mythic Daedalus.
In the earlier part of our period it is to be observed
that the Dorian race still continued to furnish the sculp-
tors of distinction, but the main centers of the art were
now in the Peloponnesus instead of the islands. In
Sicyon the reputation acquired by Dipoenus and Scyllis
was enlarged by Canachus, whose works were spoken of
in later times as models of the severe restrained style of
the early schools.
The schools of Argus and Ægina appear to have
mostly confined themselves to working in bronze. At
the head of the former stood Ageladas, whose principal
reputation consists in his having been the instructor of
the three great masters, Myron, Polycletus, and Phidias.
Nine of his works are mentioned, including two statues
of Zeus, but no description of his style is added, nor is
anything regarding it to be inferred from the very di-
verse manner of his three great pupils. His date falls
between 508 and 452 B.C.
In Athens we find in this period Endoeus, of whom the
scanty records permit us to know almost nothing, and
Antenor, the author of a bronze group representing the
Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogiton, and erected
in the Agora at the foot of the Acropolis. That these
figures were executed shortly after the incident which
they were intended to commemorate, 550 B.C., is very
probable.
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439
At Rhegium, in lower Italy, the mantle of Clearchus
had fallen on Pythagoras, unless it be true, as is also
stated, that he had received his instruction from an other-
wise unknown artist, Euchirus of Corinth. A list of the
sculptures by Pythagoras shows that he worked exclu-
sively in bronze, that his subjects, with the exception of
a group of Europa on the bull, in Tarentum, consisted
of male figures, and these of a kind in which either a
strongly-pronounced muscular action, or a marked
capacity for it, must have been expressed. The most
famous of them was his statue of Philoctetes at Syracuse,
of which the epigram writers declared that the expression
of pain in it was such as to move the spectator.
We have seen how few of the existing monuments can
be traced even conjecturally to the artists of this early
period, whose names and praises have been handed down
to us. , Monuments of sculpture there are, manifestly
assignable to this period, and some of them worthy of
the ſame of a great master. But whether the men who
executed them were unhonored in their time, or whether
from the insufficiency of our literary records names well
known in antiquity may have escaped us, or whether, in
fact, the best of these works at least may really have
come from the hands of men otherwise well known, re-
mains unexplained. The last-mentioned possibility has
been placed in a strong light by Brunn’s discussion on
the sculptures from the temple of Athene at AEgina,
now in Munich. . Not that he would trace them directly
to the hands of the artists Callon and Onatas of AEgina.
What he aims at is to connect the characteristics of the
sculptures intimately with the style recorded of these two
men, and to leave the rest for conjecture. Of the figures
in the western pediment, in which the combat over the
dead body of Achilles was represented, only one is lost.
From the eastern only five complete figures remain. The
subject of it was a combat corresponding in its main
features with that of the other pediment. In both the
central object of the strife is a fallen hero; in both the
goddess Athene appears on the scene. In the one group
her figure is entire; in the other only her head remains.
In the eastern pediment the only recognisable figure is
that of Hercules, and from his presence it has been sup-
posed that the subject of the composition was the combat
of that hero and Telamon against Laomedon of Troy.
The statues of this pediment are of a bolder and more
advanced style than the others, from which it has been
inferred that they may have been the work of a younger
man, carried away by a new movement in art, while the
others may have been the work of an older artist, hard-
ended in the traditions of his school. One thing, how-
ever, is plain from the remarkable uniformity which
reigns among the figures of both groups, that the artist
or artists had hitherto been limited in their study to one
type of the human form, and that the nude form of
finely-developed athletes. Nowhere is there individuality,
but everywhere an excessive carefulness in rendering the
forms. The goddess Athene has all the rigidity of the
ancient figures intended for a worship which little brooked
innovations. The expression on the faces is throughout
the same, and the hair is always rendered in one conven-
tional manner. The figures are spare and hard, with as
littie flesh as possible. In both pediments the scene —
a combat over a fallen hero —is intended to stir our sym-
pathy, but entirely fails. There is no straining of mus-
cles, no expression of grief, and no sense of the emergency.
We turn from the figures as a whole to the pleasing
truthfulness with which the parts are rendered. To give
them a greater air of vitality, the lips and eyes of the
statues, with such accessories as drapery, Sandals, and
weapons, were originally colored blue and red, while
many small holes remain to show that part of the armour
and aegis on the breast of Athene had been attached in
metal, a fact which bears with great importancé on the
question of the polychromy of ancient statues. With
regard to the date of these sculptures, the opinion is that
they could hardly have been executed more than fifty
years before the time of Phidias (engraved, Müller,
APezzāmāler, i. pls. 6–8).
If we are to credit the Greeks with having been intro-
duced by the Assyrians to one branch of art more than
another, we should say it was the art of gem-engraving.
Not that we possess Greek gems which compare in
style and antiquity with those of Assyria, but, if for no
other reason, because we find a technical process of so
great difficulty existing at all in Greece at an early
period.
Painting, or rather coloring, as it would be more
properly described in its earliest phase, in which it was
entirely subservient to architecture and ceramography,
is said to have been first elevated to an art by Cleanthes
of Corinth, who introduced the drawing of figures in
outline; by Telephanes of Sicyon, who improved on
this by indicating the principal details of anatomy; and
finally by Ecphantes of Corinth or Craton of Sicyon,
by the introduction of colors. Again we have Eumarus
of Athens, who is said to have first distinguished in his
paintings men from women, probably by the means
adopted in the early vases, that is, by painting the flesh
white in the case of women. The historical truth of
these statements may be doubted; not so, however,
those that refer to Cimon of Cleonae, who made an un-
questionable advance in the treatment of draperies, and
in exchanging the conventional manner of rendering
the human form for an approach to truthfulness to
nature. Cimon appears to have been the founder of the
early Peloponnesian school of painting. As the task
imposed on painters at that time was mostly the decora-
tion of the cella walls of temples, we must suppose that
they executed their paintings on the prepared stucco of
the wall either when it was fresh, or when it was dry,
by means of some binding material. Like their follow
ers down to the time of Apelles, they used only the
simple colors, white, yellow, red, and bluish black, in
the mixing of which to obtain other shades they seem
to have advanced very little, greater attention being
directed to the drawing than to the coloring. The
other colors employed are white for the flesh parts of
women and the hair of old men, white and a dark
purple for the details of draperies and other accessories.
The eyes are always placed full in profile, and the
drawing of the figures is exceedingly stiff and angular.
In temple architecture the principles of both the
Doric and Ionic orders were already fully established,
the latter in Asia Minor and the former in Greece.
proper; and it is characteristic of the national impor-
tance attached to this branch of art, that not only was
the best available talent ºf the time procured, irre-
spective of local connection, but also that architects
appear to have found a public for the writings in which
many of them narrated their proceedings, and described
the appliances used by them in building, as did Chersis
phron and his son Metagenes in regard to the temple
of Diana at Ephesus; or laid down the principles they
had followed, as did Theodorus with regard to the tem-
ple of Hera at Samus. Among the remains of Doric
architecture assignable to this period, the first to be
mentioned are the two temples at Paestum (Major, Zes
A’ztimes de Pastum one de Posidonie, 'I 768; cf. Schnaase,
Ai/demade Á7inste, ii. fig. 36), of which the larger
derives a special interest from the two rows of columns,
one above the other, with which it is furnished in the
interior, for the purpose of supporting, as it appears, a
hypaethral roof. The oldest instance of the Ionic order
in Greece proper, so far as we know, was found in the
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treasury erected at Olympia by Myron, the tyrant of
Sicyon, after his chariot victory, 658 B.C. This build-
ing consisted of two chambers, the walls overlaid in
the ancient manner with bronze plates, and the one
executed in the Ionic, while the other was of the Doric
order. The architects of this early time were not, how-
ever, restricted to the erection of temples, but had
other problems to solve, as, for example, in the Scias
of Sparta, a round building with tent-shaped roof, used
originally for musical performances and afterwards for
public assemblies. Theodorus of Samus was the
architect of the Scias. Probably the Odeum erected at
Athens by Solon or Pisistratus had the same round
form, and was intended for meetings of the same kind.
Then followed the construction of theatres, that in
Athens, which was of stone, having been commenced
shortly after 500 B.C.
Third Period.
The splendid victories of Salamis, Platea, and My-
cale, gave an immediate and powerful impulse towards
public undertakings, and especially, so far as we are at
present concerned, towards the erection of temples and
monuments worthy of the just pride of the nation. A
sense of freedom and relief from long and troublous
fears must have been the ruling feeling of the time;
and of the efforts, both intellectual and artistic, which
such new-born feelings engendered, history has its ex-
amples. Of all the Greeks, the Athenians had in that
crisis earned the best title to patriotic emotions, and in
Athens, above all Greece besides, the aspirations were
highest. Nor were means wanting to second the bold-
est designs. The Peloponnesians had loitered in the
great conflict with the Persians, and in sharing the
new impulse they loitered also. The Persian invasion
bad not, however, been hurled back by a stroke of for-
tune, but, on the contrary, by the united action which
discipline and severe habits of life gave to the Greek
forces; and in the same way the men who thereafter
achieved the first triumphs in art, who diffused freedom
throughout its realm, were men who had been trained
in severe schools, where close study, no less than re-
spect for popular feeling, restrained the exercise of the
imagination. Accordingly, before we can appreciate
the artistic freedom established by Phidias, we must
see how far his early training prepared him to fight
the battle. This can only be done by examining the
works of other sculptors, either pupils of the same mas-
ter, as were Myron and Polycletus, or probably con-
temporary, though more hardened in the traditions of
their school, as was Calamis the Athenian, with whom
we begin, remarking that the only known approximate
date in his lifetime is from 468 to 464 B.C. The works
of Calamis extended over a tolerably wide field of sub-
jects, and were executed partly in marble and partly in
Bronze ; but with the exception of two copies of his
statue of Hermes Criophorus at Tanagra, on the
coins of that town, and in a marble figure in Wilton
House, none of our remains of ancient sculpture have
as yet been identified with his style. Cicero and Quin-
tilian speak of him as less rigid and hard in his render-
ing of the human form than Callon and Canachus; but
the real advance with which his name is associated was
in the rendering of expression in the female face, and
in the treatment of draperies. A figure of Alcmene by
him was highly praised (Pliny, AV. H., xxxiv. 19, 71),
while his statute of Sosandra, on the Acropolis of
Athens, is spoken of in the highest terms by Lucian
for its chaste and tender expression, for its taste in
dress, and for the noble bearing of the whole figure.
His horses were always incomparable. To have
attained the power of expressing modesty and mobile
character in a figure was to have laid the foundation for
idealism in its true sense; and Calamis was therefore
on the same path with Phidias. *
We come now to Myron, a native of Eleutherae in
Attica, and a pupil of Ageladas of Argus. . With rare
exceptions, he worked in bronze, and that of the
AEginetan kind, while Polycletus employed the bronze
of Delus. His works, which were numerous, and scat-
tered from Asia Minor to Sicily, may be divided into
the four classes of deities, heroes, athletes, and animals,
with a considerable variety ranging within each of the
classes. He avoided female figures almost throughout ;
and though he was the author of statues of Dionysus
and Apollo, it should be remembered that these deities
had not become soft of form till Praxiteles made them
so. He preferred the well-knit figures of athletes, or of
Perseus or Hercules. His animals were marvels to the
ancients; and the human figures in which he succeeded
best were those in which purely physical qualities were
pronounced.
We have reached the time of Phidias, and have now
done with the imperfections in sculpture, so far at least
as they originated in want of knowledge, either of the
human form or of technical means. Phidias, the son of
Charmides, was an Athenian, and must have been born
about 500 B.C., or a little before, if we can trust the
statement (Plutarch, Pericl., 31) that in the portraits of
himself and Pericles, which he placed on the shield of
Athene Parthenos, he appeared a bald-headed old man,
while Pericles appeared handsome and full of vigor. A
fragment of a marble shield in the British Museum,
found on the Acropolis of Athens, and representing a
combat of Greeks and Amazons, in which a bald-headed
old man appears, has been recognised as a rough copy
of the shield in question. Phidias began his career as a
painter; then turning to sculpture, studied first under
his townsman Hegias, and afterwards under the Argive
master Ageladas. It may have been due to his training
in this school that his first two important works were
executed in bronze. The first was a large group, com-
missioned by the Athenians to be paid for out of their
booty from the Persian war, and to be dedicated at Del-
phi. The second was a colossal statue of Athene, the
Promachos, also commissioned by the Athenians out
of the Persian booty, and when finished erected on the
Acropolis, between Propylaea, and Erechtheum, the
top of the spear which she held, and the crest of her
helmet being visible at sea from Cape Sunium. On
certain coins on which the Acropolis is figured occurs a
statue which seems to correspond with the description,
except that the goddess there stands placidly, an attitude
that does not suit the idea of a Promachos. This idea
is finely embodied in a small bronze statuette, found on
the Acropolis and now in the British Museum, repre-
senting the goddess striding forward. He had pre-
viously made a figure of Athene in gold and ivory for a
temple at Pallene in Achaea, and this must be regarded
as the first of his works executed in the material in
which he afterwards achieved his greatest triumph.
We must suppose that his faculties were now at their
best, that he was fully aware of the pecularities of treat-
ment required by the different materials in which
sculptors then worked, and had found the best scope for
his own talent in chryselephantine sculpture. The two
works with which his fame was chiefly associated were in
gold and ivory, the colossal statues of Athene for the
Parthenon at Athens, and of Zeus for the temple at
Olympia. After the completion of the former statue,
Phidias accepted the invitation of the people of Elis to
exert his highest power in fashioning for their temple of
Zeus at Olympia a statue worthy of the majesty and
grandeur of the supreme god of Greece. His workshop
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44 I
was near the Altis or sacred grove, where through suc-
cessive centuries down to the 2d A.D. it was preserved
and pointed out with feelings of reverence. The fin-
ished work was over 40 feet high, and represented the
god seated on his throne, his right hand holding forward
a figure of Victory, and his left resting on a sceptre on
which the eagle was perched. On his head was a wreath
of olive. The drapery was of gold, richly worked with
flowers and figures in enamel, in the execution of which
he was assisted by his brother or cousin Panaenus.
The throne was mostly of ebony and ivory, inlaid with
precious stones, and richly sculptured with reliefs, and in
parts painted. Of this, the greatest work of Phidias,
nothing but the description now remains. The figure of
Zeus seated on a throne, which occurs on coins of Elis
struck in Roman times, may have been intended as a
reminiscence of it. On the other hand, there is in the
British Museum a silver coin of Elis, struck in the best
period of Greek art, on which is a head of the god so
singularly powerful in type that we are tempted to be-
lieve it to be a copy from the head of the statue of
Phidias, appealing to the analogy of the coins of Argus
with what is accepted as a copy of the head of the figure
of Hera by Polycletus. Among the existing examples
of Greek sculpture there is only one which claims to be
a direct work of Phidias, and that is one of the two
colossal marble statues on the Monte Cavallo at Rome,
inscribed respectively, “opus, Phidiae” and “opus Praxi-
telis.” Grand as both are, the marking of the pupils of
the eyes and the treatment of the armor prove them to
have been executed in Roman times, probably as copies
of celebrated statues.
The mantle of Phidias fell on his pupil Alcamenes
(Pausanias, v. Io, 8), an Athenian, or, as others said, a
Lemmian, the lofty conception in his figures of deities
being highly praised (Quintilian, xii. Io, 8), while in
point of gracefulness in womanly forms he appears to
have excelled his master. His most celebrated work was
a statue of Aphrodite for her temple, of which, how-
ever, the merit of the last touch was ascribed to Phidias
(Pliny, xxxvi. 5, 16). Her cheeks, hands, and fingers
were specially admired; but as to the attitude and gen-
eral effect we have no information, and are not justified
in accepting the Aphrodite of Melus in the Louvre as a
copy of it, much less the original work. How far he
may have been possessed of the power of creating new
ideal types is not expressly recorded, except in the
instance of his statue of a triple Hecate, probably such
as we know her in later works. On the other hand,
there was doubtless scope for extending the new influ-
ence of Phidias in such types as those of AEsculapius,
Hephæstus, and Ares, and it has been conjectured that
in his statues of these deities he succeeded in infusing
the spirit of his master.
Scarcely less famous was another pupil of Phidias,
Agoracritus of Parus, who so far identified himself with
the master's style that two marble statues of deities by
him were sometimes ascribed to Phidias. The one was
a figure of Nemesis in Rhamnus; the other, a statue of
Rhea in the Metroon at Athens. From his hand were
also the bronze statues of Athene Itonia and of Zeus,
in the temple of that goddess between Alalcomenae and
Coronea. Next we have Colotes and Thrasymedes of
Parus, both of whom occasionally aspired to retain the
chryselephantine technique of the master; and finally,
Theocosmus of Megara.
The difference of temperament between the Athenians
and Peloponnesians was strongly marked in the schools
of sculpture peculiar to each. , Political rivalry had its
exact counterpart in artistic rivalry, in which Phidias
represented Athens, and Polycletus the Peloponnesus.
The works of the latter appear to have been always
chastened with an hereditary severity, to have been
attractive by the purity of their style and the finish of
execution, but not commanding in aspect. It was not,
however, in producing statues of deities that Polycletus
delighted most; and if surpassed by Phidias in that in-
stance, he was quite without a rival in his own prov-
ince, the rendering of the form of ideal athletes. Of
this class were his Diadumenus, his Doryphorus, and a
third figure (unless the Doryphorus was meant by Pliny)
known as the Canon. Of the first, several presumed
copies in marble exist, two of them in the British
Museum but in no case furnishing an adequate illustra-
tion of his style. The same may be said of the copies
of the Doryphorus.
None of the pupils of Polycletus arrived at distinc-
tion.
Examples of what may be called a lower branch of
sculpture (gem-engraving) are exceedingly rare in this
period. So far as Athens is congerned, this will appear
less remarkable if we suppose that gem-engraving and
die-sinking were one profession, and remember that at
least the latter must have been, with few exceptions,
unpractised there in the best period, the coins being
allowed, probably for commercial reasons, to retain the
old stamp with which people were familiar. Possibly
also the high ideal of the times was above the grasp of
such artists, though it was seized pretty generally by
the sculptors of stelae, who could hardly have been men
of note.
In the records of painting during the previous period
it was noticeable that painters even then, in what ap-
peared to be one of the earliest stages of the art, were
accustomed to execute large compositions, such as battle
scenes. The essentially decorative character of the art
required that it should be so, just as in early sculpture,
in which also the decorative element prevailed, our prin-
cipal records are those of large compositions, such as the
cliest of Cypselus or the shield of Achilles. While the
epos flourished, and the country was full of heroic
legends, there can be little doubt but that the principal
pleasure derived from works of art lay in the variety of
the subject and the manner in which it was presented,
that is, in the composition, and not in the truthful ren-
dering of individual forms. To heighten the interest of
the spectator, it was usual to write the name beside each
of the persons that appeared in a picture, as we see it
done on the early vases. The same was the case with
the sculptured reliefs on the chest of Cypselus, which on
this account presents a remarkable contrast to the shield
of Achilles, on which, as in Assyrian Sculptures, there is
no prominence of individuals, and therefore no accurate
study of the human form. It is not to be supposed that
in the early stage of Greek painting individual forms
were studied with any other view than that of rendering
the characters more intelligible; but with this a begin-
ning was made to lift the art into a higher sphere. At
this stage appeared Polygnotus, a native of Thasus, and
a son of the painter Aglaophon, of whose probable con-
nection with the early Samian school mention has
already been made. Attracted to Athens by the oppor-
tunity presented by the new buildings which were then
being erected, Polygnotus, either owing to some family
tie or through the recommendation of his own ability,
found favor with Cimon, to whose zeal and taste the
new impulse for the improvement of the city was due.
In company with, or perhaps rather with the assistance
of, the Athenian painters Micon and Panaenus (the
brother or cousin of Phidias), he was employed to exe-
cute wall paintings for the Stoa Poecile, the Theseum,
and the Anaceum, or temple of the Dioscuri, at the
northern foot of the Acropolis. For his services, and
especially for the disinterestedness of his character, Poly-
442
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gnotus received what was then regarded as the highest
distinction — the freedom of the city of Athens. His
friendship with Cimon was intimate, and led, it was
said, to an affectionate acquaintance with Cimon's half-
sister, the beautiful Elpinice. From Athens he was
called to Delphi to execute a series of paintings for the
two long walls of the Lesche, a building erected there
by the people of Cnidus. The paintings, however,
appear to have been commissioned by the Amphictyonic
council, if it is right to be guided to that conclusion by
the statement that the painter was rewarded with the
rights of hospitality throughout the states included in the
Amphictyonic league.
The history of architecture during this period is an
unexampled record of great undertakings throughout
Greece, but more especially in Athens, which, if it had
suffered most from i. Persian invasion, had also in the
end acquired the most ample means of repairing its ruins
and adding fresh lustre to its aspect. Themistocles hav-
ing been banished, the administration and the carrying
out of works begun by him — such, for example, as the
long walls connecting the city with the harbor — fell to
Cimon. The city walls on the south side of the Acropo.
lis were rebuilt, and a tower erected to command the
entrance, which, however, being afterwards rendered
useless by the erection of the Propylaea, was removed to
make way for the temple of Athene Nike. Among the
new temples the first to be mentioned is the Theseum,
which is not only well preserved still, but is also the
oldest existing example of the Attic-Doric order. The
other temples, the erection of which may with great prob-
ability be traced to Cimon, are the Anaceum, or temple
of the Dioscuri, at the foot of the Acropolis, on the
north side; and a small temple, now quite destroyed, on
the left bank of the Ilissus, which existed in Stuart’s
time, and, from his drawing is seen to have been of the
Ionic order, differing from the Attic-Ionic in wanting
the dentils of the cornice, in having the base of its col-
umns composed of a trochilus between two spirals, and
in having its architrave quite plain. Cimon was suc-
ceeded by Pericles, under whose administration the re-
Sources of the city, not only in means, but in the talent
of using the existing means, were applied with the great-
est judgment and energy, foremost among his advisers
being Phidias. According to Plutarch Phidias exercised
a general supervision over all the public works then
going on. Apparently at this time was erected the
Odeum, a building intended for musical performances,
circular in form, and, as appears from the records of it,
brilliantly decorated with numerous columns in the in-
terior, and with a tent-shaped roof of wood. It was
the Acropolis, however, that was reserved for the
crowning effort of architecture in this period. Within
the space of probably not more than five or six years
there rose on the site of an old temple of Athene, which
had been destroyed by the Persians, the Parthenon, a
model for all time of the Doric order, pure and perfect
in its architectural forms and proportions. The architect
was Ictinus, who was assisted by Callicratidas. The
next undertaking was the so-called Propylaea, a building
which, though practically serving as an entrance to the
Acropolis, aspired to a highly decorative character. The
architect was Mnesicles. Contemporary with the building
of the Propylaea, it appears, was that of the small tem-
ple of Athene Nike, on the Acropolis, which, on the
removal of a Turkish structure in 1835, was recovered
in almost all its parts.
Aozarth Period.
Since the beginning of our last period, the political
and social circumstances of Greece have suffered a
marked change. More or less it was then accepted as
a dogma that, provided the state was flourishing, the
prosperity of individuals mattered little. All were for
the state, and by their union in the state's emergency
had achieved a glorious freedom, the sense of which
filled the national mind, and prepared it to respond with
a fostering sympathy to the efforts of artists, whom it
also inspired. Yet, conscious as they must have been
of their own services, the men of that generation turned
rather in pride to the deeds of their ancestral heroes,
and in humility to the assistance of the gods. They
sought to frame their conduct on the traditions of the
past. They were rigorous and strong in thought. Pas-
sion was a thing to deplore, not to study, analyse, and
represent. The national history was still unchequered.
Nor was the house of Hellas as yet to any degree openly
divided against itself. There was no need of artists —
whether poet, as AEschylus, or sculptor, as Phidias—
to depict the struggles of passion or other conditions of
the mind. Now this is all changed. The nation has
lost its unity, and the Peloponnesian war has made
havoc of its resources. AEschylus has given way to
Sophocles and Euripides, Phidias to Scopas and Praxi-
teles. Poets and sculptors of the new generation have
chosen as their theme the representation of pathos and
of the conditions of the mind generally. That such
was the character of what is called the second Attic
school of sculpture is known principally from the records
of artists. Of works directly from the hand of any of
the masters of this school there is no example in exist-
ence, so far as we know at present. On the other hand,
there are many copies of their works, from which, with
the aid of records, some idea may be formed of their
style.
%ie first of the artists of this school was Scopas, a
native of Parus, and, as it would seem, the son and
pupil of Aristandrus, a worker in bronze, in which ma-
terial the son appears to have commenced his career as
a sculptor.
That Praxiteles was directly a pupil of Scopas is not
proved even by the fact that he worked in the same ar-
tistic vein and spirit, with a result which rendered his
style undistinguishable from that of the older master to
the eye of Roman connoisseurs. Still, it will be safe to
assume that he was largely influenced in his youth by the
then favorite sculptures of Scopas. The scene of his
labors was mostly Athens and the neighboring towns.
That he accompanied Scopas to Halicarnassus to assist
with the sculptures of the Mausoleum, as is stated, is
probably true; but from the fact that elsewhere in place
of his name occurs that of Timotheus, it has been in-
ferred that he may there have abandoned his original in-
tention, and confined himself to the execution of those
statues for towns in that district of which we have
records. About 340 B.C. he returned to Athens, and
there remained till his death, studying, with Phryne as
his model, the expression of sensual beauty in its highest
type. Of his works, the number of which was unusually
large, the most celebrated were —(1.) The marble statue
of Aphrodite at Cnidus, of which the more or less mod-
ified copies, as the Venus of the Capitoline Museum and
the Venus de Medicis, together with the ancient records,
show that the goddess was represented standing nude at
the moment when she has left her bath, and being sensi-
tive to the air, presses her left leg against her right, and
looks towards the drapery which she has already laid hold
of with her left hand. (2.) A statue of Aphrodite at
Thespiae; beside which was placed (3) a portrait statue
of Phryne; and (4), a statue of Eros, in Parian marble,
of which there two accounts, either that it was given
by him to Phryne in token of his admiration, or that she
contrived to obtain it by a ruse, and then dedicated it at
Thespiae. Apparently exhibiting the same refinement of
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443
youthful form was his statue known as the “Celebrated
Satyr,” in Athens. Of his Appollo Sauroctonus several
copies of inferior merit exist. His statue of Artemis
Brauronia at Athens had a mouth inviting to a kiss.
Besides sculptors, otherwise famous, who applied them-
Selves to toreutic art, there were others who made this
their principal occupation. Of these we know Mys, who
executed the designs on the shield of the bronze Pallas of
Phidias on the Acropolis of Athens; and, more cele-
brated, Mentor, who worked chiefly on silver bowls and
cups, for which fabulous sums were afterwards paid by
Roman collectors. He must have lived before the time
of Alexander the Great, since some of his works perished
in the burning of the temple of Diana at Ephesus. Two
other caelatores apparently of this period were Acragas
and Boethus.
A branch of art allied to the caelatura is that of die-
sinking and gem-engraving. Of the former the finest
examples during this period are the silver coins of Syra-
cuse, especially the decadrachms with the head of Are-
thusa on the obverse and a quadriga on the reverse.
The presence of the engraver's name on many of these
coins is testimony of the value attached to their work.
From this source we know the engravers Cimon and
Euaenetus. Other names, such as Euclides, Eumenus,
Eumelus, Phrygillus, and Sosion; also occur on smaller
silver coins. With the exception of Athens, where the
archaic type was preseryed, there is a general feeling for
beauty throughout the č. coinage of this period, the
Specimens most deserving of study being those of Arca-
dia, of the Opuntian Locri, of the Macedonian kings
Philip and Alexander, of the Chalcideans of Thrace, of
Cydonia in Crete, where the name of the engraver Neu-
antus occurs, and of Lesbus. In gem-engraving during
this period the fame of Pyrgoteles is known, but of all
the existing gems which bear his name it may be ques-
tioned whether one reflects adequately his style. It may
be taken as certain that some of them are from
his hand. He was the court engraver of Alexander the
Great, whose portrait he made on an emerald.
In the person of Apelles, the son of Pytheas, a native
of Colophon, were combined, if we may judge from
his reputation, all the best qualities of the hitherto ex-
isting schools of painting. It should, however, be re-
membered that what we know of him comes entirely
from Roman and late Greek sources, and represents
rather the taste of these times than a critical judgment
on his works. He was a pupil of the otherwise un-
known painter Ephorus of Ephesus, which town, al-
ready celebrated as a centre of painting, he adopted as
his home. But so high was then the reputation of the
Sicyonian school, headed by Pamphilus and Melanthius,
that on completing his studies at Ephesus he repaired
to Sicyon, either to see for himself or to profit by the
fame of these masters. From Sicyon he proceeded,
perhaps through the influence of Melanthius, to the
court of Macedonia, where he was employed, first
by Philip, and afterwards, under circumstances of the
greatest intimacy, by Alexander, whom he accompanied
as far as Ephesus on his expedition into Asia. Of the
figures of deities painted by him the most renowned was
that of Aphrodite Anadyomene, originally in the tem-
ple of AEsculapius in Cos, represented rising out of the
sea, and wringing the wet out of her hair, with swell-
ing bosom and an expression of desire in her eyes. A
second figure of the goddess, also intended for Cos,
remained unfinished at his death. Of personifications
and allegorical figures or groups, such as delighted the
age in which he lived, we have examples — of the for-
mer in his group of Bronte, Astrape, and Ceraunobo-
lia; and of the latter in his famous picture of Calumny.
Partly of this character also were his two pictures of
ment at which to
Alexander grouped with Castor, Pollux, and Victory;
and Alexander in a triumphal car, beside a personifica-
tion of war, in the form of a captive with hands bound
behind back and seated on armor. The execution of
subjects of this nature, for which thought and reflec-
tion are mainly required as opposed to the poetic and
spontaneously creative faculty of a true artist, has been
urged as detracting from the greatness of Apelles, and
to this extent, no doubt, he was subject to the weak-
mess of his times. Like Correggio, with whom he has
been compared, he lived at a time when the great cre-
ative spirit had passed away, and it remained for him,
as ſor the Italian master, to discover the last resources
of his art for the attainment of powerful effect and ab-
solute finish simultaneously. To refine the harmony of
his light and tones, as well as to protect his paintings
from dirt, he employed a peculiar black glaze which
broke the sharp contrasts of colors required for such
powerful effects as the appearance of Zeus hurling
lightning. With regard to his colors little is known.
The statement that he used only four may or may not
be correct. Of his mere skill we have an example in
the figure of Hercules, afterwards in Rome, of which
it was said that the face, though turned away from the
spectator, was suggested almost as vividly as if it had
been actually painted. In technical skill Apelles con-
fessed himself equalled by his contemporary Protogenes
the Rhodian, claiming, however, as his own special su-
periority, that he knew when to stop. The fault of
Protogenes was over-elaboration. On one painting he
is said to have worked seven or eleven years, finishing
it with four separate glazes to protect it from injury.
Of the painters of this period there are still to be
mentioned Antiphilus, a native of Egypt, and a
pupil of Ctesidemus ; Theon of Samus, who was
praised for his happy choice of the right mo-
seize an action; and Aetion.
With the close of the Periclean period in Athens the
public desire for more temples seems to have ceased;
so that the architecture of the period now before us is
to be traced rather in works of utility, whether public
or private. Of the former class are — (1), the stadium
at Agrae for the athletic competitions at the Panathenaic
festival; (2), the gymnasium; (3), the store-house at
the Piraeus, built to contain the equipments of IOOO ships.
From private sources were (4), the temple of the Muses,
said to have been erected by Plato, in the Academy;
and (5), the choragic monument of Lysicrates, which is
the only existing example of Athenian architecture of
this time.
Fifth Period.
The conquests of Alexander had opened to the Greek
gaze the East, gorgeous in its personal attire and equip-
ments, and unlimited in its resources for the encourage-
ment of personal vanity. Alexander appeared in
Asiatic costume, and what became the monarch was
shortly found becoming to the subject. Under his suc-
cessors, in what is called the Macedonian, or, better,
the Hellenistic period, the opulence and taste for luxury
of the times led artists to aim at producing works con-
spicuous for picturesqueness; not, however, that
picturesqueness which is born of a fine fancy, but that
which originates in a studied effort to throw a gleam of
romance over a plain historical incident. The creation
of ideal types of deities ceased, and the production of
allegorical figures, which had found acceptance in the
preceding age, took its place. These figures were
simply studies of character, and implied a faculty of
observation which the existing portraits of this period
on coins and in marble warrant us in estimating highly.
To this, no doubt, was added a power of generalisation
which enabled the artist to deduce a type from a num-
444
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ber of individuals, as, for example, in the type of Gauls
introduced by the school of Pergamus. In figures of
deities or heroes the old types were retained. It was
in portraiture that the essential characteristic of the
time consisted. With art in this condition Graecia
Capta enthralled her Roman captors, and the further
development of this phase of art was transferred to
Rome. For this reason we shall here follow the unusual
plan of classing the Hellenistic and Roman art under
one period.
The two principal schools of sculpture of the last
period are represented in this by the sons of the two
great masters of each,-- the Athenian school by the sons
of Praxiteles, Cephisodotus and Timarchus, who worked
together. The former appears to have been the more
gifted of the two, if we may judge from the pains be-
stowed on certain statues of deities by him alone. Of
their contemporaries little is known beyond that their
chief occupation was in portrait sculpture. The tradi-
tions of the Sicyonian ... were left in the hands of
the sons and pupils of Lysippus, of whom the ablest was
Euthycrates, who preserved the severity of the older
schools in opposition to the tastes of his times. The
effect of this upon his pupil Tisicrates led to so close a
reproduction of the manner of Lysippus, that in many
cases it was difficult to distinguish his work from that of
the old master. In the same spirit, and with greater
success, worked Eutychides of Sicyon, and Chares of
Lindus in Rhodes. From the hands of Eutychides we
know of a bronze statue of the river Eurotas. in which
the mobility of water was finely suggested in the human
form, and a highly-praised statue of Tyche for the town
of Antioch, of which several copies exist, including a
small one in silver in the British Museum. Chares is
known mainly as the author of the bronze Colossus of
Helius at Rhodes, a statue IoS feet high, which after
standing a marvel to all for fifty-six or sixty-six years,
was broken across the knees and thrown to the ground
by an earthquake. The rising importance of Rhodes
encouraged the foundation of a school of sculpture which
adopted the manner of Chares, and aimed at effect by
colossal proportions and picturesque situations. To
this school belonged Apollonius and Tauriscus, the
authors of a colossal marble group which has been iden-
tified with that in the museum of Naples, known as the
“Farnese Bull,” and representing Amphion and Zethus
in the act of binding Dirce to the horns of a bull in
presence of their mother Antiope, and, whether copy or
original, an admirable illustration of the Rhodian school.
The moment seized by the artists is one of profound
pathos; but, justly deserved as the punishment of
Dirce may have been, it is impossible to look
upon it without pain. The same feeling, it
may be imagined, was awakened in the spec-
tator by the bronze group of Athamas seized with
insanity after slaying his son Learchus, by Aristonidas,
another artist of the Rhodian school. From the in-
stances of subjects in which cruelty and deep emotion
were combined, it has been argued that the group
of Laocoön, which was the work of three Rhodian art-
ists — Agesander, Athenodorus, and Polydorus — may
properly be assigned to the Rhodian school of this
period. On the other hand, it is argued by critics of
seemingly equal competence, that the subject of the
Laocoön is too harrowing for the Greek taste even then,
and must have been executed under the influence of the
favorite cruelties practised in the Roman circus. The
decision between these two opinions is left entirely to
taste, owing to the ambiguity of the words of Pliny.
From Rhodes we pass to Pergamus, where, under the
courtly influence of Attalus I. (241–197 B.C.) and
Eumenes II. (197–159 B.C.), was formed a school of
sculpture which derived a vigorous impulse as of a new
life from the strange class of subjects it was called upon
to undertake. It was called upon to glorify the decisive
victory of Attalus over the Gauls (239 B. C.) by groups
and large compositions of battle scenes, in which the first
difficulty was to produce the type of these barbarians,
and to carry it out consistently in the various attitudes
and incidents of a battle; as,for example, in their dogged
submission under captivity, or their grim expression un-
der pain; or, again, the abject misery of their wives
when a battle had been lost. Nor was Attalus content
to adorn his own capital with artistic productions. To
Athens he made a present of four groups representing
battles between gods and giants, between Athenians and
Amazons, between the Greeks and Persians at Mara-
thon, and between his own army and the Gauls in Mysia,
showing in each case the defeat of a barbarous race.
The height of the figures was 3% feet, and that there
must have been a considerable number of them is clear
from this, that the occurrence of Bacchus in the group
of the Gigantomachia presupposes the existence of the
other superior deities. Of the entire series nine figures
have been identified in various museums, while to the
same school belong the dying Gaul in the Capitoline Mu-
seum, known as the “Dying Gladiator,” and the group
of a Gaul and his wife in the Villa Ludovisi.
After the loss of national independence little remained
for the Greeks to do but to profit by the liberal patron-
age of their Roman masters, whose cupidity in matters
of art was by no means satisfied with carrying off as
many as possible of the existing sculptures. The increas-
ed demand led to a new energy, of which Athens was at
first naturally the centre, whence the term “New Attic”
is applied to the sculpture of this period. As, however,
this new energy was chiefly directed to the reproduction
of the favorite types of the old masters, the result was
not, as under other circumstances it might have been,
the formation of a new school properly so called. At
this time the principal sculptors were Polycles of Athens,
his son Timarchides, his grandson Dionysius, and another
Dionysius, all of whom, after earning a reputation by
their work in various parts of Greece, appear to have
followed Metellus to Rome, which now became the
artistic centre of the world. Towards the end of the
republic there lived in Rome a sculptor, Pasiteles, who,
if not superior to the artists of the new Attic period in
point of creative power, was certainly more gifted than
they with skill and carefullness in the execution of his
work, which ranged over statuaria, sculptura, and caela-
tura, including chryselephantine figures, for which a taste
had revived. As, however, none of his works exist now,
we can only judge of his manner by that of his pupil Steph-
anus, from whose hands we have the statute of Orestes
in the Villa Albani. It is called Orestes from its resem-
blance to the male figure in the group of Orestes and
Electra in Naples, with which, as an imitation of the
archaic style, it may be compared. In both, however,
it has been observed that the archaism is limited to the
proportions, attitude, and general aspect, but that the
details of anatomy have been worked in from the living
model.
When public encouragement of art takes the form of
a desire for reproduction from ancient masterpieces, it
is natural that such minor arts as those of caelatura and
gem-engraving should flourish. The production of sil-
ver vases adorned with subjects in relief had become a
profitable occupation in the wealthy times of Hellenism.
It was not, however, till the latter half of this period
that truly fabulous sums came to be paid for work of
this kind, in which Pasiteles and Arcesilaus achieved
great success. Besides them we hear of Posidonius of
Éphesus, Zopyrus, Pytheas, and Teucrus. Among the
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445
many existing examples of silver work of this period,
one — a vase found in 1761 at the Porto d’Anzo, and
belonging to the Corsini family—has been identified as
a copy of the silver vase by Zopyrus representing the
acquittal of Orestes before the Areopagus. The im-
mense number of existing statuettes, vases, utensils of
various kinds in bronze and silver, dating from this
period, are evidence of its artistic activity, and at the
same time of the closeness with which Greek models
were adhered to.
Under the influence of the luxurious tastes in the
times of the Ptolemies, gem-engravers aimed mostly at
effect, and to this end sought out specimens of onyx and
sardonyx which from their own splendor would lend a
charm to the work. A gem was now a thing to be worn
flauntingly. Hence the chief examples of the art are
the cameos, of which from the latter half of this period
we have still some magnificent examples. Of these, the
most important, artistically, is the large cameo, now in
Vienna, representing, in a partly allegorical and partly
literal fashion, the suppression of the Pannonian revolt
by Tiberius and Germanicus.
In the history of painting during this period few
names of importance occur.
Closely allied to painting is the art of mosaic-work-
ing, which, though occasionally employed for the pave-
ments of the earlier temples, as in the pronaos of the
temple at Olympia (Expédition de la Morée, i. pl. 63),
did not till after the time of Alexander assume an impor-
tance which entitled it to be ranked as an independent
art. The first mosaic artist of consequence whom we
hear of is Sosus of Pergamus, celebrated as having
introduced the practice of decorating floors of houses
with imitations of characteristic objects, such, for
example, as the accompaniments of a feast in a dining-
TOO II).
What was said of the progress of architecture at the
close of last period should be here borne in mind, as it
continues to apply to the first half of the period now
before us. While the building of Alexandria supplied a
model and an impulse, which the successors of Alexan-
der availed themselves of, in the construction of new
towns, the example of boundless luxury, in the decora-
tion of even temporary monuments, which was set by
Alexander in the erection of a funeral pyre for Hephaes-
tion in Babylon, was also eagerly followed by his succes-
sors. From the work of Callixenus on Alexandria we
have (Athenaeus, v. p. 196) a description of the tent
erected by Ptolemy Philadelphus for a Dionysiac festi-
val, and of the splendid colossal barge of Ptolemy
Philopator on the Nile) iſ id. p. 204,a). Still more
magnificent and stupendous in its dimensions was
the ship of Hiero of Syracuse, with its granaries,
dwelling-houses, towers, gymnasium, and park, for
the construction of which Archimedes and the Cor-
inthian Archias were employed. Greece proper, how-
ever, shared little in this prodigality. Thebes was,
indeed, restored after its destruction by Alexander ; and
Athens, still the eye of Greece, obtained many marks of
favor from the princes of the time, who sought to iden-
tify their names with her glory by erecting public monu-
ments of various kinds.
The presence of countless specimens of Greek art in
Rome, carried off by plunderers like L. Mummius, pro-
duced a general craving for Greek architecture also.
The first step in this direction was taken by Q. Caecilius
Metellus, who brought a Greek architect, Hermodorus
of Salamis, to Rome to build a temple to Jupiter Stator
in the pure Greek style. The public favor with which
this was viewed may be gathered from the fact, that
shortly after we find D. Junius Brutus employing Her-
modorus to build a temple to Mars. Of the Roman
architects who during the republic adopted the Greek
style, the most distinguished were Cossutius and C.
Mutius. The Greek had either supplemented or become
blended with the native Roman architecture when the
extraordinary activity in building, of which Pompey and
Caesar were the leaders, set in, not only in Rome, but
throughout the provinces of the empire. The building
of temples and monuments, which under Augustus had
been the chief occupation of architects, gave way under
his immediate successors to constructions of a more
useful and sometimes of a colossal type, such as bridges,
canals, aqueducts, and harbors. The enlargement of the
imperial palaces on the Palatine, particularly the con-
struction of the golden house of Nero, gave scope to the
boldness of design and extravagance of execution pos-
sessed by the architects Celer and Severus. In the
following times those of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian
were characterised by a series of buildings which had
not their equal in the architectural history of Rome, as,
for example, the Colisseum, a building erected to con-
tain 87,000 spectators, and still in its ruins the most
striking monument of imperial Rome. While the chief
interest of Trajan was in the construction of roads,
bridges, and harbors, his successor, Hadrian, was not
only himself ambitious as an architect, but gave a new
impetus to the erection of splendid buildings throughout
the empire. From this time onward Roman architecture
began to sink rapidly, its original tendency to florid de-
coration obtaining more and more free rein, till
finally discrimination was abandoned. The ruins of
Palmyra and Baalbec (R. Wood, London, 1827), the
arch of Severus, the baths of Caracalla and Diocle-
tian, and the arch of Constantine, are evidence of
this.
For Etruscan Archaeology, see ETRURIA.
ARCHANGEL, government of European Russia, is
bounded on the N. by the White Sea and Arctic Ocean,
on the W. by Finland and Olonetz, on the S. by Vol
ogda, and on the E. by the Ural Mountains. It com-
prehends the islands of Nova-Zembla, Waigatz, and
Some others. Its area is estimated at 286,739 square
miles, and its population (estimated) about 300,ooo. The
climate is for the greater part of the year intensely cold.
That part of Archangel which lies within the arctic circle
has a very desolate and sterile aspect, presenting little to
the eye but extensive plains of sand and moss. The
winter is long and severe, and even in summer the soil
is frozen at a little depth below the surface. The rivers
are closed in September, and scarcely thawed before
July. South of the arctic circle the greater º of the
country is covered with immense forests, with extensive
lakes and morasses, while other parts afford excellent
pasturage. The spring is moist, with cold, frosty nights;
the summer, a succession of long foggy days; the autumn
moist; and the rivers are closed from October to April.
The northern districts are incapable of being cultivated,
and the inhabitants support themselves by fishing and the
chase. In the southern districts considerable quantities.
of hemp and flax are raised, but grain crops are little
attended to, and the bark of trees is ground with corn
to eke out the scanty products of the harvest. Potatoes
are grown as far north as 65°. The principal wealth of
the government consists in its immense forests, furnish-
ing materials for ship building, which is carried on to a
considerable extent. The horses and cattle are diminu-
tive, except in the district of Kholmogory, where excel-
lent cattle are reared. The calves are sent to the St.
Petersburg market, where the veal is especially prized.
Gold is found in the circle of Cola, naphtha and salt in
those of Kem and Pinega, and coal, or rather lignite, in
several places in Mezen. The preparation of pitch and
tar is an active branch of industry; and in the districts,
446
A R C
around Archangel coarse linens are manufactured to a
considerable extent, as well as cordage, mats, leather,
tallow, turpentine, and potash. This government is
divided into eight circles, viz. –Archangel, Shenkursk,
Mezen, Cola, Omega, Pinega, Kholmogory, and Kem.
Its chief rivers are the Onega, Pinega, Dwina, Mezen,
Petshora, and Ousa. Sulphurous springs are found in
the circles of Kholmogory and Shenkursk. The popu-
lation was originally Finnish, but it is now chiefly Rus-
sian, with some Samoides and Laplanders.
ARCHANGEL, the chief town of the Russian govern-
ment of the same name, is situated at the head of the
delta of the Dwina, on the right bank of the river. By
river and canal Archangel is in connection with a large
part of European Russia, and a telegraph line unites it
with St. Petersburg. The harbor is at the island of
Solombaly, about a mile below the town, and is open
only from June to October. A bar at the mouth of the
Dwina, with only 13 or 14 feet of water, obliges vessels
of greater draught to load and unload outside by means
of lighters. About 12 miles below the town there is a
Government dockyard, with slips for building vessels,
and also some warehouses belonging to merchants in the
city. The best season of the year in Archangel is from
the middle of June to the middle of August. After that
period the nights become cold; and in September it is
often stormy. The shortest day has only 3 hours 12
minutes, the longest 21 hours 48 minutes. Population
in 1867, 19,936.
ARCHBISHOP, the title of a church dignitary of
the first class. Archbishops were not known in the
church before the 4th century after Christ, when the
term “Archbishop” was introduced in the East as a
title of dignity, which did not necessarily imply any su-
periority in jurisdiction over a bishop. Athanasius,
bishop of Alexandria, appears to have been the first
who made use of the term in applying it as a mark of
personal honor to Alexander, his predecessor in the see
of Alexandria, and Gregory Nazianzen applied the term
in like manner to Athanasius. In the following century
the title of archbishop seems to have been applied to
the bishops of the more important sees, as the names of
several archbishops are recorded in the list of church
dignitaries, who were assembled in the council of Chal-
cedon in 451 A. D. In the Latin Church the title was
hardly known before the 7th century after Christ. Isi-
dore of Seville (Hispalensis) is the first writer who
speaks of archbishops, distinguishing them as a class
from patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops. Arch-
bishops in the present day are for the most part either
patriarchs or metropolitans; but an archbishop is not
necessarily a patriarch or a metropolitan, and there are
metropolitans who have only the title of bishops. The
ecclesiastical government of the Church of England is
divided between two archbishops, – the archbishop of
Canterbury, who is primate of all England and metro-
politan of the province of Canterbury, and the arch-
bishop of York, who is primate of England, and met-
ropolitan of the province of York.
ARCHD EACON. The office of archdeacon is of
ancient institution in the Christian church, as arch-
deacons are mentioned in the 4th century after Christ.
The title was orignally given to the chief deacon in
each diocese, who had the charge of the temporal affairs
of the church, and the supervision of all matters which
appertained to the order and decency of divine service.
In the course of time the archdeacons encroached upon
the episcopal jurisdiction, but their encroachments were
restrained in England by the Council of London, 1237
A.D., and in other countries by ecclesiastical councils
held in the 13th and 14th centuries.
ARCHDUKE, a title borne during the Middle Ages
by the dukes of Austria, Lorraine, and Brabant. All
three archduchies having devolved to the imperial family
of Austria, the sons of that house are styled archdukes,
and the daughters archduchesses. -
ARCHELAUS, a Greek philosopher, was a native
most probably of Athens, though some say he was born
at Miletus. Nothing is known of his life, but as he
was a pupil of Anaxagoras, he must have lived about
450 B.C. By several writers he is said to have been the
teacher of Socrates, but this report has no support from
Plato, Aristotle, or Xenophon, and probably has no
foundation save the wish to connect Socrates closely
with preceding philosophy. So far as the opinions of
Archelaus are known, he seems to have followed with
some deviations his master, Anaxagoras. With him he
admitted a primitive matter, consisting of infinite parti-
cles similar in nature to the bodies formed from them.
He further admitted a ruling mind; but he attempted
to overcome the dualism of Anaxagoras, and in so
doing, more nearly approached the older Ionic physical
philosophers.
ARCHELAUS, natural son of Perdiccas, king of
Macedonia, seized the throne in 413 B.C., after having
murdered his uncle, his cousin, and his half brother, the
legitimate heir. His reign was remarkable for the
many improvements he introduced. He fortified cities,
constructed roads, and thoroughly organised the army.
He endeavored to spread among his people the refine-
ments of Greek civilisation, and invited to his court
many celebrated men of the time—as Zeuxis, Timo-
theus, Euripides, and Agathon. In 399 B.C., he was
killed by one of his courtiers, Crateus; according to
some, designedly, according to others, accidentally while
engaged in hunting.
ARCHELAUS, a general of Mithridates, com-
manded his army in the war against the Romans. He
was sent into Greece with an army of I2O,OOO, and after
three days' fighting with Bruttius Sura, occupied the
Piraeus. Here he was attacked by Sulla, and after a
hard struggle was compelled to withdraw into Boeotia.
Sulla followed, and at Chaeronea, 86 B.C., completely
routed him. A fresh army was sent by Mithridates, but
at Orchomenos, after a two days’ battle, Archelaus was
again defeated. Peace was soon afterwards concluded,
but as Archelaus found that he had incurred the dis-
pleasure of Mithridates, he fled over to the Romans, by
whom he was well received. He is not heard of again
in history, but several of his descendants of the same
name held high posts under Pompey, Antony, and
Augustus. tº
ARCHELAUS, son of Herod the Great, had the
kingdom of Judaea left him by the last will of his father,
though a previous will had bequeathed it to his brother
Antipas. He was proclaimed king by the army, but
declined to assume the title until he had submitted his
claims to Augustus at Rome. Before setting out, he
quelled, with the utmost cruelty, a sedition of the Phar-
isees, slaying nearly 3,000 of them. At Rome he was
opposed by Antipas and by many of the Jews, who
feared his cruelty, but Augustus allotted to him the
greater part of the kingdom, with the title of Ethmarch.
He married Glaphyra, the widow of his brother Alex-
ander. This unusual and repugnant act and his con-
tinual cruelty roused the Jews, who complained to
Augustus. Archelaus was deposed (7 A.D.), and ban-
ished to Vienne. The date of his death is unknown.
ARCHELAUS, son of Apollonius, a sculptor of
Priene, is celebrated by his bas-relief, representing the
apotheosis of Homer.
ARCHENA, a town of Spain in the province of
Murcia, of interest on account of its hot mineral springs
and old Roman baths. - -
A R C
447
ARCHERY, the art or exercise of shooting with a
bow and arrow. The origin of the bow as an instru-
ment of war is lost in obscurity. With all the ancient
peoples, both civilised and barbaric, the bow was a favor-
ite weapon; and skill in the use of it was regarded by
the Scythians as a princely accomplishment.
There is no record of the use of the bow in France
until the reign of Charlemagne, in the beginning of the
8th century, although we have evidence that in England
both the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes employed it in
the chase, as well as in battle against the primitive in-
habitants of England, many years before the Conquest.
The probability is, that it was first introduced as a mil-
itary weapon into Britain by the Romans; but it was
under the Norman rule that the practice of archery in
this island was not only greatly improved, but generally
diffused throughout the country, so that England soon
becaume famous for its archery, and her archers took
precedence of those of every other nation. To pre-
serve this superiority by constant practice appears to
have been the study of many of our monarchs; and
numerous statutes for enforcing and regulating the use
of the bow among the people were enacted from early
times until after the invention of fire-arms. Many laws
were also made for securing the presence in distant and
obscure parts of the country of persons skilled in the
manufacture of bows and all the apparatus appertaining
to archery, for guarding against fraud by those artificers,
and also for the procuring of a constant supply of bow-
staves from abroad. These laws appear to have been
absolutely necessary, for in the olden times the English
chiefly depended for their success in battle upon the
bravery and expertness of their archers, whose appear-
ance generally led to success. William the Conqueror
is reputed to have been so admirable an archer that few
could bend the bow he used, and his victory at Hastings
was certainly due to the skill and intrepidity of his
archers. Richard I. performed great exploits with his
archers in the Holy Land, where, according to Gibbon,
3OO archers and 17 knights, headed by the king, sus-
tained the charge of the whole Turkish and Saracen army.
It was in his reign that the renowned Robin Hood flour-
ished in Sherwood Forest. Edward II. levied a com-
pany of “Northumbrian archers,” in the year 1314, for
the invasion of Scotland.
The battles of Cressy and Poitiers were gained by
English archers in the years 1346 and 1356 respectively.
Edward III. was extremely jealous of the honor of the
bow, and anxious that its glory should be maintained.
In the early part of his reign it was ordered that most
of the sheriffs of England should each provide 500
white bows and 500 bundles of arrows for the then
pending war with France. In the following year this
order was reissued, with the difference that the sheriff
of Gloucester should furnish 500 painted bows in addi-
tion. This king embodied a company of soldiers whom
he called the “Archers of the Guard.” Edward III.
also, in 1363, commanded the general practice of
archery on Sundays and holidays by the people in lieu
of the ordinary rural pastimes, which were forbidden
on pain of imprisonment. In this reign the price of
bows was regulated by Government; a white bow was
Is., a painted bow Is. 6d., a sheaf (24) of sharp arrows
ts. 2d., and a sheaf of blunt arrows Is. Richard II., in
1392, directed that node of his servants should ever be
unfurnished with bows and arrows, and that they should
avail themselves of every opportunity of practising
archery. At the same date an Act of Parliament com-
pelled all persons employed as servants to shoot with
bows and arrows on Sundays and other holidays. In
the year 1402 the English archers won the battle of
Homildon; and in 1403, at the battle of Shrewsbury,
where Hotspur was slain, the most terrible havoc was
created by the archers on both sides.
For the manufacture of bows yew was generally pre-
ferred to all other woods, but to prevent a too rapid
consumption of yew, bowyers were ordered to make
four wych-hazel, ash, or elm bows, to one of yew ; and
no person under 17 years of age, except those possessed
of portable property worth 40 marks, or the sons of
parents owning an estate of 4. IO per annum, was allowed
to shoot with a yew bow, under a penalty of 6s. 8d, for
each offence. That distant counties might be properly
supplied with bows and arrows, the king claimed and
exercised the prerogative of sending, if necessary, all
arrow-head, bow-string, and bow makers, not being
freemen of the city of London, to any part of the
realm that required the services of such artificers; and
neglect of an order to visit a place after the receipt of
instructions to repair thereto, was punishable by a fine
of 40s. for every day the workman remained away.
In the reign of Henry IV. it was enacted that all
arrow-heads should be well braced and hardened at the
points with steel, and stamped with the name of the
maker, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, and
forfeiture of the arrows, &c., in default; and by an-
other statute passed in the same reign, it was enacted
that persons from places whence bow-staves were
derived, should import four bow-staves for every ton
of merchandise taken on board, under penalty of 6s.
8d. for every bow-stave deficient. In this reign the
highest price permitted for a yew bow was 3s. 4d. In
the reign of Edward IV. it was enacted that every
Englishman, and every Irishman living with an Eng-
lishman, should have an English bow of his own
height; and also that in every township shooting butts
should be set up, at which the inhabitants were com-
manded to practise on holidays, under the penalty of
one halfpenny for each neglect. In the same reign the
king, in preparing for a war with France, directed all
sheriffs to procure a supply of bows and arrows for the
service of the state. In 1405, it was made penal to
use bad materials in the manufacture of bows and
arrows. In 1417 the archers of the army of Henry V.
won the battle of Agincourt. This king directed the
sheriffs of counties to take six wing-feathers from every
goose for the feathering of arrows. In 1478 archery
was encouraged in Ireland by statute. In the year
1424 James I. of Scotland, who was himself an excel-
lent bowman, revived the practice of archery among
his subjects. Richard III. lent IOoo archers to the
duke of Bretagne. The same troops afterwards fought
at the battle of Bosworth. In 1485 Henry VII. insti-
tuted the yeomen of the guard, who were then all
archers, and in the 19th year of his reign the use of the
cross-bow was forbidden by Act of Parliament, because
the long bow had been of so much greater benefit to
the nation. In this reign archery occupied an impor-
tant position in the fashionable pastimes of the kingdom,
and upon the occasion of the marriage of Henry with
the Princess Elizabeth it formed a great feature among
the nuptial festivities, the king himself joining in the
shooting with heartiness and glee.
Several Acts were passed in the reign of Henry VIII.
for the encouragement and promotion of archery; one
ordered that butts should be erected and kept in repair
in all townships, and that the inhabitants should prac-
tice shooting at them on holidays. The same Act di-
rected that every able-bodied man, not being an ecclesi-
astic or a judge, should practice shooting with a long
bow; and the guardians and employers of youth were
ordered to bring up the boys in their charge to the
practice of archery, neglect being punishable by fine.
In this reign the practice of archery was strongly advo-
448
A R C
cated from the pulpit by Bishop Latimer; and so jeal-
ous were the English of rival nations competing with
them, that aliens were forbidden to use the long bow.
Archery continued to be an object of attention and
solicitude with the Legislature during the reign of
Elizabeth, and the price of bows was again regulated
by statute; also, bowyers were commanded to keep in
hand always a sufficient stock of bows. Charles I.
issued commissions to prevent the enclosure of fields
near London, so “as to interrupt the necessary and
profitable exercise of shooting with bows and arrows,”
and also for the restoration of all shooting-marks that
had been already removed. And the earl of Essex, at
the beginning of the civil war, raised a company of
archers for the defence of the king.
There is now no means of ascertaining precisely the
period at which the bow was relinquished entirely in
these kingdoms as a weapon of war. Grose informs
us that it was commonly used by the English soldiery
for more than two centuries after the introduction of
fire-arms, and indeed, long subsequently to the adop-
tion of guns, the bow remained the favorite weapon of
the army, a fact which is not surprising when we
learn, on the authority of Neade, a celebrated archer of
Charles I., that the ordinary range of the bow was from
I6 to 20 score yards, and that so rapid was the shooting
of the archers, or so slow the firing of the musketeers,
that an archer could shoot six arrows in the time occu-
pied in charging and discharging one musket.
ARCHES, Court of THE. This court derives its
name from its ancient place of judicature, which was in
the church of St. Mary of the Arches (de Arcubus), the
modern representative of which is now called ordinarily
Bow Church. The modern church is on the south side
of Cheapside, in the city of London, and stands on the
site of a very ancient church, which was burnt down in
the great fire of London in 1666, and which had a very
fine arched crypt, whence it derived its name. The ec-
clesiastical tribunal, which has passed for a long time by
the name of the Arches Court, is the court of appeal of
the archbishop of Canterbury, as metropolitan of the
province of Canterbury, and the proper designation of
the judge is the Official Principal of the Arches Courts,
but by custom he has come to be styled the Dean of the
Arches, from the circumstance that the office of dean has
been in modern times usually united in the same person
with that of the official principal of the court of appeal.
The office of the dean of the Arches may now be re-
garded as extinct, or at least as purely titular, like that
of the dean of Bocking in Essex, inasmuch as the pecul-
iar jurisdiction which he exercised as dean (decanus)
over thirteen churches, locally situated within the diocese
of London, but exempt from the bishop’s jurisdiction,
has been abolished, and the churches have been placed
by statute under the ordinary jurisdiction of the bishop
of London. It was, no doubt, owing to the circum-
stance that the Arches church was exempt from the
bishop of London’s jurisdiction that it was selected orig-
inally as the place of judicature for the archbishop's
court. After the College of Advocates was incorporated
and had established itself in Doctors’ Commons, the
archbishop’s court of appeal, as well as his prerogative
court, were usually held in the hall of the College of
Advocates, but since the destruction of the buildings of
the college, the court of appeal has had no settled place
of judicature, and the official principal appoints from
time to time its sittings, which have been held for the
most part in Westminster Hall. The official principal
of the Arches Court is the only ecclesiastical judge who
is empowered to pass a sentence of deprivation against
a clerk in holy orders.
ARCHIDONA, a town in the province of Malaga,
in Spain, situated on the slope of a hill, about 1o miles
W. N. W. of Loja. It seems to have been a flourishing
place under the Romans, to judge by the statues, col-
umns, and other remains which are found, but it is now,
in the words of O'Shea, a “wretched village with noth-
ing to visit.” The inhabitants, about 7600 in number,
are employed in fruit-growing, weaving, oil-pressing,
and bacon curing.
ARCHIL, or ORCHIL (Orseille, Fr.), a purple dye
yielded by various species of lichens. The name is sup-
posed to originate from the Portuguese rocha, a rock, in
allusion to the source from which the raw material is
derived. Archil can be extracted from many species of
the genera A'occe//a, Zecanora, Umbilicaria, Parmelia,
and others, but in practice two species of Kocce//a,— A'.
Zinctoria and A', ſuciformis, are almost exclusively used.
These, under the name of “Orchella Weed,” are im-
ported from the Portuguese colony of Angola, on the
west coast of Africa, where the most valuable kinds are
gathered; from Cape de Verde Islands; from Lima, on
the west coast of South America; and from the Mala-
bar coast of India. They grow on maritime rocks and
on trees along sea-coast, and it will be seen that the
species are very widely distributed. The coloring prop-
erties of the lichens do not exist in them ready formed,
but are developed by the treatment they receive at the
hands of manufacturers. Small proportions of a color-
less, crystalline principle, termed orcine, is found in some,
and in all a series of acid substances, which on treat-
ment split up into orcine and other products. Orcine in
presence of oxygen and ammonia takes up nitrogen and
becomes changed into orceine, which is essentially the
basis of all lichen dyes. Archil is prepared for the dyer's
use in the form of a “liquor" and a “paste,” and the latter
when dried and finely powdered forms the “cudbear” of
commerce, a dye formerly manufactured in Scotland from
a native lichen, Zecanora tarfarea. The manufacturing
process consists in washing the weeds, which are then
ground up with water to a thick paste. If archil paste
is to be made this paste is mixed with a strong ammo-
niacal solution, and agitated in an iron cylinder heated
by steam to about 140° Fahr. till the desired shade is
developed — a process which occupies several days. In
the preparation of archil liquor the principles which
yield the dye are separated from the ligneous tissue of
the lichens, agitated with a hot ammoniacal solution,
and exposed to the action of air. When carbonate of
potassium or sodium is added, a blue dye known as lit-
mus, much used in chemical testing, is produced. French
purple or lime lake is a lichen dye prepared by a modifi-
cation of the archil process, and is a more brilliant and
durable color than the other. The dyeing of worsted
and home-spun cloth with lichen dyes was formerly a
very common domestic employment in Scotland; and to
this day, in some of the outer islands, worsted continues
to be dyed with “crottle,” the name given to the lichens
employed. Stale urine is the form of ammoniacal liquor
used in these localities, and that in early days was the
recognised source of ammonia in the manufacture.
ARCHILOCHUS, one of the first Greek lyric poets,
was born at Paros, one of the Cyclades. The date of
his birth is uncertain, but he flourished between 72O and
680 B.C. His father, Telesicles, was of noble family,
and had been selected to consult the Delphic oracle rel-
ative to sending out a colony from Paros. His mother,
Enipo, was a slave. While still young, Archilochus
gained a prize for a hymn to Demeter; he soon after left
Paros and proceeded to Thasos, according to some au-
thorities, as leader of a colony. But his chief reasons
for leaving his native place seem to have been personal
disappointment and disgust. Lycambes had, promised
him his daughter Neobule in marriage, and had after-
A R C
449
wards withdrawn his consent. Archilochus, taking ad-
vantage of the licence allowed at the feasts of Ceres,
poured out his wounded feelings in verses of unmerciful
satire. Lycambes he accused of perjury and his daugh-
ters of leading the most abandoned lives. Such was the
effect produced by his verses, that Lycambes and his
daughters are said to have hanged themselves. The
satire was written in iambics, a measure introduced for
the first time, and from its structure admirably adapted
for light sarcastic poetry. At Thasos the poet passed
some unhappy years, and incurred the great dishonor of
throwing away his shield and fleeing from the field of
battle. He does not seem to have felt the disgrace very
keenly, for, like Alcaeus and Horace, he commemorates
the event in his verses. After ſeaving Thasos he is said
to have visited Sparta, but to have been at once ban-
ished from that city on account of his cowardice. I Iis
works, owing to their licentious character, were also pro-
hibited by the Spartans. He next visited Siris, in lower
Italy, a city of which he speaks very favorably. He
then returned to his native place, and was slain in a bat-
tle against the Naxians by one Calondas or Corax, who
was cursed by the oracle for having slain a servant of the
Muses.
The writings of Archilochus consisted of elegies,
hymns, - one of which used to be sung by the victors
in the Olympic games, – and of poems in the iambic
and trochaic measures. To him certainly we owe the
invention of iambic poetry and its application to the
purposes of satire. The only previous measures in
Greek poetry had been the epic hexameter, and its off-
shoot the elegiac metre; but the siow measured structure
of hexameter verse was utterly unsuited to express the
quick, light motions of satire. Archilochus made use of
the iambus and the trochee, and organised them into the
two forms of metre known as the iambic trimeter and
the trochaic tetrameter. The trochaic metre he gener-
ally used for subjects of a serious nature; the iambic for
satires. He was also the first to make use of the
arrangement of verses called the epode. Horace in his
metres to a great extent follows Archilochus. All an-
cient authorities unite in praising the poems of Archi-
lochus, in terms which appear to be somewhat exagger-
ated. His verses seem certainly to have possessed
strength, flexibility, nervous vigor, and, beyond every-
thing else, impetuous vehemence and energy. Horace
speaks of the “rage" of Archilochus, and Hadrian calls
his verses “raging iambics.” By his countrymen he was
reverenced as the equal of Homer, and statues of these
two poets were dedicated on the same day. The frag-
ments of Archilochus are to be found in the collections
of smaller Greek poets by Jacobs, Bergk, and Gaisford,
and have been published separately by Liebel, Archi/o-
chi /&e/iquidº, Leipsic, 1812, 1818.
ARCHIMANDRITE (cloister, or convent), is a title
in the Greek Church applied to a superior abbot, who
has the supervision of several abbots and cloisters. The
name has sometimes been applied generally to superiors
of large convents. In Russia the bishops are selected
from among the archimandrites. Although the title is
peculiar to the Greek Church, it has found its way into
Western Europe. It is used in Sicily, Hungary, and
Poland, and has even been applied to bishops of the
Latin Church.
ARCHIMEDES, the greatest mathematician and the
most inventive genius of antiquity, was born at Syracuse,
in Sicily, about 287 B.C. In his youth he went to
Alexandria, and completed his education there under
Conon, at the royal school of the Ptolemies, of which
Euclid had been the ornament some half...a century
before. On his return to his native city he devoted
himself to geometrical investigations, and by his great
energy and inventiveness carried the science far beyond
the limits it had then attained. Combined with his
remarkable faculty of analysis was a power of practical
application which enabled him to establish the Science of
engineering upon a solid mathematical basis. Of the
facts of his private life we have but a few disconnected
notices. He was the devoted friend, and, according to
some accounts, the relative of Hiero, king of Syracuse;
and he was ever ready to exercise his ingenuity in the
service of his admirer and patron. Popularly, Archim-
edes is best known as the inventor of ingenious con-
trivances, though many of the stories handed down
about these are probably ſabulous. He devised for
Hiero engines of war, which almost terrified the
Romans, and which protracted the siege of Syracuse
for three years. There is a story that he constructed a
burning mirror that set the Roman ships on fire when
they were within a bow-shot of the wall. This has
been discredited because neither Polybius, Livy, nor
Plutarch mention it; mirrors may, however, as Buffon
showed, be so arranged as to burn at a considerable dis-
tance, and it is probable that Archimedes had con-
structed some such burning instrument, though the
connection of it with the destruction of the Roman
fleet is more than doubtful. Among the most celebrated
of his contributions to practical science are his dis-
coveries in hydrostatics and hydraulics. The account
usually given of one of these is remarkable. Hiero, it
is said, had set him to discover whether or not the gold
which he had given to an artist to work into a crown
for him had been mixed with baser metal. Archimedes
was puzzled till one day, as he was stepping into a bath
and observed the water running over, it occurred to him
that the excess of bulk occasioned by the introduction
of alloy could be measured by putting the crown and an
equal amount of gold separately into a vessel filled with
water, and observing the difference of overflow. . He
was so overjoyed when this happy thought struck him he
ran home without his clothes, shouting, “ stomta,
& 3pma,”—I have found it, I have found it. It may
have been this that led to his establishing the fundamen-
tal principle still known by his name, that a body
immersed in a liquid sustains an upward pressure equal to
the weight of liquid displaced. Among a number of other
mechanical inventions ascribed to him, the water-screw
may be mentioned, which still bears his name. His
estimate of the capabilities of the lever is expressed in
the saying attributed to him, 21.65 tot} Grój, war: rmv
yńv act ºffgoo, “Give me a fulcrum on which to
rest, and I will move the earth.”
The life of this philosopher ends with the capture
of Syracuse by Marcellus, 212 B.C. . In the general
massacre which followed the fall of the city, Archim-
edes, while engaged in drawing a mathematical figure
on the sand, was run through the body by a Roman
soldier. No blame attaches to the Roman general,
Marcellus, since he had given orders to his men to
spare the house and person of the sage; and in the
midst of his triumph he lamented the death of so illus-
trious a person, directed an honorable burial to be given
him, and befriended his surviving relatives. In accord-
ance with the expressed desire of the philosopher, his
tomb was marked by the figure of a sphere inscribed
in a cylinder — the discovery of the relation, between
the volumes of a sphere and its circumscribing cylin-
der being regarded by him as his most valuable achieve-
ment. When Cicero was qaestor in Sicily (75 B.C.), he
found the tomb of Archimedes, near the Agrigentine
gate, overgrown with thorns and briers. “Thus,” says
Cicero (Tusc. Disp. v. 23), “would this most famous
and once learned city of Greece have remained a
stranger to the tomb of one of its most ingenious citi-
A 29
450
A R C
zens, had it not been discovered by a man of Arpinum.”
The range and importance of the scientific labors of
Archimedes will be best understood from a brief ac-
count of those writings which have come down to us;
and it may be remarked that though some useful and im-
portant works may have perished, it is probable that
these are chiefly details of his mechanical inventions,
and that all his most valuable mechanical discoveries
have been preserved. .
ARCHIMEDES, SCREW OF, a machine for raising
water, said to have been invented by Archimedes, for
the purpose of removing water from the hold of a large
ship that had been built by King Hiero. It consists of
a water-tight cylinder, enclosing a chamber walled off by
spiral divisions running from end to end, inclined to the
horizon, with its lower open end placed in the water to
be raised.
ARCHIPELAGO, a name which, though it is now
applied to any island-studded sea, was formerly the dis-
tinctive designation of what, though still known as the
Archipelago, is often distinguished as the Grecian
Archipelago, namely, that part of the Mediterranean
which lies between Greece and Thessaly on the W. and
Asia Minor on the E. — the AEgean Sea of the ancients.
The other Archipelagoes, portions of ocean with
numerous islands in close contiguity, as the Indian,
Caribbean, Patagonian, &c., will be described in their
respective places.
ARCHITECTURE (Latin architectura, from the
Greek architector, a master-builder) is the art of build-
ing according to principles which are determined, not
merely by the ends the edifice is intended to serve, but
by considerations of beauty and harmony. It cannot be
defined as the art of building simply, or even of building
well. The end of building as such is convenience, use,
irrespective of appearance, and the employment of
materials to this end is regulated by the mechanical prin-
ciples of the constructive art. The end of architecture
as an art, on the other hand, is so to arrange the plan,
masses, and enrichment of a structure as to impart to it
interest, beauty, grandeur, unity, power. Architecture
thus necessitates the possession by the builder of gifts of
imagination as well as of technical skill, and in all works
of architecture properly so called these elements must
exist, and be harmoniously combined. The combina-
tion of technical with imaginative features removes
architecture from the precise position occupied by paint-
ing, sculpture, and music, but does this more in appear-
ance than in reality, since the greatest works of the
architect must always be those in which the imagination
of the artist is most plainly seen.
Like the other arts architecture did not spring into
existence at an early period of man’s history. The ideas
of symmetry and proportion which are afterwards
embodied in material structures could not be evolved
until at least a moderate degree of civilisation had been
attained, while the efforts of primitive man in the con-
struction of dwellings must have been at first deter-
mined solely by his physical wants. Only after these
had been provided for, and materials amassed on which
his imagination might exercise itself, would he begin to
plan and erect structures, possessing not only utility, but
also grandeur and beauty. Before proceeding to inquire
into the history of architecture, it may be well to enu-
merate briefly the elements which in combination form the
architectural perfection of a building. These elements
have been very variously determined by different authori-
ties. Vitruvius, the only ancient writer on the art whose
works have come down to us, lays down three qualities
as indispensable in a fine building, viz., Firmitas, Utili-
tas, Venustas, stability, utility, beauty. In an archi-
tectural point of view the last is the principal, though
not the sole element; and, accordingly, the theory of
architecture is occupied for the most part with aesthetic
considerations, or the principles of beauty in designing.
Of such principles or qualities the following appear to be
the most important: size, proportion, harmony, and
symmetry, ornament, and color. All other elements
may be reduced under one or other of these heads.
With regard to the first quality, it is clear that, as the
feeling of power is a source of the keenest pleasure, size,
or vastness of proportion, will not only excite in the
mind of man the feelings of awe with which he regards
the sublime in nature, but will impress him with a deep
sense of the majesty of human power. It is, therefore,
a double source of pleasure. The feelings with which
we regard the Pyramids of Egypt, the vast monoliths at
Rome, the massive temples of Sicily and the Parthenon,
and the huge structures of Stonehenge, sufficiently attest
the truth of this principle.
The qualities in the general disposition of the parts of
a building which are calculated to give pleasure to the
beholder, are proportion, harmony, and symmetry. To
obtain a clear idea of the general plan in order to appre-
ciate these qualities, the best method is to contemplate
the building under conditions that prevent the mind ſrom
being disturbed by the consideration of the details—at
a distance, for instance, or by moonlight, when its out-
lines may be seen standing boldly out against the sky.
Thus the mass of a Gothic cathedral, the proportion of
its parts, the outline of tower, nave, choir, and lady-
chapel, the deep shadows which show the projection or
recess of its various parts, are in themselves beautiful
even when there is not light enough to distinguish mould-
ings, carvings, or tracery.
Proportion itself depends essentially upon the employ-
ment of mathematical ratios in the dimensions of a
building. It is a curious but significant fact that such
proportions as those of an exact cube, or of two cubes
placed side by side—dimensions increasing by one-half
(e.g., 20 feet high, 30 wide, and 45 long)—or the ratios
of the base, perpendicular, and hypotenuse of a right-
angled triangle (e.g., 3, 4, 5, or their multiples)—please
the eye more than dimensions taken at random. No
defect is more glaring or more unpleasant than want of
proportion. The Gothic architects appear to have been
guided in their designs by proportions based on the equi-
lateral triangle.
By harmony is meant the general balancing of the
several parts of the design. It is proportion applied to
the mutual relations of the details. Thus, supported
parts should have an adequate ratio to their supports,
and the same should be the case with solids and voids.
Due attention to proportion and harmony gives the
appearance of stability and repose which is indispensable
to a really fine building. Symmetry is uniformity in
plan, and, when not carried to excess, is undoubtedly
effective. But a building too rigorously symmetrical is
apt to appear cold and tasteless. Such symmetry of
general plan, with diversity of detail, as is presented to
us in leaves, animals, and other natural objects, is prob-
ably the just medium between the excesses of two oppos-
ing Schools. *
Next to general beauty or grandeur of form in a
building comes architectural ornament. Ornament, of
course, may be used to excess, and, as a general rule, it
should be confined to the decoration of constructive
parts of the fabric; but, on the other hand, a total
absence or a paucity of ornament betokens an unpleas-
ing poverty. Ornaments may be divided into two
classes—mouldings and the sculptured representation of
natural or fanciful objects. . Mouldings, no doubt,
originated, first, in simply taking off the * of any-
thing that might be in the way, as the edge of a square
ARCHITECTURE
EEEEErºtº-
st PETER's
ſºmnanteautiny
-º-º-º:
* , _ º - -nº- anota
- l -

ARC HITECTU. R. E.
S. T. P.A. T L S.
wart ºf elevatºr.
Łarſ ºne ºration.

A R C
45 I
post, and then sinking the chamfer in hollows of various
forms; and thence were developed the systems of mould-
ings we now find in all styles and periods. Each of
these has its own system; and so well are their char-
acteristics understood, that from an examination of
them a skilful architect will not only tell the period in
which any building has been erected, but will even give
an estimate of its probable size, as professors of physi-
ology will construct an animal from the examination of
a single bone. Mouldings require to be carefully
studied, for nothing offends an educated eye like a con-
fusion of mouldings, such as Roman forms in Greek
work, or Early English in that of the Tudor period.
The same remark applies to sculptured ornaments.
They should be neither too numerous nor too few, and,
above all, they should be consistent. The carved ox
skulls, for instance, which are appropriate in a temple of
Vesta or of Fortune, would be very incongruous on a
Christian church.
Color must be regarded as a subsidiary element in
architecture, and although it seems almost indispensable
and has always been extensively employed in interiors,
it is doubtful how far external coloring is desirable.
Some contend that only local coloring, i.e., the color of
the materials, should be admitted; but there seems no
reason why any color should not be used, provided it be
employed with discretion and kept subordinate to the
form or outline.
As has been already pointed out, the origin of the art is
to be found in the endeavors of man to provide for his
physical wants. Man, in his primitive Savage state,
began to imitate the nests of birds and the lairs of
beasts, and constructed arbors with twigs of trees.
To these arbors succeeded huts with walls composed of
dried turf, strengthened with reeds and branches.
From huts to houses the progress is gradual and easy.
Some writers have endeavored to trace three orders of
primitive dwellings — the cave, the hut, and the tent —
constructed severally by the tribes who devoted them-
selves to hunting and fishing, to agriculture, and to a
pastoral and nomadic life. There can be no doubt that
climate and surrounding circumstances affected not only
the form of the primitive buildings, but also the mater.
ials employed. Thus, where trees abounded, stone was
probably a material seldom used, as it entailed a much
greater amount of labor than timber; but as stone
would neither burn nor rot, it was preferred for all
durable purposes. Where wood was plentiful, as in
Greece and in Lycia, stone architecture exhibits traces
of an original timber construction. The columns were
originally posts, and the architraves and triglyphs beams
resting on each other. The Lycian tomb in the British
Museum furnishes a, strong proof that there the art of
the carpenter preceded that of the mason, and sug-
gested forms, which became conventional, and from
which the latter could not venture to depart. On the
other hand, in the plains of Egypt, where building
timber is scarce, and where there is abundance of large
stone in the mountains, the mason element seems to
have prevailed. In such plains as those of Nineveh
and Babylon artificial stone was made from lumps of
dried or burnt clay. Finally, in vast Sandy deserts,
where there are neither trees nor stones, the skins of
beasts, sewed together and supported by Sticks, formed
the earliest shelter. This soon grew into the tent, and
its form still influences the architecture of the Chinese
and the Tartars. Much ingenuity has been expended in
the inquiry whether it was timber or stone that first
gave birth to the art of architecture; the probability
is, that the hut, the cairn, and the tent, all contributed
their share in different countries.
No traces remain of the steps by which the beautiful
temples of Egypt or the magnificent halls of Persia and
Assyria were developed from these rude beginnings. The
earliest known structures of those countries belong to
an age already considerably advanced in civilisation and
in the art of construction. And the history of archi-
tecture ſrom its earliest specimens in Egypt is not one
continuous line of progress. We can indeed show how
from these early structures sprang the art of Greece;
how that was modified by the Romans; and finally, how
the Pointed architecture of the 13th century arose.
But the development is not gradual; it proceeds by a
series of steps, and one style does not shade impercept-
ibly into another. No doubt the architects of each
country borrowed somewhat (in detail more especially)
from the designs of the adjacent countries; but, never-
theless, each country originated forms peculiar to itself,
and in all its artistic efforts continued to repeat and
elaborate them. So definite are the characteristics of
the styles of different nations, that from the mere form,
carving, or decoration of any structure, its age and its
architects can, usually, be fairly determined.
PREHISTORIC STRUCTURES.
The numerous relics of structures left by primeval
man have generally little or no architectural value. The
only interesting problem regarding them, the determina-
tion of their date and purpose, and of the degree of civ-
ilisation which they manifest, falls within the province of
archaeology. g
The principal specimens of such prehistoric erections
may be classified thus—
(1.) Aſonzo/it/s (Maenhir, from Maen, a stone, Air,
high), or single upright stones. The best example is at
Carnac, in Brittany. This huge stone, when perfect,
was 63 feet high, and 14 feet in diameter at its widest
part. It is rudely shaped to a circular form, and weighs
about 260 tons.
(2.) Cromlechs, table-stones, generally consisting of
one large flat stone supported by others which are up-
right. The cromlech is also named Z00/mezu, from 7aal,
or ZDau/, a table, and Maeza, a stone. A good example
of the cromlech is the structure known as “Kit’s Coity
House,” near Maidstone. Other examples occur in
different parts of Great Britain and Ireland, and numer-
ous specimens are found in Algeria, in India, in the
country east of the Jordan, in Guernsey, and near Sau-
mur, on the Loire.
Circles of Stone.—The most important specimen of
these in Britain is Stonehenge.
Zumuli. —These include the beehive huts, so called
from their shape, found scattered throughout Cornwall,
Wales, and Scotland. Similar, but superior, edifices are
to be met with in Ireland; and of these, New Grange,
near Drogheda, apparently a burial mound, is the finest
specimen. The design of the “nurhags,” which are
found in great numbers in the island or Sardinia, has
greatly puzzled archaeologists. It has been conjectured
that they were sepulchres, the dead being exposed on
their summits. Of the so-called “Picts’ houses” of the
Orkney Islands, some are chambered tumuli, while oth-
ers may be more properly described as underground
dwellings.
Wooden huts, the submerged remains of which have
been recently discovered in the lakes of Switzerland, as
well as in Sweden, in Italy and in Ireland. These erec-
tions, which rose on piles just above the surface of the
water, present no features of architectural interest.
Prehistoric remains are separated by a wide gulf from
those which now fall to be noticed, inasmuch as,
whether or not they led, by improvement in their forms,
to anything really architectural, no evidence remains of
such progress, and they must therefore be regarded as
452
A R C
practically dissociated from anything that we have now
to describe.
EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.
For the beginnings of the art — its earliest efforts,
grand even in their infancy — we must turn to Egypt.
A short description of the general configuration of the
country may be useful here. Its habitable land is a
narrow strip a few miles wide, extending from the Nile,
on one or both its banks, to the rocks or desert. About
Ioo miles up the river is Cairo, and close to it Memphis,
the old capital of Lower Egypt, Heliopolis, and the
great pyramids of Ghizeh, Abooseer, Sakkara, and
Dashour; 450 miles higher up the river is the site of
the great Thebes, with Karnak and Luxor on the right
or eastern bank, and Medinet Haboo on the west.
Beyond this in succession are Esne, Edfoo, Elephantina,
Syene, and Philae, close to the first cataract. Higher
up (in Nubia) are the great caves of Aboosimbel, and
at a still greater distance, the pyramids of Meroë, or
Dankelah. The rock is generally limestone up to
Thebes, sandstone and breccia to Syene, where the
well-known variety of granite, with hornblende, is
found; these with the addition of unburnt brick, are
the chief materials used in the construction of the
Egyptian architectural monuments. The granite was
principally supplied by the quarries at Elephantina and
Syene, for which the Nile offered a ready mode of con-
veyance, although it appears that the obelisks and other
enormous blocks were sent by land. Some species
were brought down the river from Ethiopia, but we do
not find that the materials were brought from any other
foreign country. It may be remarked, too, that in the
earliest structures the common grès or sandstone is
principally employed. Excepting the obelisks and some
few of the propylaea, all the temples at Thebes are of
that material. In Lower Egypt, on the contrary, and
in the works of later date generally, almost everything
is constructed of granite.
It seems quite certain that Egyptian art is original
and not derived from that of India; and it may be con-
cluded with great probability that the structures of
Egypt are the oldest specimens of architecture in the
world. The origin of the structures themselves has
been matter of some discussion. By several writers it
has been thought that the rock-cut caves of Upper
Egypt were the earliest efforts of architectural design,
and furnished models for the enormous piles raised along
the banks of the Nile. An examination of these caves,
however, will show clearly that the very reverse is the
case, and that the carvings of the excavations are imi-
tated from the above-ground buildings.
The oldest works of the Egyptians, according to
Herodotus, were the embankment of the Nile by Menes,
the foundation of the city of Memphis, and the com-
mencement of a temple to Vulcan. Next we learn from
Manetho, as cited by Eusebius, that Venephes, the
fourth king of the first dynasty, built some pyramids at
a place called Cochomen, but this is all we know of
them. Eusebius further records that Tosorthus, or
Sosorthus, the second king of the third dynasty, found
out how to build with polished or smooth stone.
The next structure of which we have notice is the
Great Pyramid, the most gigantic work in the world—
one which never has been, and perhaps never will be
surpassed. At this time the Egyptains must have
reached a proficiency in the mechanical arts of which
we can form no conception. They seem to have been
able to quarry rocks of the hardest stone, even granite—
to transport them to great distances—to raise huge
blocks, vast monolith obelisks, that would puzzle our
engineers with their best tackle—and, more wonderful
still, they appear to have had the power not only of
polishing granite, but of carving on that most stubborn
material with the utmost facility, large surfaces and
even huge statues being covered with hieroglyphics of
the most minute kind and of the highest finish. . It is
impossible to discover how this was done, for though
Herodotus (ii. 124, 125) tells us they had iron tools, it
was long before the conversion of that metal into steel
had been found out; and with all the best modern tools
of steel, it is difficult and costly to carve even plain let-
ters in granite. According to the account of Hero-
dotus, the occasion of the erection of this great work was
the caprice of the king, Cheops, who is supposed to be
the Suphis of Syncellus, and the Chembes of Diodorus.
This king was a tyrant of the very worst kind; he closed
all the temples throughout Egypt, forbade every sort of
religious observance, and forced all his subjects to labor
for him as he pleased. Among other whims, he de-
termined to build this pyramid as a tomb for himself.
The stones were quarried in the Arabian mountains,
and none were less than 30 feet long. They were then
conveyed by the Nile to a newly-constructed road,
three-quarters of a mile long, 60 feet broad, and in a
cutting of 48 feet. This road, of polished stone, and
carved with figures, took ten years to complete. Twenty
years were spent in building the pyramid itself.
The site of this extraordinary structure is at Ghizeh,
in the neighborhood of Cairo. The base was, Herodo-
tus tells us, about 808 feet square, and the height the
same. This, however, is not the case, the Greek author
having probably measured the sloping edge. The di-
mensions are variously given by the various persons who
have measured it. M. Nouet, who was of the French
commission in Egypt, and had perhaps the best means
of ascertaining the truth, states its base to be a square
whose side is 716 French or 768 English feet, and gives
the height as 421 French or 452 English feet. The di-
mensions of the pyramid in its original state, as given
by Colonel Vyse, are 764 feet length of base, 720 feet
slant side, and 480 feet high. The pyramid thus covers
upwards of 13 acres, and is about 150 feet higher than
St. Paul’s cathedral. As compared with the largest
building in the world, St. Peter's, Rome, the Great Pyra.
mid covers an area which is as 58 to 22, or nearly three
times as much, and is 50 feet higher. Like almost all
the other pyramids, its sides face the cardinal points,
and it is entered from the north by a descending passage,
which leads to a few small chambers or cells, the larg—
est of which is but 17.7 feet wide. In one of these a
solitary sarcophagus was found. The pyramid appears
to be a solid mass of stone, and is built in regular
courses or layers, which vary in thickness from 2 to 5
feet, each receding from the one below it to the number
of 202; though even this is variously stated from that
number to 260, as indeed the height is given by various
modern travellers at from 444 to 625 feet. This vast
erection, on which the labors of IOO,Ooo men were be-
stowed for twenty years, and which contains 85 millions
of cubic feet of stone, must have cost (reckoning quarry.
ing, transport —twice by land and once by river–
squaring, hoisting, and setting at 2s. per ſoot) some-
thing like 8% imillions of English money.
A second pyramid, close to the first, was built by the
successor of Cheops, whom Herodotus calls Chephren;
the inscriptions on the stones, however, give the name
Shafra. The side of its base is about 60 feet less than
that of the former. About forty years later, Mycerinus
or Mencheres, built a third; but the side of the base is
only about 364 feet, or less than half that of the Great
Pyramid. It was, however, entirely faced with polished
granite, while the others were of limestone. A statue
of King Chephren has recently been ſound in a temple -
A R C
453
close adjacent to the pyramids, and now forms one of the
most remarkable objects in the museum at Cairo.
. The following seems to have been the manner in
which the pyramids were generally constructed. A level
platform was cut in the rock, a portion of which was,
however, leſt in the centre above the general level to
serve as a sort of core to the pyramid. A deep chamber
was then sunk in the rock, with a passage leading from
it always on the north side, and usually at an angle of
26° to 28°, to the surface of the ground. It is curious
that these passages were almost always of one dimension,
viz., 3 ft. 5 in. wide, and 3 ft. I I in. high. Over the
chamber was built a mass of masonry, which was grad-
ually added to at the side and top, according to the
power, or the wealth, or the length of life of the founder.
Finally, the angles of the stones were cut off to the
proper slope, or a casing added, and the pyramid thus
completed from the top. Some of the casings were
highly finished. Those of the first and second pyramid
were of polished stone; that of the third was of polished
granite. Occasionally, as in the Great Pyramid, and in
the Southern one at Dashour, there was a chamber built
above the one which was cut in the rock. Their en-
trances were carefully concealed, and even the doors of
the chamber defended by gigantic portcullises of granite,
some 8 to Io feet Square, weighing 50 to 60 tons, so as
to render the security of the chambers as great as pos-
sible. Yet every chamber in the chief pyramids, at
least, except perhaps “the false one” at Meydoum, has
been rifled years ago, and so the great purpose of their
erection utterly set at nought. The sarcophagus of the
Great Pyramid, however, still rests in its chamber.
An extra interest belongs to the third pyramid (of My-
cerinus) owing to its chamber being ceiled with a pointed
arch. But it is not a true arch, the stones being merely
strutted against each other, as over the entrance to the
Great Pyramid, and the underside cut to the above form.
The chamber of a pyramid at Sakkara was lined with
blue and white tiles like the Dutch style; and at the false
one at Meydoum there is, about two-thirds up, a band
about 12 feet wide, left rough all round, and it has
been supposed that this may have been left as a ground
for decoration. The construction of pyramids seems
to have ended in Lower Egypt at a very early date, with
the old dynasty of Memphis. But some of crude brick,
and containing arched chambers, are found at Thebes,
and are supposed to be of date about 1200 B.C. Many
similar structures, but on a very much smaller scale,
were erected in Ethiopia and Meroë down to about 700
B. C.
Many theories have been stated as to the purposes
for which these gigantic monuments were erected, but
the opinion of M. Mariette, the latest, as well as one of
the most learned writers, may be taken as correct, viz.,
that every pyramid was a tomb and the gigantic enclosure
of a mummy. It is certain that every pyramid is on
the western bank of the Nile, the region of the setting
sun, and thus associated by the Egyptians with the
regions of death, and that each group of pyramids is
the centre of a necropolis.
Next to the pyramids in massive grandeur comes the
Great Sphinx, and an additional interest has lately been
associated with this statue, from the finding of an
inscription, which seems to prove that it was sculptured
before the time of the builder of the first pyramid. The
Egyptian sphinx was quite different from the Greek,
which usually had a female head on the body of a
winged lion; whereas the Egyptian was wingless, and
had usually the head of a man, bearded and capped,
and thus represents strength and wisdom. The Great
Sphinx at Ghizeh has the body of a lion crouching close
to the ground; the height from the floor, or platform on
which it lies, to the top of the head is 100 feet; the total
length is 146 feet; across the shoulders it measures 34
feet. The head, from the top to the chin, is 28 feet 6
inches, and is calculated to be 40,000 times the bulk of
an ordinary human head. A small temple or sanctuary
was built between its paws. With the exception of
this, and the paws themselves, which are of masonry,
the whole appears to be carved out of the solid rock.
Indeed, it may safely be assumed to be solid; for
Colonel Vyse drilled a hole 27 feet deep into the shoulder,
and found that, so far at least, it was so.
Another grand memorial of the old dynasty must be
mentioned, viz., the Serapeum, near the pyramid of
Sakkara, discovered in 1851 by M. Mariette, and excav-
ated 30 feet deep in the solid rock. It contains the
mummies of the sacred bulls, placed in gigantic sarco-
phagi, II feet high, 7 to 8 feet wide, and 13 to 18 feet
long, each of which is placed in a chamber. The
chambers, forty in number, are excavated on each side
of galleries about 12 feet wide, the ceilings being cut
(not built) to the form of an arch.
No great distance beyond Sakkara, in the district
called the Fayoom, was the famous Labyrinth, an im-
mense mass of buildings mentioned by Herodotus as
the palaces built for the twelve kings. From his de-
scription of it, this appears to have been as great a work
and as great a wonder as the pyramids themselves. It
was close to Lake Moeris, and contained in the time he
wrote 3OOO chambers, half above and half below ground,
besides immense halls, corridors, courts, gardens, &c.
The roofs were wholly of stone, and the walls covered
with sculpture.
TOMBS.—The great reverence paid by the Egyptians
to the bodies of their ancestors, and their careful pres-
ervation of them by embalmment, necessitated a great
number and vast extent of tombs. Some of these,
erected long after the building of pyramids had ceased, are
built up above ground; others are caves cut in the sides
of rocks; others are passages tunnelled under ground
to a great extent. The most curious tomb at Ghizeh is
known as Campbell’s, of the supposed date of about 660
B.C. . It is an open excavation, 53 ft. 6 in. deep, 30 ft.
by 26 ft. 3 in. on plan, with niches, &c., leading out of
it. In these were found four sarcophagi, one of which,
of basalt, is in the British Museum. This excavation is
supposed, from some indications left of a springing
stone, to have been covered by an arch. If so, this
would be the oldest known stone arch of a large size.
In fact, it is difficult to imagine any other way in which
this large excavation could have been covered. But the
special object actually found was a tomb built up in the
centre of the excavation, of good masonry, covered by
three stones as struts, over which was a perfectly
formed voussoired arch. This arch was destroyed not
long ago by the Egyptian Government, in order to build
a mill. Outside the whole excavation was a deep trench
5 ft. 4 in. wide, and 73 feet deep, from which branch
out a number of chambers. This excavation was prob-
ably finished above with some such truncated pyramid
as we have already described.
Even more interesting are the tombs at Beni Hassan
and Thebes. There is little attempt at architectural
decoration in these, but they are filled with the most
interesting paintings, representing even the minutest
incidents of private life. A model of one was ex-
hibited in London by Belzoni; and there is a valuable
series built up, and painted in fac-simile, in the Vatican
at Rome. It appears that as soon as a king succeeded
to the throne, the excavation of his tomb commenced,
and proceeded year by year till his death. One of the
grandest at Thebes is that of a priest, otherwise un-
known to fame, which comprises a series of halls, pas-
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sages, and chambers, at various levels, branching off in
one place three different ways. In all, it is 862 feet
long, and the part actually excavated occupies an area
of 23,000 feet.
TEMPLES.— The Egyptian temples range from the
time that Thebes became the capital (about 2000 B.C.)
down to the time of the Caesars.
Of all the temples, the most remarkable is perhaps
the rock-cut one of Aboosimbel, in Nubia, supposed to
have been excavated in the 14th century B.C. The
façade was cut in the steep face of a rock, the
entrance doorway being flanked by two gigantic statues
(66 feet high) on each side. The main feature inter-
nally , was a grand hall supported by two rows of
detached piers, in front of each of which is a statue 17 ft.
8 in high. Another remarkable temple exists at Ghi-
zeh, built up within a great excavation in the rock; here
was found the statue of Chephren before mentioned.
The temple is lined with immense blocks of polished
granite, as are also the piers, each of these being of one
stone about 15 feet high, 5 feet wide. and 3.2 thick.
Over this structure there was clearly another, above
ground, as extensive remains of fine stone-walling still
eX1St.
The grandest architectural efforts of the Egyptians
are shown in their built temples, whose construction
ranges from the time at which Thebes became the chief
capital (about 2000 B.C.) down to so late even as the
time of the Caesars. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in his
Architecture of Ancient Agypt, gives a very full
account of these edifices, and classifies them thus: — I.
Sanctuary 7 emples, or those with only one single
chamber. 2. Periptera! Zemples, or the like, but sur-
rounded with columns. 3. Temples in Antis, with a
portico of two or four columns in front. 4. Those
with porticos of many columns, as Esme, Dendera, &c.,
and many inner chambers. 5. Those with large courts,
and with pyramidal towers or propylons in front.
The temple at Edfoo, though its dimensions are con-
siderable, is small when compared with that at Karnak.
This covers about 42O,Ooo feet, or five times as much as
St. Paul's. London, and more than twice as much as St.
Peter's at Rome. The propylon is 370 feet long, or
twice as much as that of St. Paul's. The hypostyle
hall," a parallelogram of about 342 feet long, and 170
feet wide, is the most wonderful apartment in the world.
It has fourteen rows of columns, nine in each row, and
43 feet high; and two rows, six in each, of the enormous
height of 62 ft., 11 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and carrying
capitals which measure 22 feet across. This hall (with
the two gigantic pylones) is said to cover 4000 Super-
ficial feet more than St. Paul's. Beyond it is the ady-
tum or shrine, a small apartment, measuring only 26 feet
by 16 feet.
STATUES.— Connected with the temples and forming |.
an important part of their decorative features, were gi-
gantic statues and obelisks. The statues are of enor-
mous proportions. The sitting figure of Memnon is
about 53 feet without the pedestal; and that in the
sepulchre of Osymandyas (the Memnonium) is nearly 60
feet high. The face of Memnon is 7 feet high, and the
ear 3 feet 6 inches long, and the shoulders measure nearly
26 feet across.
OBELISKs.—The obelisks of Egypt are generally huge
monoliths of red granite or syenite. Their use origi-
nated, no doubt, in the custom of setting up stones to
commemorate particular events. The Egyptians embell-
ished these stones, first by working them to a fine face,
and afterward by covering them with carvings. They
st and frequently in pairs before the propylon of the tem-
ples, as at Karnak and at Philae. After the conquest of
Egypt the emperors transported many of these monu-
wº-
ments to Rome. At the time the celebrated Region-
iaries (accounts of each of the wards or Regiones of
Rome) were written, there were six great obelisks, and
forty-two small ones at Rome. Of these twelve only are
now left, varying in height from over Ioo feet to 8% feet.
The first, which now stands close to the church of St.
John Lateran, is 148 Roman palms in height, or a little
over 108 feet, is about 8 feet square at the base, and
weighs, as is estimated, nearly 450 tons. It is covered
with hieroglyphics, from which we gather it was erected
in honor of Thothmes IV. It stood originally before
. temple of Amen Ra, and was brought over by Cali-
llal.
The Barberini obelisk is about 734 times as high as
the diameter of the base; Cleopatra's needle, 8%; the
one at St. Peter's 9 times, at Luxor Io times, at the
Lateran 11 times; while two at Thebes, and one in the
| Piazza Navona at Rome, have an altitude of no less
than 12 times the diameter of the base.
Sir G. Wilkinson has classed Egyptian columns into
eight orders. First, The square pillar, or post of stone.
This often has a line of hieroglyphics running down it
vertically. Second, The polygonal column, plain or
fluted. This is sometimes painted, or otherwise orna-
mented with devices. Third, The bud capital, or one
formed like the bud of the papyrus.
In the fourth order the capital is like an inverted be/Z.
It formerly was called the lotus capital, but in reality it
has no resemblance to that flower. The capital is SO
much undercut that the ornaments on its edge are not
visible, except to a spectator who is immediately be-
neath them.
The fifth order is the palm tree column, and resem-
bles the head of that tree, with the lower or drooping
boughs cut off.
The sixth order is called the Isis-headed order, the
capital being formed of one or more heads of that deity,
surrounded by a representation of a doorway, or small
shrine with an image, and sometimes a votary worship-
ping placed over it.
The seventh is called the composite order. The shafts
are generally round, and the capitals, as the name im-
ports, are a mixture of styles. The bell and palms, or
the palm and the Isis head, are frequently, found in
combination. A most curious instance is ranked under
this style, of columns of the third order with inverted
shafts, and also inverted capitals, taken from Karnak,
the work of Thothmes III.
The eighth order is called the Osiride, from contain-
ing statues of the deity Osiris. This order, is some-
thing like the Persian, or the Caryatides of the Greeks
and Romans; but it differs, inasmuch as the figure
does not support the entablature, but stands in front
of a square pier which discharges that duty.
PILASTERs.-These are employed in all ages,
though they do not always accord with the order of the
columns. For instance, at Thebes the pilasters of the
Temple in antis of Dayr el Medeeneh are of the sixth
or Isis-headed order, while the columns between are of
the seventh or composite order. They are generally
square, and without diminution. -
ENTABLATURES.–These are nearly alike in all
orders, and may be described as a cornice and architrave
without a frieze. The ſormer consists of a fillet or
regula, beneath which is what is generally called a
large hollow or cavetto; but in reality the upper half
is a quarter round, and the lower nearly straight.
Under this moulding is a bold torus, which separates
the cornice from the architraves, and runs down the
sloping sides of the angle of the building to the ground,
The cornice is generally, ornamented with divisional
|
verticle lines, like triglyphs. Between these the car-
A R C
45.5
touches or ovals of the reigning monarch, or other
devices, are carved. The centre is generally occupied
by the winged globe, or emblem of the Good Daemon.
The torus is often ornamented as if strings were bound
round a bundle of sticks, like the fasces of a Roman
lictor. On the upper part of the smaller cornices there
is often a row like the antefixae of a Greek temple, but
their form is peculiar, and is supposed to represent the
pots in which the mummies of the sacred cats and ibis
were preserved. The architraves are plain, without
being broken into fasciae, and are generally covered
with hieroglyphics.
FoRTIFICATIONS.— Next to the temples, the grandest
buildings were perhaps the fortifications. We know
that the temples themselves were often used as citadels,
few of the towns being fortified. Even Thebes seems
not to have been so. Of the actual citadels we have a
few remains, as at Dakkeh. But several are shown
on the drawings, and bear a curious resemblance to
mediaeval works, the ramparts of the walls and towers
having battlements which overhang like our machicola-
tions, while, in the centre of the enclosure formed by
the walls, was generally a high square tower or keep.
Of the further details we know little.
Although we have only ruins to guide us (for no man
living has seen an Egyptian temple as it appeared to the
old Egyptians), yet we can gather that to the Egyptians
we owe the earliest examples of columnar architecture,
and at the same time that they had not got beyond the
rudiments of it. The stable effect of their massive col-
umns disappears when we notice that scarcely any, except
those of very recent date, have the wide-spreading base
which we know so well in every other style; that the
massiveness of the column is in fact wasted, as the lower
part is rounded off and cut away so as to render 4th of
it simply useless; and that the bold projecting capital
carries no weight, and adds nothing to the strength of
the stone beam above it, for that beam rests on a small
block of stone above the capital, borrowing no strength
whatever from it. It will also have been noticed, that
nearly every Egyptian work is rectangular in plan, and
that in exceptional cases, as, e.g., the buildings at
Philae, Kalabsche, and Luxor, no attempt has been
made to Soften down the harshness of the lines.
With the elevation , it was the same. The square
was never changed into the circle or the octagon.
Nearly every form is bounded by the rectangle, and the
only varieties found in the grandest of the buildings in
Egypt are the slope of the massive pylon and the taper-
ing obelisk. The minaret and the dome, which give such
charming variety of outline, and the varied mouldings,
without which it now seems to us that no building could be
perfect, were unknown to the Egyptians. But of all
things, the neglect of the arch is the most curious. Crude
brick arches are found at least as early as the 16th century
B.C., and others have been found of the same date, it is
thought, as the pyramids. Yet the Egyptians of later
times Systematically employed enormous stones for their
coverings and lintels, and left the arch unused. We must
remember, in justice to the Egyptians, that their efforts
in art were fettered, to an extent which we are perhaps
unable to appreciate, by the restrictions imposed upón
them by conventionalities connected with their religion.
That they were so fettered in sculpture at least is abund-
antly clear from many examples. The freedom which
characterises one of their earliest statues, that of King
Chephren, the exquisitely bold yet delicately graceful
sculptures in the Serapeum and in the tomb of Tih at
Sakkara, and other examples, show clearly that the
Egyptians had a power for design and execution which
only such a cause as that referred to above could have
suppressed.
JEWISH ARCHITECTURE.
The long sojourn of the Jews in Egypt, and the fact
that their chief employment there seems to have been
the manufacture of bricks, must have made them
acquainted with the architecture of that country. On
the conquest of Canaan, the Israelites seem to have taken
possession of the dwellings of the vanquished people;
and we have no record of any important building con-
structed by the Jews till the days of Solomon. The
king therefore applied to Hiram, king of Tyre, with
whom he was on friendly terms, and that monarch sent
an architect and staff of skilled workmen. Materials
were collected for the building, and careful accounts of
the whole work are given in the books of Kings and of
Chronicles.
The early temple is described (1 Kings vi. vii.) as a
building of stone, roofed and floored with cedar. It ap-
pears to have been rectangular, with a single roof, and
divided into two parts by a wall. It was 60 cubits long,
2O wide, and 30 in height, or about 11o feet by 36 feet,
and 55 feet high. In front was a porch the same width
as the temple (20 cubits), but only 1o cubits in depth.
In the prophecy of Ezekiel (ch. xl. Jºz.) we have a
very full and interesting account of what the temple was
in his time. The house itself and the oracle do not ap-
pear to have been altered, but the old courts seem to
have been swept away and succeeded by vast atria, and
a mass of halls and chambers.
In the time of Cyrus the temple was rebuilt, but this
second temple was demolished by Herod, who constructed
a new one of the same dimensions as that of Solomon.
The outer house was 40 cubits long, and the Holy of
Holies 20 cubits; but it was nearly double the height of
the first temple. The porch also, instead of being the
width of the house, 20 cubits, was 100 cubits long and
Ioo high, crossing the temple in the form of a T, and
forming a magnificent façade much longer than that of
St. Paul’s in London. Round the house were three
stories of priests' chambers. The court had three en-
trances on each side, which were called respectively the
water-gates, the fire-gates, and the oblation-gates. But
the peculiar difference between Herod’s temple and the
earlier building was that there was, in front of the court
last described, another of about the same size, šur-
rounded by a colonnade and chambers, which was the place
set apart for the women. These courts were surrounded
by an outer court, having a species of cloister on the
north, east, and west sides, composed of a double row of
columns. On the south side was a similar construction
a furlong in length. It consisted of three rows of col-
umns, forming with the outer wall three aisles — the two
outer being 30 feet wide and 50 feet high; the centre
being 45 feet wide and Ioo feet high — no doubt with a
species of clerestory. These columns are described to
have been so large that it took three men with extended
arms to span their circumference. The outer court was
elevated six steps above the basement level; the inner
courts stood on a sort of plateau, with retaining walls
and parapets round it, which was ascended by fourteen
steps; this was on the level of the women's court. Be-
tween this and the inner court was a gate called that of
Nicanor, in front of which was a semicircular flight of
fifteen steps. The temple itself was entered by a flight
of twelve steps, so that its floor must have been between
20 and 30 feet above the ground-level of the surround-
ing city. The whole was built of the most beautiful
white marble.
The excavations recently made, at the expense of the
Palestine Exploration Fund, have disclosed considerable
remains of the massive ancient masonry, and of the cis-
terms, conduits, &c. But, with these exceptions, no
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part of old Jerusalem appears to be extant. There are,
however, some objects, formerly considered to belong to
Jewish times, that should be mentioned. There are,
first, what are called the tombs of the kings of Judah.
These are a number of Sepulchral chambers hewn out of
the solid rock, and containing Sarcophagi. They vary
from Io to 20 feet square, and are entered, exactly like
the tombs of Beni Hassan, by a portico in antis, about
40 feet wide. There are two columns and two pilasters
in front, of Greek Doric character, about 13 feet high.
The most curious feature of these is, that a broad band,
about 3 feet wide, richly sculptured with foliages, runs
down on each side 4 or 5 feet and over the columns hori-
zontally. Above this last, quite independent of the
lower construction, is a regular Doric architrave and
frieze, of a character between Grecian and Roman ; this
is ornamented with triglyphs, paterae, and foliage. In
front of the portico is a large court-yard, about 100 feet
Square. -
In the Valley of Jehoshaphat, near Jerusalem, are
three extremely curious relics ; two stand alone, on plat-
forms excavated from the rock, and the third is scarped
into the rock itself. The first is called the tomb of
Absalom. It is a square building with a solid wall, in
which are engaged Ionic columns, about 13 feet high ;
over this is a Doric entablature with triglyphs, and an
altar, surmounted by a very curious sort of hollow-sided
cupola of trumpet-mouth section, and a terminal. The
whole, including the flight of steps, is about 60 feet high.
From the character of the architecture it is incredible
that these buildings can have anything like the age as-
cribed to them. The Ionic capitals are evidently Roman,
and therefore cannot date earlier than the conquests by
that people; probably they are of the time of Herod;
while the Egyptian cornices show that the traditional
ornaments of that people had not been entirely forgotten.
Besides this, the general plan of a temple, in antis,
Scarped into a rock, so entirely resembles the work at
Beni Hassan, that it is impossible to deny that these very
interesting remains strongly corroborate the views of
Canina, that the architecture of the early temples was
at least based on the architecture of the Egyptians.
INDIAN ARCHITECTURE.
Considerable light has been recently thrown upon the
history of architecture in the East. The traditions as
to the extremely remote antiquity of the rock-cut
temples, the caves of Ellora, and the wonderful pagodas,
have disappeared before the searching eye of critical
investigation. In the time of Herodotus the Persians
had no temples; and even in that of Tacitus, the great
Indo-Germanic races “would not confine their gods
within walls.” The early religion, which appears in
the Vedas, was Brahminism, but in the 6th century
B.C., the first of the Buddhas seems to have commenced
a perversion of the ancient faith. The struggle appears
to have gone on for years, till three-quarters of a century
after the time of Alexander the Great, about 250 years
before the Christian era, when a powerful ruler named
Asoka, a grandson of Chandragupta, who is supposed
to be the Sandracottus of the Greek writers, abjured
Brahminism, and made Buddhism the religion of the
state. Certain Zats, or pillars, erected by him, and
inscribed with his edicts, are the earliest extant archi-
tectural remains of India.
The Buddhist topes are supposed to have been erected
at first to commemorate some event, or to show that
the spot was sacred; but after a time they were employed
to contain relics, such as the tooth or collar-bone of one
of the Buddhas. The relics seem in some cases to have
been preserved in a sort of box or case at the top of the
tope, called a tee; in others, in regular relic chambers.
Where there were relics, the place was called dagoba,
or relic shrine, of which, perhaps, our term pagoda is a
corruption. A great number of these topes were built
in the form of large towers, others in the form of hemi-
spheres. One of these, the Sanchi tope, is described
and figured by Mr. Fergusson. The diameter is Iof feet.
It has a curious species of gate entrance, and is sur-
rounded by a stone fence. Others are partly cylindrical,
and are finished with either a flat circle, or pointed
terminals like a dome at the top.
Of the next two classes of Buddhist architecture, the
temples (Chaityas) and monasteries (Viharas), no built
examples exist in India. They are, in fact, rock-cut
caves. At least one thousand temples are known—
one-tenth probably Brahminical or Jain, the rest Budd-
hist. They are said to form an uninterrupted series,
from the first, in I}ehar, by the grandson of Asoka, 200
years before Christ, to those at Ellora, which, instead
of being of an almost diluvian antiquity, as has gener-
ally been reported, have been proved to date from the
7th or 8th century of our era, while the most recent is
the work of Indra-dyumna, as late as the 12th century.
One of these cave-temples at Karli, near Bombay, pre-
sents exactly the features of a Roman basilica, or early
Christian church. It has a circular end or apse, and is
divided into three aisles by two rows of columns.
Others are simple square buildings, with a circular or
oval chamber at the end entered by a small door. The
monasteries, which exceed the temples in number,
seem generally to have been square caves supported by
pillars of the natural rock left in their places, and sur-
rounded by a number of small sleeping-places or cells.
The most wonderful excavations are those at Ellora,
near Aurangabad. These are a series of hypogea or
caves sunk in the solid rock, extending a distance of 3 or
4 miles. Canina has given plans and interior views of
six of them. Those called Parasova Rama and Diajan-
nata are simply halls supported on massive piers with
level architraves. The piers are richly carved with
figures and friezes, and have a sort of cushion capitals,
and square abaci, and stand round, forming a kind of
atrium. That called Indra has a court open to the sky,
in which is a small shrine or temple. In the Solid rock
are two halls similar to those above described, a larger
and smaller. The piers of the Tin Tal are quite plain.
In the Viswakarma is a quadrangle, open to the sky and
surrounded by pillars. This leads into an atrium with
three aisles and an apse, and exactly like a basilican
church. The most magnificent of the Ellora caves, and
indeed of the native Hindu works, are the chambers and
halls called the Kylas, or Kailasa. These are sunk into
the rock, and occupy a space of 270 feet deep and 150
feet wide. The roofs are solid rock, supported by pil-
lars, or rest on the walls, or on the divisions of the as-
semblage of chambers. There is a porch, on each side
of which are two columns. This conducts into a hall,
supported on 16 such columns, and leading into a sort
of adytum. Round this is passage space and five cham-
bers. The whole forms a temple, with its usual append-
ages, just such a one as would be built on the ground,
and round this a wide open space, with a colonnade or
cloister encircling the whole. Great part is open to the
sky, for the sake of light and air, but the work is en-
tirely cut out of the solid rock.
The date of the construction of the Kylas is about
IOOO A.D.
The earliest existing work of the Jains seems to be
of the Ioth century. They were a sect, which arose in
the endeavor to re-establish Brahminism, and which
first seems to have acquired importance about 450 A.D.
This sect rejects the doctrines of Buddhism, as also the
practice of monasticism. The famous temple at Som.
A R C
457
nauth belongs to them. Mr. Fergusson has given a
description of that built by Vimala Sah, on Mount Abu,
as a type of the ordinary Jain temple. In the centre is
a cell in which is a cross-legged figure of one of the
twenty-four saints worshipped by this sect; in this case
it is that of Parswanath. The cell is always terminated
by a pyramidal roof. In front of this is a portico of 48
pillars, disposed much like a cruciform church with a
dome at the intersection of the transepts. The whole
is surrounded by a species of cloister formed by double
rows of columns, and a series of small chambers like
the cells of a vihara. But as the sect abjure monasti-
cism, each cell is used not as a dwelling, but as a kind
of small chapel, and contains one of their cross-legged
deities. One of the peculiarities of this style is that
richly-carved brackets spring from the pillars at about
two-thirds of their height, and extend to the archi-
traves, forming a sort of diagonal strut to strengthen and
support them.
The Jains probably adopted the dome at a very early
period, and it is doubtful whether the Buddhists ever
used this species of construction. “No tope,” Mr.
Fergusson observes, “has the smallest trace of such a
structure, though of domical shape outside, and the
design of the rock-cut temples, with the upright sup-
ports, the raking struts, and the level architraves, has
manifestly been deduced from timber construction.”
The Indian dome has no voussoirs radiating from the
centre, as in European architecture. The courses are
all horizontal; and the domes are therefore necessarily
pointed in section, for they would not stand if circular.
The Indian dome, however, has this merit, it requires
no abutments, and has no lateral thrust. The pressure
is entirely vertical; and if the foundation be sound, and
the pillars stout enough, there can be no failure.
The leading idea of the plan of the Jain temple is that
of a number of columns arranged in squares. Wherever
it was intended to have a dome pillars were omitted, so
as to leave spaces in the form of octagons. By corbel-
ling over the pendentives in level courses the dome was
gradually formed. The plan and view of the temple at
Sadree exhibit a building as large as most cathedrals.
It has the great number of 20 domes, varying from 36
feet to 24 feet in diameter, and supported by 420 col-
U11]]]] S.
Like most architectural peoples, the Jains were also
fond of tower-building. The %aya Sthamóa, a tower
of victory erected by Khumbo Rana, to commemorate
the defeat of Mohammed of Malwa, in 1439, is nine sto-
ries high, the two topmost stories being open. The gen-
eral outline is not unlike that of an Italian campanile,
with pilasters at the angles, and an overhanging cor-
belled top. It is richly ornamented from bottom to apex,
and affords a very favorable idea of Indian art.
Hindu architecture has been divided into that of the
Aryan or Sanscrit races of North India, that of the South
or of the Tamul races, and that prevalent in the Panjab
and Cashmere. Of the first and last we have compara-
tively little knowledge, but South Hindu work is treated
of at great length by Râm Rāz, a native author. The
great pagoda at Tanjore, by far the grandest temple in
India, resting on a base 83 feet Square, rises in fourteen
stories to a height of nearly 200 feet.
Of the style of North India Mr. Fergusson gives re-
markable, and by no means elegant, examples; as the
Black Pagoda at Kannaruc, and temples at Barolli and
at Benares. The chief features are a sort of entrance
porch, sometimes walled and sometimes carried on pil-
lars, called the nuptial hall, leading into a great pagoda,
square in plan, and finishing with a sort of tub-shaped
dome. The ornamentation is profuse, so much so as to
detract from the greatness of the design. There are no
buildings in this style anterior to the Mahometan con-
quest. The date assigned to the temple of Jugernath is
f 198, and to the Black Pagoda, 1241 A.D. The ghâts,
or landing-places that line the banks of the rivers of
Northern India, are often of great architectural merit.
The pagoda forms a very prominent feature in the
architecture of Further India.
ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.
Assyria and Babylonia or Chaldea may be shortly de-
fined as the countries watered by the Euphrates and
Tigris, lying between Armenia and Arabian desert, and
reaching down to the Persian Gulf.
The capital, Ninus or Nineveh, was taken by the
Medes under Cyaxares, and some 200 years after Xeno-
phon passed over its site, then mere mounds of earth.
It remained buried until 1845, when Botta and Layard
discovered the ruins of the Assyrian cities. The princi-
pal remains are those of Khorsabad, IO miles N. E. of
Mosul ; of Nimroud, supposed to be the ancient Calah;
and of Kouyunjik, in all probability the ancient Nin-
eveh. In these cities are found fragments of several great
buildings which seem to have been palace-temples. They
were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, and all that
remains of them is the lower part of the walls, decorated
with sculpture and paintings, portions of the pavements,
a few indications of the elevation, and some interesting
works connected with the drainage, &c.
The structures were built usually on artificial mounds,
and approached, it is supposed, by great flights of steps
(of which remains composed of black basalt have been
found at Khorsabad). They consist of series of halls
and chambers of no great size, the largest hall in Sen-
nacherib's palace at Kouyunjik being only 200 feet by
45 feet, whereas Westminster Hall is 268 feet by 68 feet.
In their proportions they are utterly unlike Egyptian
structures, and they display the striking peculiarity of
being elongated beyond anything known in other styles
of architecture; e.g., one of the Kouyunjik halls is 122
feet long by 27 wide, another is 218 feet long by 25 wide.
The great hall at Nimroud, though 162 feet by 62, was
divided lengthwise in the centre by a wall 12 feet thick,
leaving each side only 25 feet wide. Another peculiarity
of these structures is the immense thickness of the walls.
Those of the Rouyunjik hall (27 feet wide) were 15 feet
thick, and those of Nimroud (32 feet wide) were 26 feet
thick. It has, indeed, been reckoned by Mr. Fergusson,
that in some of the palaces the area of the walls is as
great as that of the chambers. The reason he suggests
for this is that these thick walls supported a double row
of columns as a clerestory under the roof, so arranged as
to give light and air, while excluding the rays of the sun.
He covers the halls with flat roofs, supported on columns,
which being of wood have rotted or been burnt. An
entirely different theory is that of M. Flandin, who
studied the subject on the spot. He believes that the
halls were vaulted and had small windows at the spring-
ing. M. Victor Place has found at Khorsabad several
vaults, and also terra cotta tubes, through which he
believes that the vaults were lighted, just as domes were
in Persia in later times. But no vault has been found
large enough to span any of the wide Assyrian halls.
Of their elevations there are few traces remaining. At
Nimroud, what is supposed to be the tomb of Sardan-
apalus has its lower part, which is about 20 feet high, of
solid masonry, and the rest of burnt bricks. It has
slightly projecting piers, but no ornaments or mould-
ings. At Khorsabad and the S.E. palace of Nimroud
there is some attempt at decoration, by rude semi-col-
umns, without capitals or bases, arranged in clusters of
seven, side by side, the groups being separated by
recesses. A few detached pieces of moulding have been
458
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found at Khorsabad, but of the very simplest kind, and
we have no vestiges of capital or entablature. Were
our knowledge limited to these and a few similar remains,
we should have to form but a poor idea of Assyrian art.
But the sculptures have revealed to us a degree of refine-
ment which had been previously looked for only in
Greece. These sculptures lined the sides of the halls to
a height of IO feet. In them we see columns with both
base and capital, and surmounted by entablatures.
Sometimes the columns are combined with pilasters, as
in the Greek porticos in antis. In one specimen the
columns were carried on the backs of bulls, as is shown
by one of the bas-reliefs, and, more conclusively still, by
the beautiful small model of a winged bull brought to
England by Mr. George Smith, which has carved upon
its back a base, just as is shown on the slabs.
The plans of all the Assyrian buildings are rectangu-
lar, and we know that long ago, as now, the Eastern
architects used this outline almost invariably, and upon
it reared some of the most lovely and varied forms ever
devised. They gather over the angles by graceful curves,
and on the basis of an ordinary square hall carry up a
minaret or a dome, an octagon or a circle. That this
was sometimes done in Assyria is shown by the sculp-
tures. Slabs from Kouyunjik show domes of varied
form, and tower-like structures, each rising from a
square base. The resemblance between the ancient
form of the dome and those still used in the Assyrian
villages is very striking. Whether sloping roofs were
used is uncertain. Mr. Bonomi believes that they were,
and a few sculptures seem to support his view. Of the
private houses nothing, of course, remains; but they are
represented on the slabs as being of several stories in
height, the ground floor as usual having only a door and
no windows. All have flat roofs, and we gather from
one of the bas-reliefs, which represents a town on fire,
that these roofs were made, just as they now are, with
thick layers of earth on strong beams. These roofs are
well-nigh fire proof, and the flames are represented as
stopped by them, and coming out of the windows. No
remains of a window, or, so far as we are aware, of an
internal staircase, have been found.
Of the fortifications we know much more. In the
north wall of Nimroud fifty-eight towers have been
traced, and at Kouyunjik there are large remains of three
walls, the lower part being of stone, and the upper of
sun-dried bricks. At Khorsabad there are the remains of
a wall, still 40 feet high, built of blocks of stone 3 to 4
ſeet thick, and the evidences wanting as to the finishing
of these is completely supplied by the sculptures, which
show an extraordinary resemblance to mediaeval works
of the same class. Tier upon tier of walls are repre-
sented, enclosing a great tower or keep in the centre.
The entrances are great arched gateways flanked by
square towers. These and the other towers have over-
hanging parapets just like the mediaeval machicolations,
and are finished at top with battlements, remains of
which have been found at Nimroud and Kouyunjik, and
at Kaleh Shergat, the supposed capital of Assyria before
Nineveh.
Of temples distinct from the palace we have a few sup-
posed remains, but little is absolutely known as to their
general form.
But in Chaldea there are some enormous masses of
ruins, evidently remains of the vast mounds which formed
the substructure of their temples. The grandest of all
these and the most interesting is the Birs Nimroud, near
Babylon, which has been identified as the temple of the
Seven Spheres at Borsippa. This was reconstructed by
Nebuchadnezzar, as appears by a well known inscription.
Another example is at Mugeyer, which was 198 feet by
133 feet at the base, and is even now 70 feet high, and it
is clear that both it and the Birs were built with dimm-
ishing stages, presenting a series of grand platforms,
decreasing in length as they ascended, and leaving a
comparatively small one at top for the temple cell. This
has been found, it is supposed, at the Birs Nimroud, of
vitrified brick.
The most interesting parts of the Assyrian edifices are
the finishings. The pavements were sometimes of sun-
dried bricks, at other times of baked bricks, or of ala-
baster slabs laid in bitumen. At Khorsabad there was
one in a single block 13 feet square, and 3 ft. II in.
thick, and at the Nimroud temple there were two slabs,
one 19 ft. 6 in. by 12 feet, and the other 21 feet by 16
feet, and 1 ft. I in. thick, both sides covered with inscrip-
tions. Of ornamental pavements there are admir-
able examples from Kouyunjik at the British Museum,
and from Khorsabad at the Louvre, both covered with
delicate carving in alabaster of nearly the same pattern,
It is difficult to conceive how such delicate work could
have been used as paving, and still retain its beautiful
sharpness; for it was not filled in to protect the pattern.
Directly above the pavement came the sculptured slabs,
which are so numerous that at Kouyunjik alone there are
some two miles in length of them. They are generally
about 1o feet high from the ground, and are carved in
alabaster. Many of them show traces of having been
decorated with colors. Connected with these Sculptures
were the great winged animals which stand one on each
side of the portals of the palaces. Some of the grand-
est have the body and legs of a bull, with an enormous
pair of wings projecting from the shoulders, high over
their backs, and covering the breast. They have human
heads, bull’s ears with large ear-rings, and horns, wind-
ing from the brows upwards, and encircling a coronet of
leaves, bound by a fillet of roses. They stood in pairs on
each side of the palace doorways, and it is thought by
some that generally there were no doors or lintels, all
being open to the roof and enclosed with curtains. But
doors were sometimes used, as the places or recesses for
the bolts, hinges, pins, or sockets have been found; and
Mr. Smith has discovered a doorway with its actual lin-
tel, now in the British Museum.
In Assyrian art generally there is little analogy to that
of Egypt. There is some slight resemblance in the
mouldings and in a few of the ornaments, but in Assyria
there are no forests of columns, no grand pylons, no
enormous cloistered court, and nothing to equal the
gigantic pyramids or tombs of Egypt. The Sphinx is
superseded by the winged bull, and the slightly, cut
intaglio by the magnificently sculptured slab. . In these
early Assyrian structures there is art at a high stage of
perfection, but we have no means of discovering the
steps by which it was attained.
PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE.
Persia was one of the greatest of ancient nations. At
one time it embraced all Upper Asia, and Asia Minor,
Phoenicia, Egypt, Thrace, and Macedonia, and though
the greatness of its glory has departed, it was still, a
great living nation even in the 18th century, when its
king Nadir Shah invaded India. Compared with Egypt,
Assyria, and Babylonia, long since extinct, it has had a
wonderful existence, reaching down from Cyrus to our
own time.
Of the early times of the empire no authentic re-
mains exist, except those of the tomb of its founder,
Cyrus, at Murgab or Pasargadae (east of the head of
the Persian Gulf), and some of the walls, &c., of the
ancient capital, Ecbatana, in North Media. . The for-
mer is still in a wonderful state of preservation, but it
can scarcely be reckoned amongst Persian edifices, as
it is clearly a work designed by some architect from a
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459
Greek colony of Asia Minor. The tomb stands on
seven bold steps of white marble, the lowest being 43
feet by 37 feet. The tomb itself is 21 feet by 16 ft. 5
in. outside, with bold mouldings to the door; it has a
sloping roof of marble, with a pediment at each end,
enriched with mouldings. The chamber itself is only
7 feet by Io, the walls being built up with thick blocks
of marble. Near the tomb was the famous inscription,
“I am Cyrus the king, the Achaemenian,” and though
this is now wanting, recent discoveries seem to have
disinterred the stone which had borne it, and which had
been torn away. Round the tomb outside had evidently
been a colonnade of 24 columns, fragments of which,
with the bases, also remain. They resemble those
commonly used by the Greeks. This singular struct-
ure seems to have been unique in Persia. It is evi-
dently the work of a foreigner, although the outline
may represent, as is supposed, a temple. The famous
walls of Ecbatana, the ancient capital, are said to have
been 75 feet broad and IOS high, its stones 9 feet by 4
ft. 6 in., and its gateways IOO feet high and 6o wide.
The remains, however, show walls only 12 feet wide,
stones only 2 feet by I ft. 2 in., and a gateway only 12 feet
high and Io feet wide. They deserve particular men-
tion on account of their being among the earliest ex-
amples of constructive coloring on a grand scale. The
walls are said to have been seven in number, one over
the other on the sides of a conical hill, and colored in
succession, white, black, Scarlet, blue, orange, silver,
and the innermost gilt. From what has been discov-
ered at Warka (see above), it is possible that this gor-
geous description may have been founded on fact; and
we know that the Easterns in early times were profuse
in their employment of glazed colored bricks.
Some 50 years after Cyrus, the chief buildings at Per-
sepolis and Susa were constructed; large portions still
remain, and form some of the grandest ruins in existence.
The existing buildings at Persepolis occupy a remark-
able position on an elevated platform (partly, it would
seem, artificial) at the foot of a steep rock in the face of
which were cut out the tomb chambers of the Persian
kings. The platform was 1425 feet on the west side,
and 926 feet on the north, about the size of the Horti-
cultural Gardens in London, including the arcades and
conservatory. It was raised about 40 feet above the
level of the adjoining country, and faced with a wall,
built with stones of an immense size. The platform
was approached by the grandest flight of steps in the
world, each step being 22 feet long. Having scaled
these, the stranger would pass through the first building
viz., the Propylaeum of Xerxes, a building whose remains
have given rise to several theories as to its original plan
and purpose. . There remain two grand gateways 24
feet apart, with portions, more or less perfect, between
these, of four columns 45 feet high. The gateways had
openings of 13 feet, and each of the piers was partly
composed of bulls, admirably executed, and strikingly
like the Assyrian Sculptures at the Louvre from Khorso-
bad. The human heads of these animals are crowned
with coronets of leaves, and from the top of the coronets
to the hoofs, the animal measures 19 feet. Through
this structure was the entrance to the grand palace, the
Chehil Minar, i.e., hall of 40 columns, an Eastern mode
of expressing a great many, as there were really 72. It
was approached by a magnificent staircase, each step of
which served as a pedestal to a figure (I ft. 9 in. high) in
bas-relief, the whole representing a procession, and of
great value as giving the varied costumes, &c., of the
period. The columns of the palace are arranged in four
divisions, viz., one of 36 columns in the centre, and three
each of 12 columns in two rows, divided from the centre
by a space of about 60 feet. Of all these only Io are
standing, but the bases of most remain, and the whole.
ground is covered with the ruins of the columns that
have fallen. Their height varied from 60 feet (including
capital and base) in the front division, to 67 ft. 4 in. in
the centre one. In these columns there is an advance
upon the architecture of Egypt, for they have bases.
richly carved, and capitals of a form unknown to our
art, before or since. The typical form is that of the
double-headed bull with a deep cavity between the heads,
evidently intended to hold a beam. There is a quaint
grandeur about these columns, from their design and
their gigantic size. The capitals on one division, the
western, are 7 feet high, and 12 ft. 2 in. wide, whilst
the shaſts, 54 ft. IO in. high, are each composed of
only four great marble blocks. Unfortunately we have
only fragments of these buildings, with no history or
tradition to guide us as to their perfect forms. There
are no walls, no doorways, and no roofs.
To sum up as to our knowledge of Persian art, the
greater part of the remains are columnar, not an edifice
is built on the Assyrian plan, and there is little to remind
us of Assyria except the human headed bull. The doors.
and windows somewhat resemble those of Egypt. They
have the same plain architrave, the large roll, cavetto,
and fillet at top. But the sides of the portals are straight;.
there are no massive pylons, and the whole character of
the columns, bases, and capitals is utterly unlike any
known remains of Egyptian or Assyrian art. All we
know is that Persian art was developed contemporane-
ously with that of Greece, though with utterly different
results. The elegant form of the Greek temples, the
curve of the Assyrian arch, would seem to have been
unknown to the Persians, who, it appears likely, worked
out their latest forms by gradual stages, from the early
structures of wood, and thus originated a style, grand,
picturesque, and in its ruins beautiful, but well-nigh
isolated in the history of art, there being nothing from
which it was quite copied, and nothing which seems
quite to have sprung from it.
‘ARCHITECTURE OF ASIA MINOR.
Little was known of the antiquities of Asia Minor
until, in 1838 and 1840, Sir C. Fellows discovered in its
northwestern corner eleven ruined and deserted cities.
It was reasonable to think that in these we should have
the missing link between Assyrian and Greek art. But
although a few of the sculptures.show traces of Assyrian
influence, and though the later structures are very similar
to those of Greece, the productions of native art seem
quite isolated and peculiar. The most ancient remains.
are considerably later than such masterpieces of skill as
the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae, and the great
works of later times were erected long after the
Parthenon.
The earliest works remaining are singularly like the
Etruscan graves so often found in Italy. Perhaps the
first of these is the tomb at Tantalais near Smyrna,
which has simply a square chamber, ceiled with a pointed
arch, formed with oversailing courses, and all covered
with a tumulus. Like to it is the tomb of Alyattes, king.
of Lydia, on the bank of the Hermus, near Sardis. It
has also one chamber, II feet by 8, and 7 feet high, in
the centre of a circular pyramid, not sloping directly
from the ground, as in Egypt, but having a high moulded
stereobate, at the starting, some 34 mile round. This
structure would create no surprise if found in Tuscany;
and still more to increase the resemblance to Etruscan
work, it appears to have been surmounted by five stone
pillars. Of the tombs which belong to the races be-
tween the above and the time when Greek art was intro-
duced or was invented, the rudest are, perhaps, to be
found in Caira. They are sarcophagi, and those at:
46O
A R C
Olinda, e.g., are of enormous size, ranged on each side
‘of the street leading to the city. In the simplest form
a cavity was made in a great stone for the body, and
a heavy lid put over it, coped or rising as a pediment in
centre. Generally they were plain and oblong in shape.
In Lycia, chiefly on the banks of the Xanthus, are found
other sepulchres of remarkably singular form.
GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE.
Hitherto, we have found that, in each country, the
artistic forms used in the earliest periods descended
to later times, which embodied to some extent the tradi-
tionary forms bequeathed to them. Even the Egyptian
pyramids, unarchitectural as they are, were copied down
to the 7th or 8th century in Nubia, and the earliest col-
ummar architecture clearly shows itself as simply the
beginning of a series of works extending from 2000 B. c.
even to the Caesars. But in Greece the earliest works
are entirely separated from the later by an absolute
break both in architectural forms and construction. In
various parts of Greece and of Italy, specimens of rude
walling are found of such remote antiquity that they are,
as by common consent, referred to the fabulous ages,
and, for want of a more distinctive term, are called
Cyclopean. Now it appears, from the concurring evi-
dence, in the opinion of most antiquaries, that a people
who have been called Pelasgi, or sailors, migrated from
Asia Minor, or the coast of Syria, at a very early period,
and possessed themselves of various countries, some of
which were unoccupied, and others inhabited by Celtic
tribes. Their first arrival in the Peloponnesus was under
Inachus, about 1800 B.C., and according to their own
tradition they made their first appearance in this quarter
as uncultivated Savages. They must, however, at an
early period have made some progress towards civilisa-
tion, since the most ancient states, Argos and Sicyon,
owed their origin to them; and to them, perhaps with
great probability, are attributed the remains of those
most ancient monuments generally termed Cyclopic.
The most ancient specimen of Cyclopic walling is ſound
at Tiryns, near Mycenae. It is composed of huge masses
of rock roughly hewn and piled up together, with the
interstices at the angles filled up by small stones, but
without mortar or cement of any kind. The next species
is in stones of various sizes also, shaped polygonally, and
fitted with nicety one to another, but not laid in courses.
The oldest existing structure in Greece of regular form
is of far superior construction to the Cyclopean walling,
and must be referred to early colonists. It is at
Mycenae, and consists of two subterranean chambers,
one much larger than the other. The outer and larger
qne is circular, and is entered by a huge doorway at the
end of a long avenue of colossal walls, built in nearly
parallel courses of rectangular stones, roughly hewn,
however, and laid without mortar. Its external effect is
that of an excavation, though the structure of the front
is evident; and internally it assumes the form of an im-
mense lime-kiln; its vertical section being of a conical
form, with nearly parabolic curves, like a pointed arch.
The construction of this edifice was thought to afford
clear evidence that the Greeks were acquainted with the
properties of the arch; but in the most material point
this was destroyed on finding that it consisted of parallel
projecting courses of stone in horizontal layers, in the
manner called by our workmen battering, or perhaps
more correctly, corbelling. It proves, however, that its
architect understood the principle of the arch in its hor-
izontal position; for it was discovered, by excavations
above it, that the diminishing rings of which the dome
is composed were complete in themselves for withstand-
ing outward pressure; the joints of the stones being
partly wrought radiating, and partly rendered so by
wedges of small stones driven tightly into them behind.
The apex is formed, not by a key-stone, for the con-
struction does not admit of that, but by a covering
stone, which is merely laid on the course immediately
below it.
As no nation has ever equalled the Egyptians in the
extent and magnitude of their architectural monuments,
neither have the Greeks been surpassed in the exquisite
beauty of form and proportion, in the extreme simplicity
and perfect harmony, which prevade every part of their
structures. Unfortunately these monuments are known
to us only by their ruins, for there is not a Grecian
building remaining in a perfect state. In Greece
proper, at least, this was not so until a comparatively
recent date, viz., that of the war between the Venetians
and Turks. The Parthenon itself was nearly perfect
until that time, when it was shattered by an explosion of
gunpowder (1687).
First in importance in Grecian architecture is the use
of the three orders, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, with
the peculiar mouldings, &c., connected with each. The
Doric and Ionic columns, rudely drawn, appear on the
early Etruscan or Greek vases. They are very slender,
with large projecting capitals and with entablatures,
which indicate pretty clearly copies from a construction
of wood.
Of the triglyph, the most distinguishing part of the
Doric entablature, there are many indications in the early
works of Upper Egypt; and in the structures of the
Ptolemies they are still more evident, though it may be
objected that in them the indications were borrowed
from the Greeks after the Macedonian conquest. But
it must be borne in mind that the Egyptian nation did
not change its character, religion, or usages by the
change of its governors; and the Egyptians were,
through the whole period of their existence as a nation,
an originating and not an imitative people; whereas
the Greeks seized on a beauty wherever they found
one, and made it their own by improving it. To the
question, why the Greeks cannot be allowed to have
originated that beautiful style of architecture which they
brought to the perfection it displays in their works, it
may be sufficient to answer, that it would be against
the common course of events if it were so. It is re-
markable that, in Greece, the earliest specimen of
columnar architecture that presents itself displays the
chief characteristics which are found in works of
periods when learning and civilisation were at their
acme in that country.
Vitruvius gives several accounts of the origin of the
Greek Doric order. He states first that “ Dorus (the
son of Hellenus and of the nymph Orseis), king of
Achaia and of all the Peloponnesus, having formerly
built a temple to Juno in the ancient city of Argos, this
temple was found by chance to be in that manner which
we call Doric.” In another place he deduces the ar-
rangements of the order from those of a primitive log
hut, settling with the utmost precision what, in the
latter, suggested the various parts in the former. But
he also tells us that the Doric column was modelled by
the Grecian colonists in Asia Minor in the proportions
of a human figure, and was made six diameters in
height, because a man was found to be 6 times the
length of his foot. But this story, even supposing it to
be rational, does not coincide with the Greek Doric at
all, but, if with anything, with the Roman. . .
Ín the Greek examples, this order may be divided
into three parts, stylobate, column, and entablature.
The stylobate is from two-thirds to a whole diameter of
the column in height, in three equal courses, which
recede gradually the one above from the one below it,
and on the floor or upper step the column rests. That
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46 I
graduation, it may be remarked, does not appear to have
been made by the ancients to facilitate the access to the
floor of the stoa or portico, but on the principle of the
spreading footings of a wall, to give both real and
apparent firmness to the structure, both of which it does
in an eminent degree.
The column varies in height in different examples,
from four diameters, as at Corinth, to six diameters, as
at Sunium. Of this the capital, including the necking,
is rather less than half a diameter: in those cases in
which a necking does not exist, the capital itself occu-
pies nearly the same proportion. The shaft diminishes
in a slightly curved line, called an entasis, from its base
or inferior diameter upwards to the hypotrachelium,
where the diameter is from two-thirds to four-fifths of
that at the base. It is the inferior diameter that is
always intended when the term is used as a measure of
proportion. The capital consists of a necking, an
echinus or ovolo, and an abacus; the necking is about
one-fifth of the height of the capital, and the other two
members equally divide the remaining four-fifths; when
there is no necking, the ovolo occupies the greater pro-
portion of the whole height. The abacus is a square
tablet, whose sides are rather more than the inferior
diameter of the column. The corbelling of the ovolo
adapts it to both the diminished head of the shaft and
the extended abacus, flowing into the one, and forming
a bed for the other by means of a graceful cyma-reversa;
but its lower part is encircled by three or four rings or
annulets, which are variously formed in different
examples, and, which give the echinus form to the great
moulding, although it is, as we have said, part of a cyma-
reversa. The shaft is divided generally into twenty flutes;
but there are several examples with sixteen, and there is
one with twenty-four. The flutes are sometimes seg-
ments of circles, sometimes semi-ellipses, and some-
times eccentric curves. They always meet in an arris
or edge, and follow the entasis and diminution of the
column up through the hypotrachelium to the annulets,
under which they finish, sometimes with a straight and
sometimes with a curved head. At the base they detail
on the pavement or floor of the stylobate. . In one
example at Segesta the columns are not fluted at all,
and in two others, at Cnidus and Delos, the flutes are
marked at top and bottom only, but in these examples
the columns were possibly not finished.
The third part of the order, the entablature, ranges
in various examples from one diameter and three-quar-
ters to rather more than two diameters in height, of
which about four-fifths is nearly equally divided between
the architrave and frieze, while the cornice occupies the
remaining one-fifth; this is in some cases exactly the
distribution of the entablature. The architrave is in one
broad face, four-fifths, and sometimes five-sixths of its
whole height; and the remaining fifth or sixth is given
to a projecting continuous fillet called the taenia, which
occupies one-half the space, and a regula or small lintel
attached to it, in lengths equal to the breadth of the
triglyphs above in the ſrieze. From the regulae six
small cylindrical drops, called guttae, depend. There
are examples to the contrary, but it may be taken
as a general rule, that the architrave is not in the same
vertical line with the upper face of the shaft, or its cir-
cumferential line, at the superior diameter, but is pro-
jected nearly so much as to impend the line or face of
the column at the base. In one example only is the
architrave known to be sculptured, viz., as Assos, where
it has bas-reliefs of bulls fighting. The frieze, verti-
cally, is plain about six-sevenths of its whole height,
and is bounded above by a fascia, slightly projecting
from it, which occupies the remaining seventh. Hori-
zontally, however, it is divided into triglyphs and
metopes, which regulate the intercolumniations; the
former being nearly a semidiameter in width, and the
latter (the space interposed between two triglyphs)
generally an exact square, its breadth being equal to the
whole height of the frieze, including the fascia. This
latter breaks round the triglyphs horizontally, and is
little increased in depth on them. The metopes are
shown on the vases to be holes between the ends of
beams, and that the metopes were, at one time, open,
seems to be proved by a passage in Euripides, who
lived during the construction of the Parthenon. No
example, however, early or late, remains to support this.
view. Each glyph, of which there are two whole ones
and two halves to every tablet, is one-fifth of the width
of the whole, and the interglyphs are each one-seventh
of the whole tablet or triglyph. The glyphs detail on
the taenia of the architrave, but are variously finished
above. In some examples they are nearly square-
headed, with the angles rounded off; in others the heads.
are regular curves, from a flat segment to a semi-eclipse.
The semiglyphs are finished above in a manner peculiar
to themselves, with a turn or drop; but hardly two
examples correspond in that particular. The tablets in
which the glyphs are cut are vertical to the face of the
architrave, the metopes recede from them like sunk
panels; these are often charged with sculptures, and
indeed almost appear contrived to receive them. The
third and crowning part of the entablature, the cornice,
in what may be considered the best examples, projects
from the face of the triglyphs and architrave about its
own height. Vertically, it is divided into four equal
parts, one of which is given to a square project-
ing fillet at the top, with a small congeries of mouldings,
different, and differently proportioned to each other, in
various examples. Two other parts are given to the
corona, and the remaining fourth to a narrow sunk face
below it, with the mutules and their guttae. These lat-
ter form the soffit or planceer of the cornice, which is
not horizontal or at right angles to the vertical face of
the entablature generally, but is cut up inwards at an
angle of about 80°. The width of the mutules them-
selves is regulated by that of the triglyphs over which
they are placed, to which it is exactly equal. They are
ornamented each with three rows of six small cylinders,
similar to those which depend from the regulae under the
triglyphs and on the architrave. There is twice the
number of mutules that there is of triglyphs, one of the
former being placed over every metope also in the man-
ner the examples indicate.
This completes the Greek Doric order according to
the generally received sense of the term ; but there are
other parts necessary to it. In the front or on the ends of
a temple, or over a portico, a pediment is placed. Its
intention is to enclose the ends of the roof, but it forms no
less a part of the architectural composition. In reason, it
should be raised as much as the roof required ; but when
the span is great that would be unsightly; and reference
appears to have been made to the common standard of
proportion, as the pediments of most Doric temples are
found to be about one diameter and a half in height at the
apex of the tympanum, which in a hexastyle arrange-
ment makes an angle at the base of about 14°, and in
an octastyle about 12%9. The pediment is covered by
the cornice, without its mutules, rising ſrom the point of
its crowning fillet, so that no part of it is repeated in
profile. Another moulding, however, is superimposed :
sometimes this is an Ovolo with a fillet over it, and
sometimes a cymatium. It varies much in its proportion
to the cornice, but in the best examples it is about one-
half the depth of the latter without its mutules. Orna-
ments of various kinds, statues or foliage, are believed
to have been placed on the apices and at the feet of
462
A R C
49ediments as acroteria. Of these, however, we have
the remains of one only (a very beautiful one), viz., at
AEgina; but indications of the plinths or blocks which
may have received them exist, and such things appear
represented on ancient coins and medallions. The
tympana of pediments are well known as receptacles of
ornamental sculpture. On the flank of a Doric temple,
the cornice supported a row of ornamental tiles called
antefixae. These formed a rich and appropriate orna-
ment, but they rather belonged to the roof than to the
columnar arrangement or order. The antefixae covered
the ends of the joint-tiles as the pediments did those of
the roofs; and corresponding ornaments called stelai
rose out of the apices of the joint-tiles, forming a
highly enriched ridge.
As before stated, the earliest examples of columns are
the heaviest; they are also the most tapering, and there
are some other details which help us in identifying the
date of a Doric edifice in Greece proper. The hypo-
trachelium in early examples, as at Corinth, has three
grooves; in later, as the Parthenon, only one. The con-
tour also of the chief member, the echinus, varied at
different dates. In the earliest it was full and round, as
at Corinth, and at Assos (the latter having the greatest
curve of any known example); sometimes, possibly, as
at Segesta, struck with the compass, but almost always
part of a conic section (parabola). In later times it
became less curved, and in the finest examples almost
flat, as in the Propylaeum and Parthenon, but still form-
ing part of a very delicate curve (hyperbola). In one
case, at Selinus, where, to an inexperienced eye, the
whole temple would appear to be of the same date, the
differences alluded to contrast very strongly with each
other. In the very late times of Greek work, when
art became debased, the coarse round form of earlier
work is exhibited, as in the Agora. The width of the
abacus in early examples, as Corinth, is as much as
two-sevenths the height of the shaft and cap. In later
examples it diminishes to one-fifth. And as the column,
so the entablature was more massive in the early exam-
ples, except in the colonies, where the old proportions
continued to a late period. At Paestum the proportion
of entablature to column is as 1 to 2.4; AEgina, I to
2.53; Theseum, I to 3 nearly.
7%e G7-eciazz /ozzic.
Of this beautiful and graceful order it is as difficult to
determine the origin as of the Doric. The explanation
of Vitruvius is that the Ionian colonists, on building a
temple to Diana, wished to find some new matter that
was beautiful. Following the method which they had
pursued with the Doric (proportioning the column
according to the dimensions of a man), they imparted
to this the delicacy of the female figure — in the first
place, by making the diameter of the column one-eighth
of its height, then by putting a base to it in twisted
cords, like the sandals of a woman, and forming the capi-
tal with volutes, like the hair which hangs on both sides
of her face.
From the recent discoveries in Assyria, however,
there can be no reasonable doubt that the Greek col-
onists of Ionia at least obtained their idea of the Ionic
capital from Nineveh. As to its earliest forms great
differences of opinion exist. An extremely plausible
theory, originated and ably worked out by Mr. Skid-
more, suggests that the delicate Ionic curls were copied
from the curved ornamental wire-work of the gold-
Smiths.
Of this graceful and elegant style we take the propor-
tions and peculiarities from the perfect examples of the
Athenian Acropolis. This order may also be consid-
ered in three similar parts, stylobate, column, and
entablature. The stylobate is in three receding equal
courses or steps, whose united height is from four-fifths
to one diameter. The column, consisting of base,
shaft, and capital, is rather more than nine diameters
in height; of which the base is two-fifths of a diameter,
and the capital, including the hypotrachelium, is in one
case three-fourths, and in the other seven-eighths of a
diameter high. As shown in the vases, it is invariably
very long and slender, and without bases; but no actual
example remains to us without a base. The base
consists of a congeries of mouldings extending gradu-
ally from a diameter and a third to a diameter and a
half, and its height is in three nearly equal parts, two
equal fillets separating them. The lowest, a torus,
rests on the top of the stylobate or floor of the portico,
a fillet divides that from the Scotia, a second fillet inter-
venes between the Scotia and a second torus, and a
third fillet bases the apophyge or escape of the shaft.
The upper torus of the base is, in one example, fillet-
fluted horizontally; and in the other, the same member
is enriched with the guillochos. The shaft diminishes
with entasis from its lower or whole diameter to above
five-sixths of it immediately under the hypotrachelium.
It is fluted with twenty-four flutes and alternating
fillets, which follow the diminution and entasis of the
column. The flutes in plan are nearly semi-ellipses,
and they finish at both ends with the same curve; a
fillet is in thickness nearly one-fourth the width of a
flute. The difference in the height of the capital is in
the length of the necking, which in one case is sepa-
rated from the head of the shaft by a carved bead, and
in the other by a plain fillet. Above the necking, a
height of about one-third of a diameter is occupied by
a congeries of three spreading or corbelling mould-
ings—a bead, an ovolo, and a torus—which are all
appropriately carved. On these rests the parallelo-
gramic block, on whose faces are the volutes, and
whose ends are concaved into what is technically termed
a bolster to connect them. This part is about one-third
of a diameter in height, and includes a rectilinear
abacus, whose edges are moulded to an Ovolo and
carved with the egg and tongue ornament. The volutes
are three-fifths of a diameter in depth, and extend in
front to one diameter and a half; and they are nearly a
semi-diameter apart. The bolsters are fluted vertically
with alternate fillets, on which are carved beads. An
ornament composed of the honeysuckle with tendrils
encircles the necking of the column. It must be
remarked, that as the capitals are parallelogramic, and
present two similar fronts, to preserve the appearance
of volutes externally on all sides, the capitals of the col-
umns at the external angles of porticoes are differently
arranged. The outer volute is bent out at an angle of
45°, and volutes are put on the end or side-front of the
capital also, the outer one being the other side of the
angular volute of the front. To suit the angle inter-
nally, the two volutes of the inner face are placed at
right angles to each other: this is, however, at best but
an awkward expedient, and need not be employed when
a portico projects only one intercolumniation. All the
Greek volutes are flat on the surface, except at Bassae,
where the volutes are curved.
The entablature, which is rather more than two
diameters in height, is also divided into three parts,
architrave, frieze, and cornice,— which may be propor-
tioned by dividing the whole height into five parts, four
of which, as in the Doric, may be again equally divided
between the architrave and the frieze. The cornice,
however, in the example referred to, does not occupy
one-fifth of the entablature; but if it had a fillet over the
upper moulding, which it appears to want, that would
béjust its proportion. If the architrave be divided into
A R C
463
nine parts, seven of them may be given to three equal
fascias, which slightly project the one before the other;
the first or lowest, which is vertical to the circumferen-
tial line of the inferior diameter, being covered by the
second, and the second by the third. The remaining
two-ninths form a band of mouldings corbelling a broad
fillet, which separates the architrave from the frieze;
these mouldings are enriched. The frieze, which does
not project quite so much as the lowest fascia of the
architrave is, in the Athenian examples, quite plain;
but it may be enriched with foliage, or made the re-
ceptacle of sculpture in low relief. In two examples
(one at Selinus, and another at Agrigentum), the frieze
has the Doric triglyph. The cornice projects from the
face of the ſrieze rather more than as much as its whole
height, and is composed of bed mouldings, a corona,
and crown-mouldings. The first are a carved bead and
carved cyma-reversa, the former of which only occupies
a portion of the height of the cornice, as the planceer is
cut up inwards, to a sufficient depth for it; the crown
mouldings, which consist of a carved ovolo above a
carved bead, are rather more than one-fourth of the
whole cornice; and the corona occupies the rest of
its height, except that small portion given to the bead
of the bed-mould. A fillet above the crown-mouldings,
as already intimated, is certainly necessary to complete
the order and receive the antefixae, as has been heretofore
in this article described in the Doric, for the flank of a
temple.
The pediments in the examples of Ionic are flatter
than in those of the Doric, the angle made by the cov-
ering cornice with the base being, in a hexastyle, less
than 14°. A vertical fillet, with a small moulding,
equal in depth to the two crown-mouldings of the cor-
nice, covers them in the pediment, in the place of the
cyma-recta or ovolo used in the Doric order. The in-
tercolumniation differs in these examples; in the one it
is two diameters, and in the other three diameters and
one-sixth.
A much greater variety is found in the composition
of the Ionic than the Doric order. Indeed, the exam-
ples of the Athenian Acropolis alone have neckings.
In all the others the shaft runs up to the corbelled
mouldings which bed the block of the volutes, and the
flutes finish under them. Neither have they a torus in
that congeries, but a bead and ovolo alone, the latter
projecting inconveniently under the pendent lines that
connect the volutes, and thus the capital is not more
than half a diameter in height.
The Asiatic or the truly Ionian examples of this order
are far inferior to those above referred to. Their bases
are differently, and certainly less elegantly composed.
They are without hypotrachelia, as may have been in-
ferred; they want the torus in the capital; and, in most
cases, instead of flowing, pendent lines, they have
straight lines connecting the volutes. Their entabla-
tures are not so finely proportioned, nor so delicately
executed. The coronas want breadth, and the bed-
moulds of the cornice are as much too heavy as those of
Athens are perhaps too light. Indeed, upon the whole,
they have more of the grossness of Roman architecture
than of the delicacy and elegance of Grecian, though
the Ionian examples are supposed to be the models of
those of Athens. In the celebrated temple of Diana at
Ephesus the columns present an almost unique example
of the lower parts being sculptured.
The width of the antae of the Ionic order is deter-
mined, as in the Doric, by the soffit of the entablature;
and it will, of course; be exactly the same as, or rather
less than, the inferior diameter of the column. It is
slightly raised, too, from the face of the wall at the
ends of which it stands. The base of the antae is, in one
of the two examples of the Acropolis, a little deeper than
that of the column, having a small projecting moulding
between the lower torus and the floor; and the lower torus
itself is reeded. In the other example there is no differ-
ence in the form and proportion of the antae and col
umnar bases, but both the tori are fluted horizontally.
with beaded fillets between the flutes. The antae cap
consists of a congeries of corbelling mouldings, nearly
one-third of a diameter in height. It is divided into
three nearly equal parts, the lowest of which is composed
of a bead and an ovolo; the second of another bead and
a cyma-reversa, all carved; and the third of a plain flat
cavetto, with a narrow fillet and small crowning cyma-
reversa, forming an abacus. The necking is like that
of the capital, and is enriched in the same manner. The
cap or cornice thus formed breaks round the projection
of the antae, and is continued along the wall under the
entablature the whole length of the building, or till it is
impeded by some other construction; and the base is con-
tinued in like manner. Attached columns have the
voluted capital, but their base is that of the antae; and
it is detailed round them and along the wall to which
they belong as with the antae. It must be remembered,
however, that the attached columns in the triple temple
are about one-ninth less in diameter than those which
are insulated, though they are similar in other respects,
and have the same entablature.
7%e Greciazz Corint/hiazz.
The traditionary tale Vitruvius relates regarding the
invention of the Corinthian capital (about Callimachus
and the basket on the grave of the Corinthian virgin), is
the only reason for the name it bears. With much
more reason might the Doric be called the Corinthian
order; for, as previously stated, the oldest existing ex-
ample of that style is at Corinth ; whereas there is noth-
ing, either in ruins or authentic records, to prove that
the latter was ever known in that city. Columns with
foliated capitals are not of very early date in Greece;
earlier examples exist in Asia Minor, and foliage adorns
the capitals of columns in some of the Pharaonic monu-
ments of Egypt. In the Assyrian Sculptures, however,
the Corinthian capital is clearly shown. The interior of
the temple of Apollo Didymaeus, at Miletus in Ionia,
exhibits the earliest example of the acanthus leaf
arranged round the drum of a capital in a single row,
surmounted by the favorite honeysuckle; but that edifice
was constructed about a century before Callimachus is
understood to have lived. The only perfect columnar
example in Greece itself of this species of foliated capi-
tal is of later date than, and is a great improvement on,
that of Miletus; it is the beautiful little structure called
the choragic monument of Lysicrates at Athens.
The Caryatides, or Caryatic Order.
Besides the three species of columnar arrangement
enumerated above, the Greeks employed another in which
statues of women occupied the place of columns. The
use of representations of human and other figures, with
or instead of columns, is common in Egypt and India;
and to the former the Greeks were doubtless indebted
for the idea, though they appear to have restricted its
application to human female figures.
Of these there is but one existing example. It is the
third portion of the triple temple in the Athenian Acro-
polis, and is a projection from the flank of the principal
Ionic structure, formed by a stereobatic dado raised on
the stylobate and antae-base mouldings, with a sur-bases
consisting of a carved bead and carved ovolo covered by
a broad listel, with a narrow projecting fillet above it.
On this rests a square plinth, supporting a draped female
figure, on the head of which there is imposed a circular
moulded block, with a deep rectangular abacus, two-
464
A R C
thirds of whose face is vertical, and the other third is a
Cavetto fillet, and small cyma-reversa. The stereobate,
including the moulded base of the temple, is about
three-fourths the height of the statue pillar with its base
and capital. The entablature is rather less than two-
fifths of the same, but it consists of architrave and
cornice alone, between which parts the height is nearly
equally divided.
Of Greciazz A/ou/dings and Ornameezzas.
Greek architecture is distinguished for nothing more
than for the grace and beauty of its mouldings; and it
may be remarked of them generally that they are
eccentric, and not regular curves. They must be drawn,
for they cannot be described or struck; so that, though
they may be called circular, or elliptical, it is seldom
that they are really so, and if they are, it is evidently
the result of chance, and not of design. Hence all
attempts to give rules for striking mouldings are worse
than useless ; the hand alone, directed by good taste,
can adapt them to their purpose, and give them the
Spirit and feeling which render them effective and pleas-
}Il Q.
The leading outline of Greek moulding is the grace-
fully flowing cyma. This will, indeed, be found to
enter into the composition of almost everything that
diverges from a right line; and even combinations of
mouldings are frequently made with this tendency. It
is concave above and convex below, or the reversé; and
though a long and but slightly flected line appears to
connect two quickly-curving ends, it will always be
found that the convexity and the concavity are’ in
exactly the same curve, so that if the moulded surface
were reversed, and the one made to assume the place, it
would also have the appearance, of the other, and the
effect would be the same. It is, in fact, the Hogarthian
line of beauty; and it is not a little singular that
Hogarth, in his well-known Analysis of Beauty,
although he did not know, and indeed could not have
known, the contours of Greek architectural mould-
ings, has given the principle of them, and, under his
line of beauty, has described many of the finest Greek
forms. . The Roman and Italian mouldings were called
Greek in his day, and he assumed them to be so ; but
they evidently do not agree with his theory, whereas,
in principle, the now well-known Greek forms do most
completely.
It may be inferred from some existing edifices, par-
ticularly the choragic monuments, that the Doric col-
umnar style was not used by the Greeks, except for
temples of the gods and some of their accessories. But
whether this arose—if the feeling really did exist—
from the sanctity of its character, in consequence of that
appropriation, or from the difficulty of moulding it to
general purposes, cannot be determined. It is very
certain, F. that the few structures which do ex-
ist of Greek origin, not of a religious character, are
either Ionic or Corinthian, or a mixture of one of them
with some of the features of the Doric ; and in all
Greece and the Grecian colonies, except Ionia, there
are very few examples of religious edifices not of the
Doric order, and none which are of the Corinthian.
The only pure Greek architectural works besides
temples that remain to us, and of which we have certain
information, are propylaeum, or propylaea, choragic mon-
W. and theatres. The propylaea, as applied to the
Acropolis of Athens, is the entrance or gateway through
the wall of the peribolus. It consists of a Doric hexa-
prostyle portico internally, with a very singular arrange-
ment of its columns, the central intercolumniation be-
ing ditriglyph. This was done, probably, to allow a
certain procession to pass, which would have been in-
commoded by a narrower space. Within the portico
there is a deep recess, similar to the pronaos in a tem-
ple, but without columns in antis ; a wall pierced with
five doorways, corresponding to the intercolumniations
of the portico, close to the entrance; and beyond it is
a vestibule, divided into three parts by two rows of
three Ionic columns, and forming an outer portico,
fronted externally by a hexaprostyle exactly similar to
that on the outside. Right and left of it, and setting
out about one intercolumniation of the portico from its
end columns, at right angles, are two small triastyle
porticoes in antis, with chambers behind them. These
have been called temples, but most probably they were
nothing more than porters' lodges or guard-houses.
The whole structure, though extremely elegant and
possessing many beauties, is not a good architectural
composition; the unequal intercolumnation detracts
from its simplicity and harmony.
TOMBS.—These, the grandest structures next to the
temples in Egypt, present little worthy of notice in
Greece proper; but in the colonies there are several of
considerable importance. The grandest are in Caria
and Lycia, to some of which, constructed much after
the ancient outlines of the Lycian, &c., reference has
already been made. The most singular of the pure
Greek tombs are cut in the face of the solid rock, not
in the forms of the ancient rock-cut tombs, but much
resembling those of the temple.
Of all the Greek tombs the grandest was that of
Mausolus, at Halicarnassus, in Caria, one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world, which has given its name
to all succeeding great tombs. Its date is about 352
B. C., Mausolus having died in 353. It was erect until
the Ioth century. Since then it has been so utterly
ruined that there was doubt as to its actual site. This
was indicated by Professor Donaldson; and in 1857, Mr.
Newton discovered the actual remains. “It consisted
of a lofty basement, on which stood an oblong Ionic
edifice surrounded by thirty-six Ionic columns, and sur-
mounted by a pyramid of , twenty-four steps. The
whole structure, 140 feet in height, was crowned by a
chariot group in white marble, on which, probably,
stood Mausolus himself” (Newton). The size of the
basement was I 14 feet by 92. The name of the archi-
tect was Pythius, and the sculpture, with which the
edifice was richly adorned, was executed by four cele-
brated sculptors, of whom we may especially particu-
larize Scopas, as he was also the architect of the cele-
brated temple of Tegea.
THEATRES.—The Greek theatre deserves a short
notice. It was entirely different from ours, having
neither pit, boxes, nor roof, except the usual velarium,
as a protection from the sun. Its plan was somewhat
more than a semicircle, having seats cut out of the side
of some hill convenient for the purpose. Round the top
was a colonnade, and at the back of the stage was the
Scena. This and the colonnade combined in an artistic
way, must have formed a very effective composition.
At first the theatres were of wood; the first of stone, at
Athens, having been built, it is said, about the middle
of the 4th century. The theatres at Argos and Ephesus
were 450 and 600 feet in diameter respectively, whereas
Covent Garden Theatre, London, including the corri-
dors, is only Ioo feet.
HOUSEs, &c.— No remains exist of the domestic
structures of the Greeks. It may be taken for granted
that the houses were less extensive than those of the
Romans, as they were a poorer and less luxurious peo-
ple; but the exquisite beauty of form and decoration,
which pervades every article of Greek origin, whether
coin, medallion, vase, implement of war or husbandry,
or even the meanest article of domestic or personal use, .
A R C
465
A evidence of the fine taste with which their mansions
must have been furnished.
For TIFICATIONS.— We have large remains of forti-
fications in Lycia, though few in Greece proper. They
are not so picturesque as the mediaeval, mor, we may
say, as the Assyrian. They were massively built of
masonry, with square towers at intervals, furnished
sometimes with a pediment, sometimes with battle-
ments. The doors and windows on the upper floor are
still found at Alinda, in Caria. The Greek shield was
often sculptured as hung on the walls. A bas-relief
from Pinara, in Lycia, gives a complete sketch of the
walls, with circular-topped battlements, a postern gate,
and various openings, all square-headed; and a door is
shown, panelled like our doors.
In the construction of their edifices the Greeks seldom,
if ever, had recourse to foreign materials—the stone
used in their temples being almost invariably from the
nearest convenient quarries which supplied it of suf-
ficiently good quality. The structures of Athens are
built of marble, from the quarries of Pentelicus, and
those of Agrigentum, of a fossil conglomerate which
the place itself furnished.
R£SUMé.—Taking now a rapid view of what we owe
to the Greeks as architects, we may assume that the
invention of columnar architecture is due to the Assyr-
ians; but how far this had advanced before the Greeks
began to practise it, we cannot as yet exactly determine.
There is no doubt, however, that it owed to the Greeks
the greater part of its beautiful and delicate details.
Some of the finest examples of these are to be found at
Athens in the Theseum, Parthenon, Propylaea, and
Erechtheum, ranging in date from 469 to 409 B.C. Not
only do we find there the most beautiful mouldings and
other ornaments, but the most refined methods of
obviating the minute defects in outline supposed to be
caused by optical illusion. The lines of the shafts, for
instance, in place of being perfectly straight, were
slightly expanded between the base and necking, so as
to form a very delicate curve (entasis). The apparent
depression of the top of the cornice, supposed to be
caused by the extra weight in the centre of the pedi-
ment, was obviated by curving the cornice so that the
centre part was the highest. The steps were curved in a
similar way. Then the whole of the columns of the
peristyle sloped towards the centre. The architrave and
frieze in the Parthenon followed the same slope of about
I in 80, but its boldly overhanging cornice and antexas
sloped forwards about I in Ioo.
We owe also to the Greeks one new form in art—
the pediment. It is not found in Egypt; some slight
suggestions as to its use may, perhaps, be found in
the sculptures of Assyria, but in Greece it forms the
crowning feature of every temple; and simple as the
invention may seem, it led the way to a succession of
others, which resulted in the grand gables of our Gothic
architecture.
The details of the Grecian temples were heightened
by color and gold. Of the former, Dr. Faraday detected
many traces on the sculptures of the British Museum ;
and clear indications of it have been found in many of
the ruins both in Greece proper and in the colonies. In
fact, color, or tinting of some kind, seems to have been
absolutely requisite in order to relieve the monotonous
and dazzling effect of new white marble. A striking
example of this occurred recently when the palace of the
king was built at Athens. The newly-worked marble
had much the appearance of a smooth stucco or brilliant
whitewash. But this would serve (and doubtless did
serve in ancient times) as an admirably delicate base for
decorative work in color and gold.
What the effect was of a Greek temple, in all its
glory, we can no more judge than we can in the case of
one of ancient Egypt. For there is not one that is not
a mere wreck; and even the most ambitious of modern
copies, the Walhalla, wants the exquisitely delicate
material out of which the Parthenon was wrought, and
the sculpture which no modern Phidias was living to
supply. But in Greece proper there was but this one
type, viz., that of the pedimented temple with its colon-
nade. There was no arch, as in Assyria, to span an
opening too wide for a stone beam ; no dome to vary the
outline by its bold and graceful form ; no curved outline,
as at Mycenae, to vary that of the rectangle.
The form adopted by the Greeks was worked out in
a manner which leaves all others of ancient art, wrought
in the same likeness, far behind ; and the details which
adorned that form charm the eye with their exquisitely
chaste beauty. But in our admiration of them we must
not forget that numerous other forms, beautiful in them-
selves, and familiar in their beauty to the Assyrians and
Pelasgi, as they are to us, were unknown to, or neglected
by, the Greeks.
ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE.
Little of the history of Etruria is as yet known, for
accounts of Roman historians are not to be relied on,
and the Etruscan language is as yet unread. Our
acquaintance with its architecture, too, is very meagre,
for the comparatively few remains show us simply the
forms used by the Etruscans in their tombs; and even
these have been as yet imperfectly explored, owing to
the nature of the climate, and the desolation of those
parts of the country in which they are chiefly, found.
The sites of the Etruscan towns are nearly all on or
near a line, curving slightly from the sea, extending
from Fiesole, near Florence, through Arretium, Cor-
tona, Volsinii, and Falerii, to Rome. The only sites
of much importance near the sea were Cossa and Tar-
quinii. The towns were generally planted on the tops
of high hills, as if for the purpose of defence. Much
of the town-walling remains in various places, as at
Fiesole, Cortona, Cossa, and Volterra, and furnishes
grand examples both of the polygonal and of the
squared masonry, which has been described as belong-
ing to the early period of Greek architecture.
The tombs were of two classes, the first being nearly
of the same external form as that described at Tantalais,
viz., with a massive stereobate, circular in plan, having
one or more chambers in the center of it, and above it
a tumulus of earth. Of these, hundreds of specimens
of various sizes remain. At Volci there was one 240
feet in diameter. The grandest of all is, perhaps, that
at Cervetri, drawn by Canina, and known as the Regu-
lini Galeassi.
One of the best examples, though of very late (Ro-
man) date, is a tomb of Cervetri. The chamber was
supported on two pillars. In each side of it were re-
cesses, 2 feet in height, each having a bed, with cushion
for the head, tassels, &c., all Sculptured and painted.
The sides and pillars were decorated with painting and
sculpture, representing the helmets, shields, swords, and
other accoutrements of the officer whose tomb it was.
But there were also depicted in the same way the per-
sonal ornaments of his wife, her mirrors, jewelry, &c.
Her slippers are marked on the floor, and by the side of
the recess near, is carved her husband’s walking-stick.
Even the kitchen utensils appear in effigy, so as to give
the whole fittings of the house of a Roman officer.
Of Etruscan temples no remains exist, and the ac:
counts of them are so conflicting that any restoration of
them must be very uncertain.
s
3o A
466
A R C
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.
We have taken it for granted that the Greeks were
ignorant or neglectful of the properties of the arch. If
the great sewer at Rome, called the Cloaca Maxima, be-
longs to the time of Tarquinius Priscus, it must be con-
ceded that the properties of the arch were known, and
the arch constructed in that city. But it is contended
that the Cloaca Maxima, as it now exists, is a work of
much more recent date, and that it may have succeeded
the sewer constructed by the first Tarquinius, who was,
moreover, himself a Greek. It is, however, now certain
that the construction of the arch was known to the
Egyptians, and used by them at a very early date, al-
though, for Some reason which we do not quite under-
stand, they neglected it in their greatest works. That
it was known to and made great use of by the Assyrians
is also certain. Whoever it was that invented it, and at
whatever date, the Romans made extensive practical use
of it, and by its means they succeeded in doing what
their predecessors in civilisation had never effected. It
enabled them to carry secure and permanent roads across
wide and rapid rivers, and to make a comparatively frag-
ile material, such as brick, more extensively used than
the finest marble was in the hands of the Greeks. To
the Greeks, however, the Romans were indebted for
their knowledge of the more polished forms of columnar
architecture. Before the conquest of Greece the struct-
ures of Rome appear to have been rude and inelegant,
and from that time the existing style of architecture
either gave place to the superior merit and beauty of
what the Romans found in that country, or was com-
bined with it, though frequently the combination tended
to destroy the beauty of both.
Much of the extent and magnificence of the archi-
tectural works of the Romans is attributable to their
knowledge and use of the arch, which enabled them to
utilise inferior materials. Almost all their structures
were of brick — aqueducts, palaces, villas, baths and
temples. Of the present remains, only a few columns
and their entablatures are of marble or granite, and two
or three buildings are of Travertine stone,—all the rest
are brick. The colosseum, the mausoleum of Adrian,
the tunnel sewer, the temple of Fortuni Virilis, and the
ancient bridges on the Tiber, are of Travertine stone;
the remaining columns of the more splendid temples, the
internal columns and their accessories, of the Pantheon,
the exterior of the imperial arches, and the cenotaph
columns of Trajan and of Antonine, are of marble; but
the Imperial Mount of the Palatine, which holds the
ruins of the palace of the Caesars, is one mass of brick;
the Pantheon, except its portico and internal columns,
&c., is of brick; the temples of Peace, of Venus and
Rome, and of Minerva Medica are of brick; and so, for
the most part, were the walls of others though they may
have been faced with marble or freestone. The baths of
Titus of Caracalla, and Diocletian, are of brick; the city
walls are of brick; so are the extensive remains of the
splendid villa of Adrian, and those of the villa of Mae-
cenas at Tivoli; the palaces of the Roman emperors and
patricians at Baiae and in other parts of Italy; and so, it
may be said, are the remains of IHerculaneum and Pom-
peii, for the houses in these cities are generally built of
alternate double courses of brick and courses of stone or
lava. In most cases, at Rome and in the provinces,
stucco formed the surface which received the decora-
tions. From the above enumeration, it will appear how
much more variously the Romans built than any of their
predecessors. In Egypt we find no indications of edi-
fices of real utility or convenience, nothing but temples
and tombs,- and in Greece there is but a small addition
to this list; but in Rome are found specimens of almost
every variety of structure that men in civilized commu-
nities require.
Aarticular ſºonzazz Structures.
TEMPLES.— Whatever forms were adopted from the
Greeks by the Romans were rapidly altered by the
latter. The temples, for example, were, no doubt,
constructed, in the main, after the Greek model. But
we find three-quarter columns used in the flanks, as at
the temple of Fortuna Virilis at Rome and at Nismes,
in place of the open peristyle or plain flat wall. These
three-quarter columns were, it is true, used at the rear
of the Erechtheum and at the temple of the Giants at
Agrigentum. But these were quite exceptions. Then,
in the portico of the Pantheon the Romans availed
themselves of the properties of the arch to effect an
immense change in the internal design and appearance.
From the forest of columns, as at the Parthenon, all
placed at equal distances, or nearly so, the Romans
boldly removed four rows, arched over the space thus
left, and so obtained a picturesque effect quite unknown
to the Greeks.
THEATRES.–The best remaining specimens of Roman
theatres are those of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Like
those of the Greeks, they rest on the side of a hill, but
instead of being hewn out of the hill they are built on
it. Others in a more or less ruined state remain in
Italy, France, Sicily, &c., e.g., at Rome, Verona, Pola,
Taormina, and Arles. At first they were of wood,
and one by AEmilius Scaurus, 58 B.C., is said to have
held 80,000 spectators. That they were copied mainly
from the Greeks there can be no doubt. In fact, one
built by Pompey is expressly stated to have been copied
from another at Mytilene, and their general form is
very similar to that of the Greek theatre. But the
Roman theatre received a greater degree of architectural
decoration than the Greek. Of this the theatre of
Marcellus, in Rome, is an, example; for though other-
wise destroyed, its external wall remains and presents
columnar ordinances, with intervening arches in stories,
according to the practice of the Roman school.
AMPHITHEATREs.- These are altogether Roman in
general design. The first is said to have been built by
julius Caesar, and others were afterwards built by Cali-
gula and Nero. The first of stone is said to have been
the Colosseum, built by Vespasian and Titus, and so
called from the Colossus of Nero which stood near. It
was injured and then restored under Severus and Decius,
in whose time it is probable that the upper row was
added. As to the awning, we know that the main por-
tion at least of the audience was protected from the
fierce rays of the sun by a strong velarium, . This was
supported on the outside by heavy masts, which passed
thröugh holes still existing in the top cornice, and
stepped down on the corbels, which show so conspicu-
ously in the top order. Recent excavations have dis-
closed the original arena, about 20 feet below the present
level of the ground. Evidence has also been obtained
that the arena was sometimes a movable platform. To
obtain an approximate idea of the size of this enormous
structure, we must remember that the Albert Hall (the
largest diameter of which is 276 feet) could, have been
placed in the arena alone of the Colosseum, the exterior
of which measures 622 feet by 528. Other amphi-
theatres of great size were constructed in the various
towns of the empire. Amongst them we may mention
that at Verona, 500 feet by 404, and Nismes (still
used for public shows), 434 by 349. Extensive remains
of another, 376 feet, by 220, have been discovered
recently at El-Djemm, in Tunis. (See AMPHITHEATRE,
vol. i., pp. 295-296.
ToMB.S.–Some very grand examples of tombs of cire
A R C
467
cular forms remain, as well as many others of great
beauty. It must be remembered that with the Romans
both burial and cremation were used. The columbaria
(vaults lined with small recesses for the urns, which con-
tained the ashes of the dead) present the most ordinary
specimens of architectural forms adapted to cremation.
The sarcophagus, of which that of the Scipios is the
best known example, presents the ordinary form used in
connection with burial. But when the family of the
deceased was rich or distinguished, the ashes or the
sarcophagi were enclosed in buildings of the most
magnificent kind. The tomb of Cecilia Metella, so well
known to all by Byron's beautiful lines in Childe
Aaro/d, commencing —
“There is a stern round tower of other days,”
is a bold tower 90 feet in diameter and 62 feet high,
so solidly built as to contain only a chamber 19 feet in
diameter. Much grander was the mausoleum of Augus-
tus, which has perished. Of the mausoleum of Hadrian
the skeleton only remains. But it shows that the base
was 17O feet square, supporting a circular edifice I 15
feet in diameter. It would seem that this mass, now
formed into the castle of St. Anglo, and showing the
naked brickwork, had, in its glory, two ranges of
marble columns and probably a domed roof. From its
position on the banks of the Tiber, near the bridge, it
must have formed one of the grandest architectural
compositions of the Romans.
FORUMS.— At first these great buildings were used for
merchants, and were open spaces with porticoes, shops,
counting-houses, &c., all round. The best example
existing is, perhaps, that of the Forum of Pompeii. In
later times these erections expanded into grand archi-
tectural ranges of porticoes, with statues, &c. Leading
out of them, in various positions, were temples, law
courts, theatres, &c. It was in Trajan’s Forum that his
famous column was erected.
The AQUEDUCTs show little of the skill of the archi-
tect, but they are very picturesque as they stretch along
the Campagna and other places. Across a valley, at
Tarragona, one rises to a height of IOO feet, and another,
the Pont du Gard, at Nismes, to 18O. But they do not
reach the level of true architectural beauty, and derive
their chief value from their immense length and size.
The TRIUMPHAL ARCH is peculiarly Roman, and it is
in this form that the arch appears to have been most
boldly used as an external feature. The arch is, in
fact, the form to which all other parts of the structure
are mere decorative adjuncts. The principal examples
are the arches of Titus, Severus, Janus, and Constan-
tine at Rome, and that of Trajan at Ancona.
DWELLINGS.— The still extensive remains of the villa
of Hadrian, near Tivoli, bespeak its original magnifi-
cence. Everything appears to have been directed to
internal splendor and effect alone; and, indeed, all
collateral evidence tends to the conclusion, that the ex-
terior of Roman palaces and mansions was not heeded,
loeing merely plain brick walls. This is the case at
Pompeii, and the ruins of mansions in various parts of
Italy, and from that of Sallust on the Benacus or Lago
di Garda, to those of other Roman nobles on the shores
of the Bay of Baiae, present no indications whatever that
their exteriors were subjected to architectural decora-
tion. The palace of Diocletian at Spalatro, and the
splendid remains of Baalbec and Palmyra, some of
which, perhaps belonged to secular structures, offer
evidence to the contrary of this, if they are correctly re-
stored in the works which treat of them. Notwith-
standing the extent of the structure and its general
magnificence, however, the mouldings and ornaments
in the interior of the villa of Hadrian, though in them-
selves classical and elegant, are small, and have a gen-
eral air of littleness, especially when compared with the
apartments to which they belong,- not that the apart-
ments are generally large, but they are for the most part
lofty. The ceilings appear to have been formed by
vaulting; there are no indications of windows, and none
of stairs of any magnitude — so that the rooms must
have been nearly, if not quite, open at one end to admit
light and air; and the probability is that there were sel-
dom apartments above the ground floor, though it is
likely enough that terraces formed on the vaulted roofs
were used for the purposes of recreation and pleasure.
Of the floors, which were of mosaic, several are pre-
served entire in the museum of the Vatican; where also
are deposited many fine specimens qf ornamental sculpt-
ure in vases and candelabra, besides busts, statues, and
groups in bronze, marble, porphyry, and granite, of
various styles, remains of the noble collection Hadrian
made during his progress through his extensive domin-
ions, which have been found among the ruins of the
villa.
In Pompeii we may see the domestic as well as public
architecture of ancient Rome, although it must be
remembered that Pompeii was a Greek colony, and that
it was destroyed as early as 79 A.D. We have, there-
fore, probably to expect more Greek character than
would be met with elsewhere.
The streets of Pompeii are very narrow, their average
width being not more than 12 or 15 feet; frequently they
are not more than 8 feet wide, and very few in any part
exceed 20. The principal excavated street in the city,
that leading from the Forum to the gate towards Hercu-
laneum, and the street of the tombs, is, at the widest, 23
feet 6 inches, including two footways, each 5 feet wide.
The streets are all paved with lava, and almost all have
side pavements or footways, which, however, are for the
most part so narrow, that, with few exceptions, two per-
sons cannot pass on them. That the cars or carriages
of the inhabitants could not pass each other in most of
the streets, is proved by the wheel-ruts which have been
worn on the stones, and the recesses made here and there
for the purpose of passing. They are lined on both
sides with small cells, which served for shops of various
kinds; and they are strikingly like the ordinary shops in
towns in the South of Italy and in Sicily at the present
time. They resemble these, too, in this respect, that
there appear in very few cases to be accommodations in
connection with the shops for the occupiers and their
families, who must have lived elsewhere, as modern
Italian shopkeepers very commonly do. They present
no architectural decoration whatever ; the fronts are
merely plain stuccoed brick walls, with a large square
opening in each, part of which is the door, and part the
window, for lighting the place and showing the goods.
RÉSUMé.—Roman architecture, as we know it, dates
only from about the Christian era, and the rapidity with
which it spread from that time is something marvellous.
Through nearly the whole extent of the Roman empire,
through Italy, Asia Minor, Sicily, Britain, France,
Syria, Africa, - with one great exception, Egypt, all
was Roman in mouldings, ornaments, details, the very
style of carving and the construction. No matter what
the country or the architect, all seem to have lost their
nationality when the Roman came, and to have adopted
implicitly his system of design and decoration. It has
been seen that he copied the orders and much of the
leading forms of his buildings from the Greeks. But he
speedily added others. The apse and the circle on plan
were his ; so were the dome and the arch in elevation ;
and thus he enlarged at once the whole range of the
architect’s powers, and whilst utterly disregarding the
delicate refinements of the Greeks, secured a freedom of
468
A R C
design which resulted at length in our Pointed archi-
tecture.
But great as the advance was, it seems to have been
arrested just when opportunities were offered, on the
grandest scale, for bringing about the noblest results.
The Roman architect seems to have been unable to
reach the highest effort of art, viz., to bring the whole
of any grand edifice into one splendid mass, to concen-
trate the detailed parts into one grand whole. But in
reflecting on what the Roman did not do, we must not
forget that we owe to him some of the grandest forms to
which we too are now accustomed.
We now come to a complete change in the structures
which we have to describe. Henceforth we shall find no
Forum, no public ºath, theatre, temple, or house. All
these forms disappear, and for nearly 700 years, until
the time when the Norman castle arose, well-nigh every
building of architectural merit was in some way or other
ecclesiastical. But with our Christian faith there arose
forms of beauty utterly unknown to the Pagan, which
culminated in the glories of Lincoln and Canterbury.
POINTED ARCHITECTURE.
In those countries which received the Christian re-
ligion from Rome, but which did not contain such
mines of architectural material in temples, amphithe-
atres, and palaces, as Italy did, and, indeed, in the re-
moter ports of Italy itself, which did not contain them
as Rome did, churches were constructed in imitation of
those of the metropolis of the Christian world. These
being the work of a semibarbarous and unpolished
people, were of necessity comparatively rude, and from
them arose the Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages,
—not from any previously existing style of architecture
among the northern nations who overran Italy and sub-
verted the Roman power, the rude Celtic monuments
being the only specimens of architecture they possessed.
The transitional style of architecture referred to will be
found in what are called the Saxon and Norman build-
ings of England, and to a greater or less extent in all
parts of Europe in which the Romans had been masters,
and particularly in those which adhered to the Roman
communion in the great division of the churches. The
general forms and modes of arrangement peculiar to
Roman architecture may be traced throughout; in some
specimens they are more and in others less obvious,
but the leading features are the same. This is more
evident in Italy than elsewhere. In the early Roman
basilicas and churches, some of which are of the age of
Constantine, and which were constructed in the Roman
style, the first divergencies occur; in those which are
later they are still greater, and distance of time and
place appears still to have increased them, till what may
be called a new style was formed, having peculiarities
of its own, but even more clearly deducible from
its origin than Roman is from Greek or Greek
from Egyptian. The variation in the development
from the parent stock is great, but in all cases
there is more or less evidence of the descent.
It must be noted, however, that there was one
important modification of Roman art, and this was the
Roman art modified by contact with the East, and known
commonly as Byzantine. Its influence was felt first and
most strongly in St. Mark’s, Venice, a building which is
entirely Byzantine in style as opposed to Romanesque.
From Venice it was copied in Périgueux in the church of
St. Front, and this copy influenced the style of a vast
number of buildings in the south-west of France. St.
Mark’s, again, had a great influence on the Lombard
works of Northern Italy, and these were the originals
from which Germany, by way of the valley of the Rhine,
derived all its mediaeval buildings. To the greater part
of France and to England the stream of art was much
more purely Romanesque, being the result of knowledge
of genuine Roman art, with little, if any influence from
the East. In Spain we see the direct influence of the
Romans, the direct influence of the Arab, and the in-
direct Byzantine influence of the south-west of France,
all materially affecting the development of the national,
architecture. As might be expected, this style was not
the same in all the countries which practised it ; it was
derived, in them all, from the same source, as we have
shown, but was materially influenced by the habits, man-
ners, and state of civilisation of the various nations, and
much, too, by their means of communication with Rome.
This, in strictness, may be called Gothic architecture, as
it was partly induced by the Gothic invasions of Italy,
and was invariably practised by the nations to whom.
that term may with propriety be applied. It arose in.
the 4th century, and was subverted in the 12th by the
invention or introduction of the pointed arch, which
marks a new area, and was destined to give birth to a.
new style in architecture.
Where, when, and with whom the pointed form orig-
inated has been more discussed and disputed than the
discovery of properties of the arch itself. The pointed
arch, on its introduction into Europe, was not accompa-
nied by any of its ordinary accessories in after-time, its
light clustered pillars, its mullions, foliations or feather-
ings, and graceful tracery. These developments resulted
from its adoption; so that whether the arch itself was
invented in Europe or imported from the East, to the
European nations must be assigned the credit of develop-
ing the beautiful style of architecture whose distinguish-
ing feature it is.
There have been only too many arguments and dis-
cussions on the name which is most appropriate to the
style. By common consent the word Gothic is used
all over Europe to designate it, and it now hardly matters.
whether or not there was originally good reason for the
use of such a term.
Pointed architecture took root and grew with almost
equal vigor, though under different conditions, in
almost every part of Europe. But the honor of having
developed the style to the very highest perfection must
undoubtedly be adjudged to France, or rather to the
small portion of the country, including Paris, which
formed the old Ile de France. In Germany there was
much less natural development. For a long period after
the Lombard style had been perfected on the Rhine no
variation of moment was adopted, until German archi-
tects attempted at Cologne to outvie and rival the mag-
mificence of Amiens. In Spain the architects of some of
the finest buildings were Frenchmen, and the style can
hardly be said to have been developed there at all. In
England, on the contrary, though the earliest Pointed
buildings were undoubtedly to a great extent French in
their origin, the developments of the art were soon en-
tirely national, and were but little modified even by the
influence of the foreign religious orders, which (as at
Fountains Abbey) had so much power over many of
our ecclesiastical ſoundations. From England the
style was carried by Englishmen to Scotland,—a poor
country, with no style of its own, and no cultivation
such as is necessary to produce an order of architects,
and to Ireland, where the English architects followed
the footsteps of the invading armies; and finally, if we
may trust the evidence of the stones themselves, to the
coast of Norway, where the cathedral of Trondhjem is
as unmistakably English in much of its style and detail
as any English cathedral. In England the development
of the style is plainly marked, and its advances are easily
traceable. We find in various portions of the same edi-
fice, according to the period of its construction, exem-
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469
plifications of the style, from the ingrafting of the sim-
ple lancet arch on the Norman piers in the time of
Henry II., to the highly enriched groinings and ramified
traceries of the age of Henry VII.; but the changes are
So gradual, and are so finely blended, that the one in
advance appears naturally to result from that which
comes before it.
English Gothic Architecture.
The history of the development of Gothic architect-
ure is, perhaps, more easily read on the buildings”
themselves in England than it is in any other part of
Europe. The Roman buildings in England were never
of very great importance, and were not always standing
as evidences of the existence of an older style, which
might be looked back and up to with respect and ad-
miration, even where they did not harmonise with pop-
ular customs. Such art, nevertheless, as did exist in
this country before the IIth century, was, no doubt,
derived from Roman examples existing in the country,
and copied in a rude and unskilful fashion by native
workmen. The existing Roman remains show that
there was quite enough architectural and decorative art
introduced into the country by the Romans to have
formed a school of masons, sculptors, and builders, if
the civilisation of the people had been sufficient to make
them desire it. Such a school can hardly be said to
have been formed if we look at the few and compara-
tively rude remains of buildings certainly erected before
the Norman Conquest. In such work as the beautiful
archway recently discovered in Britford church, Wilts,
where carving of stone-work is joined with brick or tile
and stone in a very elegant fashion, we see the imme-
<diate effect of cultured Roman influence and example.
At a later date, in such fine works as the steeple of
IEarl's Barton, Northants, we see only the rude gran-
deur of comparatively uncivilised workmen cognizant
only at a distance of good Roman work. In upwards
of a hundred churches, dispersed in various parts of
England, fragments more or less complete of these
early buildings, erected before the Norman Conquest,
still remain. They are numerous enough to enable us
to classify their features in a general way, and they
agree in certain definite points of difference from the
architecture which prevailed after the Norman Conquest.
It is probable that a considerable proportion of these
buildings were erected after the year 1000, when we
recollect the influence which the expected end of the
world had in discouraging building shortly before that
date, and how enormous the zeal for building was as
soon as it was safely passed.
The transition from the simplest Early Pointed to a
more advanced style can be seen as well in Westminster
Abbey as anywhere. Here traceries began to take the
place of simple lancet openings, and led to that system
of window tracery which was, in fact, the distinguishing
feature of the succeeding style. When the invention of
tracery was complete, everything in Gothic architecture
rapidly changed. The art of masonry and stone-cutting
was rapidly developed. Moulded stones, ſrom being
made continuous round the intricate combinations of
window traceries, came naturally to be used much more
largely than before in place of simple bearing shafts.
So columns came to be formed of clusters of mouldings;
and, in the case of groined buildings, each moulding of
the shaft was developed into more mouldings above the
‘Capital, or even frequently carried on to the vault with-
out any capital at all. Traceries were first of all com-
Thenced by merely piercing geometrical patterns or circles
through the thickness of the walls. Then these pat-
terms were combined under one enclosing arch; and
then, when this sort of tracery had reached perfection,
it was found possible to vary it indefinitely by making
use of double curves (or ogee lines); and then, when
these had been used for a short time, flowing lines, wan-
dering gracefully over the space to be filled, and some-
times drawn by hand, supplanted the more formal out-
lines of the earlier work. The difference was great
between an opening which was made (as the earlier
examples were) with a sole view to the opening for glass,
and one which was the accidental result only of the
pretty lines and curves made by regarding the monial of
the window, and not the light, as the thing to be con-
sidered. The tendency of the modification was to make
men think lines of more importance than masses; and,
whether consciously or not, this was just what happened:
not only window traceries but mouldings, carvings, and
every other feature, were entirely changed in character.
The soft gradations of the early mouldings were given
up for combinations of more hardly defined and thinner
lines of light and shade, and, in harmony with this
change, a crisp and sharp imitation of natural foliage
was devised, which supplanted the rich and round forms
of the earlier sculpture. The whole practice of art was
becoming more scholarly, perhaps, but at the same
time it was more conscious, and the cleverness of the
architect was almost as often suggested as the noble
character of his work. Merton College chapel, Oxford,
the nave of York Minster, the choir of Selby, the whole
of Exeter Cathedral, are a few among the many exam-
ples of this period of which this country can boast, and
it will be seen that the change in character which is evi-
dent between the earliest and latest Middle Pointed
works is enough to justify those who would again sub-
divide the nomenclature. The difficulty is that, where
progress was so constant, it will be necessary, in order to
be exact, to subdivide each century five or more times in
order to be really definite.
A few words will suffice for the necessary notice of the
progress of Gothic architecture in Scotland and Ireland.
In point of fact, most of what was done in the best
period — that is, during the 13th and 14th centuries—
was done by English artists, and is in no way more dis-
tinct in character than their work was in different dio-
ceses or counties. The Gothic of Lincolnshire, of the
eastern counties, of Kent and Sussex, of Somersetshire
and South Wales, of Devon and Cornwall, and of York-
shire, were distinct varieties of style and full of local
peculiarities.
There is no country richer in examples of architecture
than France. The student who wishes to understand
what it was possible for a country to do in the way of
creating monuments of its grandeur, would find in
almost every part of the country, at every turn and in
great profusion, works of the rarest interest and beauty.
The 19th century may be the consummation of all, but
the evidences of its existence to posterity will not be
one-tenth in number of those which such a reign as that
of Philip Augustus has left us, whilst none of them will
come up to the high standard which in his time was
invariably reached.
Gothic Architecture in Germany.
The German Complete Gothic is essentially national
in its complete character. It has a similarity to English
and French Middle Pointed, but no more than this. It
has many and obvious defects. From the first there is
conspicuous in it that love of lines, and that desire to
play with geometrical figures, which in time degenerated
into work more full of conceit and triviality than that
of any school of mediaeval artists. These conceits are
worked out most elaborately in the traceries of windows
and panelling. The finest early examples are in the
cathedral at Minden; a little later, perhaps, the best
47O
A R C
series is in the cloister of Constance Cathedral ; and of
the latest description the examples are innumerable.
But it is worth observing that they rarely at any time
have any ogee lines. They are severely geometrical and
regular in their form, and quite unlike our own late
Middle Pointed, or the French Flamboyant. In sculpt-
ure the Germans did not shine. They, like the English,
did not introduce it with profusion, though they were
very prone to the representations of effigies of the
deceased as monuments.
In one or two respects, however, Germany is still pos-
sessed of a wealth of mediaeval examples, such as is
hardly to be paralleled in Europe. The vast collection
of brick buildings, for instance, is unequalled. If a line
be drawn due east and west, and passing through Berlin,
the whole of the plain lying to the north, and extending
from Russia to Holland is destitute of stone, and the
mediaeval architects, who always availed themselves of
the material which was most natural in the district,
built all over this vast extent of country almost entirely
in brick. The examples of their works in this humble
material are not at all confined to ecclesiastical works;
houses, castles, town-halls, town walls, and gateways,
are so plentiful and so invariably picturesque and strik-
ing in their character, that it is impossible to pass a
harsh verdict on the architects who left behind them such
extraordinary examples of their skill and fertility of re-
source. Then, again, in regard to the furniture which
before the period of the Renaissance of art and the
Reformation of religion filled the ancient buildings,
the Germans have more than any other people been hap-
pily conservative. There are still churches in Germany
in which it may be said that nothing has been changed
since Luther's day except the use of the buildings. St.
Ratharine’s at Lübeck is turned into a museum, but is
full of its old furniture. The choir of Halberstadt is
unused, but everything, even to the hangings on the
walls, remains as of old. In Nuremberg all the altars
are preserved, and decked with altar-cloths and candles,
though they are never used; and when so much tolera-
tion as to these externals has been shown, and so little
desire for change exists, it may well be imagined that the
opportunities for the study of the works of German Gothic
architects in their completeness are unusually plentiful.
During the last few years a vast number of books have been
published on the subject of their national antiquities by
German writers, and the amount of detailed information
on the subject, which may be obtained by those who care
for the study, is unbounded.
Modern English Architecture.
When the Pointed style received its deathblow in
England, in the reign of Henry VIII., it did not im-
mediately cease to exist; nor was it immediately suc-
ceeded by the Italian when it became extinct. It was
gradually declining through all the 16th century,
during the latter part of which period what has been
called the Elizabethan style became somewhat perma-
nent. It consists of a singular admixture of the Italian
orders with many peculiarities of the Pointed style, and
in many examples the latter appears predominant.
With such difficulty, indeed, did that fascinating man-
ner give up its hold on the minds of men in this coun-
try, that the Cinquecentists appear to have relinquished
the hope of effecting its destruction, unfortunately,
however, not until the injury was done; and for some
time we were left without a style of any kind, unless
that may be called by the name which marks the edifices
of the reign of James I., and of which the oldest parts
of St. James's Palace are a specimen.
The destruction of the Pointed style has been re-
ferred by some to the change in religion which took
place under the Tudor line of English monarchs, but
certainly without sufficient reason. It was the “Re-
formation” of architecture in Italy, and not that of
religion in Great Britain, that effected it; and it may be
doubted whether the change would not have taken
place Sooner in this country if its connection with Italy
had not been so materially affected by the moral change
here; for it was Germany and France that supplied us
with architectural reformers during the reigns of Henry
JIII. and his children, and not Italy, whose professors.
might possibly have obtained more credit than their
disciples did.
It is an argument in proof of the classical beauty of
the Pointed style, that when the eyes of men were
opened to the perfections of Greek architecture, they
began to discover its merits also. Pointed architect-
ure, under the opprobrious name Gothic, had long been
a subject of discussion among antiquaries, – that is,
essays were written by them to prove how the pointed
arch originated, but none appreciated its beauties. Our
Pointed cathedrals and churches were, after the exam-
ple of Inigo Jones, ruthlessly barbarised in course of
repairing and fitting them up. If an architect were
employed to do anything about one of them, he ap-
pears to have thought it incumbent on him to convert it
to the doctrines of his own faith— to Italianise it.
Saracenic Architecture.
The beautiful forms by which Saracenic or Arabian
architecture is best known were wrought into a style, if
they were not invented, by the descendants of the wild
Arab tribes who accepted Mahomet as their leader and
prophet. In estimating their influence upon architect-
ure, the first point to be considered is whether the
Arabs, as they emerged from their deserts and overran
the rich countries of Syria, Persia, and Egypt, brought
with them any art of their own, or whether they formed
their style after their conquests were secured, when
they had become great, and had consequently leisure
and power to form it by the aid of foreigners. Now,
in the Koran no notices are found that would lead us.
to suppose that any definite forms of art were known
to the Arabs in early times. We gather also that the
minaret, one of the most prominent and beautiful forms.
of their architecture, could not have been used in early
times, since we are told that the call to prayers was
then made from the roofs of the mosques.
The earliest example of a mosque in Arabia itself is.
supposed to have been that at Mecca, 705 A.D. But
this was rebuilt in the 15th century, and that of Medina.
in the 16th, and we have no definite account of the
original structures. The earliest of those which still
exist are the Mosque of Amrou at Cairo (about 642.
A.D.), and that of Damascus (705). Both of these were
built of columns, &c., obtained by the destruction of
Roman work.
In the Mosque of Tooloon at Cairo we find for the
first time anything original. It was constructed about
879, and is said to have been designed by a Christian.
architect. Indeed, numerous passages in the early his-
tory of the Saracens seem to show that their architects,
and art workers generally were foreigners, attracted from
Baghdad, Byzantium, and other places. It was the same
throughout their progress in Spain as well as in Egypt;.
and however that style was eventually formed, which has
given to us the beautiful domes and minarets of Cairo,
the Alhambra in Spain, and the houses of Algiers, there
can be little doubt but that it was based upon the art of
Persia and Byzantium.
Ultimately it developed into two very distinct forms,
— the Arabic of Cairo and the Moorish of Spain. But.
these still showed themselves, both in general form and
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47 I
in details, to be members of the same great family which
we now call Saracenic. The chief structures in this style
are the mosques and tombs. The former are very simple
in plan, consisting, usually, of a mere open space with
colonnades round and with a prayer niche (me/irab) in
the side towards Mecca. Near this was a pulpit (mim-
&ar), and as this part of the edifice was of course the
most frequented, the colonnades were made of extra
depth. In the centre of the court was a fountain, just
as in the atrium of the Christian basilicas; and conspicu-
ously, sometimes at each corner of the mosque, was,
placed a minaret. The size of the whole and the num-
ber and richness of the columns might vary, but the gen-
eral arrangement was nearly always the same, the really
essential parts being the prayer niche, the pulpit, the
fountain, some protection against the burning noonday
heat, and some elevated place from which the priest could
call to prayers. A remarkable exception to the ordinary
plan occurs in the celebrated Mosque Soultan Hassan at
Cairo, which is in the form of a cross, and four arms be-
ing arched over, whilst the centre is left open and con-
tains the usual fountain. Closely connected with the
mosque is, often, the tomb of its founder. This is nearly
always covered with a dome which, when on a large
Scale, was almost invariably a sign of a sepulchral edifice.
One of the ornaments peculiar to the Saracens, and
constantly used by them, was the honey-comb by which
they brought the Square base, which they almost always
used on plan, into the circular dome or niche-head. It
was, in fact, the Saracenic pendentive. In its simplest
form it occurs very early in the style, as e.g., at the
Mosque of Tooloon at Cairo, and was composed of a
series of small niches, the pointed head of each of which
bent forward at the top and formed the springing point
of two others. The repetition of a few rows of this
produced a pendentive in which it is impossible to detect
any harsh point of junction between the square base and
the circular finish. Sometimes this honey-comb work
was exceedingly intricate, and form niche-heads, roofs,
&c. Good examples of this occur at the Zisa, Palermo,
and at the Alhambra.
Chinese Architecture.
The buildings of the Chinese are very inferior in char-
acter to those of India; in fact, Mr. Fergusson goes so
far as to say, “China possesses scarcely anything worthy
of the name of architecture.” Sir W. Chambers has
described one of the Buddhist temples, that at Ho-nang,
which is not like those of India in arrangement. There
is an extensive court with avenues of trees, leading to a
flight of steps and portico of four columns. In a sec-
ond vestibule behind this are four colossal figures bear-
ing various emblems. Beyond this is a very large
Second court, entirely surrounded by colonnades and
small sleeping cells for the priests or òonzes; in other
words, a huge cloister, much like the Indian viharas.
In the same ranges are four pavilions filled with idols,
and large rooms for refectories, behind which are the
kitchen, courts, &c. At the extreme corners of the
grand court are four other pavilions, the dwellings of
the higher order of priests. At equal distances behind
each other, down the centre of the court, are three
larger pavilions, called tings, entered on each side by a
flight of steps, and a fourth engaged in the cloister itself,
and having a portico and one flight of steps only. The
first three are square, two stories in height, the lowest
surrounded by fourteen columns, each face or front
showing six. They have rude caps, composed of eight
brackets, projecting various ways. Sir William Cham-
bers says there are four species of tings, three used for
temples and the fourth for gardens; some having a gal-
lery and fretted railing round the first floor on the out-
side, the upper story being set back. The roofs all have
the peculiar hollow dip, which leads one to suppose
their prototype was the tent, the sag of the cloth of
which would suggest the form. They are frequently
surmounted with a sort of cresting and finial, and each
angle is turned up sharply, and ornamented with a
dragon. Sometimes the columns have a frieze per-
forated in the form of frets; sometimes the same is
also under the eaves of the upper roof. Examples are
also given of smaller octagonal tings, intended to cover
the large vessels in which the Chinese burn gilt paper to
their idols.
Mr. Simpson has given an interesting account of the
temple of Heaven at Peking. It lies in an open space
of about one mile square, surrounded by a triple enclos-
ure. In this space were kept the animals destined for
sacrifice. The temple proper consisted of several
detached structures, the most sacred being to the south,
and consisting of a raised platform approached by three
terraces, and bearing simply an altar unscreened by any
building and open to the sky. The northern structure
was roofed but not enclosed. Four pillars supported
the main roof, which was 99 feet high, and lower roofs
round the higher one were upheld by 24 columns of less
height, all richly sculptured and gilt.
The most striking buildings in China are, however,
the tapering towers which they call taas, and our old
writers pagodas. These are of brick covered with
marble, or most generally with glazed tiles; and are
built in stories, one over the other, from three, four or
five, to as many as nine in number. Each story is
reduced in width, and has a gallery round it. The roofs
are hollow or sagging, like those formerly described.
They project a great deal, the corners being turned up
sharply. On these light bells are suspended, which
make a constant ringing when the wind blows. The
roofs are covered with glazed tiles of various colors, and
the summit ornamented with a species of spire and finial.
The most celebrated of these was that known as the
porcelain tower at Nanking. It had nine stories, and
was about 200 feet high, exclusive of the iron spire. At
each angle was a bell, making seventy-two in all; and
there were eight chains hanging from the top of the
finial to the angles of the spire, and carrying nine bells
each, or seventy-two more. This celebrated building
was destroyed by the Taepings in 1853. The taa is not
a pagoda or temple, but a memorial of some event or
of some great personage. At Peking is one used as an
observatory, and at Nanganfoo one was erected simply
to bring good luck.
Buildings called 7'ooz, Tang, or halls of ancestors,
are found in all considerable towns. These much re-
semble temples, but instead of idols, memorial tablets
are placed in the niches to record the transactions and
deeds of the “worthies” or celebrated inhabitants of
the neighborhood.
The Pai Zoo, or Pai Fang, is another common object
in China. These are monumental memorials, though
they have been mistaken for triumphal arches.
The tombs are as singular as the rest of the Chinese
edifices. One of these tombs is at Nanking, but the
chief are about 40 miles north of Peking. The entry
is by a grand Pai Loo of five gateways in white marble,
and then through several other gateways to a singular
dromos, nearly a mile long, of 32 colossal figures
(ranged in pairs), some human, others of camels,
griffins, elephants, &c. Such a dromos exists also at
Shanghai. The tombs, thirteen in number, are ranged
round the base of a hill and extend for several miles.
Each consists of an earthen mound about half a mile in
circuit, having, at its base, a crenellated retaining wall
20 feet high. The mound has no entrance, nor any
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indication of the exact place of burial. To the south of
the tomb is a temple in an open court, about 1200 feet
by 500. The plan is just the ordinary one of a palace,
and the names, “The House of the living and the House
of the dead,” seem to show clearly that this resemblance
was intended.
The Chinese method of construction is very peculiar.
Their roofs are put up first, supported on wooden
posts, which are removed as the permanent fabric is
built. The walls of the grand edifices are of stone, but
the ordinary material is brick, and the work is often
executed with beautifully close joints. In palaces and
temples the whole was often gorgeously colored with
glazed tiles, or the bricks themselves were colored and
glazed. A magnificent example of this is a temple near
the summer palace at Peking, all of which is of bright
majolica, except its marble base. As with all structures
belonging to the emperor the color was yellow, it being
a capital offence for any other person to use that color.
The Chinese never use square timber when they can
get round trees of a suitable size, probably on account
of the lightness, strength, and convenience of the bam-
boo. The roofs are of very peculiar construction, and
all timbers are left visible. The windows are filled in
with the lining of the oyster shell, which looks like talc,
and is quite as transparent; and the main door is fre-
quently a perfectly round aperture. The old buildings
of the Chinese, like those of the Saracens, are fast go-
ing to decay, and the streets of even their grand
capital, Peking, now exhibit immense ranges of ruined
buildings.
ſº Azzcient American Architecture.
It was not long before the exhumation by Mr. Layard,
in Central Asia, of the wonderful remains of fine art en-
tombed in earthen mounds, that Mr. J. L. Stephens,
when engaged on a mission from his government—that
of the United States of North America — to some of the
mutable states of Central America, heard of and tracked
out in the forests of Yucatan the remains of a bygone
time, exhibited in sculptural and architectural monu-
ments of a coarse character, affording a strange counter-
part to those which Mr. Layard describes as having
existed in and about the valleys of the Tigris and Eu-
phrates. The remains of fifty or sixty cities have been
discovered, the most interesting being those of Chololu,
Palenque, Uxmal, Tescuco, and Mitla. The chief
structures were evidently temples (7 ecca/lis), raised
high above the surrounding buildings on grand base-
ments, square on plan, and rising by huge steps to the
summit, so as to have the general outline of a low
truncated pyramid. One at Palenque is 280 feet square
at the base, and about 60 feet high to the platform, on
which stands the temple, the latter being oblong on
plan, measuring about 76 feet by 25. It was a low
building, with a roof formed by stone gradini, so as to
be, in fact, a continuation of the pyramid.
Less artistic, but more vast and massive, are the
structures in Peru, which have been as yet imperfectly
explored. Referred by Mr. Prescott to the reigns of
the Incas, they are now considered to have been the
works of a far earlier race, of whom the Incas were
the conquerors. The rudest of these early works are
sepulchral, and much of the same kind as the crom-
lechs and stone-circles already referred to.
One circle at Sillustani is 90 feet diameter, another
150 feet, and they have a massive paved platform all
round them outside, which is not found in similar
remains in the Old World. The cromlechs are not
covered merely by a flat stone, but are rudely domed
over by overlapping stones.
A much more artistic class, of tombs is built of stones
in the form of a tower, but increasing in width towards
the top, and domed as above described. Most of them
are round on plan, but some are square and two stories
high, the upper being covered with overlapping stones
cut to the arch shape. Many of these are of hard
stone, beautifully fitted together, and the chambers are
lined with a peculiar stucco still in good preservation.
Some other sepulchral remains are on a much grander
scale, being immense mounds held up by huge retain-
ing walls. One of these mounds is fo8 feet high, and
276 yards by 75 at the top. None seem to have been
as yet explored. Of the ſortresses one of the grandest
examples is at Cuzco, 760 feet above the level of that
city. It has three lines of fortifications in terraces 1800
feet long, the lower terrace having a retaining wall now
25 feet high, the second (30 feet behind the first), 18
feet, and the third (18 feet behind the second) 14 feet
high. The walls are of cyclopean masonry, accurately
fitted, one stone being 27 feet by 14 by 12, and many
are 15 by 12 by Io feet. The plan shows considerable
skill, as the walls are not straight, but built with
recesses and re-entering angles, evidently for giving the
garrison command of the ground close to the walls.
The most interesting remains in Peru are those called
Aztacas ; but whether they were forts, or palaces, or
tombs, is not as yet clearly ascertained. They are
described as being enclosed, by walls (in various exam.
ples Ioo to 180 yards long, and 60 or 70 yards broad),
and divided by cross walls, thus forming enclosures or
chambers, many of which are still lined with stucco.
In some of these are considerable remains of staircases,
but the upper parts are destroyed. The chambers and
enclosures are almost invariably filled with clay, which
presents great difficulties in their examination. This
filling in may, possibly, be accounted for by the construc-
tion of the walls, which are immensely thick (some at
Chanchan are 15 feet), and usually of sun-dried bricks,
either small (adobes), viz., about two-thirds the size of
ours, or very large (adobines), some being I to 2 yards
long.
PRESENT POSITION OF ARCHITECTURE.
Of a far higher class than the private dwellings are
many of the places of business recently erected in our
great towns. In the new banks, exchanges, insurance
offices, &c., many of our most noted architects have
produced good results; and if we cannot congratulate
ourselves upon much that is being done, we can, at
least, say that the new work is an improvement upon the
old. In no instance, perhaps, is the advance more to
be noted than in the clubhouses and great warehouses
for storing the lighter class of goods. . A façade having
long lines of windows, in many stories, each story of
considerable height, and with only one main entrance
doorway, affords the materials, of course, for forming a
massive and pleasing effect.
Of a class unknown to the last generation are the
railway stations, some of the largest edifices of the time,
but usually almost hidden by another new class of
buildings, viz., the colossal hotels. The stations them-
selves are in the main mere great vaults of glass on
iron ribs, whose curved outlines are disfigured by the
iron ties which the safety of a great extent of such
roofing requires, and thus the only beauty, viz., the
curved form, is to a large extent obscured. It is a
fortunate circumstance that this form is the best
adapted to the purpose, and when, as in many notable
instances, the skill or good taste of the engineer has
allowed of the ties being dispensed with, the vast size
and lightness of the vault have a very impressive look,
The hotels, which in most cases form the frontage of
the stations in our country, are, for the most part,
worthy of the striking positions which they occupy; but
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473
they are chiefly by living architects, and so beyond the
scope of our criticism.
In the United States the architects of the public build-
ings appear to be of much the same feeling as were
English architects some years ago. The churches are
often Gothic, but the other great edifices are in the main
Italian, such as the capitols of Ohio, New York (Albany),
and Washington. The last is a building of great size
and picturesque outline, depending for its chief effect
on the lavish use of porticoes and colonnades.
Some of the best specimens of architecture in America
are the city hall and postoffice, New York City; Girard
college, Philadelphia; postoffice, county court house,
Auditorium, Rock Island depot, Board of Trade build-
ing, Chicago and North-Western depot, in Chicago;
Four Courts and Exposition building, St. Louis; Illinois
State capitol, at Springfield, and the various other State
capitols. Probably the best specimen of Egyptian
architecture in America is the Virginia Medical college
at Richmond.
In Canada very much the same state of things exists
as in the United States, the art in each being much the
reflex of that in the old country.
The adoption of Greek, Roman, or Italian archi-
tectural details, little modified by climate and customs,
is, in fact, to be noted in almost every country — any
form of art peculiarly national being now abandoned
in their favor; and if the houses in Paris were to be
transported to Berlin or Cairo, they would simply agree
with what has already been done in those cities. And
if, further, the Bourse or the Pantheon at Paris, the
Museum at Berlin, the Glyptothek at Munich, or the
great church of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg, were to be
severally changed to any of the other cities, it would be
fairly in harmony with the modern works around it,
though the nationality and language of the peoples in
those cities are utterly distinct from each other. This
abandonment of natural and peculiar styles is now pro-
ducing another result quite foreign to anything known
in art history before. From the earliest period known
until the 17th century almost every nation had its own
peculiar forms of art, and practised it (modified, per-
haps, by the conditions of climate) in every part of the
world which it colonised or conquered; and the result
was the interesting remains of Roman art, clearly to be
identified as such in Europe, Asia, and Africa; of Nor-
man in France, England, Italy, and Sicily; and of Sara-
cenic from Spain to India. This clear identification of
a nation by its art works is as valuable to the historian
as to the artist. But we can look for this no longer.
ARCHIVES (Lat. archivum), a room or building in
Which are kept the records, charters, and other papers
belonging to any state, community, or family. Very
frequently the name is applied to the documents them.
selves. • The archives of Britain are now superintended
by the Public Record Office.
ARCHON, the title of the highest magistrates in
Athens. The last king of Athens, Codrus, having given
up his life for the advantage of the state, it is said that
the people, out of gratitude for his noble act, passed a
resolution that in future none of their rulers should bear
the ancient and venerated title of king. The holder of
supreme power in the state received from that time the
name of archon or ruler. This is the popular account
of the change, but it is not improbable that, on the
death of Codrus, disputes arose with regard to the
succession, and that the nobles took advantage of the
opportunity to gain an addition to their power. In 684
a change was effected; the office was made annual, and
the supreme power was distributed among nine officials,
each of whom received the title of archon. To secure
that the office and honors were not conferred on un-
worthy persons, the newly-elected archons were sub-
jected to a double scrutiny, before the senate and in the
agora, in which they were required to show that they
were true Athenian citizens, whose ancestors had been
citizens for three generations, and to swear that they
would obey the laws and revere the religion of their
country.
Of the nine archons to whom in conjunction were
entrusted the duties of the supreme magistracy, the first
was called specially “The Archon”; there was also at-
tached to his name the epithet eponymus, because the
year in which he held office was named after him, Just
as at Rome it was named after the two consuls. At
first this archon had the general administration of state
affairs, but gradually the expansion of democratic
power reduced his authority, and at the period of which
we have accurate information his duties were not very
extensive. As a special department of civil administra-
tion, he had under his care all orphans, particularly
heiresses, all widows, and others who were left without
protection, provided they were citizens of Athens; and
had, in short, the charge of all matters in which ques-
tions of inheritance were involved. The second archon
had the title of king (/3a.61%levis); to him had been
handed over the name, as well as the sacred duties of
priesthood which formerly belonged to the supreme
ruler. He acted as public prosecutor in matters of re-
ligion; and, in cases of murder or offense against the
gods, he brought the indictment into the Areopagus,
and voted with its members. In later times he acted as
president of the court in all cases concerning the rights
and duties of priests. The third archon bore the title
of polemarch, which indicates that originally he was the
supreme commander of the Athenian forces. Doubt-
less the introduction of the ten generals by Clisthenes
tended to limit the military functions of this archon.
His duties in later times seem to have been the superin-
tendence and protection of the personal and family
rights of the resident aliens and foreigners. To these
he stood in the same relation as the archon eponymus
stood to citizens. He had also the arrangement of the
funeral games in honor of those who had fallen in
battle, and the offering up of the annual sacrifice
to Artemis in commemoration of the battle of Marathon.
Each of the three superior archons was allowed to se-
lect two assessors or assistants, who were sanctioned
after examination by the senate. The remaining six
archons were called thesmothetae (0&6/u offérat), a
name which is sometimes applied to the whole body of
archons. The six formed a college of justice, whose
jurisdiction seems at first to have extended to all cases
not directly under the cognizance of other magistrates.
They received information against parties for various
offenses, brought the case to trial in the proper court,
appointed the juries, and gave public notice of the days
of sitting. They revised every year the body of laws
to see that no discrepancies were allowed to creep in,
and they were required to enter all new laws. They
also drew up and ratified the treaties with foreign states.
After the introduction of popular courts by Solon, the
archons seem to have lost their special juridical powers;
they then acted simply as presidents of the courts
and sometimes as a grand jury. During their year of
office the archons were exempt from all state burdens;
and at its close they were required to give an account of
the manner in which they had discharge their duties;
if found blameless, they became members of the Areo.
pagus.
The name archon is frequently applied by Greek
authors to magistrates in general; it was also used as
a title under the Greek empire, and the Jews sometimes
applied it to members of their Sanhedrim.
*
474
A R C — A R D
ARCHYTAS, of Tarentum, son of Mnesagoras or
Histiaeus, was one of the most celebrated men of anti-
quity. He was distinguished as a mathematician, a
philosopher, a statesman, and a general; nor was he
less remarkable for the purity and integrity of his life
and the mildness and benevolence of his dispositon.
The time at which he flourished can be settled approxi-
mately from the fact that he was contemporary with
Plato, whom he knew personally, and whose life he
saved by interceding with the tyrant Dionysius. He
took a prominent part in the administration of the state,
and was seven times made general of the army, although
by a law it was forbidden that any citizen should hold
the command more than once. It is said that he was
never defeated in battle. He was also intrusted with
the charge of many important civil affairs.
ARCIS-SUR-AUBE, the chief town of the arron-
dissement of the same name, in the deparment of Aube,
in France, is situated about 17 miles (28 kilometres)
N., of Troyes, on the left bank of the river, just at the
point where it becomes navigable.
ARCOS DE LA FRONTERA, a Spanish town in
the province of Cadiz, on the river Guadalete, which
flows past Santa Maria into the bay of Cadiz. The
special designation ‘‘ of the frontier” is due to its
position as a border town after its capture from the
Moors by Alphonso the Wise. *
ARCOT, two districts and a city of British India,
within the presidency of Madras, and under the juris-
diction of the governor of that province. The district
of NORTH ARcot lies between 12° 22' and 14° 11' N.
lat.; and between 78° 17' and 80° 12' E. long. It is
bounded on the N. by the district of Cuddapah and
Nellor; on the E. by the district of Chengalpat; on the
S. by the districts of South Arcot and Salem; and on
the W. by the Mysor territory. The area of North
Arcot, according to the Annals of Indian Administra-
tion for 1871–72, is 15, 146 square miles; the population,
as ascertained by a census taken in July 1871, being
2,007,667 souls.
ARCOT CITY, the principal town in the district of
North Arcot, is situated on the South bank of the Palär
river, in 12°54' N. lat., and 79° 24' E. long. It is a
station on the line of railway from Madras to Beypur,
and is also a military cantonment. The population of
the town, in 1862, was returned at 53,474 Souls, inhab-
iting IO, O42 houses.
ARCTIC OCEAN. The Arctic Circle (66° 30') being
taken as a boundary, the whole of the Ocean lying to
the north is called the Arctic Ocean. From a physical
point of view this limit is hardly satisfactory, since
between Greenland and Europe the Atlantic, with its
Gulf Stream, makes an inroad on the Arctic territory,
and the southern extremity of Greenland brings down
the Arctic region beyond the Arctic limit; but the other
parallel of latitude (70°) which has been chosen as a
southern limit is perhaps still more objectionable. The
Arctic Ocean washes the north of Europe, Asia, and
America. It communicates with the Atlantic by a broad
opening on the east of Greenland, and a narrow but
important channel on the west, which has been traced
as far north as 84°, and is known in the various parts
of its extent by special names — Davis’ Strait, Baffin's
Bay, Utlak Soak, Smith Sound, Kennedy Channel,
Robeson Channel, Lincoln Sea, but might conveniently
be distinguished by some such general designation as
the West Greenland Channel. With the Pacific there
is communication between Asia and America through
Behring's Strait. Europe sends down the Onega,
Dwina, Pinega, Mezen, and Petchora; Asia the Obi,
Yenisee, Lena, Indigarka, and Robima; and America
the Mackenzie River. The most important of the num-
erous islands are Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, with
the multitudinous adjacent islets, to the north of Europe;
the Liakhov Islands, or New Siberia, off the coast of
Asia; and the vast irregular Archipelago into which
the north-eastern portion of America is split, which
extends to the quasi-continent of Greenland.
ARDEA, a Latian city, probably of Pelasgian origin,
famous chiefly for its accidental connection with the
semi-mythical rape of Lucretia and the expulsion of the
Tarquins from Rome.
ARDEBIL, or ARDABIL, one of the chief towns of
Azerbijan in Persia, situated in 38° 15' N. lat., and 489
I9' E. long., on the Karasau or Balulk, a tributary of
the Aras, in a fertile plain about 40 miles from the Cas-
pian, seems to have been built out of the ruins of a for-
mer city.
ARDECHE, a department in the south of France,
bounded on the N.W. by the department of Loire, on
the E. by Isère and Drôme, on the S. by Gard, and on
the W. by Lozère and Haute Loire. It extends 72
miles from N. to S., and 45 from E. to W., at the
widest points; and its area is 2134 square miles. The
surface of Ardèche is almost entirely covered by the
Cevennes Mountains; the main line forming the western
boundary of the department, and sending out the Bou-
tières, Coiron, Tanargue, and other branches, for the
most part in an easterly direction. Several of the sum-
mits, of which the highest, Mount Mezenc, is 5972 feet
above the sea, are evidently extinct volcanoes. The
Rhone bounds Ardèche on the east, and receives most
of its rivers, including the Cance, the Ay, the Doux, the
Erieux, and the Ardèche. A few rivers, however, belong
to the Atlantic side of the water-shed, the chief being the
Loire, which rises on the western borders of the depart-
ment, and the Allier, which for a short distance separ-
ates it from Lozère. The climate in the valley of the
Rhone is warm, and sometimes very hot; but west-
ward, as the elevation increases, the cold becomes more:
intense and the winters longer.
ARDELAN, a province of Persia, forming the east-
ern division of Kurdistan, and lying south of Azerbijan.
Its capital Senna, in long. 40° E., and lat. 35° 12' N.,
is built in a deep valley, which is well tilled and rich in
orchards.
ARDENNES, a department on the N.E. frontier of
France, which derives its name from the famous forest,
is bounded on the N. and N.E. by Belgium, on the E.
by the department of the Meuse, on the S. by that of
Marne, and on the W. by that of the Aisne. In shape
it is an irregular pentagon, with a cape-like prolongation.
into Belgium on the north. It has a superficial extent of
523,000 hectares, or 1,291,810 acres, of which 300,000
hectares, or 741,000 acres, are arable land, while I54,OOO
hectares, or 383,800 acres, are occupied with forest,
wood, and heath. The wooded plateaus which begin in
the department of the Meuse are continued in a north-
west direction, and divide the basin of the Meuse from
the basin of the Aisne, till they form a junction with the
Ardennes proper. At one time this was a very inacces-
sible region, and formed a strong defence, as Dumouriez
showed in 1792, against invasion from the east. The
chief wealth of Ardennes consists in mineral produç-
tions, wood, cattle, and sheep. The department is
divided into five arrondissements: Mézières, towards
the center; Rocroy, in the N.; Rethel, in the W. and
S.; Vouziers in the S.; and Sedan in the E. Mézières
is the capital, and a prefecture. * *
ARDFERT, a small village in Kerry, in the S.W. of
Ireland, about 4 miles N. N.W. of Tralee, and nearly
as much ſrom the coast.
ARDGLASS (the green height), a town of Ireland
in Down county, Ulster, at the head of a small bay
A R D — A R E
475.
about 8 or 9 miles S. of the entrance of Strangford
Lough, and 7 miles S.S.E. of Downpatrick, was a place
of great importance soon after the Norman invasion.
ARDOCH, a parish in Perthshire, famous for its
Roman military antiquities, which are situated in the
grounds of Ardoch House, about 2% miles N. of
Greenloaning, on the Caledonian Railway.
ARDRES, a French town, in the department of Pas
de Calais, and arrondissement of St. Omer, on a canal
joining Calais and St. Omer, to which it gives its name.
The “Field of the Cloth of Gold,” where Henry VIII.
of England and Francis I. of France tried to outdazzle
each other in 1520, was in the immediate neighborhood.
ARDROSSAN, a sea-port in Ayrshire, Scotland, 31
miles by rail from Glasgow, in N. lat. 55° 38', and W.
long. 4° 49'. It dates from an early period, as there
seem to have been a castle and a small fishing village
in existence for several centuries. The castle, famous
for its capture by Wallace, was finally destroyed by
Cromwell, who is said to have used part of its masonry
for the construction of the fort at Ayr. The rise of
Ardrossan into commercial importance is due to the
exertions of Hugh the twelfth earl of Eglinton, who
commenced the construction of the present town and
harbor in 1806. The cost of the harbor up to date
has been upwards of 42OO,OOO. The works now con-
sist of a wet dock of 4 acres in area, with 19 feet at
high water over the lock sill, and of two tidal harbors —
one 18 acres, and the other 6 acres in area. There is a
lighthouse on the north-west point of the outer break-
water, with a white flashing light.
ARECIBO, a town of Porto Rico, third in size in
the province. Pop. 12,000.
AREMBERG, a small market-town of Prussia, in
the government of Coblentz and circle of Adenau. It
is situated not far from the river Ahr, and has a castle
which was formerly the residence of the dukes of
Aremberg.
ARENDAL, a sea-port town of Norway on the
Skagerrack, 35 miles north-east of Christiansand.
AREOPAGUS, a small barren hill to the west and
within bowshot of the Acropolis of Athens, for an
attack upon which it would form a natural base. It
was so used (480 B.C.) by the Persians. For the same
purpose it had been occupied also in the legendary age
by the Amazons, when in the time of Theseus they
menaced Athens, and from the circumstance of their
having then sacrificed to Ares, the hill derived its name.
Assuming the occupation by the Amazons to have been
typical of what frequently happened during the hos-
tilities of early times, it is easy to understand how the
hill came to be associated with the war god. To the
popular mind the Areopagus was always the “hill of
Mars.” But the popular mind required a more definite
account of the origin of the name, and to supply this,
there took shape the legend of Ares having been here
called before a court of the twelve gods to answer for
the murder of Halirrhotius. This explains at once the
origin of the name of the hill and of the court which
held its sittings there. AEschylus, however, gives in
the Æumenides a different origin to the court, declaring
it to have been first appointed by Athene to try Orestes
for the murder of his mother Clytaemnestra. In later
times both legends were dismissed, and the explanation
of the name referred to the nature of the cases — cases
of murder—tried before the court. The four legendary
cases of murder tried before this court were those in
which Ares, Cephalus, Daedalus, and Orestes appeared
as the accused. On the top of the hill towards the east
is an artificial plateau accessible from the south by
steps cut in the rock. In several places are still to be
traced the rock-hewn seats on which the court sat in the
open air, so that the judges and the accusers might not
be under the same roof with a polluted criminal.
Raised upon two unhewn stones, the accuser and the
accused made their pleadings, the stone used by the
former being called “stone of implacability;” the other
was called “stone of crime.” Within the boundary of
the court stood also an altar to Athene Areia, believed
to have been dedicated by Orestes, and blocks of marble
(dºoves), on which were inscribed the laws defining the
powers of the judges. On another part of the hill
stood one of the most revered of Athenian sanctuaries,
that of the Erinnyes, containing statues of these three-
goddesses, but not in the hideous aspect in which they
were usually conceived, and also statues of those other
deities connected with the lower world, Pluto, Hermes,
and Ge. Within the boundary of this temple was the
tomb of GEdipus, and very close to the boundary, if not
within it, was the heroön or sanctuary of Hesychus,
the founder of the priestly line in whose hands were the
rites of the Erinnyes. Near the temple was the Cylon-
eion, a memorial of the pollution of the spot caused
by the treacherous slaughter of those who, having
failed in the conspiracy of Cylon, had taken refuge there
as suppliants. Towards the north-east foot of the hill
was a temple of Ares containing statues of that god, of
Enyo, Aphrodite, and Athene, while outside were
statues of Hercules, Apollo, Pindar, and a poet named
Caladas. On the north-east side there is a chasm in
the rocks with a spring of dark water, which may have
been associated with the worship of the Erinnyes.
We must then conceive Solon as having found the
Ephetae acting as judges in the Areopagus and in the
other four courts. He set himself to alter the constitu-
tion of the Areopagus by adding to the Ephetae already-
in office there the nine Athenian archons on their retir–
ing from public duties, and provided that they had ren-
dered a satisfactory account of their administration. It is.
probable that from this new source alone a sufficient num–
ber of judges was supplied, and that, therefore, the original
Ephetae were allowed to die out, though in that case the
number of Areopagites could scarcely have been a fixed
one, considering the liability of an archon to be re-
jected. The new judges retained their office for life.
subject to dismissal only by their own body. For the
most part they were advanced in years and necessarily
always men of integrity and experience, qualifications
which were demanded in the highest degree from a.
court which, instead of administering strictly defined
laws, had to base its verdicts on a careful investigation.
of the life and circumstances of parties arraigned before
it. Its decisions were quoted as models of justice. Its.
competency was limited to cases of wilful murder,
bodily injury with intent to kill, incendiarism, and poi-
soning. Other degrees of homicide were referred, ac-.
cording to their nature, to the other four Athenian.
courts, viz., accidental homicide to the Palladium, justi-
fiable homicide to the Delphinium; at the Prytaneum.
was heard the formal indictment of inanimate objects,
such as wood or stone, which by falling had caused the
loss of life; while before the court of Phreathys at the
Piraeus appeared those who having been banished for
accidental homicide had during their banishment com-
mitted wilful murder.
Besides being a court of justice, the Areopagus was
also a council, empowered to interefere in matters.
affecting religion and morals, and, previously to the
time of Pericles, in the administration of public affairs.
With powers of this order homestly exercised, it is not
singular that Isocrates in his picture of Athens in the
happy times gone by, should point to the action of the
Areopagus as one of the three great sources of this.
happiness.
476
A R E
AREQUIPA, one of the 18 departments of Peru.
It lies along the Pacific from lat. 159 to 17° 20' S. Its
chief productions are silver, alpaca and other wools,
sugar, wine, and brandy. The population is stated at
200,000, which is probably in excess.
AREQUIPA, the chief town of the department, stands
at the ſoot of Mista, in the fertile valley of the Chile,
7775 feet above the level of the sea, in lat. 16° 16' S.,
long. 72° 31' W. It is divided into five districts —
Santo Domingo, San Francesco, La Merced, San Aug-
ustin, and Miraflores—and has a population of about
30,000.
ARES [MARS], in Greek Mythology, the god of war,
not, however, of war in its wide sense, including cam-
paigns, the disposition and command of forces, but in
its more primitive meaning of a fierce encounter
between bodies of men. Neither the causes nor
the ultimate effects of war were ascribed to
Thim. He was simply a personification of the wild
impetuous spirit with which battles were fought, and as
such he was conceived as the model of a hero, splend-
idly armed with cuirass, helmet, shield, and Spear,
swift, of great size (ſtelgáptos), raging (uazvous vos),
murderous (6porońotyds), unsatiable of war, (dèrog
7toAéſuolo). Enyo, the furious war goddess, Eris,
(Strife), Deimos and Phobos (Dread and Alarm), were
usually by his side. Even his mother Hera denounces
him (ZZiad v. 761) as senseless, and knowing no bounds.
It was doubtless only as an illustration of the habitual
‘strife between Hera and Zeus that Ares was accounted
their son. When wounded by Diomedes assisted by
Athena (//iad v. 853, ſº.), he fell with a noise like that of
nine or ten thousand men in battle; and again (//iad,
xxi, 400, f.), when Athena wounded him with a stone,
he fell, and covered with his fall seven acres of ground.
ARESON, JON (or HANS), a poet, and the last Ro-
man Catholic bishop in Iceland, was born in 1484. He
‘endured many privations in his youth, and at the age of
twenty took holy orders, and was attached as priest to
the parish of Helgastad. Here he was taken under
the protection of Gottskalk, bishop of Holum, who
twice sent him on missions to Norway. He acquitted
Abimself so well that in 1522 he was appointed successor
to Gottskalk. To many his election was displeasing,
chiefly on account of his ignorance of Latin; and Og-
mund, bishop of Skalholt, the other diocese, drove
Areson with violence from his bishopric. He was re-
instated in 1524, and spent some rather stormy years
till I540, when Frederic III., king of Denmark, wrote
to the bishops of Iceland desiring them to take measures
for the introduction of Lutheranism. This Areson de-
clined to do, and he even denied the king's power as
head of the church. The greater part of the island,
however, became Protestant. In 1548 the Lutheran
bishop of Skalholt died, and Areson made an armed
excursion into his successor’s territory. For this he
was in 1549 declared an outlaw. He again sent an ex-
pedition against Skalholt, and captured the bishop,
whom he treated with indignity. In 1550 his forces
were defeated; he was taken, and executed along with
two of his sons. Areson is celebrated as a poet, and
as having been the first to introduce printing into Ice-
land. Several of his poems are collected by Harboe in
his History of the A’eformation in Iceland.
ARETAEUS, a Greek physician of Cappadocia, who
lived, according to some, in the reign of Augustus;
according to others, under Trajan or Hadrian. He
was one of the class of Pneumatic physicians, who
made the heart the seat of life and of the soul.
ARETHUSA, a fountain at Syracuse, in Sicily,
famed among the ancients for the abundance of its
waters and the number of its fishes, but still more so
for the connection which was fabled to exist between it
and Alpheus, the river of the Peloponnesus, “who stole
under seas to meet his Arethuse.” According to the
anthropomorphic legend, Arethusa was a daughter of
Nereus and Doris, who was changed into the fountain
by her mistress Diana (Artemis), to deliver her from
the pursuit of her lover Alpheus. There is still a
copious supply of water in the modern fountain, but
the taste is brackish, and it can only be used for wash-
ing; while the fish are no longer to be found.
ARETHUSA was also the name of two cities: Arethusa
in Macedonia, famous for the tomb of Euripides, and
Arethusa in Syria (AEastan), which gives its name to
Marcus, a bishop who was persecuted by the Arethus-
ans, and is honored as a martyr by the Greek Church.
ARETINO, PIETRO, an Italian writer of the 16th
century, was born in 1492 at Arezzo in Tuscany, from
which place he took his name. He received little edu-
cation, and lived for some years poor and neglected,
picking up such scraps of information as he could.
After some years' wandering through parts of Italy he
reached Rome, where his talents, wit, and impudence
commended him to the Papal Court. This favor, how-
ever, he lost, left Rome and was received by John de
Medici, who took him to Milan and introduced him to
Francis I. He gained the good graces of that mon-
arch, and received handsome presents from him. On
the death of John de Medici in December 1526, he
withdrew to Venice, where he spent his time in writing
comedies, sonnets, licentious dialogues, and a few devo-
tional and religious works. He led a profligate life,
and procured funds to satisfy his needs by writing syco-
phantish letters to all the nobles and princes with whom
he was acquainted. This plan proved eminently suc-
cessful, for large sums were given him, apparently from
fear of his satire. So great did Aretino's pride grow,
that he styled himself the “divine,” and the “scourge of
princes.” He died in 1557, according to some accounts
by falling from his chair in a fit of laughter caused by
hearing some indecent story of his sisters. The reputa-
tion of Aretino in his own time rested chiefly on his
Satirical sonnets or burlesques; but his comedies, five
in number, are now considered the best of his works.
A REZZO, the ancient ARRETIUM, a Tuscan city on
the Chiana (Clamis), which is now an affluent of the
Arno, but formerly flowed into the Tiber. Arretium
was one of the twelve cities of the ancient Etruscan
Confederation, and continued after its incorporation
with the Roman dominion to be a highly important
military post. Having sided with Marius in the civil
war, the Aretines were deprived by Sulla of their Roman
citizenship; but the city received a colony under
Augustus, and seems to have had a peculiar municipal con-
stitution. In the time of Pliny it was known for its
pottery, and many specimens of the bright red ware,
with ornaments in relief, differing from the productions
of Southern Etruria, have been preserved to the present
day. In modern history Arezzo is chiefly remarkable
for the obstinate opposition it maintained against the
pertinacious encroachments of the Florentines, to whom,
however, it had finally to submit. It is now a clean,
well-built, well-paved, and flourishing town of Io,000
inhabitants, the seat of a bishop and a prefect, with a
theological seminary, a surgical school, a library, and a
museum. Few cities can show such a list of remarkable
men as Arezzo — Maecenas (?), Guido, famous for his
musical discoveries, Guittone the poet, Petrarch, Leon.
ardo Bruno the historian, Cesalpini the botanist,
Margheritone and Spinello the painters, Alberghotti
the jurist, Pope Julius III., Pietro Aretino the satirist,
Vasari the author of Zizes of the Artists, Redi the
naturalist, Fossolnbroni the mathematician and engineer.
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A R G
477
ARGAM, a village of Haidarābād, in the Nizām's
dominions, 40 miles South-west of Elichpur and 135
miles north-east of Aurungābād.
ARGELANDER, FRIEDRICH WILHELM AUGUST, a
distinguished German astronomer, was born at Memel,
22d March 1799; and died at Bonn, 17th February
1875. He studied at the university of Königsberg,
where his attention was attracted to the study of astron-
omy by Bessel, whose assistant he became in 1821. In
the following year he published an essay on the path of
the great comet of 1811, the period of which he deter-
mined with great accuracy. In 1823 he was made
superintendent of the observatory at Abo; and in 1832
was transferred to the university of Helsingfors,
where he remained for five years. In 1837 he pub-
lished an admirable essay upon the proper motion of
the solar system, and in the same year was appointed
professor of astronomy at Bonn, where he spent the
remainder of his life.
ARGENSOLA, the name of two Spanish poets,
brothers, who are sometimes called the “Spanish Hor-
aces.” The elder, Lupercio Leonardo y Argensola, was
born in 1565 and died in 1613. His works consist of
three tragedies, highly praised by Cervantes, and lyric
oems, published along with those of his brother.
ARGENTAN, a town in the department of Orne, in
France, situated in the midst of a fertile plain at the
junction of the Ure and Orne, about 31 miles from
Alençon. Population (1889), 7,225.
ARGENTEUIL, a market-town of France, in the
department of Seine-et-Oise, and arrondissement of
Versailles, on the Seine. It gathered round a monas-
tery, which, dating from 656 A.D., was by Charlemagne
changed into a nunnery, afterwards famous for its con-
nection with Heloise, and on her expulsion in 1129,
was again turned into a monastery. Population, 8,126,
ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. THE ARGENTINE
REPUBLIC comprises the greaterpart of what was formerly
the Spanish viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres. On the separa-
tion of the country from Spain the remainder of the
viceroyalty seceded from the authority of the govern-
ment established at Buenos Ayres, and formed the three
important republics of Bolivia, Paraguay, and the Banda
Oriental del Uruguay, commonly called either the
Qriental Republic or Uruguay. The city of Buenos
Ayres, the capital of the province of the same name,
then became the seat of the national government of the
United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, so named in
the treaty with England, by which their independence
was recognized, and since termed the Argentine Repub-
lic. Including the Indian tribes, who are in almost
undisputed possession of half its territory, the country
does not contain half so many inhabitants as the city of
London, though it extends over an area as great as all
Central and Western Europe combined; and the fertil-
ity of its vast plains, together with the yet undeveloped
wealth of its mineral resources, indicaté that it is well
able to sustain as numerous a population as that of the
part of Europe just alluded to. Its extent in latitude
is greater than that of any other existing country, if we
except the comparatively useless regions of British
America and those of the Russian empire, though it
only slightly exceeds that of the comparatively narrow
slip of land which forms the neighboring Republic of
Chili. It is bounded on the W. by Chili; on the S. by
the Strait of Magellan; on the E. by the Atlantic
Ocean, the Oriental Republic, the Empire of Brazil,
and the Republic of Paraguay; and on the N. by the
Republic of Bolivia. The boundary to the W. is formed
by the mountain chain of the Andes. The southern
limit, for some time a question in dispute with the Gov.
ernment of Chili, was determined by treaty concluded at
Buenos Ayres July 23, 1881, by which Patagonia became
a part of the Republic, the Strait of Magellan being ap-
ortioned to Chili. The broad stream of the Uruguay
elow its tributary, the Guarey, or Cuareim, divides it
from the Oriental Republic, except that the small but
important island of Martin Garcia, close to the Orien-
tal shore of the Uruguay at its junction with the
Parana, belongs to the Argentine Republic. The
boundary with Brazil is then formed by the Uru-
guay and its tributary, the Pepiri Guazu, from the head
waters of which it crosses the Sierra de los Missiones.
to the head waters of the San Antonia Guazu, the
course of which it follows, and then that of the Iguazu,
or Rio Grande de Caritiba, an important tributary of
the Parana. The Parana, down to its junction with
the Paraguay, and the latter upwards as far as the
mouth of the Pilcomayo, form the boundary with the
Republic of Paraguay. South of the 22d degree of
latitude the country between the Pilcomayo and the
Paraguay is disputed by the Argentine Republic and
Paraguay. The boundary with Bolivia lies along the
22d degree of latitude between the Pilcomayo and the
Vermejo, and then, leaving important tributaries of the
latter to Bolivia, it follows the course of that river to
its source, whence it takes a devious course westwards.
among the mountains which form spurs to the Andes.
On reaching the latter it follows the main chain
southwards to latitude 25° 30', where it passes to
a more westerly ridge of the Andes on which the
boundaries of the three neighboring republics unite.
The boundary we have described with Bolivia cannot be
considered as permanently settled; and the boundary
between Bolivia and Paraguay to the north of the
Argentine Republic has not been determined. The
boundary questions with all these republics are in an
unsatisfactory state.
The most remarkable feature of the country is its
plains, which may be said to extend over more than
three-fourths of it. The plains of Patagonia in the
south, the Pampas across the extending central part of
the country, and the Chaco in the north-east, have no
very definite natural boundaries. The two latter are, in
fact, the same continuous formation, in which a slight
undulation divides the streams of the Chaco, which
join the Parana, from those of the Pampas, which either
flow into the Atlantic south of the mouth of the latter
river, or disappear by absorption into the soil, and
evaporation as they spread over the plains. The best
parts of these º are covered with a rich alluvial
soil from 3 to 6 feet in thickness, formed by the con-
stant decaying of the luxuriant vegetation which grows
upon it, and this soil rests upon a sedimentary deposit
of earth, which appears to have been scoured away
from the Andes and the high lands of the central part
of the continent. A great part of Patagonia and the
western Pampas consists of gravel and coarse detritus
from the Andes, and, though apparently sterile, only
requires irrigation to become productive. Other parts
of the plains are dry, saline wastes or brackish marshes,
which probably mark the former position of an inland
sea. Excepting the hills in the south of the province of
Buenos. Ayres and those of Cordova, the mountain dis-
tricts of the country consist of the eastern slope of the
gigantic range of the Andes and its branches, which
latter make all the north-western part of the country a
mountainous region. The great chain of the Andes
consists of a confused mass of broken and contorted
strata, piled upon an elevated ridge of granite, through
which numerous volcanoes, many of them still active,
have ejected vast quantities of lava and scoriae. Along
most parts of the great mountain chain there are three
subsidiary and more or less parallel ridges, between
478
. A R G
which fertile valleys are formed in many places, whilst
in other parts the separation between them is not very
clearly defined. In the north-west the boundary with
Bolivia lies along the most eastern of the ridges just
mentioned, so that the valleys to the west of it are
within that republic, but the boundary with Chili lies
along the western ridge, so that the central and eastern
ridges, with the fine valleys which lie between them,
Hjelong to the Argentine Republic.
The great extent of this country in latitude makes its
climate range through all diversities of temperature from
that of Northern Europe and Canada to that of Egypt
and Arabia. The climate of Southern Patagonia is less
intemperate than that of Labrador at the same distance
from the equator in the northern hemisphere, but colder
than the Atlantic shores of Europe in the same latitude.
As the diſſerence of climate in the same latitude in the
northern hemisphere is in a great measure attributed
to the fact of the warm water from the equatorial
regions driſting towards the shores of the north of
Europe, whilst the cold water from the Arctic regions
is constantly flowing southwards along the coast of
Labrador, so also the intermediate nature of the climate
of Patagonia is doubtless, in some measure, due to the
tendency of the cold water of the Antarctic regions to
flow northwards through the central parts of the
Atlantic Ocean, as pointed out by Maury, thus throwing
the warm water southwards along the coasts of Brazil
and Patagonia. Argentine Patagonia might, not inaptly,
be termed the Sweden, and Chilian Patagonia the
Norway of the southern hemisphere. In the north of
Patagonia and the southern part of the province of
Duenos Ayres the climate, as regards temperature,
resembles that of England; and northwards of this is the
broadest part of the republic, which contains the city of
Mendoza in the far west, and Buenos Ayres in the east,
and enjoys one of the finest climates in the world,
rivalling that of Southern France and Northern Italy.
North of this the summer heat becomes too oppressive,
and in the extreme north the climate is thoroughly tropical.
In some parts of the north-west the altitude of the
country gives it a cooler climate than that of the Chaco
, in the same latitude. Along the Argentine slopes of the
Andes and the adjacent country the climate is remark-
able for its dryness, because the prevalent westerly
winds lose the moisture which they bring from the
Pacific before crossing the mountains. This peculiarity
is most marked in the southern part of the continent,
where Chilian Patagonia is deluged with almost in-
ºcessant rain, whilst Argentine Patagonia is dry and
arid. In the east, as at Buenos Ayres, there is more
rain, which, with southerly winds and occasional north-
westerly storms, is often very, heavy. The oppressive
humidity which is characteristic of the northerly and
north-easterly winds forms the most disagreeable and
unhealthy weather experienced in that part of the
country. The climate of Cordova, and also that of
some of the more westerly districts is found very
suitable for consumptive patients.
The first Europeans who visited the River Plate were
a party of Spanish explorers in search of a south-west
passage to the East Indies. Their leader, Juan Dias
de Solis, landed, in 1516, with a few attendants, on the
north coast between Maldonado and Monte Video,
where, according to Southey, they were treacherously
killed, and then cooked and eaten by the Charrua In-
dians in sight of their companions on board the vessels.
The survivors at once abandoned the country and re-
turned to Spain, reporting the discovery of a fresh-water
sea. In 1519 Magalhaens, in the services of the king
of Portugal, entered this fresh-water sea, or Mar Dulce,
as it was then called, but finding no passage to the west,
he left it without landing, and then achieved his great
voyage to the English Indies, passing through the strait
which bears his name in 1520. After this Sebastian
Cabot, already a renowned navigator, who, in the Ser-
vice of Henry VII. of England, had attempted to find a
north-west passage to the East Indies, entered the ser-
vice of Charles 1. of Spain, and sailed in command of
an expedition fitted out for the purpose of colonising
the discoveries of Magalhaens in the East Indies. He,
however, entered the River Plate in 1527, and anchored
off the present site of the city of Buenos Ayres. He
then ascended the Parana, and established a settlement,
named San Espiritu, among the Timbú Indians in Santa
Fé; and he succeeded in bringing that tribe of Indians
to friendly terms with the colony. He continued the
ascent of the Parama as far as the cataracts in Missiones,
and afterwards explored the Paraguay, from which he ent-
ered the Veremejo, where his party suffered severely in a
savage fight with the Agaces, or Payaguá Indians. Of
this tribe a subdued remnant now lives on the delta of the
Pilcomayo, opposite Asuncion, amalgamating neither
with the Spaniards nor with the wild, Guaycurus of the
surrounding parts of the Chaco. The profusion of sil-
ver ornaments worn by these Indians, as well as
by the Timbus and Guaranis, led him to give the
name of Rio de la Plata, or Silver River, to the
splendid stream which he had thus far explored.
This name, rendered in English Æiver A/ate, is
now applied only to the estuary below the junction of
the Paraná and Uruguay. One of Cabot’s lieutenants,
detached on a separate exploring expedition up the
Uruguay, was killed, together with a great part of his
crew, by the Charrua Indians. And subsequently at
San Espiritu, an attempt of the chief of the Timbus to
obtain possession of one of the Spanish ladies in the
settlement led to a treacherous massacre of the gar-
rison. Before this latter occurrence Diego Garcia ar-
rived in the river with an expedition fitted out in Spain,
for the purpose of continuing the explorations com-
menced by De Solis; and Cabot returned to Spain,
where he applied to Charles I. for the means of open-
ing communications with Peru by way of the Vermejo.
But the resources of the king were absorbed in his
struggle as emperor (under the name of Charles V.)
with Francis I. of France, so that he was obliged to
leave the enterprise of South American discoveries to
his wealthy nobles. In August 1534 Mendoza left
Cadiz for the river Plate at the head of the largest and
wealthiest expedition that had ever left Europe for the
New World. In January 1535 he entered the River
Plate, where he followed the northern shore to San
Gabriel, and then crossing the river, he landed on the
Pampas. The name of Buenos Ayres was given to the
country by Del Campo, who first stepped ashore where
the city of that name now stands, and where, on the 2d
February, the settlement of Santa Maria de Buenos
Ayres was founded; the smaller vessels having been
safely harbored in the Riachuelo, half a league south
of the settlement. Mendoza's captains then explored
the country between Paraguay and Peru, in which lat-
ter country Pizarro had, in 1535, founded the city of
Lima. Of one of these expeditions consisting of 200 men,
who left Paraguay in February 1537, and are said to have
reached the south-east district of Peru, under Ayolas,
every man was killed by the Payagua Indians in the
northern part of the Chaco whilst the expedition was
returning laden with plunder. Ayolas had, on his way
up the river, built and garrisoned a fort named Corpus
Christi among the Timbus, in Santa Fé, near the
deserted settlement of San Espiritu; and in Paraguay,
after three days’ fighting with the Guaraní Indians, as
narrated by Du Graty, he had, on the 15th August 1536,
A R G
479
established a settlement where the city of Asuncion now
stands. In the meantime the settlement of Buenos
Ayres was attacked and burnt by the Indians; and after
terrible sufferings from famine as well as attacks of the
Indians, juguars, and pumas, the Spaniards abandoned
the place on the arrival of a fresh expedition from
Spain, in company with which they ascended the river,
first to Corpus Christi, and then to Asuncion, where, in
1538, Irala was elected captain-general. In 1542
13uenos Ayres was re-established by an expedition sent
out from Spain for the purpose under Cebesa de Vaca.
This able leader landed at Santa Catherina, in Brazil,
and marched overland to Asuncion, from which he sent
vessels to join the new expedition at Buenos Ayres,
reaching that place, according to Southey, just in time
to save the new comers from extermination by the
Indians. Here the Spaniards again found themselves
unable to withstand the incessant attacks of the savages,
and the place was a second time abandoned on the
3d February 1543. At Asuncion the Spaniards were
more successful in establishing themselves among the
Guaraní Indians, who, after much severe fighting,
finding themselves unable to vanquish the Spaniards,
made alliance with them, both offensive and defensive,
and also intermarried with them. The events which
transpired at Asuncion belong, however, to the history
of Paraguay. . In 1573 Garay, at the head of an expe-
.dition despatched from Asuncion, founded the city of
Santa Fé near the abandoned settlements of San
Espiritu and Corpus Christi. The expulsion of the
Spaniards from the latter place, had according to the
Aſistoria Argențăzza, resulted from a wanton attack
made by them on the Caracara Indians, slaughtering
the men, and taking the women captive, a mode of
procedure which all Pampa Indians adopted, and have
'ever since acted on. It is unfortunate, both for
the Indians and for the Spaniards, that the bold
conquistadores were not always under the guid-
ance of such high principled men as Cabot and
Cabesa de Vaca. In 1580, when the new colony
had been firmly established, Garay proceeded southwards
and made the third attempt to establish Buenos Ayres,
under the name “Cuidad de la Santissima Trinidad,
Puerto de Santa Maria de Buenos Ayres; ” and not-
withstanding the determined hostility of the Querandi
Indians, who were encouraged by the success of their
two preceding wars, the Spaniards succeeded in holding
the place. The settlement prospered, and the cattle and
horses brought from Europe multiplied and spread over
the plains of the Pampas. Whilst the Spaniards of the
River Plate were thus engaged, Pizarro had effected the
conquest of Peru; and his lieutenant, Almagro, had
extended the conquest to the south of Chili, from which,
in 1559, Hurtado de Mendoza crossed the Andes, and,
having defeated the Araucanian Indians, founded the
city of Mendoza. It is interesting to observe, that up
to a recent date the giant chain of the Andes has been a
less effective barrier to trade than the rich plains of the
Pampas. This state of affairs is, however, now much
altered by the railway, for which Mr. Clark, several years
ago, obtained a concession, direct from Buenos Ayres to
Mendoza. In 1550 the Spaniards from Peru entered the
north-western provinces by way of Catamarca, and
founded the city of Tucuman in 1565, and that of Cor-
dova in 1573. It was only in 1873, just three hundred
years after the cities were founded, that the boundary
between the jurisdiction of Cordova and that of Santa
Fé was determined by the intervention of the national
Government. In 1620 Buenos Ayres was separated
from the authority of the Government established at
Asuncion, and was "made the seat of a Government
extending over Mendoza, Santa Fé, Entre Rios, and
'several of the American posts.
Corrientes, but at the same time remained, like the
Government at Asuncion and that of Tucuman, which
latter included Cordova, subject to the authority of the
viceroyalty of Peru.
After the vast expenditure of blood and treasure which
was incurred by the Spaniards in establishing themselves
on the River Plate as just described, the restrictive legis-
lation of the home Government became a more effective
hindrance to the development of its resources and the
spread of civilisation over the country than the hostility
of the Indian tribes. Cabot had urged the feasibilty of
opening an easier channel for trade with the interior of
Peru through the River Plate and its tributaries than
that by way of the West Indies and Panama; and, now
that his views seemed about to succeed, the interests of
the trade, which had in the meantime been established
by the northern route, combined to crush the threatened
development of that of the River Plate. Spanish legis-
lation endeavored to exclude all European nations except
Spain from the trade by way of the West Indies and to
prevent any trade from being transacted by way of the
River Plate, thus enacting most flagrant injustice towards
the people it had encouraged to settle in the latter
country. The hardy pioneers of European civilisation
in these regions so far overcame the pernicious influences
which acted upon Spanish legislation, that in 1602 they
obtained permission to export two shiploads of produce
a year. But, to prevent internal trade with Peru, a
custom-house was established at Cordova, to levy a duty
of fifty per cent. on everything in transit to or from the
River Plate. In 1665 a relaxation of this system was
brought about by the continued remonstrances of the
people; and in 1774 free trade was permitted between
In 1776, with a view to
better maintaining the country against the encroach-
ments of the Portuguese in their colonies in Brazil,
Buenos Ayres was decreed the capital of a viceroyalty,
with jurisdiction over the territories of the present
republics of Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the
Argentine Confederation. All this country was then
opened to Spanish trade, even with Peru, and the devel-
opment of its resources, so long thwarted, was allowed
comparatively free play. From this time a succession
of viceroys exercised jurisdiction over the whole of these
territories. Velasco, however, was made governor of
the semi-civilized Indians in the Jesuit settlement of
Missiones on the Rivers Parana and Uruguay, subject
only to the direct authority of the home Government;
and in 1806 he became also governor of the province of
Paraguay, under the authority of the viceroyalty of
Buenos Ayres, and these offices he still held when the
independence of the country was declared.
The authority of the viceroys was interrupted in the
lower part of the River Plate during the wars between
England and Spain. On the 27th June 1806 General
Beresford landed with a body of troops from a British
fleet under command of Sir Home Popham, and obtained
possession of the city of Buenos Ayres. The viceroy,
Sobremonte, retired to Cordova, where Liniers collected
an army from all parts of the country, with which, on
the 12th August, he assaulted the city, and Beresford,
with his troops surrendered. In the meantime Sir
Home Popham had taken Maldonado; and in February
1807, Sir Samuel Auchmuty stormed and took the city
of Monte Video. In May 1808 General Whitelock,
with 8,000 men, endeavored to regain possession of Bue-
nos Ayres; but the inhabitants had made great prep-
arations for resistance, and as all the houses were at
that time built with their windows opening on the
streets, protected with strong iron railings like prison
bars, and with flat roofs, each one was of itself a for-
tress; so that after suffering terrible slaughter in the
*
48O
A R G
long straight steeets of the city, the invading army
capitulated, agreeing to abandon both banks of the River
Plate within two months. Whitelock was brought be-
fore a court-martial appointed to inquire into the cause
of the failure of the enterprise entrusted to him; the in-
dignation excited against him in England, in consequence
of his want of Success, was as great as that excited on
the River Plate against the viceroy, Sobremonte, in
consequence of the first success of the English. The
events which we have narrated tended to give self-con-
fidence to the people of Buenos Ayres, who, on apply-
ing to the home Government for assistance against the
English, had been told that they must protect them-
selves. But the disturbances which ultimately led to
the separation of the country from Spain were initiated
by the refusal of the Argentines to acknowledge the Na-
poleonic dynasty established at Madrid. Liniers, who
was viceroy on the arrival of the news of the crowning
of Joseph Buonaparte as king of Spain, was deposed by
the adherents of Ferdinand VII.; and on the 19th July
1809 Cisneros became viceroy in the name of Ferdi-
mand. In compliance with the urgent appeals of the
people, he opened the trade of the country to foreign
nations; and on the 25th May 1810, a council was
formed, with his consent, under the title of the Provis-
ional Government of the provinces of the Rio de la
Plata. This has since been regarded as the commence-
ment of the era of the political independence of the coun-
try. Of this council Mariano Morino, thesecretary, was
the most prominent member, and the people of the city of
Buenos Ayres were for some time its only effective sup-
porters. An attempt of the Spanish party to make
Cisneros president of the council failed, and he re-
tired to Monte Video. On the 31st January 1813
a congress was assembled at Buenos Ayres, and
Posadas was elected dictator of the republic.
Monte Video still supported the cause of Spain, but
was besieged by the revolutionary army of Buenos
Ayres, and capitulated in 1814. A sanguinary struggle
between the party of independence and the adherents
of Spain spread over all the country of the River Plate;
but on the 25th March 1816, a new congress of deputies
elected by the people was assembled at Tucuman,
where Payridon was declared president of the republic;
and on the 9th July the separation of the country from
Spain was formally declared, and a state of comparative
order was re-established. Buenos Ayres was then
declared the seat of government. The whole of the
viceroyalty did not, however, acknowledge this Govern-
ment. Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay, established
themselves each as a separate republic, after passing
through scenes of disorder, whilst the city of Buenos
Ayres was itself the scene of sanguinary disturbances.
From this time, however, the struggle for independence
became, as regards the Argentine Republic, more of a
foreign than a domestic war. The combined forces of
Buenos Ayres and Chili defeated the Spaniards at
Chacabuco in 1817, and at Maypu in 1818; and from
Chili the victorious General San Martin led his troops
into Peru, where, on the 9th July 1821, he made
a triumphal entry into the city of Lima, which had
been the greatest stronghold of the Spanish power,
having been, from the time of its foundation by Pizarro,
the seat of government of the viceroyalty of Peru. A
general congress was assembled at Buenos Ayres on
the 1st March 1822, in the presence of ambassadors
from all the liberated states, and a general amnesty
was decreed, though the war was not ended until the
9th December 1824, when the republican forces gained
the final victory of Ayacucho, in the Peruvian districts
of the Amazon. The Spanish Government did not,
however, formally ackowledge the independence of the
hº
country until the year 1842. On the 23d January 1825,
a National Constitution for the federal states which
form the present Argentine Republic was decreed;
and on the 2d February of the same year, Sir Woed-
bine Parish, acting under the instructions of Mr.
Canning, signed a commercial treaty in Buenos Ayres,
by which the British Government ackowledged the
independence of the country. For details of the history
of the country up to the time of independence the
reader is referred to the work of Sir Woodbine Parish,
and to the Æistoria Argentina, published in Buenos
Ayres. These works have been followed in this short
narrative, except when otherwise stated, or in unques-
tionable matters to which they do not allude.
Whilst the events already described were in progress,
Buenos Ayres was involved in a war with Brazil, in
consequence of the Government of the country having,
in 1817, taken possession of the Banda Oriental, which,
under the rule of Artigas, had become a scene of anarchy.
Buenos Ayres, unassisted by the northern provinces,
waged war with Brazil for the possession of the Banda
Oriental, until, in the year 1827, by the mediation of
England, that country was made independent of both
powers. The origin and progress of that war are more
connected with the history of the Oriental than with that of
the Argentine Republic. Under the new régime, inaug-
urated as above described in 1825, Rivadavia, who was
elected president, endeavored to establish a strong cen-
tral government; and his party obtained the name of
Unitarians in contradistinction to their opponents the
Federals, who endeavored to keep each state or prov-
ince as independent as possible of the National Gov-
ernment. At the expiration of Rivadavia's term of
office his opponents triumphed in the election of Vicente
Lopez as president; and he was followed in 1827 by
Dorrego, another representative of the Federal party.
The Unitarians, under the leadership of General La-
valle and his troops, relieved from the war in the Banda.
Oriental, rebelled against the administration, and in
1828 they defeated the Federals, under Dorrego and
General Rosas, in a battle in which Dorrego was taken
prisoner and afterwards shot. General Rosas then be-
came chief of the Federal party. In 1829 he deſeated
Lavalle; and obtaining from Congress, during a “reign
of terror,” such extraordinary powers as enabled him
to rule as dictator, he became as hostile to many mem-
bers of the Federal party as to the Unitarians. In
1838, a dispute between Rosas and the French Govern-
ment led to a blockade of the port of Buenos Ayres by
the French fleet; and, encouraged by this occurrence,
Lavalle, in 1839, returned to the country to rally the
Unitarian party. In 1840 he invaded the province of
Buenos Ayres at the head of troops raised chiefly in the
province of Entre Rios; but he was routed by the Fed-
eral army under General Pacheco, and was chased as
far as the city of Jujuy, where he was overtaken and
shot by troops under the command of Oribe. The rule
of Rosas was now one of terror and almost incessant
bloodshed in Buenos Ayres, whilst his partisans, General
Oribe and Colonel Mazza, endeavored to exterminate
the Unitarians throughout the province. This scene of
slaughter was extended to the Banda Oriental by the
attempt of Oribe, with the support of Rosas, and of
Urquiza, governor of Entre Rios, to establish himself as
president of that republic, whose existing Government
was hostile to Rosas, and sheltered all political refugees
from the country under his despotic rule. The siege of
Monte Video by the forces of Rosas led to a joint in-
tervention of England and France, and in 1845 the En-
glish minister plenipotentiary declared. Buenos Ayres
blockaded, and determined to establish direct commun-
ications with the Republic of Paraguay by ascending the
A R G
481
Parana, the right of navigating which was denied to
foreign flags by Rosas, who had always refused to ac-
knowledge the separation of the Government of Para-
guay from the authority of Buenos Ayres. At Point
Obligado, just above the delta of the river, a severe
fight occurred, in which the men of the combined squad-
rons landed and carried the batteries by storm, after
Captain Hope of the “Firebrand” and his crew had suc-
ceeded in cutting a heavy iron chain which closed the
river under their fire. The allied forces then proceeded
to Paraguay, and proclaimed the navigation of the mighty
river which forms the highway to that country free to all
nations. Ineffectual attempts were made by the allies to
induce the people of the River Plate, and more especially
Urquiza, to rise against the despotic rule of Rosas; and
finding the accomplishment of this impracticable without
an army, they withdrew their several forces, and raised
the blockade of Buenos Ayres in 1847. Brazil, whose
alliance England and France had rejected in consequence
of the opposition of that country to the English policy
in the suppression of the slave trade, now came to terms
with Urquiza ; and the forces of Brazil, under Caxias,
allied with those raised and commanded by Urquiza, in-
vaded the province of Buenos Ayres, and routed the
army of Rosas on the 3d February 1852 at Monte
Caseros, about Io miles from the city. Rosas escaped
from the battlefield in disguise, and sought protection at
the house of the English charge d'affaires, by whom he
was conveyed on board H.B.M. steamer “Locust,”
leaving the city in a delirium of joy at its sudden eman-
cipation from his tyranny. A provisional Government
was formed under Urquiza, and the Brazilian and Orien-
tal troops retired. Urquiza then assembled, all the prov-
incial governors at San Nicholas, in the province of
Buenos Ayres, and on the 31st May they proclaimed a
new constitution, with Urquiza as provisional director of
the Argentine nation. This constitution gave each
province two representatives in the Senate or Upper
Chamber of a Congress of Representatives, which was
duly elected and met at Santa Fé; but the people of
Buenos Ayres, considering that their political and
commercial pre-eminence were not duly represented
in the Congress, rose in rebellion against it on
the IIth September. Alsina then became governor
of Buenos Ayres; and in the new civil war which was
now inaugurated might be regarded as the representative
of the city, which was his chief support, in opposition
to the peasantry, who throughout the country districts
were chiefly partisans of Urquiza, or of Rosas. Alsina
resigned office in face of a rising of the country districts,
under Colonel Lagos, in favor of a restoration of Rosas;
but Pacheco, who had defeated the Unitarian General
Lavalle in 1840, rallied the city party, and with the sup-
port of the most influential citizens, proclaimed the aged
General Pintos provisional governor, and theinfluence of
the leading members of the foreign community was act-
ively exerted in his favor. The defence of the city, now
besieged by Lagos, was entrusted to General Hornos;
and Urquiza, having been duly elected president by the
other thirteen provinces, came to terms with Lagos, and
took command of the army of the besiegers; and in April
1853 his fleet blockaded the port. In July the besiegers
suddenly disappeared without awaiting an expected sally
of the city forces under General Paz, now commander-
in-chief. Urquiza signed, on board H.B.M. steamer
“Locust,” as representative of the thirteen provinces, a
treaty with Sir Charles Hotham, by which the free navi-
gation of the rivers was confirmed. The province of
Buenos Ayres then became established as an independent
state, and inaugurated an era of commercial and political
development, with Obligado as constitutional governor,
whilst Parana became the capital of the thirteen pro-
vinces under Urquiza.
the Confederation for the purpose of preventing the for-
eign trade of the confederated states from taking its
ordinary course through Buenos Ayres caused great
irritation in the latter province; but peace was, neverthe-
less, maintained until 1859, when Alsina again became
governor of Buenos Ayres, and the numerous questions
in dispute soon led to active hostilities between the Gov-
ernment at Parana and Buenos Ayres. The army of the
latter, under General (then Colonel) Mitre, was defeated
by the Confederate forces at Cepeda, in the province of
Buenos Ayres, in October 1859; and Urquiza re-entered
the city, when Alsina resigned his officce of governor to
Ocampo, and Buenos Ayres rejoined the Confederation,
of which Urquiza resigned the presidency. Derqui was
then elected president of the fourteen provinces, with the
seat of government at Parana ; whilst Urquiza became
governor of Entre Rios, and Mitre governor of Buenos
Ayres. Hostilities, however, recommenced in 1861, and
the armies of the opposite parties, under Generals Urquiza
and Mitre respectively, met at Pavon, in the province of
Santa Fé. Mitre this time was victorious, and in 1862
he was elected president of the Argentine Confedera-
tion, of which, with the consent of the provincial Legis-
lature, the city of Buenos Ayres became provisionally
the capital. Urquiza retired to the province of Entre
Rios, of which he continued to be governor. The his-
tory of these struggles is ably told by Mr. Latham from
a Buenos Ayrean point of view ; and also, from the op-
posite side, by M. De Moussy, in his able and elaborate
work dedicated to Urquiza.
In 1864 the Republic of Paraguay commenced war
against Brazil, and on the 5th February 1865, President
Lopez sent a despatch to the Argentine Government,
requesting permission for the passage of a Paraguayan
army through the province of Corrientes. This Mitre
refused, the neutrality of the country having previously
been declared. On the morning of the 13th April a
Paraguayan fleet entered the port of Corrientes, and,
without any previous warning of belligerent intentions,
fired into and took possession of two vessels of the
Argentine navy which were lying at anchor in the port,
and also fired on the crew as they endeavored to swim
ashore to escape the unexpected slaughter. In the
course of the following day a detachment of Paraguayan
troops took possession of the city, whilst the main body
of an invading army marched across the province, and,
crossing the Uruguay, invaded Brazil. . The sudden
seizure of the vessels in the port of Corrientes was the
first notification of war which reached the Argentine
Government. The official declaration of war, which
was dated the 29th March, and was based on a declara-
tion passed in Congress on the 18th, did not reach the
Argentine Government until the 3d May. The people
of Buenos Ayres were thrown into a frenzy of indigna:
tion on the receipt of the news of the above-mentioned
hostilities; and on the 1st May a treaty was signed be-
tween the Argentine Government, Brazil, and the Ori-
ential Republic, by which these powers mutually bound
themselves not to lay down their arms until they had
abolished the Government of Lopez, but at the same
time guaranteeing the independence of Paraguary.
Thus the National Government established at Buenos
Ayres was launched into a war which Sorely tried its
resources, both for the prosecution of the war itself, and
for the suppression of the opponents of its policy in
some districts. The war was soon carried into Para-
guary; but the withdrawal of the main body of the
Årgentine army, under Generals Paunero and Arre-
dondo, was necessitated by a rebellion in the north-
west (January 1867), where the rebels, under. Saa
and Videla, had obtained control of several of the
Differential duties imposed by
3 I A
482
A R G
Provincial Governments. The rebel army was not
able to cope with the veterans fresh from the bat-
tlefields of Paraguary, who drove them across the
Andes into Chili, where they laid down their
arms. These internal troubles made it requisite for
Mitre to retire from the post of commander-in-chief of
the allied forces in the field, which then devolved upon
the Brazilian General Caxias. Urquiza, though nomi-
nally under the order of the National Government, hav-
ing, on the outbreak of the war accepted from them the
appointment of commander-in-chief of the forces of
Entre Rios, virtually held that province in a state of
neutrality throughout the war, which was ended by the
shooting of Lopez on the 1st March 1870, after the
extermination of his army and a large majority of the
inhabitants of the country. Urquiza, at the outbreak
of the war, was the most renowned and powerful chief-
tain in the country, and doubt regarding the course he
might take was a source of anxiety in Buenos Ayres.
He had accumulated immense estates and wealth in
Entre Rios; and he was doubtless actuated by an earnest
desire to preserve to his province the blessings of peace
and commercial prosperity in the midst of the surround-
ing disturbances. The hope of obtaining support from
him is, however, Supposed to have encouraged the rebell-
ion of the north-western provinces, which neutralised
the reckless audacity with which the Argentine troops
fought their first battle in Paraguay. In 1868, whilst
the war was going on, Mitre's term of office as president
expired, and Sarmiento was peacefully elected in his
place. The close of the Paraguayan war did not bring
permanent peace to the country; for, on the 12th April
1870, Urquiza was assassinated at his family residence by
some well-known officers of his army, and the provincial
*Legislature immediately elected Lopez Jordan as gov-
ernor in his place. The new governor, in his address to
Congress on his installation, took upon himself the
responsibility of the assassination, and the National
Government refused to acknowledge him as governor of
the province, on the ground of undue influence having
been brought to bear on the members of the Legisla-
ture by which he had been elected. The National
troops accordingly invaded the province, for the avowed
purpose of affording protection for the free expression
of opinion in a new election. This became the com-
mencement of a civil war, which materially interfered
with the former prosperity of the province, but which
was fortunately brought to a conclusion in the end of Jan-
uary 1873, by the Entre-Riano army being completely
routed by the National troops, armed with Remington
rifles, under Colonel Gainza. The Entre-Riano leader,
with about 40 followers, escaped across the Uruguay.
Tranquillity has since that time prevailed in Entre Rios.
Whilst these events were in progress, a rupture
between the Argentine Republic and Brazil regarding
the settlement of the boundaries of Paraguay, was at
one time imminent; but, by the influence of Mitre, who
went as special envoy to Rio on the occasion, the friendly
relation of the two Governments have, it is hoped, been
placed on a secure basis.
The prosperity of the country received a temporary
check in 1874, from a brief revolution initiated when
President Avellanda was declared elected. The unsuc-
cessful party, under Brigadier-General Mitre, incensed at
their defeat, asserted that the elections had been gained
by corrupt and fraudulent practices, and resolved to
appeal to arms to overthrow the president-elect. The
revolution was declared on 24th September. President
Sarmiento, whose tenure of office was just expiring, took
active measures to repress the revolt; and no collision of
forces had taken place when the new president, Don
Nicolas Avellanda, was constitutionally installed on the
12th October. ſhe president followed up with energy
the measures of his predecessor to suppress the revolu-
tion, and his efforts were crowned with success in two
decisive victories over the insurgents by the Government
troops; whereupon Generals Mitre and Arredondo, with
their ſorces, surrendered at discretion, and were made
prisoners (Dec. 2). The revolution had lasted but
seventy-six days. On the 17th December a state holiday
was declared, and dedicated to rejoicings on the restora-
tion of peace. The complete and absolute crushing of
this revolution has great significance, as it has brought
about the dissolution of a powerful and ambitious party,
whose movements might have seriously affected the on-
ward march of the country. Those who know the
country believe that it will be long before any similar
revolutionary attempts can be made with the slightest
hopes of success, or the welfare of one of the most
favored countries in the world jeopardised by internal
commotion.
The foregoing historical sketch will have given the
reader some insight into the government of the country.
The framers of the Constitution professed to be guided by
that of the United States of North America, and freely
adopted the liberal principles there embodied. The presi-
dent is elected for a term of six years, and the presi-
dent of the Senate, elected to that office by his fellow-
senators, becomes ex-officio vice-president of the re-
public. The government is conducted by a ministry
responsible to Congress, and an adverse vote of the
Senate and deputies on any important question leads to
the formation of a new ministry. The number of sena-
tors and deputies returned by each province is in pro-
portion to the number of its inhabitants. Each prov-
ince has its own independent form of government for
all matters not expressly delegated to the National
Government, and is supposed to have irresponsible
jurisdiction in its own affairs so long as the articles of
the National Constitution are not contravened. The
city of Buenos Ayres, besides being the seat of the
Government of the province, is also the seat of the
National Government, having been so declared by the
Constitution, until such time as a suitable site for a new
capital for the republic may be determined on by the
Legislature. Not only the Constitution itself, but also
the 'spirit in which its enactments are carried out, is
thoroughly liberal, and worthy of the magnificent coun-
try over which civilisation, under its enlightened regu-
lation, is struggling successfully against barbarism.
Fresh arrivals from Europe are not only cordially wel-
comed, but every effort is made by the authorities to
induce foreigners to settle in the country. They are
free either to naturalise themselves as Argentines, or to
maintain their foreign nationality; in the latter case
they have not the privilege of a vote in the government
of the country, nor are they liable to the conscription
for service in the army. In other respects the law is
the same for all. Every one born in the country is by
law an Argentine.
The population of the city of Buenos Ayres is almost
thoroughly European, nearly one-half being, in fact,
foreigners born in Europe. But on passing from that
city into the country the Mestizo race becomes more
prominent; and in the northern provinces, as in Para-
guay and Peru, the Mestisoes, with Indian blood pre-
dominating, form the majority of the population. The
Negroes, or Mestizoes in whom Negro blood can be
traced, do not form an important part of the population
as they do in Brazil. The difference between the two
countries in this respect is, in fact, very striking.
Slavery was abolished during the war of independence;
and the importation of Negroes, which had never been
an extensive trade, then ceased; and the constant stream
A R G
483
sacrifice, in consequence of a famine which she had
9f immigration from Europe, which of late years has
been steadily augmenting, is gradually changing the
aspect of the population of the country.
The advancement of the Argentine Republic has
received a great impetus from the introduction of steam
communication and telegraphy. The first railway was
opened in 1857; and in 1889 there were more than 5000
miles open for traffic, with about 1000 miles more in
course of construction. A system of tramways was com-
menced in the city of Buenos Ayres in 1869. There are
now about 80 miles within the city and suburbs, and this
means of transit is being extended to all the smaller
towns. . There are in use within the republic above 7000
miles of telegraphic wires. Complete communication is
now established with Europe, the first telegrams having
been exchanged with London on 4th August 1874.
The province of Buenos Ayres is, in wealth and gen-
eral importance, far in advance of all the other provinces
of the Confederation. Under the enlightened admini-
stration of Señor Castro, the late governor, great im-
provements have been made in the means of communi-
cation throughout the province, which is the first step
requisite for the due development of its resources. Be-
sides railway extensions a great number of iron bridges
have been imported from England and erected under the
superintendence of Mr. Coghlan, by order of the Pro-
vincial Government of Buenos Ayres. The National
and Provincial Governments established in the city of
Buenos Ayres are rivals in their efforts to promote the
true welfare and material prosperity of the country.
The present governor of the province may be relied on
to continue the policy of assisting the development of
the resources of the country, which may almost be said
to have been inaugurated by his predecessor. And his
Excellency Señor Sarmiento, whose term of office as
president of the republic expired in October, 1874, must,
from his unceasing exertions in the cause of education,
be regarded as one of the greatest benefactors of the
country. Population (1887), 434,600.
ARGOL, the commercial name under which the
crude tartar of commerce is known. It is a semi-crys-
talline deposit which forms on wine vats, and is either
grey or red according to the color of the wine from
which it separates.
ARGONAUTS, in Greek Zegend, a band of heroes
who sailed in the ship “Argo” from Iolcus, in Thessaly,
to AEa, in Colchis, on the further shore of the Black
Sea, to fetch the golden fleece, which was there guarded
by a dragon in a grove sacred to Mars. This task had
been imposed on Jason that he might prove himself by
a perilous adventure worthy of the throne of Iolcus,
which he claimed from the usurper Pelias, at whose
hands he and his father Æson had suffered persecution.
To accompany him, Jason, when the “Argo” was ready,
called upon the principal heroes of his own race, the
Minyas, whose distant voyages and colonisation in very
early times seemed to have suggested the legend of this
expedition. Of these Acastus the son of Pelias, Ad-
metus, of Pherae, Euphemus (represented as connected
with the colonisation of Thera and Cyrene), Pericly-
menus, Erginus, and Tiphys the steersman, joined him.
So far the crew appears well fitted to conduct the
“Argo” to Colchis, leaving Jason to reserve his strength
for the culminating act, in which also they had mostly,
apart from their friendship for Jason, a special interest,
because of previous events connected with the golden
fleece, the story of which was as follows. Jason’s
uncle Athamas had by his wife Nephele two children,
Phrixus and Helle. The mother died and her place
was taken by Ino, a daughter of Cadmus, who from
hatred of her step-children persuaded Athamas, by
means of a false oracle, to offer his son Phrixus as a
caused by having the grain secretly roasted before it
was sown. But before the sacrifice the shade of Ne-
phele appeared to Phrixus, bringing a ram with a
golden fleece, on which he and his sister Helle were to
escape over the sea. Helle fell off and drowned in the
strait, which thence took the name of Hellespont.
Phrixus reached the other side, and proceeding on land
to Colchis, sacrificed the ram, and hung up its fleece in
the grove of Mars. With the family of Athamas the
original crew of the “Argo” were ...vre or less
connected. But in the later versions of the
story , it is clear that such a voyage could
not in after times be conceived without a
variety of adventures, for which other and better known
heroes had to be added. Of these the chief were Hercu-
les, Castor and Pollux, Orpheus, Mopsus, and the sons
of Boreas, Calais and Zetes. The outward course of
the “Argo” was the same as that of the Greek traders,
whose settlements as early as the 6th century B.C.
dotted the southern shore of the Black Sea. The first
landing-place was Lemmus, which the Argonauts found
occupied only by women who, at the instigation of
Aphrodite, had slain their husbands, fathers, &c. Here
Some stay was made, and Hypsipyle bore Jason a son,
Euneos, who afterwards traded with the Greeks before
Troy and with the Phoenicians. That the Minyaº had
at a very early period formed settlements in Lemnus is
known from Herodotus (iv. I45). They landed at
Cyzicus next, and here occured the incident of Hercules
and Hylas. The former having broken an oar after
they started, went into the wood to cut a new one, Hylas
accompanying him to fetch water. Some nymphs ad-
miring the beauty of the youth carried him off. Hercu-
les followed his cries, but could not find him. Nor was
he ever found, though the hero exacted hostages till
this should be done. On reaching the modern Scutari,
they again landed to get water, and were challenged by
the king, Amycus, to match him with a boxer. Pollux
came forward, and in the end overpowered his adver-
sary, and bound him to a tree. At the entrance to the
Black Sea they met Phineus, the blind and aged king
whose food was being constantly polluted by the Har.
pies. He knew the course to Colchis, and offered to
tell it, if the Argonauts would free him from the
Harpies. This was done by the winged sons of Boreas,
and Phineus now told them their course, and that the
way to pass through the Symplegades — two cliffs which
moved on their bases and crushed whatever sought to
pass — was first to fly a pigeon through, and when the
cliffs, having closed on the pigeon, began to retire to
each side, to row the “Argo” swiftly through. His
advice was successfully followed. The next place they
landed at, and the last before reaching Colchis, was
Heraclea, where the steersman Tiphys died. To
the early Greeks Colchis was the eastern extremity
of the earth, as the Pillars of Hercules were the
western. Behind both was the Oceanus, into which
the river Phasis flowed at Colchis. At Colchis was
the rising of the sun, and AEetes the king was a son
of Helios; while his daughter Medea was, by her know-
ledge of witchcraft, connected with the worship of the
moon. AEetes required of Jason that he should first
yoke to a plough his bulls which snorted fire and had
hoofs of brass, and with them plough the field of Mars.
That done, the field was to be sown with dragons’
teeth, from which armed men were to spring. Suc-
cessful so far by means of the mixture which Medea
had given him as proof against fire and sword, Jason
was next allowed to approach the dragon which watched
the fleece; Medea soothed the dragon with another
mixture, and Jason became master of the fleece. Ther.
484
A. R. G
the voyage homeward began, Medea accompanying
Jason, and Æetes pursuing them. To delay him and
obtain escape, Medea dismembered her young brother
Absyrtus, whom she had taken with her, and cast the
limbs about in the sea for his father to pick up. In
another report Absyrtus had grown to manhood then,
and met his death in an encounter with Jason, in pur.
suit of whom he had been sent. Of the homeward
' course various accounts are given. In the oldest exist-
ing account, the “Argo” sailed along the river Phasis
into the Oceanus, thence to the mythical lake Tritonis,
after being carried twelve days over land through Libya,
and thence again to Iolcus. Hecataeus of Miletus sug.
gested that from the Oceanus it may have sailed into
the Nile, and so to the Mediterranean. Others, like
Sophocles, described the return voyage as differing
from the outward course only in taking the northern
instead of the southern shore of the Black Sea. Some
supposed that the Argonauts had sailed up the river
Tanais, passed into another river, and by it reached the
North Sea, returning to the Mediterranean by the
Straits of Gibralter. And again, others laid down the
course, as up the Danube (Istros), from it into the
Adriatic by a supposed mouth of that river, and on to
Corcyra, where a storm overtook them. Next they
sailed up the Eridanus into the Rhodanus, passing
through the country of the Celts and Ligurians, and
reaching the Tyrrhenian Sea and the island of Circe,
who absolved them from the murder of Absyrtus. Then
they passed safely through Scylla and Charybdis, past
the Sirens, through the Planctae, over the island of the
Sun, Trinacria, and on to Corcyra again, the land of
the Phaeacians, where Jason and Medea held their nup-
tials. They had sighted the coast of the Peloponnesus
when a storm overtook them and drove them to the
coast of Libya, where they were saved from a quick-
sand by the local nymphs. The “Argo” was now car-
ried twelve days and twelve nights to the Hesperides,
and thence to lake Tritonis, whence Triton conducted
them to the Mediterranean. At Crete the brazen Talos,
who would not permit them to land, was killed by the
Dioscuri. At Anaphe they were saved from a storm
by Apollo. Finally they reached Iolcus, and the “Argo”
was placed in a grove sacred to Neptune on the isthmus
of Corinth. Jason’s death, it is said, was afterwards
º by part of the Stern giving way and falling upon
1Iſl.
ARGONNE, a rocky and forest-clad plateau in the
north-east of France, extending along the borders of
Lorraine and Champagne, and forming part of the de-
partments of Ardennes and Meuse. The famous defense
of the French frontier by Dumouriez in 1792 is called
the Argonne campaign.
ARGOS. The most important city of this name was
situated in the eastern part of the Peloponnesus, about
3 miles from the sea. By the Greeks themselves it was
regarded as the most ancient of all their cities, and as
the local habitation of many of their earlier heroes.
Here Inachus and his descendants had reigned for many
generations, until the arrival of Danaus the Egyptian,
with his fifty daughters, whose dynasty, glorious with the
names of Perseus the Gorgon-slayer, and Eurystheus the
master of Hercules, held sway over Argos, and Tiryns,
and Mycenae, till it, in its turn, was succeeded by the still
more important dynasty of Pelops. The Dorian in-
vasion and conquest followed, and Argos became the
head of a Dorian confederation, extending its authority
ºver a large portion of the neighboring territory. Be-
tween this region (Argolis) and Sparta, however, there
were no natural boundaries, and a conflict arose between
the two states about the border land of Cynuria. For
a time, under the despotic management of Pheidon,
Argos maintained its ground; but Sparta ultimately
established its claim in spite of the dubious result of the
famous duel of the 600, which was fought for the deci-
sion of the dispute, and the strength of the Argives was
completely crushed by Cleomenes at the battle of Tiryns.
A temporary ascendency of the serfs in Argos, an exten-
sion of the franchise, and a permanent adoption of a
more democratic constitution, seem to have been the
consequences of this national exhaustion and the subse-
quent reaction. During the Persian war Argos was in-
different and neutral, but in the contest for power which
ensued between Athens and Sparta, the old antipathy
against the latter was sufficient to make the Argives
stanch allies of the former. In the 4th century B.C., the
democratic constitution of the city degenerated into a
reign of terror, which in its turn gave place to a series
of tyrannies, from which escape was ultimately found in
the Achaean League and the Roman domination.
Pyrrhus perished in an unsuccessful attack on the city in
272 B. C. In the 13th century of our era, Argos fell into
the possession of the Franks, from whom it passed into
the hands of the Byzantine despots; and in 1463 it was
taken by the Ottoman troops. Here in the darkest
period of Greek ignorance lived one of the few repre-
sentatives of the ancient learning, Theodosius Zigomali
(Crusius's Turcog racia). In the time of Pausanias the
number of temples in Argos and its neighborhood was
remarkable, the most important of them being the
Heraeum, or temple of Hera, the ruins of which,
visible from the acropolis of Argos, but nearer to
Mycenae, were discovered in 1831 by Colonel Gordon of
Cairness.
ARGOSTOLI, the capital of Cephalonia, one of the
Ionian islands, and the seat of a bishop of the Greek
Church.
ARGOVIE (Lat. Argovia), the French form of
Aargau, the name of one of the Swiss cantons. See
AARGAU.
ARGUIN, an island, perhaps Hanno's Cerne, off the
west coast of Africa.
ARGUS, in Greek Legend, the son of Agenor or
Arestor, or, according to others, an earth-born hero
(Autochthon). He was called Panoptes, All-seeing,
from having a hundred eyes. After performing several
feats of valor, he was appointed by Juno to watch the
cow into which Io had been transformed. While doing
this he was slain by Mercury, who, according to one
account, stoned him to death, according to another, put
him to sleep by playing on the flute, and then cut off his
head. His eyes were transferred by Juno to the tail of
the peacock.
ARGYLL, EARLS AND DUKES OF. The rise of this.
family of Scottish peers, originally the Campbells of
Lochow, first ennobled as Barons Campbell, and still
retaining the family name Campbell, is referred to in the
article ARGYLLSHIRE (7.2/.)
ARGYLLSHIRE, or ARGYLESHIRE, a county on
the west coast of Scotland, comprehending a large dis-
trict on the mainland and a number of the Hebrides or
Western Isles. The mainland portion is bounded on
the N. by Inverness-shire; on the E. by the counties of
Perth and Dumbarton, Loch Long, and the Firth of
Clyde; on the S. by the North Channel; and on the W.
by the Atlantic. Its sea coast has been stated at over
600 miles. If the various islands are included, the
greatest breadth of the county is 68 miles, and its total
area amounts to 3255 square miles, or 2,083, 126 acres,
which is more than a tenth part of the whole area of
Scotland. It contains forty parishes, and has been
variously divided at different times into a number of
districts. The names of these at present in use are
North and South Argyll, Cowal, Dunoon, Kintyre (or
A R G — A R I
485
º
Tantyre), Tarbert, Lorn, Mull, Ardnamurchan, Mor-
ven, Islay, &c. The principal towns are Inverary,
Dunoon, Campbeltown, Oban, and Tobermory.
There are numerous mountain streams, but no navi-
gable rivers. The two principal are the Orchy and
Awe. The former flows from Loch Tulla through
Glen Orchy, and falls into Loch Awe at its northern
extremity; and the latter forms an outlet for the loch
across the neck of land which lies between it and Loch
Etive. The other streams are the Add, Aray, Coe or
Cona, Creran, Douglas, Echaig, Etive, Euchar,
Feochan, Finart, Fyne, Kinglas, Kinloss, Large,
Leven, Nell, Ruel, Shiel, Shira, Strae, Talaken, Uisge-
Dhu, &c. Most of these yield excellent salmon and
trout fishing. There are also some good fishing streams
in the islands. The county is remarkable for the
numerous inlets of the sea with which it is deeply in-
dented, the principal of them being Loch Long, with
its branch Loch Goil; Loch Fyne, with Loch Gilp;
Loch Etive; Loch Linnhe, with its branches Loch
Creran, Loch Leven, and Loch Eil; and Loch Sunart.
There is also a large number of inland lakes, the total
area of which is about 25,000 acres. Of these the
principal are Loch Awe, Loch Avich, Loch Eck, Loch
Lyndoch (partly in Perthshire), and Loch Shiel.
The principal islands are Mull, Islay, Jura, Colonsay,
Lismore, Tiree, Coll, Gigha, Muck, Rum, and Canna.
Besides these there are the two small but interesting
islands of Staffa and Iona — the one famous for its
basaltic caves and rocks, and the other as the earliest
seat of Christianity in Scotland.
The whole county is rugged and mountainous, and
many of the peaks are among the loftiest in the king-
dom; as Ben Cruachan (3689 ft.), Ben More, in Mull
(3172), Ben Ima (3318), Buchael Etive (3345), and Ben
Arthur, “The Cobbler” (2891), on the borders of
Dumbartonshire. To the tourist it offers a rich variety
of Highland scenery, culminating in the gloomy
grandeur of Glencoe.
The earliest recorded event in the history of Argyll-
shire is the settlement in the 4th or 5th century of a body
of Irish Scots, under the leadership of Erc, who soon
extended their power and established a dynasty. The
most famous of their kings was Aidan, the friend of
Columba. In the 8th century the district fell into the
hands of Norwegian adventurers, and continued for five
or six hundred years under Norwegian control, till the
rise of a deliverer called Somerlid. Along with the
Hebridean Isles, all the western parts of Argyll came
to the Scottish monarch by conquest in the 14th century.
Some time after, Macdonald, the representative of this
region, obtained leave from the Scottish crown to hold
his possessions as a feudatory to that kingdom; but his
turbulent spirit involved him and his family in repeated
rebellions. These were at last punished by the for-
feiture of the estates, which, along with the titles, were
bestowed on the Campbells of Lochow, who have ever
since retained them. Colin, second Lord Campbell,
was created earl of Argyll in 1457; Archibald, second
earl, fell at Flodden ; Archibald, fourth earl, was the
first nobleman in Scotland who declared himself a
Protestant; Archibald, fifth earl, is famous as the sup-
porter of Queen Mary; Archibald, the eighth earl, and
other prominent holders of the titles, are noticed in the
article immediately preceding. The tenth earl was raised
to the dukedom of Argyll in 17OI. The title is now
(1875) held by a member of the same family, George
Douglas Campbell, eighth duke.
Like other parts of the Highlands of Scotland, this
county was the seat of several clans, of which the prin-
cipal were the Campbells, the Macleans, the Stewarts of
Appin, the Macdonalds of Glencoe, the Macquarries,
and the Macdougalls; and the number of Campbells is
still a striking feature of the personal nomenclature of
the county. Gaelic is still to a considerable extent the .
vernacular dialect. The chief proprietors are the duke
of Argyll and earl of Breadalbane, whose estates are
respectively 168,000 and 179,000 acres in extent. The
other principal estates, according to extent, are those of
Poltalloch (183,000 acres), Islay (67,000), Jura (55,OOO),
Ardnamurchan (55,OOO), Sunart (54,418), Kildalton
(54,250), and Ardkinglass (51,670). The total number
of owners of land possessing one acre or upwards was
in 1872–73, 581, and of owners who had less than one
acre, 2283.
ARGY RO-CASTRO (AErgir Castri), a town in the
valley of the Drino, in the province of the Avlona, in
Albania (AEpirus). It has been variously identified with
Hadrianopolis and Antigonea, and is supposed to pre-
serve the name of the ancient Argyrini. It is the focus
of the Mussulman aristocracy of Epirus, and contains
the ruins of an imposing castellated fort.
ARGYROPULUS, or ARGYROPULO, John, a
learned Greek, who lived during the 15th century.
ARIADNE, a personification of the return of Spring,
at which period took place, it was believed, Ariadne’s
marriage with Dionysos (Bacchus), who also, after an
absence throughout the winter, was thought to return
amid the rejoicings of spring. This marriage was the
great feature in her worship, which appears to have
originated in Crete, and to have been mostly confined
to that island and to Naxus, where annually it was cele-
brated by the people with dances and a festival called
Theodaisia. But though married to Dionysos, and
sometimes called his wife, she did not generally appear
in this character. On the contrary, in the Odyssey, it
is said that Artemis slew her, with the consent of Di-
onysos, at Dia (near Cnossus), before she could reach
Athens with Theseus. Her death would thus seem a
punishment for her infidelity. But in the current
legend her connection with Dionysos did not begin till
he found her asleep in Naxus after her despair at being
abandoned by Theseus, with whom she had escaped
from Crete after assisting him against her father, the
fierce Minos, to slay the Minotaur.
ARIANO, a town of Italy, in the province of Avel-
lino, about 38 miles N.E. of Naples, situated 25oo feet
above the level of the sea, on a steep and rocky hill,
between the rivers Calore and Tribaldo. Founded by
the Greek governors of Apulia, it continued to be an
important military post for several centuries, and was
frequently taken and retaken during the various dynastic
struggles of southern Italy. A parliament was held
here by Roger I. in I 140, and in 1648 the town was
pillaged by the duke of Guise. It is still a bishop's
see, and the chief town of a circozzdario, with a cathe-
dral, and a large number of churches. Earthenware is
manufactured, and there is some trade in wine and but-
ter. The most peculiar feature of the town is the mul-
titude of troglodytic dwellings, in which the poorer
classes reside. The district is highly volcanic, and the
town has suffered severely from earthquakes (1456,
1732), and only 7 miles distant is the lake of Amsanctus
(AYoſete), remarkable for its suffocating exhalations.
Population, 14,347. (See Vitate, Storia della Città d”
Ariano, Rome, 1794.)
ARIANS. See ARIUS.
ARIAS MONTANUS, BENEDICTUS, one of the
most learned Oriental scholars of his time, and the edi-
tor of the Antwerp Polyglott, was born at Frescenal de
la Sierra, in Estremadura, in 1527. After studying at
the university of Alcala, he joined the Benedictine order.
In 1562 he accompanied the bishop of Segovia to the
Council of Trent. After a few years spent in retire-
486
A R I
ment at Arcena he went to Antwerp, at the request of
Philip II., to edit the Polyglott Bible that had been pro-
jected by Plantin the printer. The work appeared in
8 volumes folio, between 1568 and 1573. The Jesuits
founded on it several charges of heresy against Arias,
from which he succeeded in clearing himself, though
only after several visits to Rome. He declined the offer
of a bishopric from the king, but after some time spent
in retirement at Aracena, became librarian at the Esco-
rial. The closing years of his life were passed at
Seville, where he died in 1598. ©
ARICA, a sea-port of Peru, in the department o
Moquegua, . It was at one time a city of 30,000 inhab-
itants, and had a large export trade in wool, copper,
and silver; but in consequence of civil war (1821) and
earthquakes (1832, 1868), it has greatly declined; of
º: however, it has shared in the general revival of
€rll.
ARIEGE, a department of France, bounded on the
S. by Spain, W., by Haute-Garonne, N. E. by Aude,
and S. E. by Pyrénées Orientales. It embraces the old
countship of Foix, and a portion of Languedoc and
Gascony, and has an area of 1889 square miles. The
southern part is occupied by the Pyrenees, which here
contain some of the highest peaks in France; as, Pic
d’Estats (which is Io,81 I feet above the level of the
Sea), Montcalm (Io,512), Fodtargentine, and Montleon.
Among the celebrated men of the department are Gas-
ton de Foix, Pope Benedict XII., and Pierre Bayle.
The chief town is Foix; the arrondissements, Foix, St.
Girons, and Pamiers. Population, 244,798.
ARION (pronounced Ari'om), a celebrated poet and
cithara player, a native of Methymna, in Lesbos. As
he is said to have been the friend of Periander, tyrant
of Corinth, he must have flourished about 625 B.C.
Nothing more is known of the life of Arion, with the
exception of the beautiful story first told by Herodotus,
and afterwards elaborated and embellished by many
subsequent writers. According to Herodotus, Arion
had become desirous of exhibiting his skill in foreign
countries, and, leaving Corinth, had travelled through
Sicily and parts of Italy, where he gained great ſame,
and amassed a large sum of money. At Tarentum he
embarked for his homeward voyage in a ship belonging
to Corinth. The sight of his treasure roused the
cupidity of the sailors, who resolved to possess them-
selves of it by putting him to death. In answer to his
entreaties that they would spare his life, they insisted
that he should either die by his own hand on shipboard,
or cast himself into the sea. Arion chose the latter,
and as a last favor begged permission to sing a parting
song. The sailors, desirous of hearing so famous a
musician, consented, and, the poet, standing on the deck
of the ship, arrayed in the rich garments in which he
was accustomed to be habited, sang a dirge accompan-
ied by his lyre. He then threw himself overboard; but
instead of perishing, as the sailors imagined, he was
miraculously borne up in safety by a dolphin, supposed
to have been charmed by the music. Thus he was con-
veyed to Taenarus, whence he proceeded to Corinth,
arriving before the ship from Tarentum. Immediately
on his arrival Arion related his story to Periander, the
tyrant of Corinth, who was at first incredulous, but
eventually learned the truth by a stratagem. Summon-
ing the sailors, he demanded what had become of the
poet. They affirmed that he had remained behind at
Tarentum; upon which they were suddenly confronted
by Arion himself, arrayed in the same garments in
which he had leapt overboard.
ARIOSTO, LODOvICO, one of the greatest poets of
Italy, was born at Reggio, in Lombardy, on the 8th
Sept., 1474. His father was Niccolo Ariosto, com-
mander of the citadel of Reggio. He showed a strong
inclination to poetry from his earliest years, but was
obliged by his father to study the law — a pursuit in
which he lost five of the best years of his life. Allowed
at last to follow his inclination, he applied himself to
the study of the classics under Gregorio da Spoleti. But
after a short time, during which he read the best Latin
authors, he was deprived of his teacher by Gregorio's
removal to France as tutor of Prince Sforza. Ariosto
thus lost the opportunity of learning Greek, as he in-
tended. His father dying soon after, he was compelled
to forego his literary occupations to undertake the
management of the family, whose affairs were embar-
rassed, and to provide for his nine brothers and sisters,
one of whom was a cripple. He wrote, however, about
this time some comedies in prose and a few lyrical
pieces. Some of these attracted the notice of the
cardinal Ippolito of Este, who took the young poet
under his patronage, and appointed him one of the
gentlemen of his household. This prince usurped the
character of a patron of literature, whilst the only
reward which the poet received for having dedicated to
him the Orlando Furioso, was the question, “Where
did you find so many stories, Master Ludovic?” The
poet himself tells us that the cardinal was ungrateful;
deplores the time which he spent under his yoke; and
adds, that if he received some niggardly pension, it was
not to reward him for his poetry, which the prelate
despised, but to make some just compensation for the
poet’s running like a messenger, with risk of his life, at
his eminence’s pleasure. Nor was even this miserable
pittance regularly paid during the period that the poet
enjoyed it. The cardinal went to Hungary in 1518,
and wished Ariosto to accompany him. The poet
excused himself, pleading ill health, his love of study,
the care of his private affairs, and the age of his mother,
whom it would have been disgraceful to leave. His
excuses were not received, and even an interview was
denied him. Ariosto then boldly said, that if his emin-
ence thought to have bought a slave by assigning him
the scanty pension of 75 crowns a year, he was mis-
taken and might withdraw his boon — which it seems
the cardinal did.
The cardinal’s brother, Alphonso, duke of Ferrara,
now took the poet under his patronage. This was but
an act of simple justice, Ariosto having already distin-
guished himself as a diplomatist, chiefly on the occasion
of two visits to Rome as ambassador to Pope Julius II.
The fatigue of one of these hurried journeys brought on
a complaint from which he never recovered; and on his
second mission he was nearly killed by order of the
violent Pope, who happened at the time to be much in-
censed against the duke of Ferrara. On account of the
war, his salary of only 84 crowns a year was suspended,
and it was withdrawn altogether after the peace; in con-
sequence of which Ariosto asked the duke either to
provide for him, or to allow him to seek employment
elsewhere. A province, situated on the wildest heights
of the Apennines, being then without a governor,
Ariosto received the appointment, which he held for
three years. The office was no sinecure. The province
was distracted by factions and banditti, the governor
had not the requisite means to enforce his authority, and
the duke did little to support his ministry. Yet it is
said that Ariosto's government satisfied both the sov-
ereign and the people confided to his care; and a story
is added of his having, when walking out alone, fallen
in with a party of banditti, whose chief on discovering
that his captive was the author of Orlando Furioso,
humbly apologised for not having immediately shown
him the respect which was due to his rank: . Although
he had little reason to be satisfied with his office, he
A R I
487
refused an embassy to Pope Clement VII. offered to
him by the secretary of the duke, and spent the remain-
der of his life at Ferrara, writing comedies, superin-
tending their performance, as well as the construction
of a theatre, and correcting his Orlando Furioso, of
which the complete edition was published only a year
before his death. He died of consumption on the 6th
of June, I533.
Of all the works of Ariosto, the most solid monument
of his fame is the Orlando Furioso, the extraordinary
merits of which have cast into oblivion the numberless
romance poems which inundated Italy during the 15th,
16th and 17th centuries. \
ARISTAEUS (from diploros, best, a divinity whose
worship was widely spread throughout Greece, but con-
cerning whose origin and career the myths are somewhat
obscure. The account most generally received connects
him specially with Thessaly. Apollo carried off from
Mount Pelion the nymph Cyrene, daughter or grand-
daughter of Peneus (Peneius), and conveyed her to
Libya, where she gave birth to Aristaeus. From this
circumstance the town of Cyrene took its name. The
child was at first handed over to the care of the Hours,
or, according to another version, to the nymph Melissa
and the centaur Chiron. He afterwards left Libya and
came to Thebes, where he received instruction from the
Muses in the arts of healing and prophecy, and married
Autonoe, daughter of Cadmus, by whom he had several
children, among others, the unfortunate Actaeon. He
is said to have visited Ceos, where by erecting a temple
to Zeus Icmaeus (the giver of moisture), he freed the in-
habitants from a terrible drought. The islanders wor-
shipped him, and occasionally identified him with Zeus,
calling him Zeus Aristaeus.
ARISTANDER, the favorite soothsayer of Alex-
ander the Great, who consulted him on all occasions.
After the death of the monarch, when his body had lain
unburied for thirty days, Aristander procured its burial
by foretelling that the country in which it was interred
would be the most prosperous in the world. He is
probably the author of a work on prodigies, which is
referred to by Pliny and Lucian.
ARISTARCHUS, of Samothrace, the most famous
of the Greek grammarians and critics, flourished about
160 B.C. . He spent the greater part of his life at Alex-
andria, where he studied in the school of Aristophanes
of Byzantium. He acquired the highest reputation for
critical skill, and founded a school for philology, which
long flourished at Alexandria and afterwards at Rome.
Ptolemy V. (Epiphanes) and Ptolemy VII. (Physcon),
are said to have been among his pupils.
A RISTARCHUS, a Greek astronomer of Samos,
who lived about 280–264 B.C. He is famous as being
the first to maintain that the earth moves round the
sun. No mention, indeed is made of this doctrine in
his only surviving work, which treats of the Magnitudes
and Distances of the Sun and Moon; but Archimedes,
in his Arenarius, quotes from a work written by
Aristarchus as a refutation of astrology, which renders
it certain that the Samian astronomer had clearly antici-
pated the grand discovery of Copernicus.
ARISTEAS, a somewhat mythical personage, said to
have been a native of Proconnesus, an island in the Pro-
pontis.
ARISTIDES, surnamed the Just, was the son of
Lysimachus, a native of Athens, of the tribe Antiochis.
His family appears to have been of noble descent; at
least it is known that Callias, the torch-bearer at the
Eleusinian mysteries, and reputedly the wealthiest man
in Athens, was a cousin or near kinsman. Plutarch
maintains, in opposition to Demetrius Phalereus, that
Aristides was very poor, and never enriched himself at
the expense of the state. His poverty, however, seems
scarcely reconcilable with the fact that he was made
archon at a time when the possession of a certain
amount of property was an indispensable qualification
for that office.
The first certain appearance of Aristides in history
was at the battle of Marathon, 490 B.C., where he was
one of the ten generals, and led his own tribe, Antiochis.
He is said to have been second in command to Milti-
ades. According to custom each of the ten generals had
supreme command of the whole army for one day;
Aristides saw the disadvantages of this system, which
totally prevented any fixed plan being carried out, and
by his advice and example prevailed on the other gen-
erals to relinquish their right in favor of Miltiades. This
prudent measure contributed largely to the success of
the battle, in which also, according to Plutarch, much
was due to the valor of Aristides. He was left with
one tribe to collect the spoil from the field of battle,
while Miltiades marched to Athens to protect the city
from the Persian fleet. He discharged the duty in-
trusted to him with the most scrupulous honesty. Next
year he was made archon eponymus, and his reputa-
tion for justice appears to have been increased by the
manner in which he performed the duties of his office.
But his great rival, Themistocles, who had been mean-
while increasing his own power, grew jealous, and
gradually raised a strong feeling against him by repre-
senting how dangerous it was for a democracy that any
individual should be allowed to gain such influence as
that of Aristides. The Athenians, uneasy at this idea,
banished him by ostracism in 483. It is said that, on
this occasion, an ignorant fellow, who did not know
Aristides, came up to him, and, giving him his shell,
desired him to write upon it the name of Aristides. The
latter asked in surprise if Aristides had done him any
wrong. “No,” was the reply, “and I do not even
know him, but it irritates me to hear him everywhere
called the just.” Aristides made no answer, but took
the shell and wrote his own name on it.
On the night before the battle of Salamis, Aristides,
who was still in exile, made a perilous journey through
the enemy's fleet, and reached the tent of Themistocles.
He told him that he had come to bury in, oblivion their
former differences; that he had learned his plan for giv-
ing battle to the Persian fleet in the narrow straits of
Salamis, and highly approved of it; and that he would
assist him to the utmost of his ability. By his influence
the other generals were induced to assent to the plans
of Themistocles, of whom they were somewhat jealous.
On the day of battle, Aristides collected some Athenian
volunteers, and made a descent on the little island of
Psyttalea, which was filled with the forces of the
enemy. These he routed and almost annihilated.
After the victory of Salamis he dissuaded Themistocles
from his ambitious plan of conquering Asia by destroy-
ing the bridge which the Persians had built over the
Hellespont, and thereby cutting off their communica-
tions.
About this time his sentence of exile appears to have
been revoked, for in 479 he was general of the Athen-
ians in the campaign against Mardonius, and shared
with Pausanias the glory of the victory at Plataea. By
his prudent counsels before the battle, he settled a dan-
gerous dispute with the Tegetae; and after the victory,
when the Athenians and Lacedæmonians were contend-
ing as to the right of erecting the trophy, he prevailed
on the Athenians to give up their claim. The Lacedºe-
monians immediately followed this example, and the
honors of the day were given to the Plataeans. He also
instituted yearly sacrifices and quinquennial games at
Plataea, to celebrate the victory over the barbarians and
488
A. R. I
the liberation of Greece. On his return to Athens,
Aristides introduced the famous measure by which the
archonship was thrown open to all classes of citizens.
In 477, he was sent along with Cimon, over whom he
had great influence, t) take command of the Athenian
contingent, under the general command of Pausanias
the Lacedaemonian. The haughtiness and oppressive
conduct of the Spartans had disgusted the allies, who
were completely won over by the mildness and prudence
of Aristides and Cimon. In a body the allied Greeks
threw off the hegemony of Sparta, and formed a con-
federation under the Athenians. To Aristides was
committed the task of drawing up the laws for this con-
federacy, and settling the amount of tribute which should
be paid by each state. This duty he discharged to the
complete satisfaction of the allies, who were delighted
to be assessed at only 460 talents. The first instalment
of the tax was paid into the national treasury, then situ-
ated on the sacred island of Delos, but afterwards trans-
ferred to Athens, a measure which Aristides is said to
have declared unjust but expedient.
The time and place of his death are uncertain. It is
{{nown, at least, that he survived the banishment of
Themistocles, for his generous conduct towards his
fallen rival is commemorated by Plutarch. He died,
probably, about 468 B.C., according to some at Athens,
according to others at Pontus. He is said to have
slied in such poverty that he did not leave enough to
tlefray his funeral expenses, but had a tomb erected to
him with funds from the public treasury. This tomb at
Phalerum was still to be seen in the time of Plutarch.
His daughters received marriage portions from the
state, and his son, Lysimachus, was granted a sum of
money and a portion of land. Such was the respect of
the Athenians for the memory of their great statesman,
that even his remote descendants are said to have re-
ceived assistance from the public treasury.
ARISTIDES, AELIUS, surnamed Theodorus, a dis-
tinguished Greek rhetorician or sophist, was the son of
Eudaemon, a priest of Zeus, and was born at Adriani,
in Mysia. The date of his birth is given by some as
129 A.D., by others, with more probability, as I 17.
Died in 189 A.D. His account of different cures has ex-
cited considerable attention, from the similarity between
them and the effects produced by Mesmerism or Hypno-
tism, i.e., nervous sleep.
ARISTIDES of TIIEBES, a celebrated Greek painter,
was an older contemporary of Apelles, and flourished
about 350 B.C. He is said by Pliny to have been the
first to express in his paintings character and passion ;
but this is probably an exaggeration. Several of his
paintings are recorded in which there was manifested
-extraordinary mastery of expression. His coloring is
said by Pliny to have been hard.
ARISTIDES, QUINTILIANUs, author of a valuable
treatise on music, lived probably in the first century of
•our era. According to Meibomius, in whose collection
‘(Antig. Musicae Auc. Septem, 1652) this work is printed,
it contains everything on music that is to be found in
antiquity.
ARISTIPPUS, the founder of the Cyrenaic school of
philosophy, was the son of Aritadas, a wealthy mer-
chant of Cyrene, in Africa. He proceeded to Athens,
united himself to the circle of followers who surrounded
Socrates, and continued with him till his death in 399.
He did not, however, accept without essential modifica-
tion the teaching of his master, and his conduct, in
many points, was displeasing both to Socrates and to
other members of the Socratic band. He had probably
brought with him from the wealthy city of Cyrene habits
of luxury and ostentation, which contrasted forcibly
Xenophon, in the Memorabilia, reports his conversa-
tion on the nature of temperance, in which he defends
his life of ease and self-indulgence. Plato also some-
what significantly states that he was absent in the island
of AEgina on the day when Socrates died. Another
feature of his character, which rendered Aristippus
objectionable to the other Socratics, was his tendency to
adopt the theory and practice of the Sophists, among
whom he is expressly included by Aristotle. It is more
than probable that in Cyrene he had been already intro-
duced to the doctrines of Protagoras, of whose influence
his own theory shows manifest traces. We are further
told that he opened his school before the death of
Socrates, who blamed him for receiving payment from
his scholars. This story is probably inaccurate as to
the time when he began to teach, but it is undoubtedly
true that he took money for his lectures, and defended
the practice. Aristippus resembled the Sophists in
another particular; like them, he avoided the duties and
ties of citizenship by wandering from city to city. . He
was a professed cosmopolitan. The records of his
travels, particularly of his visit or visits to the court of
Syracuse, and his hostile relations with Plato there, are
not in all points consistent, and rest on but slender
authority. He appears to have settled finally in his
native city, and seems to have died there. Although
nothing is known with certainty as to the dates of his
birth and death, 435 B.C. for the one, and about 356 B.C.
for the other, may be accepted as probably accurate.
The life of Aristippus is the best exemplification of his
principles. True temperance, according to him, con-
sists not in abstaining from pleasure, but in being able
to enjoy it with moderation. He therefore indulged in
good living, rich clothing, splendid dwellings, and in
the society of the accomplished hetaerae. But in all
these pleasures he remained thoroughly master of him-
self; he possessed them, and was not possessed by
them. At any moment he could relinquish pleasure, for
he had attained an equanimity that rendered him happy
under any circumstances. To make the most of life,
reasonably to enjoy the present moment, and to drive
off care, reflection, and forethought, were the practical
precepts by which he guided himself. As might natur-
ally be expected, Aristippus left no definite system of
philosophy; indeed, according to some accounts, he
wrote nothing at all.
ARISTO, or ARISTON, of Chios, a Stoic philosopher
and pupil of Zeno, flourished about 250 B.C. He
differed from Zeno in many points, and approximated
more closely to the Cynic school. He was very elo-
quent (and was therefore called the Siren), but was
controversial in tone.
ARISTOBULUS of CASSANDRIA, one of the generals
who accompanied Alexander the Great, and who after-
wards, when very aged, wrote a history of the expedi-
tion. This work was much used by Arrian, who
praises it highly. Only a few fragments remain; these
are given in Müller’s Aſist. Graec. Frag.
ARISTOBULUS, a Jew of Alexandria, and a philos-
opher of the peripatetic school, flourished about 160
B.C., in the reign of Ptolemy Philometer. . He is the
first representative of the Jewish-Alexandrian philoso-
phy, the aim of which was to reconcile and identify
Greek philosophical conceptions with the Jewish
religion.
ARISTOPHANES. The birth-year of Aristophanes
is uncertain. He is known to have been about the
same age as Eupolis, and is said to have been “almost
a boy” when his first comedy was brought out in 427
B.C. The most probable conjecture places his birth in
or about the year 448 B.C. . His father Philippus was a
with the homely and temperate life of his master. landowner in AEgina. Aristophanes was an Athenian
A R I
489
citizen of the tribe of Pandionis, and the deme Cyda-
themé. The stories which made him a native of
Cameirus in Rhodes, or of the Egyptian Naucratis, had
probably no other foundation than an indictment for
usurpation of civic rights which appears to have been
more than once laid against him by Cleon. His three
sons — Philippus, Arărós, and Nicostratus— were all
comic poets. Philippus, the eldest, was a rival of
Eubulus, who began to exhibit in 376 B.C. Arårös
brought out two of his father's latest comedies, the
Cócalus and the AEolosicón, and in 375 began to exhibit
works of his own. Nicostratus, the youngest, is
assigned by Athenaeus to the Middle Comedy, but
belongs, as is shown by some of the names and
characters of his pieces, to the New Comedy also.
Although tragedy and comedy had their common
origin in the festivals of Dionysus, the regular estab-
lishment of tragedy at Athens preceded by half a cen-
tury that of comedy. The Old Comedy may be said to
have lasted about 80 years (470-390 B.C.), and to have
flourished about 56 (460–404 B.C.) Of the forty poets
who are named as having illustrated it the chief were
Cratinus, Eupolis, and Aristophanes. The Middle
Comedy covers a period of about 70 years (390–320
B.C.), its chief poets being Antiphames, Alexis, Plato
Comicus, Theopompus, and Strattis. The New Com-
edy was m vigor for about 70 years (320–250 B.C.), hav-
ing for its foremost representatives Menander Philemon,
and Diphilus. The Old Comedy was possible only for
a thorough democracy. Its essence was a satirical cen-
sorship, unsparing in personalities, of public and of pri-
vate life — of morality, of statesmanship, of education,
of literature, of social usage—in a word, of everything
which had an interest for the city or which could amuse
the citizens. Preserving all the freedom of banter and
of riotous fun to which its origin gave it an historical
right, it aimed at associating with this a strong practical
purpose – the expression of a democratic public opinion
in such a form that no misconduct or folly could alto-
gether disregard it. That licentiousness, that grossness
of allusion which too often disfigures it, was, it should
be remembered, exacted by the sentiment of the
Dionysiac festivals, as much as a decorous cheerfulness
is expected at the holiday times of other worships.
This was the popular element. Without this the enter-
tainment would have been found flat and unseasonable.
But for a comic poet of the higher calibre the conscious-
ness of a recognized power which he could exert, and
the desire to use this power for the good of the city,
must always have been the uppermost feelings. At
Athens the poet of the Old Comedy had an influence
analogous, perhaps, rather to that of the journalist than
to that of the modern dramatist. But the established
type of IDionysiac Comedy gave him an instrument such
as no public satirist has ever wielded. When Moliere
wished to brand hypocrisy he could only make his
Tartuffe the central figure of a regular drama, devel-
oped by a regular process to a just catastrophe. He had
no choice between touching too lightly, and using sus-
tained force to make a profound impression. The
Athenian dramatist of the Old Comedy worked under
no such limitations of form. The wildest flights of ex-
travagance were permitted to him. Nothing bound him
to a dangerous emphasis or a wearisome insistence.
He could deal the keenest thrust, or make the most
earnest appeal, and at the next moment—if his instinct
told him that it was time to change the subject — vary
the serious strain by burlesque. He had, in short, an
incomparable scope for trenchant satire directed by sure
tact. t
Aristophanes is for us the representative of the Old
Comedy. But it is important to notice that iſ is genius,
while it includes, also transcends the genius of the Old
Comedy. He can denounce the frauds of a Cleon, he
can vindicate the duty of Athens to herself and to her
allies, with a stinging scorn and a force of patriotic
indignation which make the poet almost forgotten in
the citizen. He can banter Euripides with an ingenu-
ity of light mockery which makes it seem for the time
as if the leading Aristophanic trait was the art of see-
ing all things from their prosaic side. Yet it is neither
in the denunciation nor in the mockery that he is most
individual. His truest and highest faculty is revealed
by those wonderful bits of lyric writing in which he
soars above everything that can move laughter or tears,
and makes the clear air thrill with the notes of a
song as free, as musical, and as wild as that of the
nightingale invoked by his own chorus in the Birds.
The speech of Dikaios Logos in the CZouds, the praises
of country life in the Peace, the serenade in the AEccle-
zíazusae, the songs of the Spartan and Athenian maidens
in the Lysistrata, above all perhaps the chorus in the
Arogs, the beautiful chant of the Initiated,—these pass-
ages, and such as these, are the true glories of Aristo-
phanes. They are the strains, not of an artist, but of
one who warbles for pure gladness of heart in some
place made bright by the presence of a god. Nothing
else in Greek poetry has quite this wild sweetness of
the woods. Of modern poets Shakespeare alone, per-
haps, has it in combination with a like richness and fer-
tility of fancy.
Fifty-four comedies were ascribed to Aristophanes.
Forty-three of these are allowed as genuine by Bergk.
Eleven are only extant. These eleven form a running
commentary on the outer and the inner life of Athens
during 36 years, and present varied pictures of ridicule,
satire and denunciation. They may be ranged under three
periods. The first of these periods, extending to 420
B.C., includes those plays in which Aristophanes uses
an absolutely unrestrained freedom of political satire.
The second period ends with tile year 405. Its productions
are distinguished from those of the earlier time by a cer-
tain degree of reticence and caution. . The third period,
down to 388 B.C., comprises two plays in which the
transition to the character of the Middle Comedy is well
marked, not merely by disuse of the parabasis, but by
general self-restraint.
A sympathetic reader of Aristophanes can hardly fail
to perceive that, while his political and intellectual tend-
encies are well marked, his opinions, in so far as they
color his comedies, are too indefinite to reward, or in-
deed to tolerate, analysis. Aristophanes was a natural
conservative. His ideal was the Athens of the Persian
wars. He disapproved the policy which had made
Athenian empire irksome to the allies and formidable
to Greece; he detested the vulgarity and the violence
of mob-rule; he clave to the old worships of the gods;
he regarded the new ideas of education as a tissue of
imposture and impiety. How far he was from clearness
or precision of view in regard to the intellectual revolu-
tion which was going forward, appears from the
Couds, in which thinkers and literary workers who had
absolutely nothing in common are treated with sweep-
ing ridicule as prophets of a common heresy. Aristo-
phanes is one of the men for whom opinion is mainly a
matter of feeling, not of reason, . His imaginative
susceptibility gave him a warm and loyal love for the
traditional glories of Athens, however dim the past to
which they belonged; a horror of what was ugly or
ignoble in the present; a keen perception of what was
offensive or absurd in pretension. The broad prefer-
ences and dislikes thus generated were enough not only
to point the moral of comedy, but to make him, in
many cases, a really useful censor for the city. The
490
A R I
services which he could render in this way was, how-
ever, only negative. -
ARISTOPHANES, of ByzaxTIUM, one of the
most famous of the Alexandrian critics, flourished
about the middle of the 3d century B.C. He studied un-
der Eratosthenes and Zenodotus, and himself founded
a school for grammar and criticism, of which the most
distinguished pupil was the great Aristarchus of Samo-
thrace. He was afterwards appointed to the superin-
tendence of the Alexandrian library. Aristophanes,
like his great pupil, was celebrated as an Homeric
critic, but little is known of the results of his labors
on that poet. He seems, however, to have been par-
ticularly occupied with the consideration of questions
of authenticity. He arranged and commented on the
works of Hesiod, Alcaeus, Pindar, Anacreon, Calli-
machus, Plato, and Aristotle; he also explained and
wrote arguments to the plays of Aristophanes and the
tragic poets. He is Justly celebrated as the inventor of
the Greek system of punctuation, accent, and breathing.
To him, also, is due in great measure the foundation of
the well-known Alexandrian Canon.
ARISTOTLE. In the history of European thought
and knowledge, down to the period of the revival of
letters, the name of Aristotle was, without a rival,
supreme; and this supremacy arose from no false estimate
or unwarranted preference. Aristotle, speaking gener-
ally, treated of every subject which came within the range
of ancient thought, and if we regard matter, and not
form or literary style, he treated of each of these subjects
better than any one else. He also initiated many new
branches of inquiry, dependent on observation and
induction, and thus not only represented in himself the
culmination of Greek speculative philosophy, but was
also, as far as possible, the forerunner of modern science.
Therefore, the sense of mankind recongnized him gradu-
ally (after many vicissitudes of appreciation) as the
strongest of the ancients. It even came to pass that, for
a long period, all secular writings but those of Aristotle
had dropped out of notice in Europe. His works may
almost have the credit of having saved men from re-
lapsing into barbarism. All sought in Aristotle the basis
of knowledge. Universities and grammar schools were
founded in Aristotle. Dante only justly expresses this
predominance, when he speaks of Aristotle as “the
master of those that know,” and depicts him as centre
and head of the philosophic family. Of the influence
which he has exercised over the minds of men we have
evidence, not only in the vast literatures connected with
his system, which exist in all great libraries, but also in
the traces which that system has left in all the modern
languages of Europe. The number of Aristotelian
“fossils” existing in our everyday language is quite re-
markable. If it had not been for the system of Aristotle,
we should have had to express many of our ordinary
thoughts differently.
The thought of Aristotle takes its start out of two
separate sets of elements previously existing in Greece:
the one purely philosophical, the other scientific. In
Plato were summed up and remoulded all the former re;
sults of logical, metaphysical, psychological, ethical, and
political speculation in Greece. And Aristotle was, in
the first place, thoroughly imbued with Plato, and all
the purely philosophical side of his writings was con-
ceived in close relation to Plato's works, the results of
which he may be said to have codified, reducing into ex-
pository form what Plato had left scattered up and
êown, rather as hints and suggestions, in his brilliant
dramatic dialogues. Partly, then, Aristotle adopted the
results of Plato, and made them available for the world
in general; partly he dissented from some of the Platonic
doctrines, and carried on a polemic against them. To
compare the Platonic dialogues with the works of Aris-
totle, and to trace the agreements and disagreements be-
tween them, forms an interesting study in the history of
philosophy. But on the whole, the difference between
Aristotle and Plato is one of aims rather than of doc-
trines. Aristotle's aim, almost from first to last, is to be
scientific, and to reduce even philosophy to science. He
wishes to deal with what can be known for certain, and
to express this in exact language. Plato's aim was, in
one sense, greater than this; in another sense it was in-
ferior to it. Plato stood apart from dogmatic systema-
tising; he seems to have regarded truth as too great and
many-sided to be capable of being submitted to such a
process; he was content to develop various aspects of the
truth, on all the highest questions, as they appeared to
different minds, or to the same mind at different periods.
To do this he chose the vehicle of the dramatic dialogue,
in which nothing was positively announced beyond the
views arrived at for the moment by the particular speak-
ers. He was a poet at the same time that he was a
philosopher, and his works exhibit that true note of
poetry which consists in constant attention to form, so
that no part is a mere means to a final result; but each
part is treated as an end in itself, and contains its own
beauty and perfection. His dialogues are thus master-
pieces of consummate literary art, though somewhat in-
definite in their conclusions, and not without a tinge of
imaginative mysticism. To all these Platonic tenden-
cies in the treatment of philosophy Aristotle was totally
opposed. . He disregarded form in all his extant works;
he thought of matter alone, and his main care was to be
definite and exhaustive. In adopting results from Plato
he first stripped them of the poetry with which they had
been surrounded. We shall revert below to some of the
points on which he controverts Plato, but the real con-
trast between them is in their attitude; the one is essen-
tially a dialectician, though of the highest and noblest
type, the other more and more tends to be a man of sci-
ence. Following out his proper bent, Aristotle, in many
of his works, strikes on a path in which Plato had not
been his precursor. In these works he lays the founda-
tion for the sciences of Natural Philosophy, Mechanics,
Physiology, and Natural History. In these branches of
thought he stands related, not to Plato, but to the early
Greek writers on physical subjects, the inquirers on spe-
cial questions, she medical writers, and the travellers,
whose works he often mentions, though they are all now
lost. If we possessed them, we should probably only
see how meagre had been these beginnings of Science,
and what great things Aristotle achieved in the accumu-
lation and systematising of knowledge, and in preparing
the way for its future development.
Aristotle’s complete neglect of artistic form (in his
extant works), and his adherence “to essential naked
truth,” induced William von Humboldt to say that Aris-
totle was un-Greek in the character of his mind; that he
was deeper and more earnest than the Greeks, but was
wanting in Greek fancy and grace, and spiritual freedom
of treatment. This may be so; but in point of descent
Aristotle was purely Hellenic. His family, however,
had been settled for some generations on the Macedon-
ian frontier, and it was there that Aristotle was born,
at the town of Stageira, a Greek colony, on the Stry-
monic gulf. This place was not far from Pella, the
residence of the Macedonian king, Amyntas, whose
physician Nicomachus, the father of Aristotle, became.
Intercourse with the Macedonians may have, to some
extent, influenced the manners of this family. But it is
to be remembered that they belonged to the race of the
Asclepiads, or supposed descendants of Æsculapius,
and it is more natural to attribute the scientific tenden-
cies of Aristotle's mind to the inherited character and
A R I
49 L
traditions of this race than to any influence which he
can have received from the Macedonians. Among those
traditions it is said to have been one, that “from father
to son they learned the art of dissection, as regularly as
others learn to read and write.” The best biography
of Aristotle, hitherto written, is that given by Grote in
his posthumous work (1872, vol. i., p. 3). The chief
ancient authority on the subject is Diogenes Laërtius, a
compiler and anecdote monger, perhaps of the 3d or 4th
century A.D. His life of Aristotle contains, amid many
worthless, gossiping statements, two fragments of antiq-
uity which are of the greatest value. One of these is
an extract from the chronology of Apollodorus (140
B.C.), giving the dates of the chief events of Aristotle's
career; the other is a catalogue of “the books which he
left behind him,” to the number of 146. The following
are the statements of Apollodorus: — That Aristotle
was born 384 B.C. That he joined Plato and passed
twenty years with him, thirteen of them consecutively,
and that he came to Mitylene 345 B.C. That in the first
year after the death of Plato he went to Hermeas, and
abode with him three years; that he came to Philip 343
B.C., when Alexander was fifteen years old; that he came
to Athens 335 B.C. That he held a school in the Lyceum
thirteen years, and then went to Chalcis 322 B.C., where
he died of a disease, about sixty-three years old. This
skeleton of the life of Aristotle is probably authentic;
and if so, we knew as much about him as could possibly
be expected. It is easy to fill up, to some extent, the
details; he must have been in his seventeenth year when
he came to Athens to put himself under Plato; twenty
years afterwards, when Plato died, he was, on account
of his great divergencies of mind from Plato, not ap-
pointed head of the school, and he, therefore, retreated
to the court of his philosophical friend, Hermeas, ruler
of Atarneas, in Asia Minor; he married the niece of
Hermeas, who was a eunuch, and had been a slave. On
his death Aristotle went to live in retirement in Mityl-
ene, whence, in his forty-second year, he was
summoned by Philip of Macedon to undertake
the tuition of Alexander the Great, then fifteen
years old. Seven years later Philip was assassinated
and Alexander became king of Macedonia, and was im-
mediately absorbed in plans for the conquest of the East.
Aristotle now came to Athens and spent the last thirteen
years of his life there, and it is these years which have
the most interest for us, for in them, in all probability,
he composed all those of his works which still remain.
In rivalry to the Platonic school which had been estab-
lished in the gardens of the “Academia" on the west
side of Athens, he set up his own school in the covered
“walks "round the temple of the Lycean Apollo, on the
east side of the city, and from this circumstance his
philosophy got the appellation of “Peripatetic.” His
mind and the general features of his system were now
matured; he had before him the task, on the one hand,
of reducing to writing for the world the results of his
reflections in philosophy, on the other hand, of accumu-
lating fresh materials for those sciences of observation
of which he was laying the foundation. He set himself
simultaneously to writing and to teaching, and there is
reason to believe that he employed his school to some
extent, in co-operation with himself, to work out de-
tails, and to assist in a subordinate way in the construc-
tion of the great philosophical and scientific edifice
which he had in view. The period of the zenith of Aris-
totle was coeval with the astonishing career of his pupil,
Alexander. There is a tradition that Alexander fur-
nished him with funds for his physical and zoological
researches. However this may have been, it appears
certain that Aristotle was identified in Athens with the
Macedonian cause, and that when, in the summer of
323 B.C., the startling news of the sudden death of Alex-
ander was spread through Greece, Aristotle was involved
in the temporary fall of a political party, and those who,
from different causes, were his enemies, made an attack
upon him which caused him to fly from Athens. Grote
has well drawn out the various elements of enmity ex-
isting against Aristotle, and to his account we refer.
Aristotle retired to Chalcis in Euboea, a place garrisoned
by the Macedonians, and there shortly afterwards closed,
in an illness, his life of unsurpassed activity and achieve-
ment. His will, preserved by Diogenes, would seem
to indicate a kind, just, and generous disposition; of
the genuineness of this document we cannot be sure,
but there is nothing recorded of Aristotle with any cer-
tainty which would lead us to think of him personally
otherwise than with respect.
After his death his works had a strange and remarkable
history. His library, containing all his own autographs,
many of them being MSS. of unpublished and unfin-
ished treatises, was bequeathed to Theophrastus, his
chief disciple, who, dying thirty-five years later,
bequeathed them in turn, together with his own books
and writings, to Neleus, a Peripatetic scholar. Neleus
took the whole precious collection with him to his home
at Scepsis, in Asia Minor, and his heirs concealed it in a
vault to prevent its being seized by the king of Per-
gamus, who was then levying contributions for his royal
library. The Aristotelian MSS. were thus lost to the
world for 187 years. About the year Ioo B.C. they
were brought out of their hiding-place and sold to a
wealthy book-collector, named Apellicon, who carried
them back to Athens. In the year 86 B.C., on the tak-
ing of Athens by Sulla, the library of Apellicon was
seized and brought to Rome. There some learned
Greeks obtained access to it; Tyrannion, the friend of
Cicero, arranged the MSS.; and Adronicus of Rhodes
undertook the task of furnishing a correct text, and a
complete edition of the philosophical works of Aristotle,
out of the materials at his disposal. He arranged the
different treatises and scattered fragments under their
proper heads, and published what was henceforth
received as the authorised edition of the works of Aris-
totle. It seems reasonable to believe with Grote that
“our Aristotle,” that is, the collection of writings which
under this name has come down to modern times, is none
other than the edition of Andronicus, and thus dates
from about the year 50 B.C. For the first generation
after the death of Aristotle, his scholars, Theophrastus,
Eudemus, Phanias, Straton, &c., were engaged partly in
editing, partly in paraphrasing, sometimes in endeavor-
ing to improve upon his mostly unfinished works. But
the Peripatetic school very rapidly declined; all the
philosophic ability round the shores of the AEgean threw
itself into one or other of the two new rival schools
which had arisen, the Stoic and the Epicurean. The
Peripatetics could not keep up to their master's level;
they soon lost interest in the higher parts of his sys-
tem; they took to writing monographs on small sepa-
rate questions, and moral platitudes dressed up in
rhetorical form. We may hesitate to affirm that, during
187 years, there were absolutely no copies of Aristotle's
greatest works extant besides those hidden in the vault
of Scepsis, for the Stoical ethics and logic both bear
traces of a knowledge of Aristotle. But, at all events,
for the time, the world had lost its interest in all that
we most prize in Aristotle's thought. Strabo says ex-
pressly that “all his writings, except a few of a more
popular character,” had been lost; and in accordance
with this, Cicero says that “even philosophers know
nothing of Aristotle, though they ought to have been
attracted by the incredible sweetness of his diction.”
The latter part of this remark may seem surprising, for
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it is not in the least applicable to any of the works of
- Aristotle which have come down to us. But Cicero is
evidently referring to the Dialogues, which were read,
admired, and attributed to Aristotle in the days before
the edition of Andronicus became known. The ques-
tion has been raised, especially by Valentine Rose,
whether these dialogues, and other short, unsystematic
works which passed under the name of Aristotle, were
all forgeries, or were in any case genuine. On the one
hand it is urged that the dialogic, or artistic, mode of
exposition, was alien from Aristotle’s turn of mind.
On the other hand, it may be said that Aristotle in his
youth may very probably have tried his hand at imitat-
ing the Platonic dialogues. And, indeed, unless he had
done so, it is difficult to understand how even the
forgers could have ventured to publish dialogues bear-
ing his name. Very likely, after his death and the loss
of the main bulk of his works by their removal to a
vault in Asia Minor, a crop of forged Aristotelian
writings sprung up, and imitations of his earlier and
more popular works were among the number. But
still, it appears safest to believe that Aristotle did at
one time endeavor to make the dialogue his vehicle for
philosophy. In the years that followed the death of
Plato, he probably felt within himself a reaction and
repugnance against this mode of writing, and when he
returned to Athens as the leader of a school, he utterly
renounced it, and set himself henceforth to the state-
ment of the naked truth in the directest and most
scientific terms which he could find. Whether the
dialogues which Cicero and his contemporaries read and
admired were early works of Aristotle himself, or were
forgeries, there is no means of knowing. But the frag-
ments of these works, which a search of all ancient
literature has brought together, show us nothing worthy
of Aristotle in his best days, nothing that contributes
any light to his philosophy. And it is remarkable that
all works of this kind seem to have been excluded from
the edition of Andronicus. Owing to that exclusion
they are all now lost, and thus the tables are turned,
for whereas before the edition of Andronicus the world
had forgotten all about Aristotle, except so far as he
was represented by his own youthful and lighter pro-
ductions, or by spurious imitations of these, it came to
ass later that all except his solid and great philosoph-
ical treatises passed into oblivion.
Of the works that have come down to us as Aristotle’s,
the following are undoubtedly genuine:–I. Zopics. 2.
Prior Analytics. 3. Posterior Analytics. 4. On Soph-
istica/A’efutations. 5. Art of Æhetoric. 6. Micomach-
eam Athics. 7. Politics. 8. On the Art of Poetry.
9. A Physical Discourse. Io. On the Heavens. II.
On Generation and Destruction. 12. Meteorologics.
13. A'esearches about Animals. I4. On Soul. I5.
Appendices to the preceding work—(a.) On Sense and
Sensible Zhings. (b.) On Memory and Recollection.
(c.) On S/eep and Waking. (d.) On Dreams and
Prophesying in S/eep. (e.) On Zongevity and Short-
Zizedness. (f) On Youth and Old Age. (g.) On Life
and Death. (h.) On Respiration. I6. On Parts of
An imals. 17. On Zocomotion of Animals. 18. On
Generation of Animals. 19. The Metaphysics.
The following works attributed to Aristotle are
almost undoubtedly spurious:— I. On Rhetoric; ad-
dressed to Alexander. 2. Budemian AEthics. 3. Great
A thics. 4. On Virtues and Vices. 5. Economics. 6.
On Colors. 7. Physiognomics. 8. On Plants. 9.
On Strange Statements. Io. Mechanics. II. On
Andivisible Zines. I2. On Xenophanes, Zeno, and
Gorgias. 13. On the Universe; addressed to Alexander.
14. On ..]/otion of Animals. 15. On Breath. I6.
Aroh Meyzy.
We shall now proceed briefly to indicate, we cannot
attempt more, the leading features of the contents of
Aristotle's undoubted work, as they have come down to
us. The books of the Organon (so called by Andr.)
form together a connected whole. Of these the Zopics
appear to have been written first, but the sequence of
thought between the books is that the Prior Analytics
stand first, as containing the theory of the syllogism, a
necessary preliminary to reasoning of all kinds; and
then growing out of this root we have two divergent
treatises: the Posterior Analytics, on demonstrative
reasoning, or the logic of science; and the 7'opics, on
dialectic, or the art of discussing subjects in which
demonstration is impossible. For the details contained
in these treatises we must refer the reader to Grote’s
generally excellent account. The matter of the Prior
Analytics has become the common property of all mod-
ern books on logic. And scarcely anything has had to
be detracted from or added to what Aristotle wrote upon
the syllogism. His was the proud, distinction of hav-
ing discovered and fully drawn out the laws under which
the mind acts in deductive reasoning. That in deduc-
tion the mind proceeds from some universal proposi-
tion, and how it proceeds — these were the first things
which Aristotle had to tell the world. The modern at-
tempts to impugn these principles, and to show that the
mind does not reason from universals, are a failure.
They confuse inductive with deductive reasoning, and
ignore both the case of a science like geometry, which
is all deduction, and also the numerous cases where the
mind, having unduly assumed a universal principle,
rests in it afterwards and makes deductive applications
of it. Granting that there is such a thing as deductive
reasoning (and surely life is full of it), it is a great mat-
ter to have the laws of this so clearly ascertained, that
about the process itself there can no longer be doubt,
and any flaw in the process can instantly be detected.
This was the service that Aristotle rendered in drawing
out the laws of the syllogism. Men, of course, rea-
soned deductively by means of “the syllogism * before
Aristotle had appropriated this name to indicate the
formula for deductive reasoning, and before he had dis-
covered and stated the laws under which the mind acts
in deductive reasoning. They did so, however, uncon-
sciously and by instinct, just as men wrote and talked
grammatically before any idea of a science or an art of
grammar existed. In Aristotle deductive reasoning be-
came conscious of itself. Unfortunately for his repu-
tation, this merely preliminary part of his
labors, in which the principles and rules
of syllogistic inference were drawn out, occu-
pied almost exclusively the minds of thinkers in
the Middle Ages. The errors of modern Aristotelians
were imputed to Aristotle, and hence arose the notion
that Aristotle explained nature by means of the syl-
logism. Nothing could be further from the truth;
Aristotle was not only one of the most inquiring and
encyclopaedical, but also one of the most thoroughly
sensible, of all writers, and no one would have repudiated
more strongly than himself the idea that the formula of
the syllogism can be used to test or explain anything
beyond the process of reasoning from certain premises
possessed or assumed, and he is never tired of telling us
that the only means of obtaining premises is by ex-
perience and observation of facts. While discussing
the syllogism itself, he says, - “This is the case in
astronomy, which is based on the observation of astron-
omical phenomena, and it is the case with every branch
of science or art. When the facts in each branch are
brought together, it will be the province of the logician
to set out the demonstrations in a manner clear and fit
for use.” It is true that Aristotle did nothing towards
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{
the logic of Induction, that is to say, towards elucidating
the methods by which the mind legitimately arrives at
general facts or laws of nature. This was left to be
worked out by the moderns, by Galileo, and Bacon, and
Whewell, and J. S. Mill. Aristotle, indeed, made a
cursory attempt to put the inductive process into syl-
logistic form, thus: “A, B, and C draw iron ; A, B,
and C are (or represent) all magnets; therefore all mag-
nets draw iron.” It is clear that this syllogism does not
explain the inductive process, it only records in the
minor premiss a previous induction. The real question
is,...do A, B, and C here properly represent all magnets 2
To answer this, verification would be required. The
syllogism, then, does not explain the inductive process,
but only calls attention to what is implied in it. Leav-
ing unattempted the question how the minor premise in
the Inductive syllogism is to be obtained, and how
tested, - what Aristotle really works out is the logic of
Deductive Science (in the Post. Analytics) and the logic
of Deductive Probability (in the Topics). Under the
former head he draws the ideal of a perfect science, and
recounts the conditions necessary to its existence. In-
teresting discussions are introduced by him on Causa-
tion, Hypotheses, Axioms, Ultimate Laws, Definition,
and the Apprehension of Primary Truths. In all this
there is little which might not be accepted by a man of
science of the present day. The Topics, on the other
hand, treat of a subject which possesses rather an anti-
quarian than a living interest, namely, the conduct and
regulations of Dialectic as practised in Athenian society.
Hardly anything of importance on the subject of Rhet-
oric has been added to what Aristotle wrote. Take the
most powerful and subtle specimen of modern oratory —
for instance, Shakspeare's speech of Mark Antony over
the body of Caesar — and you will find the rationale of
every telling point set forth by anticipation in the Rhet-
oric of Aristotle. His work contains some few Greek
technicalities— for instance, the doctrine of the Enthy-
meme, or rhetorical syllogism — on the precise nature
of which commentators are not agreed. But the main
bulk of the treatise consists of a rich collection of re-
marks on human nature and life, applicable to all pe-
riods. In the wisdom and knowledge of the world which
it exhibits, Aristotle's A&hetoric might be compared with
the Æssays of Lord Bacon. And it might be compared
with them also in this respect, that a bad and Machia-
veliºn use might certainly be made of some of the sug-
gestions which it contains, though Aristotle professes
only to give them to be employed in the interest of truth
and justice. The third book, on Style, is excellent
so far as it goes, but it is less exhaustive and universally
applicable than the former books, which treat of the
matter of speeches.
Rhetoric was said by Aristotle to be allied, on the one
hand, to Dialectic, on the other hand to Ethics; and, ac-
cordingly, he seems to have gone next to the exploration
of the latter subject. At all events he wrote the AVico-
machean Athics later than the AEAetoric. When we com-
pare the two treatises together we are struck with the
growth of mind which has taken place between them.
The Rhetoric is full of ethical definitions of happiness,
pleasure, virtue, friendship, and the like. But in the
Z/hics these are all remodelled, and made far deeper and
In Ore exact.
The AVicomachean Athics was, perhaps, the first of
Aristotle's extant works which entered upon the mat-
ter of knowledge, as distinct from the theory of the
reasonings by which knowledge is obtained, and from
the theory of the statement by which knowledge may
be best set forth. . The moral system herein contained
differs from the ethics of Plato, first, in its more accu-
rate psychological analysis, in distinguishing the will
from the intellect, and in making virtue to consist in a
formed state of the will, rather than in wise insight;
second/1, in being disconnected from any assumption,
or theory, of the immortality of the soul, - from all
that we should call “Faith.” Whether or not Aristotle
denied a future life is another question to be considered
later. But at all events he constructed ethics independ-
ently of such a doctrine. On the other hand, his sys-
tem differs from the modern point of view, in that he
asks, not, What is right? what is our duty? or what is
the ground of moral obligation? but, What is the chief
good for man? In order to answer this question, he
calls in the aid of his metaphysical forms of thought,
such as the doctrine of the Four Causes, and of Actu-
ality and Potentiality. From these he deduces that the
chief good for man must consist in something which is
an End in itself, and that it must be found in the actu-
ality of the human powers. It is a weak point in the
system that, instead of at once recognising the law of
moral obligation as the deepest thing in man, it intro-
duces the idea of virtue and morality in a dry logical
way, saying that the chief good for man must be the actu-
ality of his powers according to their own proper law
of excellence.
But the whole question of man's moral nature is really
subsidiary in the AEthics of Aristotle. His question is,
What is the chief good for man P and the answer to this
question is, It must consist in the evocation and actual-
ity of man’s highest faculty, namely, the Reason. Thus,
the highest happiness is to be found in contemplation
and speculative thought ; the joys of the philosopher
are beyond compare. A satisfaction of an inferior kind
is to be found in the exercise of the moral virtues. Such
is, in brief, the view which Aristotle gives of human
life. He excludes religion from his consideration of the
subject, though his disciple, Eudemus, in restating his
conclusions, tries to introduce it. The same question,
What is the highest good for man P has been answered
in somewhat similar terms, in modern times, by Spinoza.
The concluding paragraphs of the AWicomacheazu Z:/lics
form the prelude and introduction to the Politics of
Aristotle. Neither virtue nor happiness, he says, can
be attained by the individual separately. Moral develop-
ment and the realization of our powers require as ex-
ternal conditions a settled community, social habits, the
restraint and protection of laws, and a wisely-regulated
system of public education. Man is by nature a poli-
tical creature; he cannot isolate himself without becom-
ing either less or more than man. Thus the state is a
prime necessity to man, and, indeed, the state is prior in
idea to the individual, that is to say, the normal concep-
tion of man is of man in a state of civilisation, and this
implies beforehand the conception of a state. On these
grounds Aristotle went on from his Záhics to the com-
position of his Politics. Some little time, however,
may have elapsed between the two works. This is sug-
gested by the mature and free handling given to ethical
questions when they occur in the Politics. Aristotle,
with his usual tendency to seek a solid basis of experi-
ences for his theories, may, in this interval, have been
engaged in making that remarkable collection called the
Constitutions which, according to Diogenes Laertius,
contained a description and history of the constitutions,
manners, and usages of I58 states, and of which numer-
ous fragments remain. However this may be, the
Aolitics, as we possess them, are full of learning and
information.
His ideal state contrasts favorably, from a scientific
point of view, with that of Plato. For while giving, as
we have seen above, great and predominant weight to
the idea of the state, he refuses to allow the individual
and the family to be absorbed by the state. He thus
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A R I
resists all approaches to that communism which was
carried to so great extravagance in the Republic of Plato.
The form of government which, ideally speaking, he
prefers, is a wise monarchy or aristocracy —some gov-
ernment, in short, in which neither wealth nor numbers
shall be permitted to determine everything. In some
points it must be confessed that he exhibits a narrow
and conservative spirit, and a belief in the divine right
of things as they are, which puts him at a disadvantage
in comparison either with Plato or with modern views.
Thus, despite counter opinions in his own day, he
maintains the institution of slavery as based on nature,
and even lays it down that it is justifiable to make war
upon and reduce to slavery those races who were evi-
dently intended by nature to be subject. In accordance
with his physiological system, he treats woman as
stunted man, fixed by nature in a position of inferiority;
and, therefore, he resists Plato's proposals for the
emancipation and improved education of women. And
by a third misapplication of his favorite conception of
“nature,” he denounces interest as unnatural, money
being a mere instrument of exchange, whereas interest
unnaturally increases it.
The logical order of the physical treatises, and,
probably to a great extent, the actual order of their
composition, is as follows:– 1st, The Physical Dis-
course, in eight books, forms an introduction to the en-
tire subject. It is, as Hegel called it, “a Metaphysic
of Physic.” It treats of the Principles of Existence,
Matter and Form, Nature, Motion, Time, Space, the
Unmoved First Mover, and the Evermoved, i.e., the
sphere of the outer heaven. 2d, The treatise On the
A'eavens, in four books, naturally succeeds; and Aris-
totle, thus beginning with the periphery and divinest
part of the universe, descends gradually to the region
of the material and perishable. In so doing it becomes
necessary to him to consider the causes of those changes,
— that passing into and out of existence,—which had
no place in the higher region. Therefore, 3d, the
treatise Oſt Generation and Destruction, in two books,
gives us Aristotle's theory of the Hot and the Cold,
and the Wet and the Dry,<pairs of opposites, the first
pair active, and the second pair passive, which by their
combinations and mutual workings produce the four
elements (Hot and Dry= Fire, Hot and Wet=Air,
Cold and Dry= Earth, Cold and Wet– Water), and
form the ground for all natural changes. 4th, The
Meteorologics, in three books, treat of the region of the
planets, comets, and meteors, a region ever full of
change and alteration. The fourth book of this treatise
does not logically belong to it, for in it Aristotle de-
velops his theory of two exhalations—the steamy or
wet, and the smoky or dry—which, being imprisoned
within the earth, produce, the former the metals, and
the latter the rocks, and such other minerals as are in-
capable of being melted. This theory, which seems to
be a dim foreshadowing of the doctrine of crystallisa-
tion, takes us out of the mid-air below the surface of
the earth. It is, therefore, out of place; but almost
everything in Aristotle must be looked upon as un-
finished. 5th, The treatise On the Parts of Animals,
in four books, leads the way to the investigation of or-
ganic life. It contains Aristotle's physiological distinc-
tion between homogeneous and unhomogeneous
substances (Öuovoſtepſ and divoſuovo/lepſi), i.e., tissues
and organs. This distinction, which is recognised still
as perfectly valid, gives a scale of ascension from the
inorganic to the organic world. First, Heat and Cold,
&c., form the simple elements; out of the elements are
formed the homogeneous substances or tissues; out of
these are formed the organs, out of the organs the or-
ganised being. As a principle of method, Aristotle
lays it down that all which is common to the various
species of living beings should be discussed before
entering upon their specific differences. Therefore,
6th, the treatise On Soul follows next in order, which,
as Spengel observes, is not to be regarded as a
work of psychology in the modern sense, but as a
physiological treatise on the soul of vital principle
common to all living beings And next follow, 7th,
the so-called Parva Maturalia, which form appendices
to the three books On Soul, and treat physiologically
of sense and sensation, youth and age, sleep and wak-
ing, and other phenomena attaching to life in general.
8th, The short essay On Locomotion of Animals shows
how various organs in the various creatures are adapted
by nature for this purpose. 9th, The elaborate treatise,
in five books, On Generation of Animals, works out
this subject with astonishing fullness. And, Ioth, the
great work entitled Researches about Animals, in ten
books, in which Aristotle exhibits an acquaintance,
more or less intimate, with about 500 species, crowns
the series of his physical writings, and certainly con-
stitutes one of his greatest achievements.
Last of Aristotle’s extant and undoubted works, we
have to deal with the Metaphysics.
Among the many-sided merits of Aristotle must be
mentioned the example set by him of making the history
of opinion on each subject the prelude to a scientific
consideration of the subject itself. In the first book of
his Metaphysics he sketches the leading doctrines of his
predecessors on the first principles of existence. He
thus becomes the father of the history of philosophy, a
study which has been taken up anew and much developed
during the present century. His brief and masterly
sketch is, however, open to the charge of not doing suf-
ficient justice to the different points of view of former
philosophers. And his polemic against Plato's doctrine
of Ideas, which is several times repeated in his extant
writings, has the appearance of captiousness, and of
misrepresenting the doctrine which it impugns. Aris-
totle himself never discarded idealism. He declared
that universals, and the truths apprehensible by the high-
est reason, “were by nature more known " than individ-
ual concrete phenomena, and the facts apprehended by
sense. But yet he had the strongest bias towards phys-
ical research and empirical observation. A modern
physical philosopher might have been content to follow
out his own special inquiries without seeking a general
scheme for the universe. But Aristotle had to form a
theory of the whole, leaving scope, afterwards, for the
separate physical sciences. The idealism of Plato did
not do this; it left no place for matter, motion, or
change; when followed out it reduced all but the Ideas
to the category of the non-existent. Aristotle, to rescue
all nature from theoretical annihilation, introduced a
term between the existent and the non-existent, namely,
the “potential.” On the one hand, the potential does
not exist, for as yet it has no qualities; on the other
hand, it does exist, for some change brings the “actual”
into existence, and this could not be without implying the
previous existence of the potential. The universe, accord-
ing to Aristotle, is a continuous chain; at the one end
is the purely potential–matter without form or qual-
ities; at the other end is pure unconditioned actuality,
the ever existent, or God.
Reflection upon the relation of the potential and the
actual shows the world to have been eternal, for the
actual must always have preceded the potential; the
seed is the potentiality of the plant, and the plant must
have always preceded the seed, the fowl the egg, &c.
Thus, all the system of cause and effect, which makes
up what is called “nature,” has been and will be, accord-
ing to Aristotle, of eternal duration, and is only slightly
A R I
495
modified and altered by two incalculable elements of
causation,-chance and the will of man.
The history of the study of the Aristotelian philoso-
phy, since the time of Andronicus, falls under various
heads, dealt with elsewhere. It is contained, - first,
under such names as those of the Greek commentators,
Boethus, Nicolas Damascenus, Alexander of AEgge,
Aspasius, Adrastus, Galenus, Alexander of Aphrodisias,
Porphyry, Iamblichus, Dexippus, Themistius, Proclus,
Ammonius, Damascius, David the Armenian, Asclepius,
Olympiodorus, Simplicius, and Johannes Philoponus;
secondly, under the history of the caliphs of Baghdad,
and their encouragement of the translation into Árabic
of Greek philosophical works; thirdly, under the names
of Avicenna (of Baghdad), and Averroes, and Moses
Maimonides (of Cordova), and the history of the con-
troversies to which they gave rise; fourthly, under the
names of Thomas Aquinas, and the history of Scholas-
ticism generally; ſºft/h/y, under the history of the
Renaissance, and of the manifold editions of Aristotle
to which the first age of printing gave birth; sixthly,
under the names of Ramus and Bacon, and the history
of the reaction against scholastic Aristotelianism ;
seventh/y, under the names of Lessing, Hegel, and
other great Germans who, within the last hundred years,
have revived a genuinely philosophical and critical study
of Aristotle.
A RISTOXENUS, of Tarentum, a celebrated Greek
philosopher and writer on music, was the son of Spin-
tharus or Mnesias. He was at first a pupil of the
Pythagorean School, and received instruction from
Xenophilus; afterward removing to Athens, he studied
under Aristotle. He became one of the most dis-
tinguished pupils of the Peripatetic school, and is said
to have been much disappointed when, after the death
of Aristotle, Theophrastus was preferred to him as
a scholar. His writings, which, according to Suidas,
were 453 in number, have been almost entirely lost.
ARITH METIC is the science that treats of numbers,
and of the methods of computing by means of them.
In introducing the subject, and endeavoring to trace the
progress of the science, there appear to be three points
that call for particular notice, viz., the conception of
number, the representation of numbers either by words
or graphically by characters, and the principles and
modes of computation.
I. The primary conceptions of numbers are neces-
sarily of a very crude kind. The child attains the
notion slowly by experience, and the ability that even
adults have to apprehend the significance of numbers
with precision is restricted to an extremely narrow
area. This is still more the case among uncivilised
races, some of which do not appear to be able to count
beyond 3, or 4, or 5, or are at least believed to have no
words in their vocabularies that express larger numbers.
It is to be remembered that the knowledge that is ac-
quired regarding numbers through experience and cult-
ure is not of numbers absolutely or in the abstract, but
rests almost entirely on a preception of the relations
which numbers bear to each other.
The power to form a direct and immediate conception
of numbers is very limited; but the relative magnitudes
of numbers, large as well as small, can be expressed
with the utmost accuracy, and so as to be clearly under-
stood. The system of notation in common use, whereby
we express not merely numbers, but parts of numbers,
supplies us with means of comparing arithmetically
together either the greatest or the minutest magnitudes,
to which there is absolutely no limit. The proportion,
for instance, that the circumference of a circle bears to
the diameter, though it cannot be stated with arithmetical
exactness, has been calculated to upwards of 200 deci-
mal places,—a nicety for which the vast dimensions that
science discloses in the physical universe furnish no
means of comparison whatever. For let it be supposed
that a circle were described, with a point on the earth's
surface as centre, so as to extend beyond the most dis-
tant star that can be discerned by the most powerful
existing telescope, that the radius of the circle were
known, and that the circumference were computed from
it, it does not appear that an error in the thirtieth deci-
mal place would be of such magnitude that the keenest
vision, aided by the most powerful microscope, could
detect it.
In all systems of number, with the exception, per-
haps, of the very rudest, numerical conceptions are
aided by the introduction, usually at a very early stage,
of methods of grouping. In nearly every case the
methods adopted connect themselves with the number
of the fingers, either of one or, more usually, of the
two hands. Having reached 5 or Io, the reckoner pro-
ceeds by adding to these the prior numbers; and when
a second 5 or Io is reached, a new word or sign is em-
ployed, the significance or derivation of which is gener-
ally well marked in the name or form it bears. Similarly
when (say) five fives or ten tens are reached, a fresh
start is made. These processes of grouping are of
great importance, conveying clearer conceptions than
could otherwise be obtained of the relative magnitudes
of numbers. An additional evidence of the value of
the principle is to be found in certain numerical combi-
nations which are not additive, as such combinations
mostly are, but subtractive. Thus, if a conception be
formed of Io, and again of 20, 19 and even 18 will con-
nect themselves more readily with the latter than with
the former, and so we have such forms as duodez/igint:
and undevigimti, and there is little doubt that similar
considerations, in combination with a regard for brevity
of expression have led to the use of the subtractive
forms IX., XL., &c.
2. There are two ways in which numbers are repre-
sented,—either in words or by particular characters
or symbols. It is with the latter that arithmetic has
more especially to do, the numerous important and in-
teresting questions that relate to word-numerals falling
rather within the domain of language. It is only in so
far as they arise out of the systems of grouping already
referred to, suggesting in their formation such pro-
cesses as addition or multiplication, that these call for
any notice here. Dr. Tylor (Primitive Culture, chap.
vii.) gives a variety of remarkable collocations of this
sort, as well as of descriptive numerals, that are in use
among different races and tribes.
There is also a common use of characters to represent
numbers which does not properly belong to this subject.
The letters A, B, C, &c., or a, ſº, y, or the like, the order
to whose succession is fixed, are often employed to indi-
cate numerical order, either singly or in combination with
numerals proper. This is not, however, an arithmetical
use of the characters; they are merely ordinals, and
cannot furnish a basis for calculation.
The origin of the various characters which have been
employed to indicate numbers proper, and by means of
which computations can be effected, is in most cases
alphabetical. In the Hebrew and Greek notations, for
instance, the letters were taken in the main in their
alphabetical order, being divided into three groups, of
which the first represented units, the second tens, and
the third hundreds; and very similar systems have been
in use among other nations.
Far superior to all the ancient systems, and indeed to
every other system that exists, is the arithmetical nota-
tion that is in common use. The Arabic numerals, as
they are called, are ten in number, nine of them repre:
496 *
A R I
senting the first nine numbers, and the tenth, the cipher
or zero, indicating the absence or negation of numerical
value. The significance of these figures or digits
depends on their relative position, and the great merit
of the system is due to this element of local value.
Standing singly, the figures denote simply one, two,
three, &c.; but in combinations of them every removal
towards the left increases the value of the figures ten
times. In 5673, for instance, the 3 denotes three, the
7 seven tens (70), the 6 six times ten tens (600), the 5 five
times ten hundreds (5000). Should any of the series of
tens be wanting, as in nine thousand and forty-eight,
where hundreds do not occur, the place is supplied by
a cipher, which throws back the digit that expresses
thousands into its proper place, thus 9048. It is by
this use of the cipher in supplying blanks, and so
regulating the places of the significant digits that the
principal of local value is carried out. See further the
sections on notation and numeration.
The ordinary numerals are called Arabic, and it
appears to have been through the Arabians that they
were introduced into Europe; but they are now gener-
ally acknowledged to be of Indian origin. As may be
imagined, they have passed through a great variety of
forms, one of the earliest types of them being the
Aezazzagari, a species of Sanskrit numerals. In the
early Indian treatise of Bhascara and Brahmegupta,
translated by Mr. Colebrooke (see article ALGEBRA),
as well as in the still earlier writings of Arya-
Bhatta, there are both indications and illustrations
of the use of the nine digits and the cipher; and the
system is thus traced back to the 7th, and in all proba-
bility to the 5th century of the Christian era. Even
then it was evidently no novelty, but is alluded to as
holding an established position; and the Hindu Writers
nowhere lay claim to the invention of it, but constantly as-
sign to it a supernatural origin. The method was known
to the Arabians in the 9th century; and in the course of
the Ioth it seems to have come into general use among
them, especially in their astronomical writings and
tables. It was probably in the following century that
the Arabs introduced the notation into Spain; but in
regard to this we have no explicit information, and
different accounts are given of the earliest instances of
the use of the system in Europe. On the one hand, it
is alleged that the figures first occur in a translation of
Ptolemy, of the date 1 136, while others maintain that
they were introduced (about 1252) by means of the
celebrated astronomical tables published by and named
from Alphonso the Wise. That their use was known
in Italy at the commencement of the 13th century,
appears to be satisfactorily established, for there is no
good reason to doubt the genuineness of the MS.
writings of Leonardo of Pisa, copies of which have
been found bearing the dates 1202 and 1220. Numer-
ous other instances are given of the early use of the
nine figures and the cipher, especially by astronomers,
and in calendars. The great superiority of this to
earlier modes of numerical expression became gradu-
ally apparent, and in course of time it came into almost
universal use among civilised nations.
For a time there was, not unnaturally, considerable
inexactness or confusion in the employment of the no-
tation. In early writings such combinations are found,
for example, as X2 for 12, 301 for 31, &c. In the latter
case the law of local value is lost sight of, and the char-
acters 30 are used as equivalent to thirty, irrespective
of their position.
3. Calculation or computation by means of numer-
ical characters is what is ordinarily regarded as the dis-
tinctive province of arithmetic, and the worth of a sys-
tem of notation is to be estimated by the facilities it
affords for the operations of reckoning.
Computation of a comparatively rude kind was often
carried on in ancient times, and is practised still in some
countries, by what are called palpable methods,-as, for
instance, by means of counters, or by balls strung On
rods or running in grooves. -
The methods that preceded the adoption of the Arabic
numerals were all comparatively unwieldy, and very
simple processes involved great labor. The notation
of the Romans, in particular, could adapt itself so ill to
arithmetical operations, that nearly all their calculations
had to be made by the abacus. One of the best and
most manageable of the ancient systems is the Greek,
though that too is very clumsy.
The operations of the Greek arithmetic involving
fractions were necessarily very complicated. ' A sim-
pler system was introduced (by Ptolemy, according to
his commentator Theon, but it appears to have existed
before his time) in what are known as sexagesima/s,
which are precisely analogous to the duodecimals by
which we sometimes calculate areas. The division of
the circle into 360 degrees arose, no doubt, from 360
approximating the number of days in the year, and
containing a large number of divisors. The radius of
the circle, or side of the inscribed hexagon, subtended
at the centre 60 of these degrees, and from this the
degree was again divided into 60 parts called minutes,
the minute into 60 seconds, &c., just as the foot is
divided into 12 inches, the inch into 12 seconds, &c., in
duodecimals. The sexagesimal system, though applied
in the first instance to circular, was also employed in
linear, measurements.
The most important step in the progress of modern
arithmetic was the introduction of decimal fractions,
and the extension of the Arabic notation to the expres-
sion of them. The first writer who advocated and
exemplified the use of decimals was Simon Stevin de
Bruges, better known as Stevinus, in a paper published
about 1585; but he employed an awkward notation,
and it was only after a considerable period that they
assumed the form—entirely consistent with jhe nota-
tion of integers — with which we are familiar. From
a form which Lord Napier employs in his A'abdologia
(1617), the introduction of the decimal point (as a
comma) has been ascribed to him, but apparently with-
out sufficient evidence.
ARIUS, a well-known name in ecclesiastical history,
identified with the origin and spread of the first great
“heresy” in the Christian church. Arius is supposed
to have been a native of Cyrenaica in Africa, but nothing
is really known of his birth or of his early training. He
first comes clearly into view as a presbyter of the Church
of Alexandria, in the commencement of the 4th cen-
tury, engaged in conflict with his bishop, Alexander.
At a previous period he is said to have been connected
with the Meletian schism, and on this account to have
been excommunicated by Peter of Alexandria, who had
ordained him deacon.
The views of Arius first attracted attention about
319 A.D. According to the church historian Socrates,
Bishop Alexander, in addressing, the presbyters, and
other clergy on the doctrine of the Trinity, dwelt so
strongly on the consubstantial unity of the Father and
the Son that Arius charged him with holding Sabellian-
ism. A different account is given by profane historians
—notably Sozomen. Arius’ belief is set forth in the
following: “We believe,” he says, in the letter to
Alexander, “in one God alone without birth, alone
everlasting, alone unoriginate. . . . We believe
that this God gave birth to the only begotten Son
before eternal periods, through whom He made these
A R I — A R K
497
periods and all things else; that He gave birth to Him,
not in semblance, but in truth, giving Him a real ex-
istence, at His own will so as to be unchangeable,
God’s perfect creature, but not as other creatures
not, as Valentinus maintained, a development; nor,
again, as Manichaeus a consubstantial part; nor as
Sabellius, Son and Father at once, which is to make
two out of One, ... but created by the will of
God, and endowed with His own glorious perfections
—yet not so that the Father did thereby deprive him-
self of attributes which are His without orignation,
being the Source of all things; so that while there are
three persons yet God is alone the Cause of all things
and unoriginate. The Son, on the other hand, is orig-
inate, begotten by the Father time-apart. The Son is
not, therefore, co-eternal or co-unbegotten with the
Father, as if these were two unbegotten principles; but
God is before all things as single and the principle of
all, and therefore before Christ also.”
Such were the questions which distracted the church
beyond all precedent in the beginning of the 4th century,
and led to the first great oecumenical council, which
was convened in Nicae in 325. The account of the
proceedings of this council will be given under its own
heading. It requires only to be mentioned here, that
after various turns in the controversy, it was finally de-
cided against, Arius, that the Son was “of the same
substance” (Öuoovyozov) with the Father, “very God
of very God.”
Although defeated at the Council of Nicae, Arius was
by no means subdued. He obtained means of access
to Constantia, the sister of the emperor, who, on her
death-bed, strongly urged her brother to reconsider the
question, and to recall the heresiarch from banishment.
Restored to court, he, along with the Eusebian party,
who, although professing to accept the Nicene doctrine,
were in reality indifferent, if not hostile, to it, renewed
the theological strife, in which Athanasius was nothing
loath to join. Interchanges, now of friendly recognition
and now of menace, passed betwixt the emperor and
the intrepid bishop of Alexandria, who obstinately re-
fused to reinstate Arius as presbyter. At length, on
the banishment of Athanasius to Treves in 336, Arius
returned to Alexandria to claim his old position; but
even in the absence of the bishop the people rose in up-
roar against the heretic, and the emperor was forced to
recall him to Constantinople. There the bishop was re-
luctantly compelled to profess his willingness to receive
him once more into the bosom of the church, but before
the act of admission was completed Arius was taken
suddenly ill, while walking with a friend in the evening,
and died in a few moments.
ARIZONA, a territory of the United States, bounded
N. by Utah, E. by New Mexico, S. by Mexico, and W.
by California and Nevada, with an estimated area of
I 13,900 square miles. According to the Act creating it
a territory in 1863, Arizona comprises all the lands of
the United States formerly belonging to New Mexico,
extending from W. long. Io99 to the California line.
Since then, however, the N.W. corner has been ceded
to Nevada. The territory lies in the basin of the
Colorado river, which enters it in about 37° N. lat.,
and forms its western boundary southward from 362.
In the north there is an extensive but barren plateau,
with an average elevation of 7000 feet, through which
the Colorado cuts its way, and forms one of the most
remarkable gorges in the world, the length being about
300 miles, and the perpendicular walls reaching heights
of from 3000 to 6000 feet. South of this plateau is the
valley of the Colorado Chiquito (Little Colorado, or
Flax river), which joins the Colorado in 36° 15' lat. N.
and 1139 long. W., while further south the ground
rises into another plateau, the main portion of which is
known as the Mogollon Mountains. In this district
the country is reported to be beautiful and fertile, the
mountains covered with noble pine trees, and the val-
leys clothed with rich grama grass. Farther south,
again, is the basin of the Gila, with its numerous tribu-
taries, obliquely crossed by detached prolongations of
the Sierra Madre of Mexico. The inhabitants of
Arizona are mostly Indians. Of these 4,300 Pinas and
Maricopas occupy a reservation of 64,000 acres on the
Gila sriver; 4,000 Papagoes, a wandering tribe in the
south-eastern part of the territory, have no grounds
allotted them; 4,000 Mojaves have 75,000 acres on the
Colorado river; 2,000 Yumas live near the mouth of
Colorado, but belong to the Mojave reservation; while
1,500 Hualapais and 8,000 or 12,000 Yavapais and
Apaches, without settled habitations until recently lived
in a state of warfare with their neighbors. Civilization
however, is gradually asserting her claim to those fertile
districts. Arizona is rich in mineral products—nearly
all the mountains in the south and center yielding gold,
silver, copper, and lead. Lime, gypsum, and coal are
also present, and salt of excellent quality exists in ex-
tensive deposits. The vegetable productions are iron-
wood, mesquite, cotton-wood, Sycamore, ash, oak, wil-
low, walnut, prickly pear, cactus, aloe, artemisia; and,
under cultivation, grapes, figs, oranges, lemons, tomatoes,
tobacco, Indian corn, and the cereals. Much of the
land produces two crops in the year.
The population of the territory in 1890 (official) was
59,691, with 17,000 registered voters. During 1889,
1,093 miles of railroad were assessed, the total tax-
able property represented a valuation of $26,575,692;
the total debt, territorial, county, and city approxi-
mated $3,000,000, and applications were made for
leave to enter upon a total of 501,797 acres. The
output of the mines was fully up to that of pre-
vious years, and in addition to those at present
worked, there are properties of great value awaiting
development.
The principal cities are Prescott, the territorial capi-
tal, Tucson, Globe, Phoenix, Yuma, Tempe, and Tomb-
stone. Prescott is located in Yavapai, one of the largest
and wealthiest counties in the territory, containing many
highly cultivated farms and real and personal property
valued in the aggregate at more than five and one-half
millions of dollars. The cities are well built in modern
style, and the population and material interests of the
territory are steadily increasing in number and im-
portance.
ARK OF NOAH, the vessel constructed by Noah
for preservation from the approaching deluge. See
NOAH.
ARK OF THE COVENANT, ARK OF THE REVE-
LATION, are the full names of the sacred chest of acacia
wood, overlaid with gold, which occupied the holiest
place in the tabernacle and temple, and through which
the idea of the constant presence of the covenant God
with the people of Israel received symbolical expres-
sion. The Old Testament religion conceived of God
as spiritual, and so could not think to secure His
presence by the use of images.
ARKADELPHIA, the county seat of Clark county,
Arkansas, is eligibly situated on the west bank of the
Onacheta river, also on the Arkansas division of the
St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern road. It is
the center of an extensive cotton producing area, and
one of the most important shipping points for that
staple in the State. The city contains two banks, three
weekly papers, six churches, graded schools, being also
the location of a college conducted under the auspices
of the Baptist denomination, cotton mills, saw mills,
498
A R K
salt works, sash, door, and blind factories, foundries, etc.,
hotels and public halls, besides a large number of stores.
The population in 1890 was 5,000. -
ARKANSAS, one of the southwestern States of the
North American Union, with an area of 52,198 square
miles. It is bounded north by Missouri, east by
Tennessee and Mississippi, from which it is separated
by the Mississippi river, south by Louisiana, and west
by the Indian Territory. It belongs to the great basin
of the Mississippi, being watered by that river, and by
several of its main tributaries, which are all more or less
navigable. Of these the principal are the St. Francis,
in the northeast ; the White River with its affluents, the
Cache, Little Red, and Black Rivers in the north; and
notably the Arkansas, which, entering the State at Fort
Smith, traverses it in a southeasterly direction until it
joins the Mississippi. The southern part of the state
is watered by the Washita in the east, and by a bend
of the Red River in the west. The eastern part of
the state, bordering on the Mississippi, is low and
swampy, and is annually overflowed. Westward the
country, gradually attains a greater elevation, passing
off into hills and undulating prairies, which lead up to
the Ozark Mountains, beyond which again an elevated
plain stretches toward the Rocky Mountains. The
Ozark Mountains do not exceed 2,000 feet in height,
and the only other great masses of elevation are the
Black Hills and the Washita Hills. A geological sur-
vey of the whole territory was commenced at the State
expense by Dr. David D. Owen, in 1857, and two
volumes of Reports were published in 1858 and 1860.
In the district north of the Arkansas River, the three
leading formations are the “mill stone grit, with its as-
Sociate shales and conglomerate; the subcarboniferous
limestone and its associate chert, shales, and sandstones;
and the magnesian limestones, and their associate sand-
stones, calciferous sandrocks and chert, belonging to
the lower Silurian period.” The mineral products are
reported to be very considerable, “including zinc, man-
ganese, iron, lead, and copper; marble, whet and hone
stones, rock-crystal, paints, niter-earths, kaolin, granite,
freestone, limestone, marls, greensand, marly limestones,
grindstones, and slate.” The zinc ores are said to com-
pare very favorably with those of Silesia, while the ar-
gentiferous galena, produces a high average percentage
of silver. Of coal, anthracite and lignite, there are
abundant supplies. A great number of mineral and
thermal springs occur in various parts of the state, the
most remarkable and most frequented groups lying
to the south of the Arkansas in Hot Springs
county. The heat of several attains 1460 or 1480
Fahr. Among what are called natural curiosities may be
mentioned the sandstone dam across Lee's Creek in
Crawford county, Mammoth Springs in Fulton, which
is supposed to have undergound connection with How-
ell's Valley in Missouri, and is said to pour forth its
water “at the rate of 8,000 (?) barrels per minute,” the
Bee Rock in White county, and the crystalline produc-
tions of Magnet Cove. It need hardly be said that there
is great variety of soil in such a state as Arkansas.
Along the river “bottoms” the alluvium is dark, rich,
and deep, and yields excellent crops. The chief crops
cultivated are maize, wheat, cotton, and tobacco, as well
as apples and other fruits. There is a natural flora of
great richness, a complete list of which is given in Doc-
tor Owen's second report. The trees and shrubs most
frequently occurring are poplars, oaks, pines, sweet-gum,
Sycamore, black locust, ash, elm, hickory, dogwood,
elder, palma-christi, black spice, pawpaw, mockernut,
wild vine, etc. The fauna of Arkansas includes the
buffalo, eland, red-deer, beaver, otter, hare, raccoon,
wild turkey, goose and quail, as well as bears and wolves
among the mountains. The climate of the lower dis-
tricts is decidedly unhealthy, largely on account of the
lack of wholesome water; but in the upper regions it is
quite Salubrious. Hitherto Arkansas has been mainly
agricultural, but it is rapidly advancing in the develop-
ment of its mineral wealth, in the extension of its rail-
road communication, in the embankment and guidance
of its rivers, in the reclaiming of its waste but fertile
lands, in the progress of manufactures and industries,
and in the establishment of educational and benevolent
institutions.
The material interests of the State are represented as
enjoying a high degree of prosperity. The products of
the lumber and mining industries, particularly, have
annually increased in volume, to meet the constantly
growing demand therefor throughout the State and in
other portions of the Southwest. In 1880 the value of
the former was nominal; eight years later it was quoted
at $18,000,000. An abundance of bituminous and
semi-anthracite coal is being mined in various parts of
the State, giving steady employment to several hundred
experienced operatives and yielding an annual output
valued at nearly one million of dollars.
There is a total of 2,063 miles of railroad in the State,
owned and maintained by the St. Louis, Arkansas and
Texas; Iron Mountain; Little Rock and Fort Smith,
and other roads and their branches, representing an
outlay of nearly thirty millions of dollars. These roads
have made extensive and valuable improvements along
their several lines, and further improvements in prog-
ress and contemplation call for the expenditure of large
sums of money in addition.
The school system is well managed and sustained.
It is under the direction of a state superintendent and
subordinate officials. In addition to upward of 2,700
school houses distributed throughout the various school
districts in the state, a Normal school is conducted at
Pine Bluff, and an industrial university at Fayetteville.
The curriculum of the latter embraces agricultural and
mechanical courses, besides the regular classical and sci-
entific departments, and in 1889, was attended by 444
students, a portion of whom were females. At the open-
ing of the school year in 1888, there were 202,754 pupils
enrolled, 4,644 teachers employed, and the school prop-
erty was valued at about $706,500. The tax for school
purposes is seven mills in addition to the poll tax; for the
two years ending October 1, 1888, the total receipts
were $601,460.36, and the total expenditures amounted
to $506,105.63, leaving a balance of $95,354.73. The
school fund available for the same period amounted to
$1,683,909.99, and at the expiration thereof had been
increased $90,986.03. The State also maintains schools
for the blind and deaf and dumb, and has at present a
total of about 1,200,000 acres of State lands of various
descriptions remaining insold.
The State finances are stated to have been as follows,
January 1, 1889: Balance to the general revenue fund
in round numbers $779,000; to the common school fund
$439,766.24, and $266,368.38 to the general school
fund
The bonded debt of the State is made up of $2,029,-
1oo principal, and $2,832,915 overdue interest, mak-
ing a total of $4,862,015, a large proportion of which
is held by the United States, the balance being owned
by the State in the capacity of trustee for the perma-
nent school and sixteenth section funds, and by private
individuals and corporations. At the close of the fiscal
year 1888, the state had a balance in the sinking fund
of more than $2,000,ooo to apply upon the payment of
existing debts. In 1888 the taxable property was
valued at $154,000,000. Population in 1899, I, 182,990.
ARKANSAS, a river of the United States, which
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A R K
499
rises in the Rocky Mountains, in lat. 39° N., long. Ioffº
W., Io,000 feet above the level of the sea, flows with a
generally eastward direction through Colorado and part
of Kansas, then turns to the southeast, and so proceeds
through the rest of Kansas, the northeast part of the
Indian territory, and the State to which it gives its
name, and finally falls into the Mississippi at a point
near the former site of Napoleon, in lat. 33° 40' N.
The length of its course is stated at 2,170 miles, and
its drainage-area at 178,000 square miles. It re-
ceives a large number of tributaries, of which the most
important are the Cimarron, Rio Nutria, and Canadian
rl VerS.
ARKANSAS CITY, a rapidly growing city in the
southern portion of Cowley county, Kansas, is situated
at the junction of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers a
short distance from the Indian Territory. . It is a rail-
road center of considerable importance and a supply
depot for the trade of the Indian Territory and the
Oklahoma country. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe, Missouri Pacific, and St. Louis and San Francisco
roads pass through the city and affordabundant facilities
for shippers and travelers. These corporations have
also made valuable improvements here, and have been
important agencies in the development of prosperity in
the surrounding country, which is largely devoted to
agriculture and cattle raising. One daily and two
weekly papers are published in the city, and six banks
are successfully conducted. It also contains churches,
schools, etc., six hotels, an opera house and public halls,
besides commercial and manufacturing enterprises in
large number, many of the latter being operated by
water power, of which an abundance is available. The
city is lighted by gas and electricity, provided with
water-works and is in all respects progressive. Popula-
tion, 8,354 in 1890.
ARKLOW, a seaport and market town in the county
of Wicklow, Ireland, fifty miles from Dublin, the
inhabitants of which are principally engaged in the fish-
eries and in copper mines. Population (1889), 6,000.
ARKWRIGHT, SIR RICHARD, famous for his inven-
tions in cotton spinning, was born at Preston in Eng-
land, in 1732, of parents in humble circumstances.
The spinning-jenny, invented in 1767 by Hargraves,
a carpenter at Blackburn in Lancashire,"gave the means
of spinning twenty or thirty threads at once with no more
labor than had previously been required to spin a single
thread. The thread spun by the jenny could not, how-
ever, be used, except as weft, being destitute of the
firmness or hardness required in the longitudinal threads
or warp. But Mr. Arkwright supplied this deficiency
by the invention of the spinning-frame, which spins
a vast number of threads of any degree of fineness and
hardness. It is not difficult to understand the principle
on which this machine is constructed, and the mode of
its operation. It consists of two pairs of rollers,
turned by means of machinery. The lower roller
of each pair is furrowed or fluted longitudinally,
the upper one is covered with leather, to make
them take a hold of the cotton. If there were
only one pair of rollers, it is clear that a carding
of cotton, passed between them, would be drawn
forward by the revolution of the rollers; but it would
merely undergo a certain degree of compression from
this action. No sooner, however, has the carding, or
rozing as it is technically termed, begun to pass
through the first pair of rollers, than it is received by
the second pair, which are made to revolve with (as the
case may be) three, four, or five times the velocity of
the first pair. By this ingenious contrivance the roving
is drawn out into a thread of the desired degree of te-
nuity, a twist being given to it by the adaptation of the
spindle and fly of the common flax wheel to the ma-
chinery. Such is the principle on which Arkwright
constructed his famous spinning-frame. ~ *
Arkwright's first patent for spinning by rollers,
which is the essential part of his inventions, was ob-
tained, according to the account given, in 1769; and its
value and importance were no longer doubtful after the
establishment of the factory at Cromford in 1771. The
success which attended this novel method of spinning
naturally excited the strongest desire on the part of the
Lancashire manufacturers to participate in the advan-
tages to be derived from it; and the fair presumption
is that, instead of attempting clandestinely to pirate the
invention, they would, had they conceived there were
any good grounds to go upon, have at once contested
the validity of the patent. But no such attempt was
made till 1781, twelve years after the date of the first
patent, and six years after the date of the second. And
even then, Arkwright's opponents came forward only in
consequence of his having resolved to windicate his
rights, which had begun to be invaded on all sides, by
raising an action against Colonel Mordaunt for an in-
fringement on his patent. Mordaunt was supported by
a combination of manufacturers and, as they felt the
question to be of the greatest importance, it is all but
impossible to suppose that anything would be omitted
on their part which was conceived likely to contribute
to their success. The case having been tried in the
Court of King's Bench, after Trinity term, July, 1781,
the decision was unfavorable to Arkwright.
But in a new trial (Arkwright v. Nightingale), which
took place in the Court of Common Pleas on the 17th
of February, 1785, Lord Loughborough, the presiding
judge, having expressed himself favorably with re-
spect to the sufficiency of the specification, a verdict
was given for Arkwright. On this, as on the former
trial, nothing was stated against the originality of the
invention.
On their introduction, Arkwright’s machines were re-
garded by the lower classes as even more adverse to
their interests than those of Hargraves, and repeated
attacks were made on the factories built for them. But
however extraordinary it may appear, it was amongst
the manufacturers that the greatest animosity existed
against Arkwright; and it required all the prudence for
which he was so remarkable to enable him to triumph
over the powerful combination that was formed against
him. At the outset of the business they unanimously
refused to purchase his yarn; and when his partners,
Messrs. Strutt and Need, had commenced a manufacture
of calicoes, the manufacturers strenuously opposed a
bill to exempt calicoes from a discriminating duty of 3d.
a yard laid on them over and above the ordinary duty
of 3d. by an old Act of Parliament. Luckily, how-
ever, the manufacturers failed of their object; and,
in 1774, an Act of Parliament was obtained (14 Geo.
III. cap. 72) for the encouragement of the cotton man-
ufacture, in which fabrics made of cotton are declared
to have been Zately introduced, and are allowed to be
used “a lawful and laudable manufacture;” the duty of
6d. the square yard on such cottoms as are printed or
stained being at the same time reduced to 3d. But this
disgraceful spirit of animosity, which must, had it been
successful, have proved as injurious to the interests of
the manufacturers as to those of Arkwright, did not
content, itself with actions in the courts of law, or a
factious opposition to useful measures in Parliament,
but displayed itself in a still more striking and unjusti-
fiable manner. A large factory, erected by Arkwright
at Birkacre, near Chorley, in Lancashire, was destroyed
by a mob collected from the adjacent country, in the
presence of a powerful body of police and military,
500
A R M
A R L —
without any one of the civil authorities requiring them
to interfere to prevent so scandalous an outrage.
Fortunately, however, not for himself only, but for
his country and the world, every corner of which has
been benefited by his inventions, Arkwright triumphed
over every opposition. The same ingenuity, skill, and
good sense, which had originally enabled him to invent
his machine and get it introduced, enabled him to over-
come the various combinations and difficulties with
which he had subsequently to contend.
Though a man of great personal strength, which he
is said to have displayed, when young, in election riots
at Preston, Arkwright never enjoyed good health.
During the whole of his memorable career of invention
and discovery, he was laboring under a very severe asth-
matic affection. A complication of disorders at length
terminated his truly useful life in 1792, at his works at
Cromford, in the sixtieth year of his age. His inven-
tions have opened a new and boundless field of employ-
ment; and while they have conferred infinitely more
real benefit on his native country than she could have
derived from the absolute dominion of Mexico and Peru,
they have been universally productive of wealth and
enjoyment.
ARLES (Arelate), a city of France, in the depart-
ment of Bouches du Rhône, forty-six miles northwest of
Marseilles. It stands on the left bank of the Rhone,
where that river divides. Population, 25,000.
A relate was an important town at the time of Caesar’s
invasion, and subsequently received a Roman colony,
and became under the later emperors one of the most
flourishing towns on the further side of the Alps. It
was plundered in 730 by the Saracens, but in the Ioth
century became the capital of a kingdom of the same
name formed by Bozon from the two kingdoms of Bur-
gundy. In the 12th century it was a free city, gov-
erned by consuls and podestats after the model of the
Italian republics. In 1251 it submitted to Charles of
Anjou, and from that time onward followed the fortunes
of Provence. Arles still possesses many monuments of
Roman architecture and art, the most remarkable being
the ruins of an amphitheatre (arenes), capable of con-
taining 20,000 spectators.
ARLINGTON, a town of Alexandria County, Va.,
a few miles from Washington City, on the opposite
bank of the Potomac. Close by lies the famous “Ar-
lington Heights,” the country-seat of Gen. R. E. Lee,
which was confiscated by the government after the war,
but was restored to his family subsequently.
ARLINGTON, a thriving town of Middlesex county,
Mass., is located in Arlington township, seven miles
northwest of Boston, on the Middlesex railroad. It was
formerly known as West Cambridge, adopting the pres-
ent name in 1867. The town is handsomely laid out,
and contains many attractive and elegant residences and
public edifices of more than ordinary pretensions.
There are six churches in Arlington, one weekly paper,
one bank, and a number of manufactures of drugs, piano
cases, ice tools, etc. The population is 5,000.
ARLON (Oroſaunum in the Antonine Itinerary), the
capital of the Belgian province of Luxemburg, is situ-
ated on rising ground in the midst of a well-cultivated
plain. In the neighborhood was the nunnery of Claire-
fontaine or Bardenburg, established about 1216, which
is now a foundry. Population (1889), 7,500.
ARMADA, a Spanish word, meaning generally an
armed force or fleet, is applied specially to designate
the great expedition sent out against England in 1588
by Philip of Spain. His principal motive for this enter-
prise was the desire to strike a decisive blow at the
Protestant faith, of which England was then the bul-
wark. For many months the whole energies of the
Spanish nation had been directed toward the construc-
tion and equipment of the requisite ships. In 1587
everything was nearly ready, but the sailing of the
expedition was delayed for a year by Drake, who made
a bold dash into the harbor of Cadiz and destroyed
nearly a hundred ships, with immense stores of provi-
sions. A further delay was caused by the sudden death
of the marquis of Santa Cruz, who had been originally
intrusted with the chief command. His loss was a
serious blow to the Spanish cause, for he was an expe-
rienced sailor. The duke of Medina Sidonia, a man
almost entirely ignorant of naval affairs, was then made
admiral. All preparations being at length completed,
the great fleet sailed from Lisbon on the 29th (19th O. s.)
of May, 1588. It consisted of 129 large vessels, and car-
ried 19,295 soldiers, 8,460 sailors, besides slaves as
rowers, and 2,431 cannon. Their destination was the
coast of Flanders, where Alexander Farnese, prince of
Parma, was lying with about 35,000 men and a flotilla
of boats. This force was to be landed on the Isle of
Thanet at the mouth of the Thames, under the protec-
tion of the Armada, which would be able to keep the
channel perfectly clear. Another body of troops was
then to be landed further north; and it had been hoped
at one time that the duke of Guise would effect a diver-
sion by landing a force on the west coast. These plans,
however, were considerably deranged by the length of
time occupied in preparing the expedition, and by the fur-
ther delays encountered. For the fleet had scarcely sailed
from Lisbon, when it was overtaken by a severe storm,
which shattered several of the ships, and compelled them
all to put in for repairs at Coruña. It was on the 22d
(12th) July before they finally sailed from Spain. Eng-
land meanwhile had not been idle ; when the news
arrived that the great expedition was really about to set
out, the most intense enthusiasm took possession of the
people, who gladly furnished ships and stores, and raised
volunteer bands for coast defense. The command of
the army was given to the earl of Leicester,
who took his post, with about 16,000 men at Tilbury to
oppose the landing of Parma. About 45,000 were
assembled round the queen, to protect her person. The
royal navy, which consisted of about thirty ships, was
at once put in order, and gradually increased, by the
addition of merchantmen and privateers, to about 18o
vessels. These carried about 18,000 sailors, but they
had not half the weight of the Spanish artillery, and
they were scantily supplied with ammunition and pro-
visions. The ships, however—those of the queen in
particular—were in splendid order, and the sailors were
the finest in England. The lord high admiral was Lord
Howard of Effingham, who had under him Drake,
Hawkins, Frobisher, and others, the most celebrated
mariners of the age. He took his station with the main
body of ships, about eighty in number, at Plymouth,
and another squadron, under Lord Seymour, cruised oft
Dunkirk, commanding the straits and blockading the
prince of Parma. Meantime, news was brought to
England that the Armada had encountered severe
storms, and that the expedition was given up. So much
faith was put in this report that several ships began to
discharge their crews. Howard, however, sailed down
toward Coruña, and discovered that the report had no
foundation. On the 29th (19th) July, the fleet was ob-
served entering the Channel, and the beacon-lights
along the coast gave warning to England that the
dreaded enemy was at hand. . That evening Howard’s
ships were moored so as to be able to slip out of Ply-
mouth Sound at a moment’s notice. On the follow-
ing day the Armada was seen standing up the Chan:
nel in the form of a crescent, seven miles long, and
numbering 150 ships. They passed Plymouth to-
-*--
*
-º-º- --
A R M
5OI
wards evening, and during the night the English fleet
sailed out of the Sound, and took up a position to wind-
ward. On the following day the action began by the
duke of Medina Sidonia attempting to close and come
to a general engagement. But he found this to be impossi-
ble; the English ships, light and admirably handled,
sailed so swiftly, and were manoeuvred with such dex-
terity, that it was out of his power to inflict any injury
on them. . Their fire also was rapid and deadly, while
the Spanish guns were worked slowly, and generally
sent the shot far over the light English vessels. Dis-
mayed at their want of success, the Spanish fleet stood
off up the Channel, closely pursued by the English.
Throughout all the next week the same tactics were
pursued; the English, hovering on the rear of the
Armada, harrassed and weakened it without coming to a
general engagement. At length, on the 6th August
(27th July), Medina Sidonia cast anchor in the roads of
Calais, and sent messengers “o the prince of Parma,
asking him for ammunition and light vessels, and sug-
gesting that he should now attempt his landing on
the coast of England. But the prince declared that
it was impossible to cross the Channel while the
English fleet was on the sea, that he had no light
ships, and that the state of the weather prevented
him sending such ammunition as he could spare. Lord
Howard had now been joined by Seymour's squadron
and by many private ships, but he and the other com-
manders were still in the deepest anxiety. They were
almost destitute of provisions and powder, and did not
yet know what damage they had inflicted on the Ar-
mada, which, after all their endeavors, seemed now to
have reached its destination. At last it was resolved to
drive the Spanish fleet out into the open sea, and to
effect this by means of fire-ships. Eight ships were
selected and filled with combustibles, their rigging was
Smeared with pitch, and on the night of the 7th August
(28th July) they were drifted down with the tide and
set on fire. The Spaniards, in great alarm, immedi-
ately cut their cables and cleared off from the shore.
Next morning Drake pursued them, while Howard re-
mained for some time to attack a galleon that had gone
ashore during the night. The Spanish fleet was scat-
tered over a large space off Gravelines, and Drake at
Once began the action, driving them together into a
confused mass by his rapid firing and swift manoeuvr-
ing, and forcing the whole towards the coast of Flan-
ders. , Had his ammunition held out he might have
completed the ruin by driving them on shore; as it
was, the injury inflicted by this one day's fighting was
enormous. Nearly 4000 men were killed and many
ships were disabled, and the hopes of the Spaniards
were broken. Their courage completely deserted
them; and next day, when a council of war was held,
it was resolved to try the perilous voyage to Spain by
the North Sea and Pentland Firth rather than again
face Drake and the English fleet. The whole fleet,
still numbering . 120 vessels, stood off accordingly
towards the North Sea. Drake and Howard pursued
for some days, till want of provisions compelled them
to return. But the weather proved a sufficiently form-
idable enemy to the unhappy Spaniards. The contin-
uous violent gales which accompanied them along their
route, by the north of Scotland and the wild Irish
coast, completely shattered their unseaworthy vessels.
The shores were strewn with wrecks, and many hun-
dreds of unfortunates who were saved from the sea
were slain by the Irish. Constant sickness had deci-
mated the troops, and when at length, in September
and October, fifty-four shattered vessels reached Spain,
they conveyed only 9000 or IO,OOO men, and these were
in a pitiable state from sickness and want.
ARMADILLO, a family of South American mam-
mals (Dasypidae), belonging to the order Edentata, and
distinguished by the peculiar nature of their external
covering. This consists of a bony case, partly com-
posed of solid buckler-like plates, and partly of movable
transverse bands, the latter differing in number with the
species, and, to a certain extent, with the age and sex of
the individual, and giving to the entire body a consider-
able degree of flexibility. The under parts are destitute
of bony covering, but in every case are more or less
thickly covered with hair. The legs of the armadillo
are short, and its movements usually slow, although,
when pursued, it is said to be able to outrun a man. In
danger, however, it chiefly depends for safety on its
long, powerful claws, by which it can bury itself, in a
few minutes, several feet below the surface of the ground.
Most of the species are nocturnal in their habits, with
small, weak eyes, but highly developed organs of hear-
ing and smelling.
ARMAGH, an inland county of Ireland in the prov-
ince of Ulster, comprising an area of 328,086 statute
acres, of which 178,064 are under tillage, IOO, I37 in
pasture, 4670 in plantation, and 28, 177 in waste, &c.,
while 17,038 acres are under water. It is bounded on
the N. by Lough Neagh, on the E. by the county of
Down, on the S. by Louth, and on the W. by Mona-
ghan and Tyrone. The general surface of the county
is gently undulating and pleasingly diversified; but in
the northern extremity, on the borders of Lough Neagh,
is a considerable tract of low, marshy land, and the
southern border of the county is occupied by a barren
range of hills, the highest of which, named Slieve Gul-
lion, attains an elevation of 1893 feet, being the highest
mountain in Ulster excepting Slieve Donard in the
county of Down. The summit of Slieve Gullion, com-
manding one of the finest prospects in the province, is
crowned by a large cairn or pile of stones, which forms
the roof of a singular cavern of artificial construction.
In the western portion of the county are the Few Moun-
tains, a chain of abrupt hills mostly incapable of cultiva-
tion.
The soil of the northern portion of the county is a
rich, brown loam, on a substratum of clay or gravel,
with an abundance of limestone near Armagh and other
places. Towards Charlemont there is much reclaimable
bog resting on a limestone substratum. The eastern
portion of the county is generally of a light friable soil;
the southern portion rocky and barren, with but little
bog except in the neighborhood of Newton Hamilton.
The climate of Armagh is considered to be one of the
most genial in Ireland, and less rain is supposed to fall
in this than in any other county.
The total population in 1821 amounted to 197,427
Souls. In 1831 the population was 220, 134, and in 1841
it was 232,393, but in 1851 the numbers had declined to
196,085, in 1871 to 179,260, and in 1889 to 163,177.
The land is in general but indifferently cultivated, yet
owing to the occupation of the peasantry in the linen
manufacture they are better lodged, clothed, and fed
than in most other parts of Ireland. The cultivation of
grain has been for some time slightly on the decrease,
and the number of acres under flax diminished from
27,245 in 1866 to 7530 in 1887; but in the green crops
there has been considerable increase.
The farms are in general very small, and show less
tendency to decrease in number than in most other
parts of Ireland. In 1887 there were 6220 holdings of
less than five acres each.
The principal manufacture, and that which has given
a peculiar tone to the character of the population, is
still that of linen, though it has somewhat declined of
late. It is noways necessary to the promotion of this
5O2
A R M
manufacture that the spinners and weavers should be
congregated in large towns, or united in crowded and
unwholesome factories. On the contrary, most of its
branches can be carried on in the cottages of the peasan-
try. The men devote to the loom those hours which are
not required for the cultivation of their little farms; the
Women spin, and reel the yarn during the intervals of
their other domestic occupations.
ARMAGH, a city, and parliamentary borough in the
above county, 64 miles north of Dublin. It derives its
name of Ard-macha, or High-Field, from its situation
on the sides of a steep hill called Drumsailech, or the
Hill of Willows, which rises in the midst of a "fertile
plain. Qf high antiquity, and, like so many other Irish
towns, claiming to have been founded by St. Patrick, it
long possessed the more important distinction of being
the metropolis of Ireland; and, as the seat of a flourish.
ing college, was greatly frequented by students from
other lands, among whom the English and Scotch were
said to have been so numerous as to give the name of
Trian-Sassanagh, or Saxon Street, to one of the quar-
ters of the city, Qf a synod that was held here as early
as 448, we have interesting memorials in the Book of
Armagh. Population (1889), Io,000.
ARMAGNAC, a district of the south of France, cor-
responding to a large part of the present department of
Gers, , with portions of the neighboring territory,
erected in the Ioth century into a countship in favor of
Bernard the Squint-eyed (le Louche), son of the count
of Fezinsac. The family thus founded at various times
exercised great influence on the destinies of France,
especially in the persons of John I. (d. 1373), Bernard
VII. (d. 1418), John IV. (d. 1451), and John V. (d.
I473). James of Armagnac, grandson of Bernard VII.,
was made duke of Nemours in 1462, and was succeeded
in the dukedom by his second son, John, who died
without issue, and his third son, Louis, in whom the
house of Armagnac became extinct in 1503.
ARMENIA (Hayasdami or Haizh, in the native
language), formerly an extensive country of Western
Asia, which is now divided between Turkey, Russia, and
Persia. Its political relations, and consequently its geo-
graphical limits, were subject to frequent variation, but
in its widest extent it may be described as reaching from
the Caucasus in the N. to the Mountains of Kurdistan
in the S., and from the Caspian Sea in the E. to Asia
Minor in the W., frequently, indeed, somewhat over-
lapping with the last-mentioned geographical division.
From avery early period a distinction was drawn between
Greater Armenia (Armenia Major, Medz Hayotz) to
the east of the Euphrates, and Lesser Armenia (Armenia
Minor, Phokhr Hayotz), lying to the west. The
former is more properly Armenia. It consists for the
most part of an elevated table-land, about 7000 feet
above the level of the sea, culminating in the peaks of
Mount Ararat, and sinking towards the plains of Iran
on the east and those of Asia Minor in the west, while
it is frequently broken by glens and valleys. It is
watered by the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Aras, and
the Kur, all of which have their sources within its
borders; and, like other mountainous countries, it pos-
sesses a large number of lakes. The most important
of these are Van or Aghtamar, Sevan or Khabodan, and
Urmiah or Keghem. The country is naturally fertile,
producing grain, cotton, tobacco, and grapes, but for
many centuries it has been sadly neglected. It abounds
in romantic scenery and luxuriant pasture. The beauty
of the district of Ararat especially has been celebrated
by patriotic historians like Moses of Khorene and
Lazarus of Pharb.
According to their own legendary history, in which
ancient traditions are curiously incorporated with
Biblical lore, the Armenians are descendants of Haik,
a son of Togarmah, the grandson of Japhet, who fled
from the tyranny of Belus of Assyria and settled in the
country which now, in their language, bears his name.
The conquest of the land by Semiramis, and the revolt
of Barvir against Sardanapalus, are the chief events in
the early ages. Tigranes or Dikran is regarded as the
contemporary and ally of Cyrus, and the history of his
reign is recorded in detail. His son, Vahakin, who
succeeded him, was celebrated for his strength, and
was deified aſter his death. . The dynasty came to an
end in the person of Vahi, who was defeated by
Alexander the Great, 328 B.C.
The Armenians threw off the Macedonian yoke in 317
B.C., and chose Ardvates as their king; but on his
death, about thirty-three years afterwards, they sub-
mitted to the Seleucids of Syria. About 190 B.C.,
Artaxias, who had been appointed governor by Antio-
chus the Great, took advantage of that monarch’s defeat
by the Romans and proclaimed Armenia Major inde-
pendent. It was this prince who afforded an asylum in .
his court to the exiled Hannibal. The example of revolt
was followed in Lesser Armenia by Zadriades, whose
descendants maintained their position till the time of
Tigranes II., when their territory was annexed to
Greater Armenia.
About the middle of the 2d century B.C., the great
Parthian king, Mithridates I., who had already extended
his empire over Syria, established his brother, Valarsa-
ces (Wagharshag), in Armenia, and thus rendered him
the founder of one of the most important branches of
the Arsacid family. The new king greatly promoted
the prosperity of the country by founding cities, estab-
lishing laws, and rewarding persons of talent. The
most celebrated of his successors was his great-grand-
son, Tigrames II., who made himself master of Syria,
the Lesser Armenia, and many Parthian provinces, and
would, probably, have been the founder of an extensive
empire had not the solicitations of his father-in-law,
Mithridates of Pontus, brought him into collision with
the Romans. In reward for the submission which he
ultimately made to Pompey, he was allowed to keep
possession of Armenia, with the exception of the pro-
vinces of Sophene and Gordyene, which were erected
into a separate kingdom for his son, Tigranes. He
continued a faithful ally of the Romans till his death,
about 55 B.C., when he was succeeded by his son, Arta-
vasdes, who, having adopted a more independent policy,
was taken prisoner by Antony and carried to Alexandria,
where he was afterwards beheaded by Cleopatra in 30 B.C.
A period follows of nominal Roman supremacy and
actual anarchy; 170 independent families all asserting
themselves to the best of their ability, and a few of
them succeeding in establishing their petty principalities.
At length a usurper, Erovant, an Arsacid by the female
line, made himself in some sort master of all the king-
dom about 58 A.D., and maintained his position till he
was expelled by Ardashes (Exedarus), a more direct
representative of the race, who was repeatedly dethroned
and restored by Parthian and Roman interference, but
managed to do something for the amelioration of his,
country.
When the Arsacids were driven from the Persian
throne by the Sassanid Artaxerxes (Ardeshir), Chos-
roes the Great of Armenia naturally took up arms in
their defence; and he maintained the contest till his
assassination by Anag, an Arsacid prince of Persia,
when Armenia became subject to the Persian dynasty,
232 A. D. In the massacre of the royal family which
ensued, none escaped but Tiridates (Tirdat), a son of
Chosroes, who fled to Rome, and afterwards, with the
help of the Romans, established himself on the throne,
A R M
5O3
259 A.D. The first act of his reign was the persecu-
tion of the Christians, who had begun to take root in
the country during the previous century. St. Gregory,
surnamed the Illuminator, was cast into prison; but
the king being, as he supposed, miraculously cured of
a dangerous distemper by the saint, the Christian re-
ligion was embraced by himself and most of his peo-
ple. The introduction of Christianity tended to arouse
the animosity of the Persians; and from this period
Armenia became the theatre of almost uninterrupted
struggles between that nation and the Romans, until
Theodosius the Great agreed to cede to Persia the eas-
tern part of the country, which was thence called Per-
sarmenia, while the western part was annexed to the
Roman empire. Theodosius nominated Arsaces IV.,
then nominal king of Armenia, governor of the west-
ern division; and the Persian king, to conciliate the
people, appointed Chosroes III., a descendant of an-
other branch of the Arsacids, governor of the eastern
part. The rule of the Arsacids in Persarmenia ended
with Ardashes IV., who was dethroned by Bahram V.
of Persia in 428; and from that date Armenia ceased
to be a kingdom, and was ruled till 632 by Persian
marzbans or governors. The Persians had all along
endeavored to subvert Christianity, and for that pur-
pose had recourse to the most cruel persecutions.
Frequent insurrections were the consequence, one of
the most remarkable being that which was led by Var-
tan (see Neuman's Aſistory of Varian, by Elisazus,
1830). From 632 till 839 Armenia was the scene of
almost incessant struggles between the Greeks and
Mahometans, while its own native princes added to the
confusion by their rivalries and strife.
In 1604 Shah Abbas, in his contest with Ahmed I.,
laid the whole country waste, and forcibly transplanted
about 40,000 of the inhabitants into Persia, where they
settled principally in Ispahan and New Julfa, as they
fondly called the city which they founded. Since then the
Armenians have had no political position as a nation,
though they continue to form an important and valua-
ble portion of the population in Russia, Turkey, and
Persia, and their colonies have spread into almost all
quarters of the globe.
ARMENIAN CHURCH, THE, is one of the oldest
Eastern Christian churches not in communion with the
orthodox Greek Church or with the Church of Rome.
1. History.—This is divided into three periods,
from 34 to 302 A.D., from 302 to 491, and from 491 to
the present time. (I.) The first period is mainly
legendary. The Church of Armenia claims an older
than apostolic foundation. (2.) The historical founder
of the Armenian Church was St. Gregory, called the
“Illuminator.” He was a prince of the reigning family
of the Arsacidae, who, having been converted to Chris-
tianity, was eager for the conversion of his countrymen.
About 450 A.D. the Armenian Church suffered a severe
persecution, which prevented any of the bishops being
present at the fourth oecumenical council (Chalcedon,
451 A.D.), at which Eutyches and his followers, the
extreme opponents of Nestorius, were condemned.
The Armenian Church never accepted the decisions of
the Council of Chalcedon, and, in 491 A.D., the patri-
arch, in full synod, solemnly a nulled them. This act
led to the separation of the A rmenian from the ortho-
dox Greek Church. (3.) The period of schismatic
existence divides into three — (a), from 491 A.D. to the
middle of the 15th century; (b), from the middle of the
15th to the middle of the 18th centuries; (c), from 1746
down to the present time. It is difficult to account for
the schism of the Armenian Church ; according to com-
mon report, the Armenians were Eutychians, and were
virtually cut off from the church when the Council of
Chalcedon condemned that heresy, but their own
account of the matter in their authoritative documents is
very different. *
2. A)octrines.—These are almost identical with those
of the orthodox Greek Church. The Armenians accept
the first three, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh cecumeni-
cal councils, denying that of Chalcedon only, but, as has
been explained, they, in in their authoritative documents;
reject the Eutychian heresy, which that council was called
to condemn.
The Ziturgy is said to date from the 1st century,
and to have been founded on that of the Church of Jeru-
salem. St. Gregory remodelled it, and introduced the
Nicene Creed, using that edition which contains the
damnatory clause, and adding a conclusion of his own.
4. Sacraments.--The Church of Armenia has the
seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, the eucharist,
penance, ordination, marriage, and extreme unction.
5. The Clergy.—There is the threefold order — bish-
ops, priests, and deacons; and there are three degrees of
episcopal rank—the archbishops (chief among whom is
the patriarch or catholicos), the bishop, and the wartabed,
or doctor of theology, who has frequently charge of a
diocese, with episcopal functions. The clergy are fur-
ther divided into the black and the white.
ARM ENIAN LANGUAGE. The Armenian or
Haikan language is an offshoot of the Iranian branch
of the Indo-Germanic family of languages. Its earlier
stage is probably represented in the cuneiform inscrip-
tions of Van, on which see Hincks, in Jour. R. Asiatic
Soc., vol. ix. (1848), and Mordtmann, in Zeitschrift d.
deutshen morgen!, Gesellschaft (vol. xxvi. (1872). The
existing literature of the Armenians dates from the 4th
century, and is essentially and exclusively Christian. The
translation of the Old Testament by Sahag Bartevatsi,
and of the new by Miesrob, are among its oldest monu-
ments. The dialect in which this version is written, and
in which it is still publicly read in their churches, is called
the old Armenian. The modern Armenian not only de-
parts from the older form by dialectic changes in the na-
tive elements of the language itself, but also by the great
intermixture of Persian and Turkish words, which has
resulted from the conquest and subjection of the country,
and by the character of inversion in the structure of its
sentences. Of its two principal dialects, – the Western,
spoken in Constantinople and Asia Minor, and the East-
ern, spoken by the Armenians scattered over Tartary,
Persia, and India, – the latter approaches more nearly
to the idiom of the ancient language.
ARMENIAN LITERATURE. With the exception
of a few fragments incorporated in later writers, the
pre-Christian literature of Armenia has totally perished.
The early Armenians seem to have possessed a body
of traditional and historical songs analogous to the
Shah-nameh of Persia, the memory of which lingered
long among the common people, especially in the prov-
ince of Koghten. Portions of these have been pre-
served by Moses of Khorene, and investigated by
several modern scholars (see WebA: //nuin Z/ayasdani,
i.e., Chants hist. et Zop. de Z’Arzczerzne Armézie, J. B.
Emin, Moscow, 1850; Dulaurier, Rez. des D. A/ondes,
1852, vol. xiv.; “Etudes sur les chants hist. de l’anc.
Arménie,” in Journal Asiatique, 1852). With the in-
troduction of Christianity a great development of liter-
ary activity took place, which chiefly expended itself,
however, in translations from the Syriac and Greek.
Armenian students were found in Athens and Byzan-
tium, Alexandria and Rome, and some of them attained
celebrity in their chosen pursuits. To this tendency
we owe the preservation, in Armenian, of many works
that have perished in their original languages.
The 12th and 13th centuries form a second great
5O4
A R M
period of Armenian literature, during which the influ-
ence of Syriac is again perceptible. Gregory Magistros,
who introduced the Arabic system of versification into
his native language, Narses of Lampron, Mekhitar
Kosh, John Vanacan, Vardan the Great, Vahram, and
Sempad, are a few of the numerous writers of note.
From the 14th to the 18th century there is a falling off,
the most important work, perhaps, being Thomas of
Medzoph’s History of Timour. In the 18th century a
revival took place, which was mainly due to the Mek-
hitarists of Venice (see Langlois, AVotice sur le couvent
Armémien de / ?/e Saint-Zazare de Venise, Paris, 1863),
and since then Armenian literature has acquired a de-
velopment which is remarkable in the absence of
national unity.
ARM ENIAN VERSION. The Armenian version
of the Bible was undertaken in the year 410 by Miesrob,
with the aid of his pupils Joannes Ecelensis and
Josephus Palmensis. It appears that the patriarch
Isaac first attempted, in consequence of the Persians
having destroyed all the copies of the Greek version, to
make a translation from the Peshito ; that Miesnob
became his coadjutor in this work; and that they actually
completed their translation from the Syriac. But when
the above-named pupils, who had been sent to the
ecclesiastical council at Ephesus returned, they brought
with them an accurate copy of the Greek Bible. Upon
this Miesrob laid aside his translation from the Peshito,
and prepared to commence anew from a more authentic
text. Imperfect knowledge of the Greek language,
however, induced him to send his pupils to Alexandria
to acquire accurate Greek scholarship ; and, on their
return, the translation was accomplished. Moses of
Khorene, the historian of Armenia, who was also em-
ployed, as a disciple of Miesrob, on this version, fixes its
completion in the year 410; but he is contradicted by
the date of the Council of Ephesus, which necessarily
makes it subsequent to the year 431.
ARMENTIERES, a well-built and flourishing town,
in the department of Nord in France, on the Lys, nine
miles N. W. of Lille.
ARM FELT, GUSTAv MAURItz, BARON, afterwards
COUNT, eldest son of a Finnish nobleman, was born at
Juva in 1757. He entered the army and gained the
favor of Gustavus III., who appointed him to a post in
the Service of the Crown Prince, and afterwards made
him general of a division of the army in the war against
Russia. He was successful in his military operations,
and also materially aided the king in quelling a con-
spiracy of the officers. In 1790 he signed the treaty of
peace at Verela; and two years later, when Gustavus
was mortally wounded by an assassin, Armfelt was
named by him governor of Stockholm. But the regent
Charles, the late king's brother, was not well disposed
towards him, and he took an opportunity to leave the
Country as ambassador to Naples. While there he
entered into a conspiracy to depose the regent. This
was discovered ; he was outlawed and condemed to death,
and his associates were severely punished. The acces-
sion of Gustavus IV. restored him to his honors,
and after the revolution of 1809, by which the ex-regent
became king, he was made president of the military
council. Being suspected of having a share in the
poisoning of the prince of Augustenburg, he fled from
Sweden and took refuge at the Russian court, where
he received the highest honors. He died in 1814 at
Tzarskoe-Selo.
ARMINIUS, JAMES, a distinguished Dutch theolog-
ian, author of the modified Reformed theology that re-
ceives from him its name, was born at Oudewater, South
Holland, 1560. Arminius is a Latinised form of his
family name Hermanns or Hermannson. Theodore
AEmilius, a priest, who had turned Protestant, adopting
James, removed with him to Utrecht, but died when his
charge was in his fifteenth year. Rudolph Snellius, the
mathematician, a native of Oudewater, then a professor
at Marburg, happening at the time to visit his early home,
met Arminius, saw promise in him, and undertook his
maintenance and education. But hardly was he settled,
at Marburg when the news came that the Spaniards had
besieged and taken Oudewater, and murdered men,
women and children, sparing only certain matrons and
maids, “who had been sold by auction to the soldiers
at two or three dollars each.” Arminius hurried home,
but only to find all his relatives slain. In February the
same year (1575), the university of Leyden had been
founded, and was becoming a rallying point and nursery
for the nascent literary genius, theological activity, and
scholarship of the country. Arminius seized the oppor-
tunity thus afforded of pursuing his studies at home.
The six years he remained at Leyden (1576–82) were
years of active and innovating thought in Holland.
The War of Independence had started conflicting tend-
encies in men’s minds. To some it seemed to illustrate
the necessity of the State tolerating only one religion,
but to others the necessity of the State tolerating
all. Richard Koornhert argued in private confer-
ences and public disputations, that it was wrong
to punish heretics, and his great opponents were,
as a rule, the ministers, who maintained that there
was no room for more than one religion in a
State. Casper Koolhaes, the heroic minister of Leyden
—its first lecturer, too, in divinity — pleaded against a
too rigid uniformity, for such an agreement on “funda-
mentals” as had allowed Reformed, Lutherans, and
Anabaptists to unite. Leyden had been happy, too, in
its first professors. There taught in theology William
Feugueraeus, a mild divine, who had written a treatise on
persuasion in religion, urging that as to it “men could
be led, not driven; ” Lambert Danuaes, who deserves
remembrance as the first to discuss Christian ethics
scientifically, apart from dogmatics; John Druisus,
the Orientalist, one of the most enlightened and
advanced scholars of his day, settled later at Frane-
ker; John Kolmann the younger, best known by his
saying that high Calvanism made. God “both a tyr-
ant and an executioner.” Snellius, Arminius's old
patron now removed to Leyden, expounded the Ramist
philosophy, and did his best to start his students
on the search after truth, unimpeded by the authority of
Aristotle. Under these men and influences, Arminius
studied with signal success; and the promise he gave in-
duced the merchants' guild of Amsterdam to bear the
further expenses of his education. In 1582 he went to
Geneva, studied there awhile under Theodore Beza, but
had soon, owing to his active advocacy of the Ramist
philosophy, to remove to Basle. After a short but bril-
liant career there he returned to Geneva, studied for three
years, travelled, in 1586, in Italy, heard Zarabella lect-
ure on philosophy in Padua, visited Rome, and, open-
minded enough to see its good as well as its evil, was
suspected by the stern Dutch Calvinists of Popish lean-
ings. Next year he was called to Amsterdam, and there,
in 1588, was ordained to the ministry. He soon acquired
the reputation of being an elegant preacher and faithful
pastor. He was commissioned to organise the educa-
tional system of the city, and is said to have done it well.
He greatly distinguished himself by fidelity to duty dur-
ing a plague that devastated Amsterdam in 1602. In
1603 he was called to a theological professorship at Ley-
den, which he held till his death in 1609.
Arminius is best known as the founder of the anti-
Calvinistic school in Reformed theology, which created
the Remonstrant Church in Holland (see REMON-
A R M
5O5
straNTs), and contributed to form the Arminian tend:
sency or party in England. He was a man of mild and
liberal spirit, broadened by varied culture, constitution-
ally averse to narrow views and enforced uniformity.
ARMISTICE, a temporary suspension of hostilities
by mutual agreement between two nations at war, or
their respective forces. An armistice may be either
general or particular : in the first case, there is a com-
plete cessation of hostile operations in every part of the
dominions of the belligerent powers; in the second,
there is merely a temporary truce between two contend-
ing armies, or between a besieged fortress and the force
besieging it. A general armistice cannot be concluded
by the commander-in-chief unless special authority has
been previously delegated to them by their respective
governments; otherwise, any arrangement entered into
by them requires subsequent ratification by the Supreme
powers of the states. A partial truce may be concluded
by the oſſicers of the respective powers, without any
special authority from their governments, wherever,
from the nature and extent of the commands they ex-
ercise, their duties could not be efficiently discharged
without their possession of such a power.
ARMORICA. The Armorici were, in Caesar's time,
the Celtic inhabitants of the coast from the Loire to
the Seine. The word appears to be composed of “ar,”
near, and “mor,” the sea, and would originally be ap-
plicable to any maritime population.
ARMS AND ARMOUR. The history of arms and
armour forms one of the most suggestive chapters in
the history of civilisation. The use of stone weapons
appears to have been universally characteristic of the
earlier, as it is still distinctive of the ruder races of
mankind. The forms of the weapons fabricated in this
intractable material were of necessity few and simple.
The commonest and most widely distributed type is that
of the imperforate axe, varying from the roughly-dressed
wedge of flint, to the finely-shaped and highly-polished
lenticular “ celt.” They were fabricated of flint, diorite,
greenstone, serpentine, indurated clay-slate, in short, of
almost every material capable of being worked into the
desired form, and of retaining the requisite sharpness of
edge. Spear-heads and arrow-points were chipped in
flint with such surprising dexterity and skill, that they
were nearly as effective as those subsequently fabricated
in metals, and not much inferior in form and finish.
The highest efforts of the ancient stone-workers cul-
minated in the short leaf-shaped knife-dagger of flint,
suggestive of the form which afterwards became the
characteristic weapon of the Bronze Age, the leaf-shaped
sword. These knife-daggers offlint exhibit considerable
variety of form, though always of the same type. They
vary also in size, but seldom exceed about 12 inches in
length. They are never ground or polished, but deli-
cately chipped to a straight edge, while the flakes are so
regularly removed from the convex portions of the blade
as to give a rippled or wavy surface, and the corners of
the handle are delicately crimped, thus producing an
appearance of great beauty and finish.
The Bronze Age.—In the earliest interments in
which the weapons deposited with the dead are of other
materials than stone, a peculiar form of bronze dagger
occurs. It consists of a well-finished, thin, knife-like
blade, usually about 6 inches in length, broad at the hilt
and tapering to the point, and always riveted to the
handle by massive rivets of bronze. . It has been found
associated with stone celts, both of the roughly-chipped
and the highly-polished kind, showing that these had
not been entirely disused when bronze became available.
A later type of bronze dagger is a broad, heavy,
curved weapon, usually ſrom 9 to 15 inches in length,
with massive rivets for attachment to an equally massive
handle. The leaf-shaped sword, however, is the char-
acteristic weapon of the Bronze Period. It is found all
over Europe, from Lapland to the Mediterranean. The
transition period between the Bronze and Iron Ages in
Central Europe is well defined by the occurrence of
iron swords, which are simple copies of the leaf-shaped
weapon, with flat handle-plate previously fabricated in
bronze. These have been found associated with articles
assigned to the 3d or 4th century B.C.
Z'he Greek Aeroic Age.—The Greek sword of the
heroic age is described by Homer as double-edged, long,
sharp, and trenchant, the blade of bronze, and the hilt
and scabbard adorned with gold or silver studs. In the
Homeric combats, however, the spear, lance or javelin
always plays the principal part, and the Sword is only
used when the combatants meet at close quarters, the
spear having failed to decide the contest. Both sword
and spear appear to have been of the forms which are
characteristic of these weapons in the Bronze Age of
Central and Northern Europe. The bow of Pandarus
is described as made of ibex-horn and strung with sin-
evs. The arrow-head is the only part of the warrior's
equipment which Homer expressly describes as of iron,
and the mode of its insertion in a split in the head of
the shaft, where it was made fast by a ligature of sinew,
is precisely that which is still adopted by modern Sav-
ages with their arrow-points of flint. The defensive ar-
mor of the heroic ages was also entirely of bronze. It
consisted of helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield.
GreeA Aſistoric Age.—In the early historic ages the
characteristic weapons of the Greek armies were deter-
mined by the military tactics of the period. The mode
of fighting in heavy phalanx necessitated the use of long,
heavy spears. The Hoplites when massed in phalanx
stood sixteen deep, the men of each rank close together,
shield touching shield, the pikes of each line, 21 to 24
feet long, projecting from 2 to 13 feet in front of the
foremost rank at equal distances. The shield of the
early monuments, though still large, is not nearly so large
as that of Hector, usually reaching from the shoulder to
the knee, and still retaining its round or oval form and
bold convexity. On the early vases the shields, are rep-
resented as adorned with a great variety of devices.
Agyptian.—The strength of the Egyptian armies in
the earliest times consisted of archers, who fought either
on foot or from chariots. The Egyptian bow was some-
what shorter than the height of a man. The string was
of hide, catgut, or cord. The arrows varied from 24 to
34 inches in length, and were usually of reed, winged
with three feathers and pointed with heads of bronze.
The spearmen fought in close phalanx, and were fur-
nished with shields of a peculiar form, rectangular below
and semicircular above, like a round-headed door, about
half the height of a man. Their shields were covered
with bull’s hide, having the hair outwards, strengthened
by rims and studs of metal, and furnished with a round
sight-hole in the middle of the semicircular upper part.
They had quilted helmets, and cuirasses of bronze scale
or quilted with bands of metals, but no greaves.
Assyrian.—The Assyrian sword, as represented on
the monuments, resembled the Egyptian, but was worn
on the left side, slung in a nearly horizontal position by
the waist-belt. The bow was also a favorite weapon
with the Assyrians, and lances, spears, and javelins,
with oblong, leaf-shaped and unbarbed heads, con-
stantly appear upon the sculptures. The shield was
round and convex; the helm frequently conical, trun-
cated or curved forward, and with pieces to protect the
neck at the back and sides. Their cuirasses were close-
fitting tunics made of many layers of flax, plaited or
interwoven, and hardened and cemented with glue,
a species of linen corselet frequently referred to as in
506
A R M .
use also among the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the
Romans.
A truscan.—The arms and armor of the Etruscans
were in the main similar to those of the Greeks.
A’oman.—The early Roman sword, like that of the
Greeks, Egyptians, and Etruscans, was of bronze.
We have no direct statement as to its form, but in all
probability it was of the leaf-shaped form so universally
characteristic of this weapon in bronze. We gather
from the monuments that, in the 1st century B.C., the
Roman sword was short, worn on the right side;
suspended from a shoulder-belt, and reaching from the
hollow of the back to the middle of the thigh, thus rep-
resenting a length of from 22 inches to 2 feet. The
blade was straight, double-edged, and obtusely pointed.
On the Trajan column (114 A.D.) it is considerably
longer, and under the Flavian emperors the long,
single-edged spatha appears frequently along with the
short sword. The characteristic weapon peculiar to
Romans, however, was the pi/um. The form of this
weapon and the mode of using it have been minutely
described by Polybius, but his description has been
much misunderstood in consequence of the rarity of
representations or remains of the Žilum. It is shown
on a monument at St. Remi, in Provence, assigned to
the age of the first emperors, and in a bas-relief at
Mayence, on the grave-stone of Quintus Petilius
Secundus, a soldier of the 15th legion. A specimen of
the actual weapon is in the museum at Weisbaden. It
is a pike with a stout iron head, carried on an iron rod,
about 20 inches in length, which terminates in a socket
for the intersection of the wooden shaft. When used
as a javelin at short distances it had a most embarras-
ing effect.
A rankish.-The characteristic weapon of the Franks
of the Merovingian epoch (450-760 A.D.) was the frazz-
cisca or battle-axe, which they used as a missile. Pro-
copius describes it as having a broad blade and a short
haft, and it is said that the blow of an axe when hurled
would pierce a shield or kill a man, and that the Franks
rarely missed their aim. Agathias, the continuator of
Procopius (535 A.D.), says they wear no body armor,
few of them even inaving helmets, but they carry round
shields, swords of the length of a man's thigh, axes
having double edges, and darts which are used either
for throwing or for thrusting. These darts had barbed
iron heads, and were used as the pilum was used by
the Romans. When the ango” was fixed in the enemy's
shield the custom of the Frank was to bound forward,
place his foot on the end of the dart as it trailed along
the ground, thus compelling the enemy to lower his
shield, when he killed him with his axe or sword. The
Frankish sword was a short, straight, broad-bladed,
double-edged weapon, somewhat obtusely pointed, and
usually about 30 to 32 inches in length. The sword
and francisca of Childeric, one of the first of the Mer-
ovingian kings (457–481), were discovered in his tomb
at Tournay in 1653, and are now in the museum of the
Louvre.
Scandinaviazz. –The swords of the early Iron Age
in Scandinavia are frequently found in the mosses of
Schleswig, associated with objects bearing a strongly-
marked analogy to those recovered from the graves of
our own Pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors, of the period
dating approximately from the 5th to the 7th centuries
of the Christian era. They are long, straight, double-
edged, and often richly damascened. On the tangs of
several of those found at Nydam are the names of the
armorers, some of which are of the Roman form. The
grip of the hilt was circular, usually narrow in the
middle, and the cross-pieces above and below were
similar in shape. The sheaths were of wooden laths,
adorned with tastefully-executed mountings in bronze.
Anglo-Saxon.—The early Anglo-Saxon sword was
usually about 3 feet long, straight, double-edged, broad
in the blade, and rounded at the point, with hilt and
grip and cross-piece like those of the early Scandi-
navian swords previously described. As the sword was
not carried by any man under the rank of thane, it is
not often met with in Anglo-Saxon interments. With
them, as with the Franks, it was a horseman's weapon,
and the common accoutrement of the infantry was a
spear, an axe, a shield, and scramasax, or heavy single-
edged knife. The Saxon spear was a narrow, long-
bladed weapon, varying greatly in form and dimensions,
but generally characterised by the socket being slit or
unclosed throughout its length. The axe was narrow-
bladed and single-edged, and sometimes peaked at the
back. The shield which was circular or oval in form,
was of wood, covered with leather, and furnished with
a high conical boss, often terminating in a pipe or a
button. Anglo-Saxon warriors of the IOth century are
represented in the manuscripts as wearing hauberks of
mail and rounded casques. The AElfric manuscript, of
the end of the 11th century, shows the tri-lobed sword-
hilt and round-shield.
AVormzazz.—The arms and armor of the Normans at
the period of the conquest of Normandy were, , of
course, Scandinavian. The Norman arms of the period
of the conquest of England are portrayed on the Bayeux
tapestry. The sword is still P the Scandinavian type,
long, straight, double-edged, and somewhat tapering,
and round or obtusely pointed with cross piece and
pommel. The horsemen are armed with long lances as
well as swords. On the tapestry the Normans are
represented as well provided with archers and cavalry, of
which the Saxons are apparently destitute. , Maces and
clubs appear also among the weapons; and axes, with
shafts from 4 to 5 feet in length, appear in the hands of
both Normans and Saxons. The Norman shield is large
and kite-shaped, provided with arm-strap and handle,
and adorned with emblazonments of badges or devices.
Anglish after the Norman Conquest.— The armor
in use in England since the period of the Norman
Conquest may be briefly divided into four groups, each
associated with its own historical period. True mail
armor of interlinked rings was generally adopted in the
time of the Crusades, and its use extended to about the
beginning of the 14th century. Towards the close of
the 12th century the long plaited or mailed skirt, divided
at the bottom, as we see in the Bayeux tapestry, had.
been superseded by a short-sleeved tunic, generally of
chain-mail, reaching only to the knees, but sometimes
covered with variously-shaped plates of metal. This.
short hauberk was confined by a belt about the waist,
and furnished with a hood or coif, over which a close-
fitting helm was worm. In the 13th century there was.
less uniformity of military equipment. The hauberk
was again lengthened to the middle of the leg, and had
a coif to cover the head, over which the massive helm,
with or without a nasal, was worn, sometimes with a
movable visor. The sleeves of the hauberk were pro-
longed, and mittens added to protect the hands; the
lower limbs were covered with mail, the coverings above
the knee being called chaussons, and those below the
knee chausses. The sword was long, straight, and
pointed, generally with a short recurved guard and
rounded pommel. The shield was small, triangular, or
heater-shaped; the helm massive, high, and flat-topped.
After the middle of the 13th century secondary defences
of plate for the protection of the joints began to be
introduced; the hauberk was shortened, the mittens of
mail were divided into fingers, the helm was often
rounded at the top, and greaves and shoulder-plates.
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5O7
were introduced. The period of mixed mail and plate
armor extends from about 1300 to about 14 IO.
Artillery.—The adoption of gunpowder as an agent
in warfare gradually revolutionised the whole system
of military tactics, and was not only the ultimate cause
of the total disuse of defensive armor, but rendered
obsolete all the weapons of the Middle Ages.
Aand Fire-arms.-Hand-cannon appear almost sim-
ultaneously with the larger bombardes. They were
made by the Flemings in the early part of the 14th cen-
tury, and before the end of the century considerable
bodies of troops were in existence armed with portable
culverins. At the battle of Morat (1479) the Swiss
army is said to have been provided with 6000 of these
hand fire-arms. In England the yeomen of the guard
were armed with them in 1485. At first these portable
fire-arms were served by two men, but a smaller kind
termed petronels were used by the cavalry. The long-
barrelled harquebus, the prototype of the modern fire-
lock, having the touch-hole on the right side of the
barrel, with a pan for the priming, a trigger, and a pair
of movable nippers, called serpentine, for holding the
match, was invented in Spain in the time of Francis I.
(1515-1547). The muschite (so named from the spar-
row-hawk, like the falcon or small cannon) which was
larger, heavier and more powerful than the harquebus,
came into use shortly afterwards, and was well known
in England before the close of the 16th century. On
account of its weight it was provided with a long rest,
forked in the upper part and furnished with a spike to
stick in the ground. The musket and harquebus when
first employed by the French armies were contemptu-
ously spoken of by contemporary writers, by whom they
were considered inferior to arblasts and cross-bows.
The wheel-lock, which was invented at Nuremberg in
1515, was but sparingly applied to the harquebus and
musket on account of the costliness of its mechanism
and the uncertainty of its action. The same objection
applied to the snapſhaunces, the precursors of the first
flint locks, and even to the flint locks themselves, which
were invented in France about 1640, and it was not till
the beginning of the 18th century that the flint-lock
musket finally superseded the old match-lock. In 1807
a Scottish clergyman, Alexander Forsyth, took out a
patent for a percussion gun, though it was not till 182O
that it began to come into general use. The system of
firing the charge by a fulminate was followed by the in-
vention of the needle-gun, the first model of which was
constructed in 1827 by Jean Nicolas Dreyse, a native of
Erfurt. Improvements in the mode of adapting the
bullet to the rifled grooves successively led to the per-
fected system of the Minnie rifle, by which the explosion
of the charge expands the cup-shaped end of the
conical bullet, and drives it into all the grooves, a
process which was previously effected by hammer-
ing with the ramrod. The needle-gun was first
made breech-loading in 1836, and since that time
the improvements effected have been mainly di-
rected to the combination of length of range with
accuracy of aim and rapidity of fire. The most effective
small weapons are probably the Winchester repeating
rifle and the Colt revolving pistol, both American inven-
tions. The recent political agitations in Europe have
caused great activity in the search for more effective en-
gines of destruction, and it is claimed that in the event
of war, European nations (France particularly) could
send to the field armies equipped with weapons of almost
marvelous power. The most radical change boasted of is
a noiseless and smokeless powder of wonderful propulsive
force. Neither breech-loaders nor revolvers are of modern
date. Both were known in Germany by the close of the
15th century. There are in the Musée d'Artillerie at
Paris wheel-lock harquebuses of the 16th century which
are breech-loaders; and there is, in the Tower armory,
a revolver with..the old match-lock, the date of which is
about 1550. A German harquebus of the 16th century,
in the museum of Sigmaringen, is a revolver of seven
barrels. Nor is a rifling a new thing in fire-arms, for
there was a rifled variety of the old harquebus of the
15th century, in which the balls were driven home by a
mallet, and a patent was taken out in England for rifling
in 1635. All these systems were thus known at an
early period in the history of fire-arms, but it is only the
perfecting of their mechanism and rifling, the improve-
ments in the gunpowder and the cartridge, and above
all the adoption of the system of firing by a fulminate,
that have enabled them to be used with the precision,
length of range, and rapidity of fire, that now form
such striking features in the warfare of modern times.
It remains only to notice the bayonet, the invention of
which, about 1650, has been claimed for Puséygur, a
native of Bayonne. The bayonet in its simple plug
form, inserted into the mouth of the barrel, was adopted
in France and England about 1675. In 1689 it was at-
tached by two rings to the barrel by General Mackay,
and the socketed bayonet was introduced by Vauban
into the French army in 1703. In these days of precis-
ion of aim with long-range projectiles the bayonet, once
the most decisive of modern weapons, has become of
secondary importance.
ARMSTRONG, JOHN, a physician, litterateur, and
poet, the friend of Thomson, Mallet, and Wilkes, was
born about 1709 at Castletown, Roxburghshire, where
his father was parish minister. He graduated M.D. at
Edinburgh university, and soon aſterwards settled in
London, where, however, his professional success was
small. In all probability he paid more attention to
literature than to medicine. He died in 1779.
ARMY, “a collection of armed men obliged to obey
one man’” (Johnson); “a collection of troops of all
arms formed into brigades and divisions, placed under the
orders of one commander, with a general and special staff
and administrative departments; provided with all neces-
sary war material, and destined to act offensively and de-
fensively against the enemy.” Neither definition is quite
satisfactory. The first is too comprehensive; the second
excludes the forces of all but highly-civilised nations.
The essential characteristics of an army, by which it is
distinguished from other assemblages of armed men,
are its national character—that is, its representing
more or less the will and the power of the nation or its
rulers—and its organisation. The degree of the latter
must depend on the age and the state of civilisation; the
armies of former days we should now call mobs. The
art of war has kept pace with the arts of peace, and
there is as much difference between the armies of the
present and of the past as between an elaborate modern
machine and an early stone implement. But armies of
some kind have existed since the earliest periods of man’s
history. At no time has industrial accumulation, with
its results, progress and civilisation, been possible unless
accompanied by the will and power to defend it. No
nation has made its mark in history that has not at
some period of its existence been pre-eminently dis-
tinguished for martial spirit and proficiency in arms; or
been allowed to throw its full energies into the pursuits
of peace till it had proved what it was able and willing
to do and endure in war.
The art of war divides itself into two distinct branches
—the first relating to the military institutions of nations,
the manner in which armies are raised, their composition,
characteristics, organisation, and government ; the
second to their employment in war. The first, com-
monly known as the administration or organisation of
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armies, is that of which this article treats. A modern
army is a vast and complicated machine, so constructed
that the whole aggregate force of its. numerous parts
may be exerted in any direction and on any point re-
quired. It is our province to describe this machine in a
state of rest, explaining the construction, purpose, and
combination of its several parts, but leaving its action
to be treated elsewhere (see WAR).
In the earliest stage of civilisation the army is identi-
cal with the tribe or nation. Every man is a warrior;
even women and children accompany the expeditions,
prepare and carry food, and bear such share as they are
fitted for. In more settled communities the able-bodied
men only take the field, while the women, the children,
and the aged remain at home to watch the herds and till
the fields. Production is still so small that no division
of duties, among the men is necessary. The armies
consist of the whole male population, collected under
their chiefs and heads of families, or under warriors
who have specially distinguished themselves. Such were
some of the earliest armies mentioned in history, and
such are still the armies of the savage nations with
whom our colonial empire brings us in contact, well
fitted for petty warfare between neighboring tribes or
nations, when the assailants confine themselves to raids
for plunder and captives, but not for distant expeditions
or prolonged operations. As population and industry
increase, a division of labor becomes both possible and
necessary. A Select portion of the inhabitants are
specially devoted to military service, either permanently
or for a time, while the remainder give undivided atten-
tion to pacific pursuits. Standing armies and perma-
ment Organisation are thus introduced, and lead to im-
provements in administration and progress in the art of
war, till finally we attain to the perfection of modern
Organisation.
History points to Egypt as the first country in which
a regular military organisation was established, and the
warrior class, as such, distinguished from the rest of the
population. By its earliest laws the revenues of the
state were divided into three equal parts, of which one
went to the priests, one to the king, and one to the
warriors. , Sesostris seems to have been the great mili-
tary organiser of Egypt. Trained by his father from
childhood to war, he early distinguished himself in
military expeditions against the Arabians and against
Lybia, and mounted the throne with visions of universal
conquest. To pave the way for such schemes, he gave
Egypt a military organisation, dividing it into thirty-six
provinces, and establishing a militia or warrior class,
called A'alasires and Aſarmatopoii, to each of whom was
allotted land sufficient for the maintenance of himself
and his family. These formed the nucleus of the vast
army, amounting, according to Diodorus Siculus, to
600,000 infantry, 24,000 cavalry, and 27,000 war char-
iots, with which he undertook the conquest of the
world. We read that the command of this army was
given to the companions of the king, who, like himself,
had been trained to arms under his father, and that a
strict discipline was maintained and a military code
established which forbade corporal punishment, appeal-
ing to the higher instincts of the soldier; but of the
details of organisation and administration by which so
vast an army was moved and fed we can learn little.
With this army, aided by a powerful fleet, Sesostris first
subdued Ethiopia, and then extended his conquests east-
ward as far as the Ganges; thence turning northwards
and westwards, he swept over the Punjab, the table-
land of Tartary, and the north shores of the Caspian,
and descended through Sarmatia and Dacia into Thrace.
Finally, he overran Asia Minor, and having conquered
the Assyrian empire and seated himself on the throne of
highly prized element.
Ninus and Semiramis, returned in triumph to Egypt
after a nine years’ absence, and devoted the rest of his
life to the peace and prosperity of his kingdom. Such
are the accounts handed down by the ancient historians;
and if any faith is to be attached to them, it seems clear
that he did actually raise and maintain large armies, and
with them carry out prolonged and distant expeditions,
extending over several * without interrupting the
industry and progress of his own country—facts which
in themselves prove a high degree of national and mili-
tary organisation.
. The martial spirit of Egypt, however, seems to have
expired with its first and greatest conqueror, and as a
nation it has distinguished itself in the arts of peace
rather than those of war. The country became the prey
of the conquerors and the battle-field of other nations,
and the palm of military supremacy passed successively
into the hands of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the
Medes, and the Persians. The first two nations pre-
sent no special features in their military systems; their
armies like those of Egypt, consisted mainly of infantry,
horsemen and chariots forming but a small though
But the Persian empire intro-
duces us to a more highly developed military organisa-
tion, and a system of standing armies closely resem-
bling those of modern times. Drawn from a hardy and
nomadic race, its armies at first consisted mainly of cav-
alry, and owed much of their success to the consequent
ease and rapidity of their movements. Constantly
extending their power by fresh conquests, the warlike
Persians established themselves as garrisons in the
subjected provinces, gladly exchanging their own barren
mountain lands for these rich and fertile countries, and
for some time remained a distinctly conquering and
military race. Their empire attained its highest power
under Cyrus and Cambyses; the former, the founder of
the great Persian empire, uniting on his head the crowns
of Babylon, Media, and Persia, while the latter still
further extended the empire by the conquest of Egypt.
Cyrus seems to have been the founder of that complete
military organization of which we gather details from
Xenophon and other writers. To each province of the
empire was allotted a certain number of soldiers as
garrison or standing army. These troops formed origi-
nally of native Persians only, were called the king’s
troops. They comprised two classes; the one devoted
exclusively to garrisoning the fortified towns and cas-
tles, the other distributed throughout the country. To
each province was appointed a military commander,
responsible for the number and efficiency of the troops
in his district; while the satrap, a civil governor, was
answerable for their subsistence and pay. Annual mus-
ters of these troops were held either by the king in
person or , by generals deputed for the purpose, and
invested with full powers. This organisation seems to
have fully answered its original purpose, that of hold-
ing a vast empire acquired by conquest, and promptly
repelling inroads or putting down insurrections. But
when a great foreign war was contemplated, the stand-
ing army was augmented by a levy throughout the
empire, and each province and tributary nation furnished
its quota of men, horses, and provisions. The extent
of the empire made such a levy a matter of time. Thus
the preparations for the invasion of Greece by Xerxes
took three whole years; and the heterogeneous and
unorganised mass of men of all nations so brought
together was a source of weakness rather than strength.
That the warlike Persians, whose reputation rose so
high under Cyrus, who were distinguished for their
powers of endurance, and a daring courage which
despised stratagem and delighted in single combats,
should within a century have failed so disgracefully
A R M
509
against the Greeks, has often been matter of wonder.
Something, doubtless, was due to the fact that their
reputation was won over effeminate races very different
from their later antagonists; something also to the degen-
eracy induced among themselves by years of success and
luxury. But it must also be borne in mind that the vast
hosts over which the Greeks gained such easy victories
comprised but a very small proportion of the true Per-
sians — of the race which had given Cyrus his conquests.
The cavalry alone seems to have retained its national
character, and with it something of its high reputation,
even to the days of Alexander. Nevertheless, the first
contact between the Asiatic and the Greek proved that
the crown of military glory had passed to the western
nation.
The earliest knowledge we have of the military
institutions of the Greeks is derived from the pages of
Homer. They are glimpses only that we obtain, but
they suffice to distinguished many of their characteris-
tics. Their compact formations and subordination and
silence in the ranks are contrasted with the looser for-
mation and noisy attacks of the Trojans. Their armies
consisted almost entirely of infantry. The leaders
fought either on foot, like the rest, or from chariots;
and single combats between the chiefs of the two sides
were common, and often served to open the battle. We
have sketched for us the traits of a hardy, independent,
enterprising race, sometimes cruel and quarrelsome,
but gallant, high-spirited, and intelligent, and well
fitted to become distinguished as soldiers. How these
qualities were developed, till the Greek armies and
Greek tactics acquired a renown which has lasted to
our day, we learn from the laws of Lycurgus and Solon,
and from the ample details handed down by Xenophon,
Thucydides, and other historians.
By the laws of Athens every free man was liable to
military service. It was not only his duty but his dis-
tinction and privilege. The slave worked, the free-
man devoted his time to military exercises and the gym-
nasium. At eighteen his name was enrolled on the list
of fighting men; for two years his duties were confined
to home service, and especially the guarding of Athens;
from his twientieth to his fortieth year he was liable to
service wherever the good of the state might require.
The collectors of taxes, the singers at some theatres,
and a few others, were alone exempted. The only
privilege granted to the wealthy was that of serving in
the cavalry. The infantry, of which the army was
mainly composed, consisted of three classes. First
were the heavy troops, “hoplitai,” armed with a spear,
a dagger, a corslet, and a large oval shield. These
formed the phalanx or main line of battle, and were
composed entirely of free citizens, natives of Attica.
Secondly, the light troops, “psiloi,” armed with jave-
lins, but carrying little defensive armor, and no shields.
These were destined for skirmishing and covering the
movements of the phalanx, and were mostly slaves,
who followed their masters, serving among the “hop-
litai,” to war. Thirdly, there were “gumnetai,” or irregu-
lar light troops, carrying no defensive armor, but pro-
vided with javelins, bows and arrows, and slings, to
harass the enemy; these usually consisted of slaves or
foreign troops. Besides these there was another class,
“peltastai,” so called from the light shield or target
(pe/ta) which they carried, and intermediate between
the “hoplitai” and “psiloi.” . The cavalry consisted
entirely of the wealthier Athenians, and was intelligent
and enterprising. Each of the tribes of Athens had its
own military commander, chosen from itself, and elected
for the year only; and an Athenian army thus obeyed
ten chiefs (“strategoi”) of equal rank. These com-
manded by turns for the day, while the ten together
formed a council of war to consult and decide in cases
of emergency. Practically the inconvenience of such
a system was obviated by leaving nine of the ten behind,
or by the appointment of a “polemarch,” a sort of per-
manent chief of the staff, who carried great weight in
the councils.
The Spartans owed much of their specially soldierly
qualities to the institutes of Lycurgus, which had for
their aim to form a nation of warriors, and develop to
the utmost those physical and moral qualities which
render men invincible. Discipline, unquestioning
obedience, uncomplaining endurance, and contempt of
danger, were the principles inculcated on the young
Spartan from his earliest years, while his body was
strengthened by every exercise and trained to every
fatigue. As with the Athenians, military service was
the first duty of every citizen of Sparta. The age of en-
rollment was twenty instead of eighteen; but the service
lasted till sixty, and was more severe. In peace as in
war, the Spartan lived as if in presence of the enemy.
War time was, indeed, his relaxation, for he was then
accompallied by slaves, carriages, and beasts of burden,
and relieved of every labor or fatigue, to keep him
fresh for battle. Cavalry was held in disrepute in
Sparta; their infantry was formed in five “moras,” or
regiments, corresponding to the five tribes; later, a
sixth, which included a small force of cavalry, was
added. The armies were usually commanded by the
kings of Sparta; when one only was formed, one king
remained at home. The king was accompanied by a
bodyguard, comprising the winners of the prizes at the
athletic games, and had attached to him two polemarchs,
or chief staff officers, and three administrative officers,
who relieved him of all care of details, leaving him free
to devote his mind to the great task of his command.
Macedon, inhabited by rude but hardy shepherds and
hunters, and far behind its southern neighbors in civil-
isation, had made no mark in history till Philip ascended
its throne. But this monarch, who combined the high-
est military qualities with a far-seeing shrewdness
which was fettered by no strict principles of honor, had
no sooner established himself than he devoted all his
energies to raising the military power of his country
and extending his authority. The experience of his
wars with the Athenians and other nations of Greece
taught him that he could only overcome them by a dis-
cipline and training superior to their own, and he early
saw that such was not to be given to a mere militia
force. He set himself, therefore, to form a standing
army, to which he gave an organisation, copied, but im-
proved, from that of his adversaries. By force of arms,
by treachery, or by policy, he increased his power, and
influence till it embraced all Greece; and he was about
to make war on Persia at the head of her united armies
when his death put an end to his ambitious, projects.
But his son Alexander had all his father’s military gen-
ius and ambition, and at the same time inherited the
instrument he required in the highly-trained army so
carefully prepared. Within a year he had chastised the
Thracians in the north, stamped out the Greek revolt
by the storming and destruction of Thebes, and re-
ceived at Corinth from the representatives of the south-
ern states the chief command over their united forces;
and in the following year crossed the Hellespont at the
head of an army of 35,000 men, and commenced that
career of conquest which was not to cease till he had
carried his victorious arms over India, and founded the
largest empire the world had yet known. The army
with which these astonishing campaigns were won was
composed of native-born Macedonians, of their allies,
and mercenaries. The infantry was divided into heavy
and light armed, the peltastai now forming a most im-
5 IO
A R M
portant part of the force, besides auxiliaries or irregu-
lar troops. None but native Greeks were admitted into
the phalanx or the cavalry. The cavalry, which was
more numerous than that of the Spartans or Athen-
ians, was also divided into heavy and light; the
former carrying horse armor as well as body armor.
The actual force with which Alexander crossed the
Granicus, the frontier line, was 30,000 infantry
and 4500 cavalry, of whom about 12,000 were Mace-
donians, 5000 foreign mercenaries, and the remainder
Greeks and allies. Special attention was paid to recruit-
ing, generals being left behind to attend to it, and
numerous reinforcements were sent to Alexander during
his expeditions, so that at the battle of Arbela his army
amounted to at least 60,000 men. The tactical organi-
sation of his army was adopted from the Greeks. The
Macedonian grand phalanx, as finally formed by Alexan-
der, numbered 16,384 heavy-armed infantry: it was
formed 16 deep, each file of 16 men forming a lochos
under a lochagos, who led the file, and thus became the
front rank man. These files were variously grouped.
Thus two files formed a dilochie, four a tetrarchie, two
tetrarchies a dariarchie, under a taxiarch or centurion,
&c.; and 32 taxiarchies, or 256 files, formed a simple
£halanx of 4096 men. Four of these, with a due pro-
portion of peltastai, light troops, and cavalry, formed
the grand phalanx. The depth of 16 was chosen as
giving greater solidity than the Spartan phalanx, while
admitting of more subdivision. To form a solid col-
umn the phalanx was doubled, giving a depth of 32; to
extend its front, its depth could be reduced to one-half,
still offering a firm line. The principal weapon was the
sarissa or pike, 24 feet long, of which 18 feet extended
beyond the grasp. Thus the pike heads of six ranks
projected beyond the front, and formed that bristling
mass of spears which gave the phalanx its formidable
appearance. The proportion of peltastai, cavalry, and
irregular troops attached to the grand phalanx varied
slightly, but as a rule the total about equalled that of
the phalanx. Of these, the peltastai would form one-
half, the cavalry and irregular troops about a quarter
each. Thus the total strength of a grand phalanx and
its auxiliaries amounted to about 32,000 men, and Alex-
ander’s army at Arbela was formed of two such. The
Macedonian phalanx was the crowning point of Greek
military organisation, and therefore has been described
at Some length; but a still greater military power was
already rising in the West, before whose legions the
phalanx itself collapsed, and to this it is now time to
turn. &
The early or legendary period of Roman history is
enveloped in a darkness which hides the rise and first
development of those institutions which ultimately gave
to Rome the empire of the world. Her earliest mili-
tary organisation is attributed to Romulus, who grouped
the great families or clans (“gentes”) in three tribes;
each required to furnish 1000 foot soldiers and Ioo
cavalry, and in the force so raised is traced the origin
of the Roman legion. But it is to Servius Tullius that
the legend assigns the great classification, lasting to the
time of the Caesars, according to which the burdens
and duties of military service were determined. The
whole population was numbered and divided, according
to wealth, into six classes; the class determining the
amount of war-tribute to be paid by the citizen, his
position in the army, and the armor he had to provide.
The legionary infantry, Triarai, Principes, Aſastati,
were usually drawn from the first four classes; the
light troops, “Velites,” from the fifth; while the sixth
and poorest class was exempted from all military service
and from the tribute. For voting purposes and for
enrollment these classes were subdivided into centuries;
and a certain number of special centuries of “equites”
were formed from the patricians and most wealthy citi-
zens, who were required to provide horses as well as
armor, and formed the cavalry of the legion. ... Every
five years a fresh census was held, and the classification
according to property revised. Liability to service
commenced at the age of seventeen, and lasted until
forty-six; and no Roman citizen could aspire to any
office until he had served ten years in the infantry or
cavalry. The manner of raising the annual levy of
troops is minutely described by Polybius. Immediately
after the election of the consuls, twenty-four military
tribunes were chosen from among the citizens of longest
and most distinguished service. The consuls having
published the day on which all persons liable to service
were to assemble at the capital, the military tribunes
were apportioned to the several legions. The magis-
trate then proceeded to choose from the different tribes,
in order determined by lot, those most fit for military
service, and sent them, in groups corresponding to the
number of legions, before the military tribunes, who
selected in turn for their several legions till the required
numbers were raised. The conscripts then took the
military oath, sacramentum, and were dismissed until
the appointed muster-day, when the legion was
formed and organised. The youngest and poorest were
made Velites, the next in age Hastati, the most power-
ful were selected for the Principes, and the oldest or
richest reserved for the Zºriarii. The legion was
commonly composed of 600 Triarii, I2OO Principes,
1200 Hastati, and I2Oo Velites, with 300 cavalry, L
making a total strength of 4500; the number of
Velites, however, often varied considerably. When
the classification was completed, the three classes of
Triarii, Principes, and Hastati were divided into ten
manipuli or companies each, and the cavalry into ten
turma or troops; while the Velites were distributed
among the thirty manipuli. A first and second centu-
rion was then chosen and appointed to each manipulus;
and these again chose each two “ensigns” from their
manipuli. The centurions ranked among themselves
according to the class to which they belonged; thus a
centurion of Triarii ranked above one of Principes or
Hastati, and the first centurion of each class com-
manded the whole of his class or one of the lines of
battle of the legion. Originally Roman citizens only,
belonging to the five upper classes, were admitted in
the army, and the soldier equipped himself at his own
cost, and received no pay. Afterwards, the socii or
allies were included in her armies, and in the time of
Polybius a consular army consisted usually of two le-
gions, or 9000 Roman soldiers and about the same
number of allies or socii. But under the pressure of
the great Punic wars the consular armies were often
doubled; at Cannae two double consular armies, or
nearly 80,000 men, were brought together; and at one
period of the second Punic war as many as 23 legions
were raised. The system of payment, too, dating from
the prolonged siege of Veii, removed the reasons for
exempting the poor from military service, and they
were included in the levies, though usually detailed to
the navy as an inferior service. Finally, when civil
wars had shaken the old institutions, and everything
was sacrificed to faction and party spirit, even slaves
and criminals were enrolled, and the whole character of
the army was changed. Other causes also tended to
the same result. The system of raising the consular
armies annually, and disbanding them at the conclusion
of each campaign, required to be modified when dis-
tant wars were undertaken: legions were kept perma-
nently under arms, and recruited annually by levies
sent from Rome; ambitious generals found excuses
A R M
5 II
for not disbanding the armies to which they owed their
power, and by degrees a standing army was estab-
lished; and these changes in the character of the army
were accompanied by corresponding changes in its or-
ganisation and tactics. The distinction between the
three ranks became gradually effaced, and the three cor-
responding manipuli were merged in the cohort. The
legion was no longer divided into three lines and thirty
manipuli, but into ten cohorts, and its force was raised
from 4000 to 6000 men. The manner of fighting, too,
was gradually changed, and the Roman soldier learned
to trust less to his sword and heavy pi/ieme, only useful
at close quarters, and more to javelins and warlike in-
Strulhen tS.
The turning-point in Roman military art is commonly
fixed about the time of Marius, to whom the change in
the organization, as well as the composition, of the
Roman armies is attributed. But the evil effects did
not make themselves felt immediately, and the legions,
whose actions under Caesar shed the brightest lustre on
the Roman arms, were organized on the new system.
So long as discipline and the old military spirit re-
mained, the Roman armies retained their superiority,
whatever their tactics. This spirit was too deeply im-
planted to die out soon; and whenever men arose
worthy to command them, the Roman soldiery regained
its reputation. But under a succession of weak and
profligate emperors all discipline was lost; the legions,
degenerated into a feeble militia, sold the empire which
they were incapable of defending, and ultimately fell an
easy prey to the rude and daring barbarians of the
North.
The Roman armies owed their long and remarkable
ascendency to three principal causes: discipline; care
in the selection, training, and exercise of the soldiers;
and readiness in adopting improvements, whether from
friends or foes. In the first the Romans surpassed all
other nations. The second especially attracted the atten-
tion of contemporary students of their military institu-
tions; Hirtius, Vegetius, Josephus, all speak of the
constant exercises by which, in peace as in war, the
Roman soldier was trained and inured to war. “If,”
says Josephus, “we consider what a study the Romans
made of military art, we must confess that the empire
to which they have attained is not a gift of fortune, but
a reward of virtue.”
Hitherto war had been a progressive art. Each
great military power succumbed in its turn to an organ-
isation and a science superior to its own. But with the
fall of Rome we seem to begin afresh. The nations by
whom the overthrow of this great empire was effected
were in the condition from which the Latins had
emerged ten centuries before; and more than ten cen-
turies elapsed before the lost ground was regained, and
such highly-trained armies again appeared.
The early institutions of the Frank and German
races, the new masters of Europe, were those of a free,
proud, warlike people. The right to bear arms was
the privilege of the freemen, the mark of his status in
the community. No man could assume it till publicly
pronounced worthy, and solemnly invested before the
assembly of the people. From that time he was
never separated from his arms. The same word (weſºr)
denoted a weapon and a freeman; even his plot of land
(were) was named after that by which alone he held it,
and his social existence ceased when no longer able to
carry arms or mount his horse. Similarly, nation and
army were convertible terms; the Longobards
continued to call themselves an army (Aſeer) long after
their settlement in Italy. Their organisation was rude
and simple. The family was the basis of the social
fabric; kindred families formed clans, and these again
confederations (Markgemossenschaft), to which ad-
mission was only obtained by common consent.
Finally, the kindred tribes or communities occupying a
certain district (gau) formed a higher organisation
(gaugemeinde), which usually included the whole of a
particular race or stock, and had well-defined natural
boundaries. For political and military purposes the
gau or province was subdivided into “circles” (Kreis)
and “hundreds,” names which have continued to this
day; the latter calculated to include as many house-
holds as would suffice to place a hundred warriors in
the field. Kings and commanders were elected and
were entrusted with absolute power in war time, but in
peace every freeman claimed perfect liberty; all great
questions were determined by the people in public
assembly, and all conquests were the property of the
community, to be shared equally among them. It is
hard to imagine a greater contrast than that between
the perfect freedom and equality of the early German
institutions, and the tyranny and unequal rights of the
feudal system which succeeded it. But we can trace
the gradual transition. From early days the most
adventurous youths attached themselves to the hero
of the nation or tribe, to be instructed by him in peace
and led to victory in war. Thus each great warrior
collected round him a band of personal followers—
retainers, whom he equipped with horses and armor,
and rewarded with a share of the booty, and who in
return followed him in all expeditions, and obeyed no
law but his word. When conquests were effected by
such bands, the land was the property of the chief, and
was distributed by him as a reward to his followers.
Gradually kings and chieftains increased their retinues,
extending protection to those who obeyed them, and
enriching them by grants of land acquired by conquest
and seizure. These grants soon ceased to be free gifts,
rewards for past service, but were held to entail future
service also ; and the chiefs assumed the right to revoke
them. As the power of the nobles and the number of
their retainers increased, so did the number and power
of the independent freemen decrease; a prey to oppres-
sion and exactions of all sorts, they attached themselves
in self-defense to some neighboring lord, surrendering
their lands, and consenting to hold them of him as vas-
sals. Finally, the lords increased their pretensions,
assuming the titles of “suzerains” or “seigneurs,”claim-
ing absolute authority over the person and property of
their vassals, and requiring an oath of fealty from them;
and the feudal system, with all its grinding tyranny, was
established. Nations were broken up into small
seignioralties, whose lords, at constant war with each
other, only united to resist any interference with their
privileges; and if occasionally a powerful ruler like
Charlemagne succeeded for a time in establishing a real
government, it was only personal, and collapsed as soon
as the strong hand was removed. No great national
undertakings, no great progress in the arts of peace or
war, were possible under such conditions; and it was
not till feudalism was nearly extinct that these arts
emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages.
The early Frank and German armies comprised the
whole manhood of the nations, rudely organised by
“hundreds,” or by tribes and families. Some know-
ledge of tactics had been gained from their adversaries
the Romans, and from deserters and escaped slaves in
their ranks; but they usually adhered to their own
national formation, the wedge-shaped column of attack.
The principal arm was infantry, divided into “heavy”
and “light;" the light infantry being originally the
&lite, and trained to act with the cavalry, but afterwards
degenerating into mere attendants of the latter. The
transition from the national to the feudal system is
5 I2
A R M
seen in the armies of Charles Martel. These consisted
in part of his personal followers, partly of mercenaries,
and partly of national levies. At Tours the latter still
formed the great bulk of the force, and fought, as of
old, in heavy masses and with little tactical organisa-
tion. Under Charlemagne armies became more feudal,
the chiefs and their retainers forming a large proportion,
the national levies a much smaller one; and the
frequent levies ordered in his reign did much to extin-
guish the class of freemen, driving them to seek pro-
tection as vassals of the great nobles. The true feudal
armies were formed entirely of the knights, men-at-
arms, and vassals who obeyed the summons of their
suzerain, either at the call of the king, or for his own
private wars, and whose service lasted variously for
twenty or forty days or three months, at the end of
which the army disbanded and returned home.
The change in the constitution of armies was accom-
panied by changes in their armanent. As the equality
of the old freemen gave place to the classification of the
people into lords, gentlemen, and serfs, corresponding
distinctions in arms and equipment followed; the horse-
man became the representative of the upper classes, the
foot soldier of the serfs and peasants. The feudal
system could only be maintained by the superior fight-
ing power of the ruling class. All that money and art
could do was therefore lavished on the equipment of
the lord and his immediate retainers, while the peasant
remained ill-armed and comparatively defenceless. The
strength of armies was measured by the number of
men-at-arms. Efforts to arm and train the mass of the
people commonly originated with the kings, in their
desire to form a more national force than the semi-
independent feudal levies, and received small encourage-
ment from the nobles. When they succeeded it was
a sign of weakness in the feudal chiefs, and of a more
popular government. In no country were the lower
orders so warlike and used to arms as in England; and
historians have showed how essentially popular was the
rule even of our most absolute monarchs.
Two characteristics of feudalism were especially ad-
verse to progress in military art: the undue preponder-
ance given to one arm, numerically weak; and the im-
possibility of unity of action or combined organisation
among so many independent and rival authorities.
Among the causes tending to bring about a better mili-
tary system must be reckoned the Crusades, those
marvellous efforts of fanaticism that still excite a won-
der and admiration mixed with pity. It is true they left
no mark at all proportionate to the vastness of the
efforts. The armies of the Crusaders, as they took the
field, were mere tumultuary masses, as destitute of order
and discipline as their leaders were ignorant of military
science. But for the first time large bodies were kept
continuously under arms, and some sort of organisation
necessarily developed itself. The knights and leaders
becoming conscious of their own numerical weakness,
bestowed more care on the arms and discipline of their
men, and learnt their value; and the first true infantry
of the feudal times dates from the Crusades.
The fall of feudalism as a military system, though
gradual, as all such changes are, may be said to have
been accomplished in the middle of the 15th century.
Two events occurring about that time gave it its death-
blow—the defeat of the Burgundian chivalry by Swiss
infantry in three successive battles of Granson Morat
and Nancy; and the establishment of “compagnies
d’ordonnance ’’ by Charles VII. of France. The first
destroyed for ever the overwhelming prestige attached
to the mailed horsemen, and restored infantry to the
place which it had held in ancient armies, and has
never lost since; from the second dates the origin of
discord and disastrous wars with England.
standing armies in Europe. Charles VI., had already
sought to substitute a permanent national force for the
foreign mercenaries, who were as great a curse to their
employers as to their enemies; but the attempt was inter-
rupted by his insanity, followed immediately by internal
It was not
till sixty years later that Charles VII., having fully
established his power by a series of successes over the
English, carried out his father's idea; and (in 1445)
organized fifteen “compagnies d'ordon ſtance,” to be
maintained in peace as well as in war. Each company
consisted of Ioo men-at-arms, or “lancers,” with their
attendants, viz., Squire, groom and batman, and three
archers— the whole force amounting to 9,000 men.
Three years later he organized a corresponding force of
infantry, 16,ooo strong, named franc-archers. The
superiority of a standing army over an assemblage of
feudal militia was soon proved, and other states imi-
tated the example of France. A change took place in
the military system of Europe; the practice of calling
out the feudal contingent ceased, and permanently paid
troops, regularly disciplined and organised, were sub-
stituted for them. These troops were not always
national. At first they were largely composed of the
old bands of wandering mercenaries; but the propor-
tion of foreigners decreased as the feudal spirit gave
way to a more national one.
The development of the new system may be dated
from the beginning of the 16th century. Armies, no
longer undisciplined feudal levies, were permanently
organized in companies and in regiments. The use of
fire-arms became general, though it was long before the
pike was entirely supplanted. The distinctive duties
and value of cavalry and infantry were recognised, and
regular tactics introduced for the different arms, the
battalion (originally battaglia, battle array) becoming
the recognized tactical unit for infantry, as distinguished
from the administrative organisation by regiments and
companies. “Articles of war” were issued to their
several armies by Ferdinand of Spain, Francis I. of
France, and Charles V., and a regular discipline thus
established. From this time to the outbreak of the
great French Revolution but little change took place in
the manner of raising armies, though their technical
organisation varied according to the arms in use.
Armies were raised mainly by voluntary enlistment,
compulsory levies being only resorted to under pressure
of war. Usually the king or his commander-in-chief
contracted with a nobleman, of repute as a warrior, or
large possessions, to raise a regiment—the nobleman
to receive a certain sum down and an annual allowance
for its maintenance, and to have the command of it.
He in his turn engaged “captains,” some of whom
brought companies with them, others raised companies
under his authority, and others, again, merely com-
manded the men he himself had raised. Royal Officers,
“commissaries,” were appointed to muster these regi-
ments periodically, and see that the colonels fulfilled
their share of the contract; and, on the other hand, to
issue the pay and provide for the subsistence of the
forces. The regiments were sometimes raised for a
fixed time, and disbanded at the expiration of that time
or at the close of the war; but as standing armies be-
came general, they were maintained permanently, the
command being transferred as occasion required; and,
as the terms of the contract were always favorable to the
colonel, the command of a regiment was a valuable
piece of court patronage. The earliest form of organi-
sation, both in the cavalry and infantry, was the com-
pany, originally representing the group of men who
followed a knight to battle and ſought under his banner,
and later the bands of mercenaries who served under a
A R M
5 I 3
* Captain.” These companies were afterwards grouped
and organised in regiments, but for a long time
each company continued to carry its own banner,
ndicating its real origin. Both companies and
regiments varied in strength according to the
habits of the country, and according to the wealth
or personal influence of the leaders. In the days
when men fought in compact masses, and one
man's voice could thus control a large number, 5oo and
even 600 men was not an uncommon strength for a
company; and in some nations the numbers never fell
very low. In France, however, the policy initiated by
Richelieu, and afterwards adhered to by Mazarin and
Louis XIV., of breaking the power of the French no-
bility, and making them followers and dependants of the
king, reacted on the organisation of the army; for it
was found desirable to give employment to as many of
the young noblemèn as possible in the royal armies, and
therefore to multiply the companies and commands, and
the French companies sometimes fell as low as 30 men.
As the undisciplined melée of feudal battles gave way to
regular and scientific tactics, the necessity of bodies of
constant and uniform strength was felt, and the battal-
ion and squadron were introduced as the fighting for-
mations of infantry and cavalry respectively. Origi-
nally battalions were dense masses numbering several
thousand men, and composed of many regiments. As
changes in arms led to the adoption of more extended
formations, it became necessary to subdivide into smaller
fractions, and battalions were gradually reduced in size
till they became mere fractions of a regiment Finally,
when the advantages of uniform and permanent organi-
sation were more fully understood, and large standing
armies enabled such improvements to be introduced,
regiments also were made of uniform strength, and the
battalion became a fixed fraction, usually one-half or
one-third of a regiment, but still retained its distinctive
character as a tactical unit; while for administrative pur-
poses, recruiting, clothing, payment, &c., the regiment
was the unit. Similarly, the company remained the
lesser administrative unit,- that is, the captain was an-
swerable for the pay, equipment, and discipline of his
company in camp and quarters; but on the parade-
ground or battle-field the battalion was divided into a
number of equal divisions not necessarily corresponding
to the companies. In Frederick the Great’s time a
Prussian battalion consisted of five (afterwards four)
companies, but on parade was divided into eight “zugs”
(divisions); and the Prussian company column, now so
famous, is merely a return to the old formations adopted
when the company acted independently.
The tactical changes effected in European armies
between the beginning of the 16th and end of the 18th
centuries, consequent on alterations in arms, need only
be very briefly noticed here. In the earlier wars of the
16th century the musketcers formed but a small pro-
portion of the infantry, and the great bulk consisted of
pikemen, whose power lay in weight and mass: deep form-
ations were consequently the rule. The cavalry still
fought principally with the lance. In the latter part of
the century, during the great war of independence of
the Netherlands, improvements in fire-arms led to the
proportion of musketeers being increased, and the front
of battle proportionately extended to give effect to their
fire. Thus Maurice of Nassau usually formed his armies in
battalions of 500 men, of 250 pikemen, and 250 musketeers
each, the pikemen ten deep in the centre, the musket-
eers on the flanks. The cavalry also adopted fire-arms,
and were taught to trust more to fire than to the effect
of the charge. During the Thirty Years' War (1618-
1648) the proportion of musketeers was Still further
increased. The imperial armies under Tilly and Wall-
33 A. -
enstein still fought in heavy masses, but Gustavus
Adolphus reduced his formations to six ranks. The
bayonet, introduced about the middle of the 17th cen-
tury, gradually superseded the pike, and led to a further
reduction of the ranks to four. During the prolonged
wars of Louis XIV.'s reign, and under the auspices of
the great generals of that age,_Turenne, Condé,
Eugene, and Marlborough, considerable improvements
were effected in the tactics and organisation of armies,
and the permanent grouping of battalions and regiments
into brigades and divisions was first introduced. Still
further improvements were made during the Silesian and
Seven Years' War (1740–63). Many changes ascribed
to Frederick the Great are really due to Leopold of
Dessau, who, under the first Frederick, formed the army
which the second Frederick led to victory. He reduced
the ranks of the inf intry to three, trained them to
manoeuvre rapidly and with extraordinary precision, and
was the author of the drill-book which has remained the
basis of all European systems of drill. But the improve-
ments in cavalry tactics were unquestionably due to
Frederick himself, who taught them the true secret of
their strength, shock and rapidity, and further developed
their power by the introduction of horse artillery, able
to move rapidly and accompany the cavalry anywhere.
At the close of Frederick’s brilliant career every army
in Europe had copied that of Prussia more or less
closely. Infantry was organised in regiments of two or
three battalions, each battalion 500 or 600 strong—this
number being determined by the length of line which it
was considered one man could effectively control. Cav-
alry was organised in regiments of four squadrons,
each squadron from IOO to 150 strong. Artillery organi-
sation was still in its infancy, a large part of the guns
being attached to regiments, and the heavy guns often
horsed and driven by contractors. But Gribeauval was
laying the foundation in France of the battery organisa-
tion afterwards adopted by all nations. The Prussian
army, proud of its brilliant series of successes, equally
proud of its manoeuvring power and drill, was looked
up to by all Europe, and believed itself invincible, but
in its pride forgot how much was due to the hand which
had guided it. The French army had fallen very low in
general estimation, and even the American war, and
minor successful expeditions towards the end of the
century, did little to raise it. The Austrian army was
slow to adopt improvements, but had acquired a reputa-
tion for tenacity. England, recently driven out of her
American colonies, was hardly acknowledged as a
power on land.
Such was the military condition of Europe when the
French Revolution broke like a storm over the Conti-
nent, sweeping away old landmarks and old systems,
covering the land for years with a flood, which, when it
receded, left the whole face of the country changed.
When, in 1792, the monarchs of Europe banded to
crush the revolution, the military force of France was at
a very low ebb. The old Royalist army was disor-
ganised by revolutionary passions and frequent changes,
and the constituent assembly had rejected the proposed
“compulsory service” as at variance with the liberty of
the citizen. But on the proclamation that “the country
was in danger,” volunteers flocked from all parts to join
the armies, and a levy en masse was ordered to repel the
invaders. Officials vied in proving their zeal by the
numbers of recruits they forwarded to the frontiers, and
patriotism and terrorism combined to fill the ranks.
Within three years nearly 1,200,000 men were thus
poured into the army, and sufficed to repel the invaders,
and form the armies which, under Hoche, Moreau, and
finally under Bonaparte, brought France forth victorious
in 1797. But the long and bloody wars had exhausted
5 I4.
A R M
the supply, large as it was, and some new system of
recruiting became necessary, for it was evident that
voluntary enlistment would no longer suffice. In
I798, therefore, Jourdan brought forward and passed
the law establishing conscription, the basis of all
French military legislation since that date, and more or
less of that of other countries also. Every citizen was
declared liable to service for five years, and the whole
male population, between the ages of twenty and twenty-
five, was divided into classes and enrolled by name, to be
called out as occasion required. It was the terrible
power of the conscription that enabled Napoleon to carry
on the gigantic wars which characterised his reign, and
after losing in the snows of Russia the largest army ever
put in the field, to reappear in a few months with another
almost as large. Other nations of necessity followed the
example of France, and the conscription became general.
Prussia still further developed its power by reducing the
period of service in the ranks, and passing her soldiers as
soon as sufficiently trained into a reserve, thus gradually
training the whole of her population. The “short serv.
ice and reserve” system, the greatest revolution ever
effected in this branch of military art, and characterised
by a recent foreign writer on political economy as “the
greatest, and in its ulterior consequences probably the
most important, of the events of our century,” owed its
origin to the conditions imposed on Prussia by Napo-
leon at the treaty of Tilsit. Restricted to an army of
43,000 men, the Prussian statesmen evaded the spirit of
the clause by sending the trained soldiers to their homes,
to be recalled when needed, and replacing them with
recruits. . This system, by which every citizen becomes
also a trained soldier, and there is no limit to the size of
the armies save that of population, was at first only par-
tially adopted by other countries. The prejudice infavor
of professional armies—soldiers whose business it was
to fight, and do nothing else — was too strong, and
doubts were felt whether these semi-citizen armies would
stand the rough trials of war. But after Sadowa, other
nations had no choice but to copy it or resign, their
military position. It is true the lesson was not learnt
at once by all, but 1870 and 1871 enforced what 1866
had already taught; and within the last few years every
great Continental power has reorganised its military in-
stitutions on the model of Prussia.
. If we glance back at the history of military institu-
tions in Europe since the fall of Rome, we find it di-
vides itself into four well-defined periods. In the first
or barbarous stage we have vast armies or hordes, for-
midable from their numbers and the courage of the war-
like freemen composing them, but almost without tactics
or organisation. In the second or feudal period we have
armies nearly as numerous, but whose strength lay en-
tirely in a small body of highly equipped knights and
men-at-arms—the bulk of the army no longer freemen
fighting for their country, but slaves fighting at their
lord's command. , Little progress has been made in tac-
tics and organisation, and the fighting power of nations
is exhausted in constant petty wars. In the third or
“standing army” period we have small armies of highly
trained professional soldiers forming a class distinct from
the rest of the population, tactics and organisation be-
coming a science and making vast progress. Lastly,
under the conscription we have armies once more na-
tional, embracing the whole male population, more
numerous than ever, but now trained and organised
with all the science and skill of professional soldiers.
Some remarks on the general principles involved in this
branch of military art will serve as introduction to a
more detailed account of existing armies.
The military institutions of a nation are governed by
various considerations, the principal of which are geo-
graphical position, policy, national character, and
wealth. A country like America, which is threatened
by no powerful neighbors, can devote its whole energies
to peaceful pursuits, and reduce its army to a mere po-
lice force. But a European state, surrounded by warlike
and powerful nations, may depend for its very existence
on its army, and must consequently keep pace with its
neighbors, and develop its forces to the utmost that in-
dustrial and economical considerations admit of. Po-
litical economists class all military expenditure as non-
productive. Perhaps it might more fairly be called
indirectly productive, as necessary to the maintenance
and extension of civilisation, and the protection and
development of trade. Further, the value of property
increases with increased security, and military expendi-
ture within certain limits thus tends to repay itself.
Broadly, however, it may be treated as a tax for insur-
ance, and as so much withdrawn from the productive
power of the nation. The object of all military institu-
tions is to develop the highest amount of fighting
power, that is, attain the greatest security with least
strain on the industry of the country, the latter being
measured not by the cost of the army as shown by the
budget, but by the amount of productive labor with-
drawn and disturbance produced. All questions, there-
fore, have to be considered under two aspects, military
and economical—that of efficiency and that of cost.
The first question that presents itself is the manner
of raising armies. There are two methods,--that of
voluntary enlistment, and that of compulsory levies or
conscription: the former once the universal system, but
now retained by England alone; the latter adopted by
all other European powers. By voluntary enlistment
the burden of military duty is distributed evenly
throughout the community, the soldier receiving fair
wages for his service, while the citizen bears his share
in the form of taxes. Personal liberty is not interfered
with, the industry of the country generally is undis-
turbed, those members only are withdrawn who are
likely to contribute least to its wealth, and the army
becomes a useful school and refuge for the restless
classes of the community. But the supply of recruits
is fluctuating and uncertain, they are drawn almost
entirely from the lowest class, every desired improve-
ment is hampered by considerations of its effect on
recruiting, and the army tends to become a class rather
than a national one. Compulsory service gives unlim-
ited command of men, introduces a higher class in the
ranks, and raises the tone of the army generally; while
military efficiency alone has to be considered in organisa.
tion. But it presses much more severely on the country.
Military service becomes a tax inflicted by lot, falling
with excessive weight on some, while others escape
free.
The next great question is that of the terms of serv-
ice. No nation can afford to keep constantly under
arms the whole force which it may require to put forth
in war. In olden times fresh armies were raised on the
outbreak of each war. The great step in modern or-
ganisation was the maintenance of permanent cadres
and the formation of trained reserves. Military forces
are now divided into “standing armies,” comprising
those who are actually doing duty as soldiers, and form-
ing in peace time the cadres and the school of instruc-
tion of the army; and “reserves,” under which name are
included all who pursue their industrial callings in peace,
but are called to arms in war. Such reserves, however,
may be of very different value, from the Prussian “re-
servist,” a trained soldier in the prime of life, to the
garde mobile or volunteer who has only attended a few
drills; and their value is always closely connected with
the system and terms of service. There are practically
A R M
5 IS
three systems. The first, or long Jerzice system is now
almost obsolete, – it partly lives in England alone.
Under this the soldier was engaged for life, or for a long
term of years, remained with the colors so long as fit
for service, and was then discharged, usually with a
pension. It produced a highly-trained army, in which
discipline, mutual reliance, espriz de corps, constancy
under discouragement, and all soldierly qualities, were
carried to their highest pitch. The soldiér made the
regiment his home, and knew no law but the word of
his commander. But such an army was necessarily
small, being maintained in peace as well as in war, and
could form no reserve, as all remained with the colors
till they were no longer fit for service. In war, there-
fore, it had to be increased, and its casualties replaced
by untrained recruits; and its quality deteriorated when
excellence was most required. Long service also tended
to produce a class army, isolated from the liſe of the
nation, and always a dangerous weapon in the hands of
an unscrupulous ruler.
The converse of this is the second, or militia system,
actually in ſorce in Switzerland and Canada, and to a
certain extent in America. Under this no permanent
army is maintained, but all, or a large proportion, of
the inhabitants are liable to service, and undergo a
partial training. The cost of such a force is very
Small, the industrial disturbance reduced to a minimum ;
yet the forces that are put in the field are ſormidable,
in numbers at least.
The third and intermediate system is that of short
service and reserves, now adopted by all nations. The
European details of its application vary, but the gen-
eral principles are the same in all,— to maintain the
Cadres of a large army in peace, capable of expansion
in war, and to keep the recruit in the ranks only so
long as is necessary to make him a trained soldier, and
then pass him into a reserve. It combines the numeri-
cal strength of the militia system with the organisation,
training and discipline of a long Service army.
The principles of organisatione are comparatively
simple. Organisation is of two kinds, tactical and
administrative ; the first having reference to action on
the battle-field, the second to general maintenance in
peace as well as in war. Originally the two were often
distinct; thus companies and regiments were originally
administrative units, battalions tactical ones; and the
two had not necessarily any connection. But the most
perfect organisation is that which answers both pur-
oses, and in this direction all modern improvements
f. tended; and as the battle-field is the ultimate
object of all preparation, administrative considerations
:Iust give way to tactical ones when they clash, and all
organisations must conform to the tactical requirements
of the day. Great progress was made in this branch
during the Revolutionary war. The origin of regiments
and battalions has already been described. The first
“mixed divisions,” i.e., divisions comprising troops of
all arms, were formed in the revolutionary armies of
1792, and in 1804 Napoleon organised “corps d'armée,”
each forming a complete army in itself, under the com-
mand of a marshal,— the necessity for such organisation
arising from the size of his armies, which had grown
beyond the immediate control of one man. This
organisation was copied by other armies, and attained
its highest perfection when combined by the Prussians
with their territorial system—each corps d’armée being
permanently located in and recruited from a particular
province. A modern army usually comprises several
‘such corps d’armée.
A Prussian army corps, which may be taken as the
type of modern organisation, consists of a staff, two
infantry divisions, a cavalry brigade, a regiment (seven
batteries) of corps artillery, a regiment of engineers,
and a number of administrative services. An infantr
division consists of a staff, two infantry brigades, a #.
battalion, four batteries of artillery, and a regiment of
cavalry. An infantry brigade consists of a staff and
two regiments (six battalions); a cavalry brigade of a
staff, three regiments (twelve squadrons), and a battery
of horse artillery. The engineers comprise a pontoon
train, a light field bridge train, a column of entrenching
tools, siege materials, and a field telegraph; while nine
reserve ammunition columns accompany the corps
artillery. The administrative departments include the
commissariaſ, charged with the supply of the troops, and
having at its disposal five provision columns and a
large amount of hired or requisitioned transport, and
provided with a field bakery;-the medical department,
consisting of a staff; three ambulance detachments, each
having a staff of medical officers, 120 trained stretcher-
bearers to attend to and carry off the wounded on the
battle-field, a supply of medical stores, covers for
the wounded, and a number of ambulance wagons,
fitted for the conveyance of wounded; and the medical
staff attendants, tents, and all appliances for 12 field
hospitals, each calculated to receive 200 wounded;—the
pay department, charged with the military chest;-a
field post, a depôt for sick and supernumerary horses,
and other services. Such an army corps has a fighting
strength of 25 battalions, or about 25,000 infantry, 5
regiments (about 3,000) cavalry, and 96 guns, and, a
total strength of about 40,000 men, I2,000 horses, and
1,400 wagons and wheeled vehicles.
BRITISH ARMY.
The supreme command of all the military forces of
the nation is vested in the Crown, but can only be exercised
through an intermediate and responsible agent. The
entire administration, therefore, of the regular army and
reserve or auxiliary forces is under the control and
responsibility of the Secretary of State for War, who
is assisted by two under-secretaries, the Aarliamentary
and Permanent Under-Secretaries of State. The actual
army administration is divided among three great
officers, the Officer Commanding in Chief, the Sur.
veyor-General of Ordnance, and the Financial Secretary.
These officers are at the head respectively of the three
great departments of the War Office, viz., the Military
Department, the Control Department, and the Financial
Department; their duties are defined by orders of
Council of the 4th and 23d June 1870. The Officer
Commanding in Chief is charged with “the discipline
and distribution of the army, and of the reserve forces
of the United Kingdom when embodied or called out
for actual military service; the military education and
training of the officers, non-commissioned officers, and
men of the army, and of the reserve forces when
assembled for training, exercise, inspection, or voluntary
military duty; enlisting men for and discharging men
from the army and army reserves; the collection and
record of strategical information, including topography,
in relation to the military circumstances of this and
other countries; the selection of fit and proper persons
to be recommended to Her Majesty for appointment to
commissions in the army, for promotion for staff and
other military appointments, and for military honors and
rewards.” The Surzeyor-General of the Ordnance is
charged with “providing, holding, and issuing to all
branches of the army and reserve forces, food, forage,
fuel, light, clothing, arms, accoutrements, munitions of
war, and all other stores necessary for the efficient per-
formance of their duties by such forces, of proper
quality and pattern, and in proper quantities, according
to the regulations governing the provision, custody, and
/
516
A R M
issue of such supplies; exercising a strict control over
the expenditure of such supplies, and seeing that they
are properly accounted for by the several officers and
others who may be charged with their custody, issue,
and use; the custody of all buildings in which troops
are quartered, and allotting quarters; providing transport
for troops, and directing land and inland water transport;
preparing the estimates for the above services, and caus.
ing the expenditure for them to be duly and carefully
examined.” The Financial Secretary is charged with
“preparing the annual estimate for the pay of the army
and reserve forces; collecting and incorporating into a
general estimate for army services the estimates of the
other departments of the War Office, and financially
reviewing the expenditure proposed in such estimates;
submitting for the instructions of the Secretary of State
for War any proposed redistribution of the sums allotted
to the different subdivisions of the votes for army
Services; finally, allowing all cash expenditure, and
recording the same under its proper head of service in
the annual account for Parliament; issuing all warrants
for the payment of moneys, making all imprests to
accountants and others, and seeing that accounts areduly
rendered for the same; advising the Secretary of State
on all questions of pay, retired pay, and pensions for the
army, and reserve forces.” Any or all of the above-
mentioned great officers may be in Parliament; and the
Surveyor-General of Ordnance and Financial Secretary
have usually seats in the Lower House.
The Officer Commanding in Chief is nominated by a
letter of service, and holds his appointment during Her
Majesty's pleasure, differing in this respect from the
Surveyor-General and Financial Secretary, who are ap-
pointed by the Secretary of State, and removable at his
pleasure. He is assisted in his duties, and his orders
are conveyed and executed through the agency of the
Generał Staff of the army, comprising the Headquarter
Staff of the Military Department of the War Office,
and the general officers holding commands at home or
abroad, with their subordinate staffs. The Headquarter
Staff is subdivided into the Adjutant-General's Depart-
ment, under the Adjutant-General to the Forces, a gen-
eral officer of high standing, who is named directly by
the Sovereign, and is the chief staff officer of the Com-
mander-in-Chief, and the channel through which all
communications connected with the personnel, military
operations, duties, discipline, and general efficiency of
the army pass; the Quartermaster-General's Department,
under the Quartermaster-General to the Forces, – a
general officer of subordinate rank to the Adjutant-Gen-
eral, but also appointed by the sovereign — whose duties
embrace the movement and quartering of troops, roster
of regiments for foreign service, and military questions
connected with barracks; the Military Secretary’s De-
artment, under the military secretary to the Commander-
in-Chief, who is the channel of correspondence on all
matters connected with the appointment, promotion,
exchange, and retirement of officers, and honors and re-
wards; the Antelligence Oepartment, including the To-
pographical Department, under a Deputy-Adjutant-
General, charged with the collection and registering of
all strategical, statistical, and topographical information,
whether relating to the British Empire or to foreign
countries and armies; the A’ecruiting Department,
under an Inspector-General of Recruiting, charged with
the supervision of the recruiting throughout the king-
dom; the Auxiliary Forces Department, under an In-
spector-General of Reserve and Auxiliary Forces, em-
bracing all questions, connected with the militia, yeo-
manry, volunteers, and army reserves; and the Military
Aducation ZDepartment, under the Director-General of
Military Education, charged with the instruction and
examination of officers, and matters connected with mil-
itary colleges and regimental or garrison schools and
libraries. The artillery and engineers have a distinct
headquarter staff, subordinate, however, to the Adjutant-
General.
The Surveyor-General of the Ordnance is appointed
by the Secretary for War, and removable at his pleasure;.
the appointment is, therefore, a political one, and usu-
ally connected with a seat in Parliament. His subordi-
nates and assistants in the performance of his duties are:
the staff of the Ordnance Department at the War Office,
and the officers of the Control Department at the vari-
ous military stations at home and abroad. The Ord-
mance Department is divided into the Supply and 7 rans-
Aort Division, under a Director of Supplies and Trans-
port, whose duties embrace questions connected with
transport, food, forage, fuel and light, barracks, billets,
and lodging; the Artillery and Stores Division, under a .
Director of Artillery and Stores, whose duties embrace ,
all questions connected with the manufacture, mainte-
nance, and supply of warlike stores of all kinds, and
store and clothing accounts; the Contracts Division, un-
der a Director of Contracts, who makes all necessary
contracts at home, and examines those entered into
abroad; and the Clothing Division, under the Director
of Clothing, who has charge of the manufacture and sup-
ply of clothing for the army.
The Financial Secretary is appointed by the Secretary
for War, and removable at his pleasure; the appoint-
ment, like that of the Surveyor-General, is therefore a
political one, and usually connected with a seat in Par-
liament. He is assisted by an Accountant-General and
large staff of clerks in his Department of the War Of-
fice, but has no staff or subordinates outside its walls.
The number of men to be maintained and the amount
of money to be expended are determined by an annual
vote of Parliament, based on the estimates laid before
the House by the Minister of War. The minister, with
the advice of the Officer Commanding in Chief, decides.
on the number of men that Parliament shall be asked to
provide for the ensuing year, and the estimates are
framed accordingly.
The whole of the military forces of England are raised.
by voluntary enlistment. Recruiting for the army is car-
ried on partly by means of the large staff of non-
commissioned officers attached to the brigade depôts,
partly by means of pensioners receiving a special rate
of pay while so employed, and partly by sergeants or
parties sent out by regiment and corps for the purpose
— the whole being under the superintendence of the
colonel commanding the , brigade district. Infantry
regiments of the line recruit as far as possible within
the districts to which they are attached; but the cavalry,
artillery, engineers, guards, and rifles recruit through-
out the country generally. Enlistment in the army is.
regulated by the annual Mutiny. Act and the Army
Enlistment Act; the former legalises the maintenance:
of an army, and lays down the number of men and
manner of enlisting them; the latter fixes the period and
conditions of service. By the Enlistment Act of 1870.
men are enlisted for a first period of twelve years, which
may be spent either entirely in the army, or partly in
the army and partly in the reserve, as may from time to
time be fixed by the Secretary of State for War. At
present “short service” is fixed at six years in the army
and six in the reserve for infantry, and eight years in
the army and four in the reserve for the other branches.
The Household cavalry, and a certain proportion in the
other branches, are enlisted for “long service,” i.e.,
twelve years in the ranks. e
On the completion of twelve years' army service,
soldiers may be allowed to re-engage for nine years,
A R M
5 17
making a total of twenty-one, at the end of which they
are entitled to discharge with a pension. Those who are
passed into the army reserve remain liable for the rest of
their twelve years' engagement to be recalled into the
ranks in case of war or national emergency, and to be
called out for eight days’ training in each year; but
otherwise resume their positions as citizens, and are free
to follow their callings.
A recruit for the army must be between 18 and 25 years
of age, unmarried, free from physical infirmities, and of
such height and chest measurement as may be laid down
from time to time. The standard has frequently varied,
having been used as a means of regulating the supply of
recruits, but stood in 1873 at a minimum of 5 feet 5
inches for the infantry, 5 feet 6 inches for light cavalry
and engineers, 5 feet 7 inches for gunners, and 5 feet 8
inches for heavy cavalry; the minimum chest measure-
ment being 33 inches. For rifle regiment and for artil-
lery drivers the standard is reduced to 5 feet 4% inches,
but increased chest measurement is required. Excep-
tions are also made in favor of artificers and others.
When a recruit presents himself for enlistment he is
asked certain questions as to age, and whether he has
served before; if the answers are satisfactory, and he is
otherwise suitable, he is given a shilling as enlistment
money, and served with a notice warning him to attend
before a magistrate for attestation. Within not less
than twenty-four, and not more than ninety-six hours
he is brought before the magistrate. If he then dissents
from his enlistment, he may be discharged on payment
Of 20s. “Smart money;” if he still wishes to enlist, he
makes a declaration contained in the attestation paper
as to age, place of birth, trade, &c.; signs the attesta-
tion, and takes the oath of allegiance; and is thenceforth
legally a soldier. No recruit, however, is finally ac-
cepted until he has been examined by a medical officer,
and approved by an officer of rank detailed for the pur.
pose. Formerly, recruiting was carried on largely at
public-houses kept for the purpose; young men were
entrapped by lying placards or by the misrepresentations
of recruiting agents, and often enlisted whilst drunk,
and then sent under escort to their regiments. Recently
great improvements have been made in the recruiting
service : the bounties formerly offered, and varying from
4. I to A, Io, according to the demand for recruits, have
been abolished, exaggerated placards forbidden, the re-
cruiting taken away as much as possible from the pub-
lic-houses, and the young soldier sent by himself to join
his regiment. Under the system of long service the an-
nual number of recruits required to keep up the army
was from 8 to IO per cent. of its strength, but in future
the proportion will be largely, increased. The average
number actually raised annually was 16,ooo in the ten
years 1860-9, and 21,000 in the three years 1870–2 ; the
largest number raised in any one year since the war be-
ing 28, ooo, in 1859.
The rates of daily pay of the soldier and of the non-
pay commissioned ranks are shown in the following
table:—
Rank. Infantry Cavalry º: Engi-
ery. neers.
{ S. D. S. D. S. D. S. D.
Private - - - - - - || 1 o | I 2 I 2% I 15%
Corporal - - - - - - || 1 3 I 6% 2 I 2 I }}
Sergeant - - - - - - || 1 11 || 2 3 2 9 2 9%
Color-Sergeants & from 2 5 || 3 | 3 3 3 3%
Staff-Sergeants, to 3 3 || 3 7 4 2 4 7%
The Household cavalry, horse artillery, and some
ranks of the foot guards, receive a higher rate of pay,
and the engineers usually earn working pay in addition.
Every soldier further receives a free ration of bread and
meat, valued at 6d.
There are ten ranks of combatant officers in the
army, viz,, field-marshals, generals, lieutenant-gener-
als, and major-generals (classed as general officers);
colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and majors (field officers);
captains, lieutenants, and sub-lieutenants (regimental or
company officers). The classification and promotion of
officers is complicated by the system of brevet or army
rank, by which an officer may hold a higher rank in the
army than he holds in his regiment. Brevet rank is
usually given for distinguished service in the field, or
for length of service: it begins with the rank of major,
and may be said to cease with that of major-general, as
in that grade and in those above it all rank is army
rank. Relative rank and command within the regiment,
regimental promotion and duties, and pay, are deter-
mined by regimental rank; but rank, command, and
duties outside the regiment, and army promotion are
governed by army rank.
Previous to November 1871, first appointments and
regimental promotion in the cavalry and infantry were
made under the purchase system. The system dates
from the earliest days of the army, and arose partly from
the mode in which regiments were originally raised.
Every regimental commission had a fixed regulation
price, varying from 4,450, the price of an ensigncy in
an infantry regiment, to £7.25o, that of a lieutenant-
colonelcy of Life Guards; in addition to which an over-
regulation price, which sometimes even exceeded the
regulation price, had sprung up, and become estab-
lished by custom, though contrary to law. An officer
on retiring received the regulation price of his commis-
sion from Government, and the over-regulation from the
officer who succeeded him; and the step went to the
senior qualified officer of the lower grade in the regi-
ment who was able and willing to purchase it. An
officer who could not afford to purchase rose with the
others till he became senior of his rank, and there
remained till a death vacancy or other “non-purchase
step.” gave him his promotion. Practically, however,
the injury inflicted was less than at first sight appears,
as the purchase system stimulated a rapid flow of pro-
motion, by which the non-purchase officer profited also,
and if he lost a year or two in promotion, he saved
several thousand pounds. First appointments were
given to gentlemen whose names were on the Com-
mander-in-Chief's list, and to cadets from the Military
College at Sandhurst, on passing the required examina-
tions and paying the price of the commission; a certain
number ..P commissions without purchase being given
to those who passed high examinations at Sandhurst,
and to young men whose fathers’ services gave them
special claims.
Purchase was abolished by warrant of 20th July 1871,
Parliament voting the money to compensate the officers
then holding saleable commissions, and a system of pro-
motion by “seniority tempered by selection ” was sub
stituted by the present regulations. - --

Staff.
The staff of the British army may be classed under
three principal heads —
I. General Officers, commanding divisions, districts,
brigades, &c.;
2. General Staff, including Adjutant-General and
Quartermaster-General's Departments, brigade-
majors, &c.;
3. Personal staff, consisting of military secretaries
and aides-de-camp.
Appointments to commands are made from the lists
of superior officers of corresponding rank. Some-
518
A. R. M.
times, however, commands are given to officers of lower
rank than that of the appointment, in which case they
receive Kocal and temporary rank. The command of
brigades is usually given to colonels, with temporary
rank of brigadier-general. º
General officers are responsible for the discipline and
efficiency of all the military forces within their com-
mands. They are required to make annual inspection
of every regiment or corps, and report minutely on
them for the information of the Commander-in-Chief.
They are assisted in their duties, and their orders con-
veyed to the troops, by the officers of the staff. Offi-
cers for the General Staff are selected exclusively from
the regular army, and, except in cases of proved abili-
ties in the field, must have passed through the Staff
College. Admission to the Staff College is obtained by
competitive examination, the number entering being
limited to twenty annually. Candidates must have
served not less than five years, and be reported to be
thoroughly good regimental officers, qualified from gen-
eral character, disposition, &c., for employment on the
staff, and physically fit for its active duties. Before be-
ing allowed to compete, they are reported upon by a
board consisting of the commanding officer and two
next seniors of their regiment and corps, and also
by a general officer, to whose staff they have been at-
tached for a month on trial. Officers of not less than
seven years' service may present themselves at the final
examination without having studied at the college; but
the same qualifications and certificates are required
from them. After completing the course and passing
the final examination, officers are attached during the
following summer drill season either to the staff of a
general officer, or to the other arms of the service.
Officers appointed to the Personal Staff are not re-
quired to pass through the Staff College, but have to
undergo a qualifying examination.
Staff appointments are held for five years only, at the
end of which time the officer reverts to his regiment or
to half-pay. Most of the lower appointments are held
by regimental officers who are temporarily withdrawn
from their regiments, but still borne on its establishment.
No effective field officer of a regiment, however, can
hold a staff appointment, and no regiment of cavalry
may have more than one captain and one subaltern, and
mo battalion of infantry more than two captains and
two subalterns on the staff.
GERMAN ARMY.
By the “constitution of the German empire,” bearing
date the 16th April 1871, the land forces of all the
states of Germany form a united army under the com-
mand of the emperor. The German army thus includes
the contingents of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Würtem-
berg, Baden, and a number of minor states, all raised
and organized (with insignificant variations) on the
Prussian model. The peace strength of the army is
fixed at 401,659 men, or about I per cent. of the popu-
lation; and the budget is established on the basis of 257
thalers, or 4.38, 11s. per soldier present with the colors.
The army is organised in 18 army corps, of which 14
are furnished by Prussia and the states whose contingents
are amalgamated with hers, 2 by Bavaria, I by Saxony,
and I by Würtemberg. As the Prussian army thus con-
stitutes three-fourths of the military forces of the empire,
and is the model on which not only the other contin-
gents, but to a certain extent the armies of most
European powers, have been formed, a detailed account
of its organisation will serve as an introduction to the
necessarily brief notices of the other armies of Europe.
The Prussian army, like the monarchy, is of compara-
tively recent origin. Its European reputation dates
from the wars of Frederick the Great, but it was his
father, Frederick William I., aided by Prince Maurice
of Dessau, who really created the army which Frederick
II. led to victory, and which numbered 70,000 men,
admirably, trained and equipped, when the latter
ascended the throne.
The infantry had been especially perfected by Prince
Maurice; and under Frederick’s care the cavalry soon.
rivalled, if it did not excel it. The gallant struggle
against overwhelming odds, and the series of brilliant
victories which marked the Seven Years' War, raised
the reputation of the army to the highest pitch; and the
superb force of 200,000 men which he bequeathed to
his successor was justly accounted the best in Europe.
It was hardly, however, a national army, and its excel-
lence was owing rather to Frederick’s genius, and to his
system of discipline and instruction, than to the good-
ness of the material. The cavalry, it is true, and the
hussars especially, were recruited almost entirely from
the Prussian states, and from the sons of the small farm-
ers or better class peasants; but the infantry was raised
from all sources, and was largely composed of foreigners,
deserters, and vagabonds of all kinds. With Frederick's
death, the genius which had animated it, and which
alone gave value to such heterogeneous materials, was
gone. It still retained its imposing appearance and pre-
cision of movement, and its overweening self-confidence.
But at the first encounter with the armies of Napoleon it
fell to pieces; and after a series of crushing defeats,
Prussia found herself at the feet of the conqueror,
shorn of half her territory, obliged to receive French
troops in all her towns and fortresses, and only exist-
ing as it were by sufferance. But in these very disas-
ters were laid the seeds of her future greatness. By
the treaty of Tilsit the Prussian army was limited to:
43,000 men. This limitation suggested to Scharnhorst
what was known as the “krumper,”or “short-service ’’
system already described. The bitter humiliation and
suffering endured under the French yoke aroused a na-
tional spirit which was capable of any sacrifices. Every
Prussian was eager to be trained to fight against the
oppressor of his country; and when Prussia rose in
1813, the armies she poured into the field were no
longer mercenaries, but national armies, imperfectly
trained and organised it is true, but animated by a
spirit which more than compensated for these defects.
At the close of the war her rulers, with far-seeing.
sagacity, at once devoted themselves to organise on a
permanent footing the system which had sprung up un-
der the necessities and enthusiasm of the moment.
The conscription, compulsory personal service, and a
three years’ term in the ranks, with further periods in
the reserve and landwehr, were then introduced; and
though variations have subsequently been made in the
distribution of time, the principles were substantially
the same as those now in force. By the law of 1814.
the periods of service were fixed at three years in the
army, two in the reserve, and fourteen in the landwehr,
and the annual contingent at 40,000 men. As the pop-
ulation increased, it was felt that the service was un-
equally distributed, pressing unnecessarily heavy on
some, while others escaped altogether. Further, the
experiences of 1859, when Prussia armed in anticipa-
tion of a war with France, aroused great doubts as to
the efficiency of the landwehr, which then formed the
bulk of Prussia's forces, and of whom many had been
as long as ten years away from the colors. Accordingly,
by the law of 1860 the annual contingent was fixed at
63,000, the period in the reserve was increased from two
to four years, and that in the landwehr reduced from.
fourteen to five. The total armed ſorce thus remained
nearly the same (12 contingents of 63,000, in place:
A R M
519
of 19 of 40,000), but the army and its reserves were
more than doubled (increased from 5 × 40,000 to
7 × 63,000) while the landwehr was proportionately
reduced.
This change was not effected without great opposi-
tion, and led to a prolonged struggle between the king,
guided by his able and ambitious minister Bismarck,
and the parliament; for some time the king ruled and
levied taxes in open defiance to parliament and the con-
stitution; and it required the brilliant success of 1866,
and the position thereby won for Prussia, to reconcile
the nation to the new law.
By the present “military law of the German empire,”
every German is liable to service (wehrpflichtig.), and
must render such service personally. Neither substi-
tutes nor purchase of exemption are allowed; and
those who are physically unfit for the ranks may be re-
quired to render such other services—as hospital at-
tendants, tradesmen, &c.—as they are capable of.
Every German capable of bearing arms belongs to the
army for seven years, commencing at the age of 21,
and afterwards to the landwehr for five years. Army
service is divided between the ranks and the service,
three years being spent in the former and four in the
latter. The annual contingent of recruits is not now
permanently fixed, but is determined by the number
required to keep up the peace establishment, and is
estimated at from 120,000 to 130,000 annually. By
fixing the total peace establishment instead of the
annual contingent, the authorities have gained the power
of largely augmenting the army without raising the
budget or attracting public attention, as by passing
men into the reserve before their time they can always
increase the contingent required to complete the regi-
ments, and thus the total number of trained men avail-
able in war. Thus, before the war of 1870, command-
ing officers of regiments were directed to send home a
certain number of the most intelligent men after two
years’ service; and since the war a large proportion of
the infantry have been subjected to two years’ training
only.
The military organisation of Germany is based on the
territorial divisions of the empire. With the exception
of the Prussian guard corps, which is recruited generally
throughout the kingdom, each army corps has a corps
district (Aezirk) within which it is raised, recruited, and
stationed. The first six army corps districts correspond
to the six provinces of old Prussia, the 7th and 8th to
the Rheinish plovinces. The 9th, Ioth, and 11th were
formed from Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, and the
minor states annexed to Prussia in 1866; the 12th by
the kingdom of Saxony, the 13th and 14th by Würtem-
berg and Baden, the 15th by Alsace and Lorraine, and
the 16th and 17th (called 1st and 2d Bavarian army
corps) by the kingdom of Bavaria. The following
details apply strictly to the Prussian provinces only.
The corps districts are divided into divisions and
brigade districts, and these again into landwehr battal-
ion districts, corresponding to the civil A reis, or circle.
As a rule, for each infantry regiment there are two
corresponding landwehr battalion districts, from which
the former draws its recruits and reserves. The
battalion districts, again, are divided into company
districts, of which there are ſrom 3 to 6 to a battalion.
Every town and village has thus its appointed place in
the general organisation, and this is indicated on notice
boards conspicuously placed at all the entrances.
At the beginning of each year lists are prepared from
the parish registers of all young men who have
attained their twentieth year, and to these lists are
added the names of thcse who, though still liable to
service, have been allowed to stand over from previous
years. In the spring, about May, the battalion recruit-
ing commences its labors. This commission is com-
posed of the landwehr battalion commander, the land-
rath or chief civil functionary, two officers, and a
surgeon, as permanent members, and four local members
taken from the most respectable inhabitants of the
different villages.
The commission having notified the days of its
v'siting the headquarters of the several company
districts, the youths are mustered there accordingly, and
inspected. Those who are found physically unfit for any
service are struck off the lists altogether. Others who are
too young and unformed for military service are put back
a year. Many also are permitted to stand over on per-
sonal or family grounds, the commission being allowed
great latitude in granting temporary exemptions.
Every young man can be called up three years in suc-
cession, and as a rule the majority of the recruits are
put back one year at least on medical grounds, but at
the end of the third he must either be definitely passed
or exempted. Those who are exempted in their third
year are passed into the Ersatz reserve, where they
undergo no training, and are free of service in peace
time, but in war can be called out and sent to the
depôts to replace the casualities in the active army.
Men below the regulation standard, but otherwise fit
for the army, are passed into the Ersatz reserve; as
also only sons of widows, and others who are the
sole supports of families, or who have, or have lost,
brothers in the army. Although exemptions are much
more charily granted in the third than in the first and
sceondyears of liability, they are still sufficiently numerous
to soften materially the hardships of compulsory serv-
ice. Finally, after all “exemptions” and “adjourn-
ments” have been made, there remain those passed as
fit for service, and from these the required number are
chosen by ballot. But the ballot is almost nominal.
In 1862, for instance, when the number coming of age
amounted to 227,000, only 69,000 were left on the lists
for the ballot—63,000 being the required contingent—
and in many districts the ballot was not applied at all.
In 1867, 262,000 came of age, I IO,OOO were passed for
the service, and about 100,000 taken. The system of
exemptions is so elastic that practically the recruiting
commission can select, by a process of elimination those
best fitted for service, and abolish the element of
chance. A margin of about IO per cent., however, is
usually allowed; those who draw the lucky numbers
are passed into the Ersatz reserve, but remain liable
for a year to fill any accidental vacancies in the peace
establishment. *
The men drawn for the army are then told off to the
different branches of the service; men with good chests
and good feet to the infantry, men accustomed to
horses to the cavalry, gamekeepers and foresters to
the rifles, men of high standard to the guard, those of
inferior physique to the train, carpenters and mechanics
to the engineers, and a certain proportion of shoe-
makers, tailors, saddlers, &c., to all regiments and
corps. ... The guards recruit throughout the kingdom
generally ; the cavalry, artillery, fusiliers, and rifles
throughout their own corps districts; while the infan-
try regiments draw their recruits as far as possible
from the corresponding landwehr battalion districts.
The proceedings of the battalion recruiting commissions
are revised by brigade commissions, who distribute the
recruits to regiments and corps, and these again by a
corps commission. The final decision and allotment
to regiments, is usually completed about September.
From that time the men are called recruits, and amen-
able to military law, but are given passes until the 15th
October, the date on which they join their regiments.
52O
A R M
These conscripts form the great bulk of the army;
but there are other classes, also, serving under varied
conditions. Of these the most important are the “one
year volunteers,” young men of means and education
who, on condition of passing certain examinations and
bearing all expenses of clothing, equipment, &c., are
allowed to pass into the reserve after one year’s service
only. This system is a great boon to the middle and
professional classes, who thus materially reduce the
interruption which the full term in the ranks would
cause in their education; and every effort is made to
render the service as light as is consistent with thorough
instruction. Many of these pass the requisite examina-
tions for officers' rank, and become officers of landwehr,
or qualify as non-commissioned officers, and serve as
such if re-called on mobilisation. A certain number
of youths enter voluntarily for three years, gaining the
privilege of serving at an earlier age, and choosing
their own regiments. The non-commissioned officers
are mostly “re-engaged men.” Re-engagements are
allowed for various periods, and each squadron or
company has several “Capitulanten,” smart young
men, who have engaged to prolong their service in the
ranks with the object of getting promotion. In the
cavalry it is common for men to engage to serve four
years instead of three, in consideration of which their
time in the reserve is reduced by one year, and that in
the landwehr by two years. Finally, there are a certain
imumber who serve for a given number of years in
return for advantages received in the way of education
or maintenance from Government; such are the pupils
of the non-commissioned officers’ school and of the
school of forestry, &c.
After completing his term in the ranks the soldier is
passed into the reserve, retaining, however, his place
in his regiment, borne on its books, and liable to be
recalled to it in case of war. The reservist is supposed
to take part in at least two manoeuvres, not exceeding
eight weeks, during his term of reserve service. On
completing his seven years' army and reserve service he
leaves his regiment and passes into the landwehr and is
taken on the lists of the corresponding landwehr battalion
for the remaining five years of liability. The landwehr
battalion is the basis of the local organisation, both for
recruiting and mobilisation. As a rule, to each three-
battalion regiment of the line is attached a two-battalion
landwehr regiment. These two are connected as closely
as possible; they bear the same number, the line regi-
ment draws its recruits from the battalion districts,
furnishes the staff for their cadres, and passes its men
into their ranks.
In peace time the landwehr battalions exist only in
cadre, viz., a commanding officer, adjutant, and three
clerks and orderlies per battalion, and a sergeant-major
and two non-commissioned officers per company.
These are charged with keeping the registers of the
names and addresses of all reserve and landwehr men
in their districts, and on the mobilisation the whole
labor of summoning, collecting, and forwarding the
men to their destination falls on the landwehr battalion
commander and his staff. The fusilier reserve landwehr
battalions form a peculiar feature in local organisation.
Each army corps has a fusilier regiment, which does
not draw its recruits from a particular sub-district, but,
like the cavalry and special corps, from the corps
district generally. But to each fusilier regiment is
attached a reserve landwehr battalion and district,
bearing the same number, but used to equalise and fill
up the regiments throughout the corps district generally,
remedying deficiencies in the regimental quotas of
lecruits or reserve men, and forming, in fact, a great
central depôt of recruits and reserves. It has always
for its district some important town or centre of com-
merce, where the floating population is largest and local
attachment weakest, and whence also the communica-
tions to all parts of the province are easiest, and is
allowed a considerably larger staff.
The following is an approximate estimate of the
resources in men at the disposal of the German
empire:— e
Standing army, 400,000
Reserves of the army, 450,000
Landwehr, . tº ºr @ 500,000
Total trained men, . I,350,000
When the army is mobilised, about 1,250,000 of these
are embodied, and IOO,OOO remain still available of men
not trained, but registered and liable to be called out;
then there are the next year’s contingent of recruits,
120,000 and Ærsatz reserve, which cannot be estimated
under 800,000,— making, with her trained soldiers, a
total of about 2% millions.
Arussian Army.
The Prussian army is divided into field troops, who in
peace time form the standing army and the school of in-
struction in arms for the nation, and in war time,
augmented by the reserves, becomes the active army;
AXepôt troops (Ersatztruppen), who have no existence
in peace time, but in war time are formed of cadres sup-
plied from the field troops, and filled up by recruits and
reserve men, and whose duty it is to maintain the active
army at full strength; and garrison troops (Aesatzuzags-
truppen), principally formed of the landwehr, and ex-
isting only in cadre in peace time, but who are embodied
and take up the garrison duties and home defence when
the active army takes the field, and also occasionally
reinforce it.
The field troops consist of
115 Regiments of Infantry.
I4 Battalions of Rifles.
73 Regiments of Cavalry.
14 Brigades of Artillery.
I4 Battalions of Pioneers.
I4 Battalions Military Train.
The total war strength of the 14 army corps compos-
ing the Prussian Army is
Men. Horses. Guns.
Field Troops, e 524, § I61,913 1428
Depôt Troops, e 186,59 17,8or 264
Garrison Troops, gº 200,552 26,047 246
9II,485 205,761 1938
FRENCH ARMY.
From the earliest times the inhabitants of Gaul were
distinguished for bravery and enterprise. First as
enemies and afterwards as subjects and auxiliaries, they
played an important part in the great wars of Rome;
and though they yielded to the irruption of the Franks,
the admixture of races seemed only to heighten the
warlike spirit of the nation. Under Charlemagne, and,
later, in the Crusades, and under Philip Augustus and
St. Louis, the chivalry of France especially distinguished
itself. The excessive power and independence of the
great vassals, however, long prevented the formation of
any permanent national force, and made France a prey
to intestine wars and foreign invasions. Charles VII.
availed himself of the lull which followed the final ex-
pulsion of the English in the middle of the 15th century
to organize his campagnies d'ordonnance, and thus laid
the foundation of a national standing army. But the
armies that followed the kings in their wars still con-
A R M
52 I
sisted mainly of foreign mercenaries, hired for the occa-
sion; and the creations of Charles and his successors fell
to pieces during the religious wars. Louvois, War Min-
ister of Louis XIV., was the true creator of the French
royal army. On his accession to power, the king's
guards, some squadrons of gendarmerie, and a few infan-
try regiments (aſterwards distinguished as the “old”),
constituted the whole of the standing army. All other
forces had to be created at the outbreak of a war,
being usually raised under contracts allotted to generals
and others. Louvois first transferred the army from
the hands of contractors and speculators to those of the
king. He abolished the arrière-ban, and substituted a
money tax for the liability to service, thereby obtaining
funds for the maintenance of a regular army. In 1672,
after ten years of his administration, Louis XIV. was
able to take the field with a force of 91,000 infantry,
28,000 cavalry, and 97 guns, all permanently organized
troops, the largest national army that had yet been
seen; and six years later the military forces of France
had been raised to nearly 280,000 men. The last half
the 17th century is a brilliant period in the annals of
the French armies. Organised by Louvois, animated by
the presence of the great king, and led by Condé,
Turrenne, Luxembourg, Catinat, and Vendome, they
made head against coalitions which embraced nearly all
the powers of Europe, and won a series of victories that
extended the bounds of France, and made her for a time
the first military nation of Europe. But after the death
of Louis XIV. the French army gradually deteriorated.
In the Seven Years' War it was disgracefully defeated.
Under the reign of Louis XV. confusion and maladmin-
istration prevailed everywhere, and the highest idea of
military art was to copy servilely every minute detail of
the Prussian army. The higher officers, usually nobles
about the court, seldom went near their regiments; and
Madame de Genlis relates how, when young courtiers
departed to join their regiments for a few weeks’ duty,
the ladies of the court decked them with scarfs and
favors, as if proceeding on a distant and perilous expedi-
tion.
Under Louis XVI. the army improved somewhat; the
American war and the successes of Lafayette and Ro-
chambeau revived a more warlike spirit; instruction was
more carefully attended to, a good system of drill
and tactics was elaborated at the camp of St. Omer, and
attempts made to reſorm the administration. But the
Revolution broke over France in the midst of these at-
tempts at reorganisation; the old royalist army disap-
peared with the monarchy, and was merged in that
revolutionary army which under a new flag was destined
to raise the military fame of France to its greatest
height.
If Louvois was the creator of the royal army, Carnot
was so of the revolutionary army. At the outbreak of
the Revolution the royal army consisted of Io; infantry
regiments of 2 battalions each, 14 rifle battalions, 7 regi-
ments of artillery, and 62 regiments of cavalry, number-
ing about 173,000 in all, but capable of augmentation
on war strength to 2 IO,OOO. To this might be added a
provincial or militia force of about 60,000, but nominal
rather than real. At the very outset it was deemed
necessary to reorganise and augment this army. Volun-
tary enlistment under the system of raco/eurs or
“bringers,” by which the army had hitherto been fed,
was found insufficient. “Compulsory service " was
proposed in 1789, but rejected as “contrary to the liberty
of the citizen.” An appeal was then made to the pa-
triotism of the nation, and 200 battalions of volunteers
were enrolled; but though many presented themselves, and
these volunteers contained much of the best blood and
highest intelligence of France, the numbers fell far short
of the expectations, and the proportions that reached the
frontier was small. In the winter of 1792-3 the French
armies, notwithstanding the unexpected successes of the
preceding campaign, seemed on the point of dissolving
altogether, and the Convention was driven to Order a
compulsory levy of 300,000 men.
To eradicate the royalist element from the army, the
old regiments were broken up and amalgamated by
battalions with the volunteers; and the name even of
“regiment” was abolished. Promotions were made, not
by seniority of rank, but length of service; thus an old
sergeant succeeded to the command of a regiment over
the heads of all the captains. In August 1793 the affairs
of France were at their lowest ebb. Its armies had
been driven from the Rhine and out of Belgium, and a
dangerous insurrection had broken out in La Vendée.
The compulsory levy, slowly and imperfectly carried
out, had not yielded the full number; and those that
were obtained deserted by hundreds. The nominal
strength amounted in all to 480,000 men, but one army
with a paper strength of 90,000 had really only 33,000
in the ranks, and the others were little better. Under
the new system of promotion commands changed almost
daily, and fell into the hands of men who had never
before been entrusted with more than a section, and
confusion reigned everywhere.
Such was the position when Carnot, then a captain of
engineers, was called to the Ministry of War. A few
days later a levy en masse of all the male population
between the ages of 18 and 25 was ordered, and was
carried out with more method and success than former
levies. The muster-rolls of the armies filled rapidly,
and by the end of the year the effective force had risen
to 770,000. The amalgamation of the old army and the
volunteers, which had been commenced, but imperſectly
carried out, was effected on a different and more thor-
ough principle; the white uniform distinctive of the old
days of royalty was abolished, the infantry organised in
demi-brigades of three battalions (usually one of the old
army to two of volunteers), and the men and cadres
intermixed within the demi-brigade. A permanent
organisation in divisions, composed of all arms, was
introduced, and able officers selected ſor the commands.
Jourdan, Hoche, Pichegru, Kleber, Moreau, were at
the head of the armies of the republic. Arsenals and
manufactories of warlike stores were created ; schools of
instruction were established; the republican forces were
transformed from hordes to armies, well disciplined,
organised, and equipped. The enemies of France were
defeated at all points; and in tracing the plan for the
campaign of 1794 Carnot showed that his genius shone
in strategy as much as in administration. “Twenty-
seven victories, of which 8 in pitched battles, 120 com-
bats; 80,000 enemies /ors de combat; 91,000 taken pris-
oners; I 16 fortresses or important towns taken, 36 of
them after siege or blockade; 230 forts or redoubts car-
ried; 38oo guns, 70,000 muskets, 1900 millions of
powder, and 90 colors captured ;”—such was the
account Carnot was able to give of eighteen months of
office; and at the close he returned to his duty as a
simple major of engineers. And even this did not do
justice to all he had effected. Himself of an almost
Roman type of character, severe, but a true patriot
and republican,—he had succeeded in infusing much of
his own spirit into the army; he had given it not merely
discipline and organisation, but honor and soldierly feel-
ing. When Moreau promulgated to his army the decree
of the Convention, which forbade them to give quarter
to any Englishman or Hanoverian, he added, in general
orders, “I have too high an opinion of French honor to
believe that such an instruction will be obeyed ‘’”—and
he was right.
522
A R M
In the year 1796 Napoleon appeared on the scene,
and by a series of brilliant victories enlarged the fron-
tiers of France and secured a glorious peace. But the
exhaustion of years of continuous warfare had made
itself felt; the armies were reduced to mere skeletons,
and no sufficient means existed of replenishing them, till
in 1798 the conscription was introduced. . From that time
there was never a dearth of men; the whole male popu-
lation of France was practically at her ruler’s disposal;
and Napoleon had full scope for his genius in organis-
ing finese masses. His principal improvements were
effected in the interval between the peace of Amiens
and the war with the third coalition, while threatening
the invasions of England. His armies were collected
in large camps on the coasts of the Channel, and there
received that organisation which, with minor variations,
they retained during all his campaigns, and which has
since been copied by all European nations. The di-
z/isions, as organised by Carnot, consisted usually of
two brigades (twelve battalions) of infantry, two regi-
ments of cavalry, and two or three batteries of artil-
lery. This was a great improvement on former organi-
sation, and worked well in the comparatively small
armies which then took the field. But in large armies
of 150,000 men and upwards the number of isolated
commands was too great. Further, it had been found
by experience that the very completeness of the divis-
ional organisation — each division forming a miniature
army complete in all branches— tended to excessive in-
dependence of action on the part of the divisional com-
manders. Napoleon therefore grouped two or three
divisions into corps d’armée, commanded by marshals.
He withdrew the whole of the cavalry and a portion of
the artillery from the divisions, and with the light
cavalry and batteries so obtained formed a reserve corps
under the immediate orders of the corps commander;
while he kept the whole of the heavy cavalry, amassed
in cavalry divisions, his guards, and a certain propor-
tion of artillery, in his own hands, as a reserve to the
whole army. Thus was organised that “grande
armée '’ which immortalised itself at Ulm, Austerlitz,
Jena, Friedland, Wagram, and Borodino; and after
planting the tricolor on every capital in Europe, per-
ished at last in the snows of Russia.
The frightful expenditure of life during Napoleon's
wars almost drained France of her manhood, and his
frequent calls on the country made the name of the con-
scription detested. One of the first acts of the Restora-
tion was to abolish it, and return to voluntary enlist-
ment; but it was soon evident that this means of recruit-
ing no longer sufficed, and within three years com-
pulsory service had to be again resorted to. In 1818
the annual contingent was fixed at 40,000, and the
period of service at six years; in 1824 the contingent
was increased to 60,000, and in 1832 to 80,000. Of
this, however, a part only, according to the require-
ments of the service, were enrolled; the remainder were
sent home on leave or furlough. Up to 1855 certain
exemptions were authorized, and substitution or ex-
change of lots amongst young men who had drawn was
permitted, but the individual drawn was obliged either
to serve personally or find a substitute. In 1855 the
law of “dotation ” or exemption by payment was
passed, and put an end to personal substitution. The
state now undertook to provide substitutes for all who
paid a fixed sum, and did so by high bounties to volum-
teers or to soldiers for re-engaging. Although the
price of exemption was fixed as high as 4,92, on an
average 23,000 were claimed annually, and in 1859 as
many as 42,000 were granted. ... Thus gradually the con-
scription became rather subsidiary to voluntary enlist-
ment, and in 1866, out of a total establishment of 400,-
ooo, only i2O,Ooo were conscripts. Changes had also
taken place in the constitution of the army. On the
Restoration its numbers were reduced to 150,000, the
old regiments broken up and recast, and a royal guard
created in place of the old imperial one. When the
revolution of July 1830 had driven Charles X. from his
throne, the royal guard, which had made itself peculiarly
obnoxious, was dissolved; and under Louis Philippe's
reign the army was augmented to about 240,000 with
the colors. Under the Provisional Government of 1848
it was further increased, and in 1854, when France
allied herself with England against Russia, the army
was raised to 500,000 men. The imperial guard was
re-created, and every effort made to revive the old
Napoleonic traditions in the army. In 1859 Napoleon
III. took the field as the champion and ally of Italy,
and the victories of Montebello, Magenta, and Solferino.
raised the reputation of the army to the highest pitch,
and for a time made France the arbiter of Europe.
But the campaign of 1866 suddenly made the world
aware that a rival military power had arisen, which was
prepared to dispute that supremacy. From this time a
trial of strength between France and Prussia was looked
forward to as inevitable, and both sides prepared for
the coming struggle. Niel, the then War Minister of
France, saw clearly that the organisation which had
with difficulty maintained 150,000 men in Italy, was no
match for that which had within a month thrown 250,-
Ooo into the very heart of Austria, while waging, a
successful war on the Maine against Bavaria and her
allies. In 1867, therefore, he brought forward a meas-
ure for the reorganization of the army, by which he
calculated to raise the military force to 800,000 men —
half of them with the colors and half in reserve—be-
sides forming a separate army for home defence in case
of need. It is not necessary to dwell on the law of
1868, for it remained but two years in real operation.
To complete Niel's scheme many years were required;
but Niel himself died within a year, and the next year
saw the French army annihilated, or existing only as
prisoners of war in Prussia.
At the outbreak of the great Franco-German war the
French field troops consisted of 368 battalions, 252
squadrons, and 984, guns. The strength of the entire
army on peace footing was 393,000 men; on war-foot-
ing, 567,000. The forces immediately available for the
war on the Rhine were estimated at 350,000, but they
actually ſell short of 300,000. They formed 8 corps
d'armée, each composed of from two to four infantry
divisions and one cavalry division,-making a total of 26
infantry divisions of 13 battalions each, I I cavalry divi-
sions of from 4 to 7 regiments each, and 756 guns.
Within seven weeks the whole of this army, with trifling
exceptions, was either captive in Germany or hopelessly
shut up in Metz. But the spirit of the nation rose to
the occasion, and though, as the result proved, extem-
porised armies can do little against veteran ones, the
efforts of the people and the creative energy of her
rulers will always command admiration. The next
year's contingent of recruits was called out and hastily
trained. Fourth battalions were formed from the depôt
cadres, and organised into 7%giments de marche. The
gardes mobiles were mobilised, and by successive decrees
and under various names nearly all the manhood of the
country called to arms.
The regular troops raised as regiments de marche,
&c., amounted to 213,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and
Io,000 artillery. The gaſ de mobile exceeded 300,000,
and the mobilised National Guard exceeded I, IOO,OOO –
of whom about 180,000 were actually in the field and 250,-
Ooo in Paris; the remainder in camps or depôts. Alto-
gether the new formations amounted to nearly 1,700,000,
A R M.
523,
and if to that be added the army existing at the beginning
of the war, the total forces developed by France during
the struggle reach the enormous amount of 2%
millions.
The military forces of France under the new laws are
estimated as follows, allowance being made for casual-
ties: —
Active army (5 classes). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 705,000
Reserve of active army (4 classes)... . . . . . . 5 IO,OOO
Temporary exemptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I4I,OOO
Permanent part of army. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I2O,000
Total of active forces. . . . . . . . . . . I,476,000
Territorial army —
5 classes, organised. . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 582,OOO
6 classes (reserve), not organised. . . . 626, OOO
Total. . . . . & e e e º e º e s e . . . . . . . . .I.,208,000
AUSTRIAN ARMY.
The imperial army of Austria may be said to date
from the Thirty Years' War. Long before that, Maxi-
millan I. had extablished a corps of “kyrisser” (orig-
inal of the modern cuirassiers), and taken into his pay
a considerable force of “landsknechts,” the early Ger-
man infantry. . But the latter were companies engaged
for the war only, and disbanded at its termination; and
it was not till the reign of Rudolph II. (about 1600)
that any permanent regiments were formed. Even
these can hardly be counted as belonging to the imper-
ial army, for the men composing them were only indi-
rectly subject to the sovereign, and really obeyed their
own chiefs, who could transfer their services to other
powers. It was Wallenstein who first raised a dis-
tinctly imperial army of soldiers owing no duty but to
the sovereign; and it was the suspicion that he intended
to use this army, which was actually raised largely at his
own expense, to further his own ends, that led to his
assassination. . From that time the regiments belonged
no longer to their colonels, but to the emperor; and the
oldest regiments in the present Austrian army date from
the Thirty Years' War. At the close of the war Aus-
tria had 19 infantry and 7 cavalry (6 cuirassier, I dra-
goon) regiments. Half a century later her forces had
increased to 40 regiments of infantry and the same of cav-
alry; and in 1809, when she put forth her whole
strength for the great struggle with Napoleon, she had
61 infantry regiments (46 German and 15 Hungarian)
and 45 of cavalry. Up to the beginning of this century,
her armies were recruited almost entirely by voluntary
enlistment; but, like all the other powers, she was com-
pelled to follow the example of France, and have re-
course to the conscription during the great Revolution-
ary wars. During the half-century which intervened
between the final overthrow of Napoleon and her strug-
gle with Prussia for supremacy in Germany, various
minor alterations were introduced, but in the main her
military system remained as it was at the close of the
great war. The conscription continued in force, the
period of service being fixed at ten years, eight of them
in the ranks and two in the reserve; unlimited fur-
loughs, however, were granted, and the actual service
in the ranks seldom exceeded six years, and was oſten
reduced to two or three in the infantry. The disastrous
war with Prussia in 1866, and the new constitution
finally granted in 1867, led to an entire revision of her
military institutions in the following year, and her pres-
ent organization is based on the law of 1868.
The armed forces of Austria consist of the standing
army, which in peace time, on a reduced footing, serves
as a school for training the nation to arms, and in war
time, completed by its reserves, forms the field army; the
landwehr, which in war time acts as a support to the
field army and provides for home defence; the Ersatz
reserve, from which casualties in the field army are
replaced ; and the landsturmz, a national levy only called
out to resist invasion. The war establishment of the
standing army is fixed at 800,000; the peace establish-
ment varies, being governed by financial considerations,
but is usually about 250,000.
The standing army consists of −
& s
Peace War
Establishment. Establishment-
8o Regiments of Infantry. . . . . I49,720 485,440
40 Battalions of Rifles. . . . . . . . I9,860 58,430
Total Infantry. . . . . . . . . 169,580 543,870
4I Regiments of Cavalry, . . . . . 44,OOO 58,670.
13 Regiments Field Artillery... 19,210 41,870.
12 Battalions Garrison........ 7,790 18,910.
Total Artillery. . . . . . . . . 27,OOO 60,78o
2 Regiments of Engineers. . . . 5,7 IO I6,35o
I Regiment of Pioneers. . . . . 2,800 7,750
72 Squadrons of Train. . . . . . . . 2,600 3O,900
Engineers and Train.... I I, I IO 55,000
Miscellaneous Establishments... 23,860 33,760
Grand Total. . . . . . . . . . .275,550 752,080
with 644 guns on peace establishment, and 16OO on war
establishment. There is no special corps of guards, as
in the Prussian and Russian armies; the “imperial and
royal guards,” which include the archers of the body-
guard, the palace guard, the Hungarian crown guard,
&c., only number 600 in all; and their duties are cere-
monial and police rather than combatant.
RUSSIAN ARMY.
Of all European powers, Russia maintains by far the
largest army. In 1870 its peace establishment amounted
to three-quarters of a million, and its war establishment
to a million and a quarter; and when the changes
which were commenced in that year have taken full
effect, her available war strength will be increased to
nearly two millions. But even this enormous force is
not excessive when measured by the vast extent of her
possessions (7,500,000 square miles), or her population
(82 millions); it is calculated that a levy of 25 per cent.
of the young men coming annually of age will suffice
for the requirements of the army, and that military ser-
vice will thus fall more lightly in Russia than in any
other great nation of the Continent.
The military resources of Russia thus consist of the .
active army, or men serving with the colors; the
reserves, who have completed their period in the ranks,
but rejoin the army in case of war; the irregular troops,
or Cossacks; and the national lesſions, or armed levies,
only called out in exceptional cases, such as invasion.
The regular army is formed by the active army, com-
pleted in time of war from the reserves, and is divided
into field troops and Zocal troops, the former furnishing
the armies for the field, the latter the garrisons, and the
depôts at which the recruits are assembled and trained,
and whence the field troops are fed. The local troops,
as their name implies, are permanently localised; the
field troops are not, as in Prussia, connected with cer-
tain districts, but draw their recruits indiscriminately
from the whole empire, and are moved from one part to
another as occasion demands.
The field troops of the regular army consist of 612
battalions of infantry, 236 squadrons of cavalry, 16 bat-
524
A R M
talions of sappers and engineers, and 306 batteries of
guns and mitrailleuses. They are divided into guards
and line, each having its due proportion of all arms, and
are organized in detail as follows:—
Jnfantry.—The infantry consist of—
12 Regiments of Guards (including 2 Grenadiers) of 3
battalions each.
12 Regiments of Grenadiers of 3 battalions each.
4. Regiºns of Caucasus Grenadiers of 4 battalions
€a.Cºl.
148 Regiments of the Line of 3 battalions each.
I2 Regiments of Infantry of the Caucasus of 4 bat-
talions each.
4 Battalions of Rifles of the Guard.
2O Battalions of Rifles of the Line.
8 Battalions of Rifles of the Caucasus and Turkestan.
Cazalry.—The regular cavalry consists of Io regi-
ments of the guard, 18 regiments of dragoons, 14 regi-
ments of lancers, and 14 regiments of hussars.
Artillery. — The field artillery consists of 3 brigades
of field and I of horse artillery of the guard; 44 brigades
of field and 7 of horse artillery of the line; and 3 Turk-
estan brigades.
Organisation of the Field Army.—The organisation
of the Russian army is entirely divisional ; two or more
divisions may be brought together to form an army
corps, but no such organisation exists permanently.
The infantry is formed in 47 divisions, viz., 3 of guards,
# of grenadiers, 1 of Caucasus grenadiers, and 40 of the
ine. Each division consists of 4 regiments or 12 battal-
ions (with the exception of the divisions of the Caucasus,
which have 16 battalions), and has attached to it a brig-
ade of field artillery, but no cavalry or rifles. The rifles
are organised in separate brigades of 4 battalions each,
and form 8 brigades (I guard, I of the Caucasus, I of
Turkestan, and 5 of the line); and the cavalry in cavalry
divisions of six regiments, to each of which is attached
a brigade of horse artillery.
The following was the peace and war strength of the
field army in 1873: —
Peace. War,
Infantry (612 battalions)........ 364,422 694,511
Cavalry (236 Squadrons). . . . . . . . 38,306 49, 183
Artillery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . e s s is sº tº ... 4 I,731 48,773
Engineers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,413 I6,203
Total, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457,872 808,670
Local 7%-oops.—That portion of the Russian army
which is stationary in peace is distinguished by the name
of “local troops;” and these again are divided into “re-
serve and depôt troops and troops for service in the inte-
rior.” The reorganisation of these forces was com-
menced in 1873, but will take some years to complete.
The total strength of the “local troops,” when the
Inew organisation has been completed, will amount to
about 784,000 men and 816 guns.
The irregular troops or Cossacks have always bornea
most important share in the wars of "Russia. In 1812
more than 100,000 were raised, and the services they
rendered in that and the following campaigns made their
name famous and a terror throughout Europe. In 1856
they raised 184,000 men, of whom about three-fourths
were cavalry; but the Crimean war did not give the op-
portunity of utilising this class of troops.
ITALIAN ARMY.
The Italian army consists of 8o regiments of the line,
Io of bersaglieri (riflemen), 20 regiments of cavalry, Io
of artillery, and 2 of engineers. A regiment of the line
consists of 3 battalions of 4 companies each, and num-
bers about 1500 men on peace and 3000 men on war foot-
ing. Eight of the existing regiments are grenadiers.
The bersaglieri are formed in regiments of four battal-
ions each, and are picked troops, armed with a shorter
rifle, and especially trained to traverse long distances
at a run.
The total strength of the Italian active army on peace
and war footing is approximately as follows: —
º Peace. War.
Infantry, 8o regiments....... ...... I28,000 245,000
Bersaglieri. IO “ . . . . . . . ... . . . I8,000 36,000
Cavalry, 20 “ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18,000 2 I, OOo
Artillery, IO Field Regiments........ I I,000 21,000
y; gl 3.
Cé 4 Garrison “ . . . . . . 6,000 13,000
Engineers, 2 Regiments... . . . . . . . . . 4,000 7,000
Train, 3 “ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,500 10,000
Staff Administration, &c............ . 3,500 8,000
I91,000 361,000
In war time this force is organised in 20 divisions,
forming IO army corps, each corps comprised of 24
infantry battalions, 4 bersaglieri battalions, 2 cavalry
regiments, and Io field batteries, giving a fighting
strength of 28,000 infantry, 2000 cavalry, and 80 guns.
The corps and divisional organisation is not permanent
in peace time; but the divisional staffs are kept up in
those of 16 territorial and 4 active divisions maintained
in peace.
SPANISH ARMY.
In 1867 the total armed forces of the kingdom (includ-
ing navy and colonial troops) were fixed at 200,000. The
land forces in Spain itself amounted to 150,000, of whom
8O,OOO belonged to the regular army, and the remaining
70,000 were made up of carabineros or gendarmerie,
guardia civil, and provincial militia. The total strength
of the army, exclusive of reserves, is about 38,000 men;
the number serving with the colors varies according to
the time of year.
Swedish AND Norwegian ARMY.
Although the crowns of Sweden and Norway are now
permanently united, each country retains its own govern-
ment, constitution, and laws; and the military ſorces of
the two countries are separate and differently organised.
The Swedish army is composed of three distinct classes,
— the “várfrade,” or enlisted troops, to which belong
the royal guards, one regiment of hussars, the artillery,
and the engineers; the “indelta,” or national army, paid
and kept by the landowners, each of whom furnishes a
certain number of men, to whom, besides a small annual
pay, a cottage and a piece of land are allotted during the
period of service; and thirdly, the “beráring,” or con-
scription troops, drawn by annual levy from the male
population between the ages of 20 and 25 years. The
“indelta” are called out for a month's training annually
in time of peace. Besides the above, there is a Goth-
land militia force of 30 companies of infantry and 3 bat-
teries of artillery, numbering about 8ooo men ; these,
however, are not compelled to serve beyond the confines
of the isle of Gothland, and have a separate command.
The royal guards number 2240, the line (under which is
included the “indelta") about 25,000 infantry, 5000 cav-
alry, 5000 artillery with 234 guns, and Iood engineers.
The “beráring” amount to about 95,000 of all arms.
The Swedish troops are physically the finest in Europe,
— powerful, hardy, and brave, and retaining much of the
old Scandinavian heroic spirit; and, though strictly a
militia only, their peculiar aptitude for all warlike exer-
cises would make them formidable antagonists, even to the
best trained armies. Few nations have so brilliant a
A R N
525.
military history. . Under Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty
Years' War, and later under the heroic but insatiate
Charles XII., they achieved a reputation almost un-
rivalled in Europe ; and their armies and tactics served
for many years as models to the great military powers.
The military forces of Norway are differently organ-
ised, and though divided into line and militia, are in
fact purely a militia force. By the law of 1867 all
young men past the age of 21 are liable to the conscrip-
tion, with exception of the inhabitants of the three
northern provinces, who are free from all military ser-
vice. Actually the troops are raised partly by volum-
tary enlistment and partly by conscription. The term
of service is for ten years, divided into three in the line,
four in the reserve, and three in the militia or “land-
vaern.” The cadres of the army are formed entirely of
volunteers.
Of these, however, the landwehr exist on paper
only, and may be left out of consideration; and the
available force is estimated at about 105,000, of whom
70,000 belong to the “auszug,” and 35,000 to the
TeServe.
AMERICAN ARMY.
The army of the United States of America is the last
that calls for notice. Threatened by no powerful or
war-like neighbors, the United States are saved from
that ruinous competition in armaments which presses on
the industry of European countries. The American
army is little more than a police force, of which a few
regiments serve as a reserve to the civil power in the
great towns, while the rest are dispersed in small posts
along the frontiers or among the Indian districts. By
an Act of 1870 its strength was limited to 30,000 men.
It consists of Io regiments of cavalry, each of I2 com-
panies or troops; 25 regiments of infantry, of IO com-
panies each; 5 regiments of artillery, and one engineer
battalion. The cavalry, broken up in small detach-
ments, partake more of the character of mounted police
than of that of European cavalry. They are armed
with swords'and breech-loading or repeating rifles, and
trained to act on foot as well as on horseback; and the
whole cavalry drill is assimilated as closely as possible
to that of the infantry. The infantry are organized
after the old English fashion in single battalion regi-
ments of Io companies. The army is raised entirely by
voluntary enlistment; the term of service was three years,
but it has recently been extended to five, and re-en-
gagements are encouraged. Two regiments of cavalry
and three of infantry are composed of negro soldiers,
but commanded by white officers. The officers of the
army are furnished by West Point Academy, a military
school equal to any in Europe. The course of instruc-
tion lasts four years, and includes all subjects of general
education besides purely professional ones. West Point
is sought by young men of the best families in America,
and the number educated there considerably exceeds the
requirements of the army. It is thus ths means of
spreading a certain military education throughout the
country, and it was to this West Point training that the
Southerners owed the large number of excellent officers
that were found in their ranks in the war.
For military purposes the territory of the United
States is divided into ten departments, and those
grouped into four military divisions: the South, com-
prising the departments of the South and of Texas;
the division of the Missouri, comprising the depart-
ments of Dakota, the Platte, and Missouri; the division
of the Pacific, comprising the departments of Columbia,
California, and Arizona; and the division of the East,
comprising the departments of the East and the Lakes.
By the constitution of September 1787 the President
is Commander-in-Chief of the army and militia of the
Union, and Congress has power to raise and support
armies, to make rules for their government and regula-
tion, and to provide for calling forth the militia to exe-
cute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and
repel invasions. The Articles of War, by which all
troops when mustered into service are governed, were
enacted in 1806, and are a close but somewhat improved
copy of those in force in the English army, and much
of their army regulations is identical with the old gen,
eral regulations and orders of the royal army.
The military history of the United States is as strange
as the rise and rapid growth of the nation. In 1790 the
rank and file of the army, as fixed by the Act of Con-
gress, amounted to I2 16 men ; and in 1814 an English
expedition of only 3500 men was able to seize and burn
Washington, the capital of a country which even then
numbered eight millions of inhabitants. In 1861, at the
commencement of the war of the secession, the whole
regular force amounted to only 14,000 men. In April
of that year the President called out 75,000 volunteers
for three months to defend the capital, which was
threatened; and in May a further call for 42,000 was
made. In July two calls for 500,000 each were author-
ised by Congress, and as even this vast force proved in-
sufficient for the gigantic struggle which America had
now embarked in, it was found necessary to introduce
the conscription. In October 1863, a levy of 300,000
men was ordered, and in February 1864 a further call of
500,000 was made. Finally, in the beginning of 1865
two further levies, amounting in all to 500,000 men, were
ordered, but were only partially carried out in conse-
quence of the cessation of hostilities. The total number
of men called under arms by the Government of the
United States, between April 1861 and April 1865,
amounted to 2,759,049, of whom 2,656,053 were actually
embodied in the armies. If to these be added the
I, IOO,000 men embodied by the Southern States during
the same time, the total armed forces reach the enor-
mous amount of nearly four millions, drawn from a
population of only 32 millions,— figures before which
the celebrated uprising of the French nation in 1793,
or the recent efforts of France and Germany in the
war of 1870–71, sink into insignificance. And within
three years the whole of those vast forces were peace-
fully disbanded, and the army had shrunk to a normal
strength of only 30,000 men.
ARNAUD, HENRI, the celebrated pastor, military
leader, and historian of the Vaudois, was born, in 1641,
at La Tour, or La Torre, in Piedmont. He is said to
have served under William of Orange, and it is probable
that he received pecuniary assistance from that prince
in his efforts to restore the exiled Vaudois to their na-
tive valleys. Owing to the cruelties of Victor Amadeus
of Savoy, from two to three thousand of these Vaudois
had been forced to take refuge in Switzerland and the
states along the banks of the Rhine; and twice they
ineffectually attempted to return to their home. But
the English Revolution of 1688, and the accession of
William of Orange to the throne, encouraged Arnaud
to make a grand effort. Concentrating about 900 fol-
lowers in the great forest of the Pays de Vaud, he
remained in concealment for some time; and at last
embarked with them on the Lake of Geneva on the
night of 16th August 1689. By September 16 they had
entered the valley of San Martino, after hard fighting
with the French and Savoyard troops that harassed and
opposed them. Being now, however, in danger of
attack from about 20,000 French and Piedmontese
troops, they were obliged to repair to the lofty table-
land of the Balsille, which they fortified with such skill
as to be able to withs' and the fiercest attacks of the
enemy, repeatedly renewed through the whole winter.
526
A R N {
A general assault on the Balsille (2d May 1690) by
about 22,000 French was an utter failure, resulting in
the decimation of the enemy, without the loss of a
single man to Arnaud. Not caring to hazard a renewal
of the assault, the garrison withdrew from this strong-
hold to Angrona, where, just when all chance of further
escape seemed impossible, they learned that hostilities
had broken out between France and Piedmont, and that
their king, who had persecuted and expelled them, was
now ready to receive them with open arms. Thus ended
the “glorieuse rentrée des Vaudois dans leurs vallées,”
effected, according to their own account, with a loss of
only 30 men, while they made out that the joint losses
of the French and Savoyards fell little short of Io,000
men. For a while the Vaudois were allowed to remain
in peaceful possession of their ancient homes; but when
the war of the Spanish Succession broke out, Arnaud
and his followers took part in the combination against
France, and rendered the allies effectual service. When
the war came to a close, the ungrateful king of Pied-
mont once more joined the French monarch against his
own subjects, and complied with the demands of that
prince, that the Vaudois should be expelled from some
of their valleys. The exiles, amounting in all to about
OOO, found an asylum in Würtemberg. Arnaud, who
ad invitations from Wiliiam III., and might have spent
the remainder of his days in ease and honor in England,
chose rather to continue the pastor of the exiles in the
village of Schönberg, and wrote, in his retirement, the
Aſſistoire de Za glorieuse A’entrée des Vaudois dams /eurs
Vallées. It was printed in 17 Io, and dedicated to
Queen Anne, and has been twice translated into English.
Arnaud died at Schönberg in 1721, and every memorial
that he left behind him was long cherished by his fol-
lowers and their posterity.
ARN AUD, or ARNOLDUS, DE VILLA NOVA,
a physician, alchemist, and astrologer, who lived at
Paris about the end of the 13th and beginning of the
14th centuries. . The discovery of the three principal
acids,— sulphuric, nitric, and hydrochloric, - has been
attributed to him, but Hoefer has shown that these had
all been discovered long before his time.
ARN AULD, ANGELIQUE (called Angélique de
Saint-Jean), niece of the first or great Angélique, was
born in 1624. She was educated at Port-Royal, and
took the veil in her twentieth year. In 1653 she was
made sub-prioress. During the persecution of the
Jansenists, from 1661 to 1664, she was the chief sup-
port of the nuns in their resolute refusal to sign the
Formulary of Alexander VII. Along with some others
ishe was put into confinement, and, even after permis-
sion had been given to return to Port-Royal, they con-
tinued to be under the close surveillance of soldiers,
who were not withdrawn till 1669, after the “peace”
edict of Clement IX. In 1678 Angélique was elected
abbess, which office she continued to hold till her death
in 1684. See ARNAULD, JACQUELINE MARIE.
ARN AULD, ANToINE, one of the greatest French
theologians and philosophers, was born at Paris, Feb.
8, 1612. He received his first instructions in theology
from Lescot, confessor of Richelieu, but his teacher’s
influence over his mind was greatly weakened by the
study of some works of Augustine, which, at the request
of his mother, had been recommended to him by St.
Cyran. The thesis which he presented for the degree of
bachelor in 1635 showed manifest traces of Augustine's
influence, and gave great offence to Lescot. Arnauld
now entered the Sorbonne, and from 1638 to 1640 pro-
fessed the courses of theology and philosophy requisite
for a licence. . In 1641 he was ordained priest, and took
his degree of doctor. After being twice rejected on
formal grounds, or, perhaps, from the hostile influence
of Lescott, he was, in 1634, admitted a member of the
Society of the Sorbonne. In 1641 his mother died. Her
last words, in which she implored him to hold stead.
fastly by the truth, made a deep impression on his mind.
He gave up several benefices which he had obtained, and
resolved to devote himself with all his soul to the defence
and propagation of what he believed to be the truth.
Between 1641 and 1643 he composed a treatise in two
vols., De la Mecessité de la Foi (not published till 1700),
and another, Théologie Morale des 7&ntites. In Aug-
ust 1643 he published his famous work, De la Fréguenze
Communion, expressly directed against the Jesuits, who
held that the mere mechanical reception of the sacra-
ments was sufficient, and that previous preparation and
actual repentance were of secondary importance. They
had even gone the length of saying, that the more a man
sinned the more frequently and boldly should he
approach the table of communion. Arnauld's book was
sanctioned by many doctors of the Sorbonne, and by
several bishops and archbishops. It was denounced by
the Jesuits, one of whom, by name Nouet, preached
against its heretical tenets, and called Arnauld an heres-
iarch worse than Calvin or Luther. This, however,
carried matters too far; the Sorbonne and the bishops,
who had given their sanction, were implicated in such a
condemnation, and, by their influence, Nouet was com-
pelled to retract. But the Jesuits insisted that the work
must be judged at Rome, and laid special stress on a
sentence in the preface, due not to Arnauld, but to De
Barcos. This sentence they held to be adverse to the
Papal supremacy, and they so wrought upon Mazarin as
to obtain from him a decree commanding Arnauld and
De Barcos to repair to Rome. Such intense excite-
ment and indignation were roused by this decree, which
struck a blow at the freedom of the French Church,
that Mazarin apologised and withdrew it. De Barcos,
who had made preparations for his journey to Rome,
now learned that the Jesuits were forming bolder and
more dangerous designs against Arnauld and himself.
He withdrew into concealment and warned Arnauld,
who followed his example. The book was examined at
Rome and defended by Bourgeois, a doctor of the Sor-
bonne; and only the one sentence in the preface fell
under Papal censure.
Scarcely was this controversy over, when a fresh cause
of trouble arose. In 1640 appeared the Augustimus of
Jansen, bishop of Ypres, the great object of which was
to show that the doctrines of Augustine on grace, free-
will, and redemption, were opposed to those of the Jesu-
its, which were really semi-Pelagian. This work fell
under Papal censure in 1642, in the bull /n eminenti,
which condemned it as a revival of the errors of Bajus.
Arnauld, in 1643, wrote some observations and consid-
erations on the bull, and in 1644–45 a first and second
apology for Jansenius. For a time there was little
opposition made by the Jesuits, and Arnauld, besides
superintending at Port-Royal, occupied himself in trans-
lating into French some of Augustine's works, and into
Latin his own treatise De la Fréquente Communions.
At last, in 1649, one Cornet proposed to the Sorbonne
seven propositions which he maintained to be heretical.
Of these, five were drawn from the Augustimus of Jan-
sen. The other two propositions were allowed to drop,
and after much controversy the five were condemned by
a Papal bull in 1653. Two years later the duc de Lian-
court, whose chaplain was a Jansenist, and whose grand-
daughter was an inmate of Port-Royal, was refused
absolution by a Jesuit confessor unless he dismissed his
chaplain and withdrew his grand-daughter from the her-
etical community. Arnauld wrote two letters upon this
affair — the first anonymously, the second signed with his
name, and addressed to the duc de Luines. In this sec-
A R N
527
ond letter it was stated, - Ist, that the fathers of the
church exhibit to us, in St. Peter, a saint who was
deficient in Saving grace; 2d, that the five heretical
ropositions were not contained in the Augustimus.
This second statement contains the celebrated distinction
of the questions “de jure” and “de facto.” As a mat-
ter of right,-of faith,-the propositions were heretical,
wherever they occurred, but as a matter of fact, they
were not to be found in Jansen’s book in the sense
ascribed to them by his opponents. The Jesuits held
that this was really a rejection and defiance of the Papal
bull; and, in 1656 they prevailed on the Sorbonne to
expel Arnauld, deprive him of his doctorate, and pass a
decree to the effect that all future members of their
body must sign the censure. Arnauld's defence against
this decree was undertaken by Pascal, who, in his bril-
liant Provincial Zetters, brought down the dispute to
the level of public comprehension. Arnauld continued
to live in retirement, and, in company with Nicole, com-
posed the valuable Port-Royal treatises on grammar,
logic, and geometry. In 1668 the peace of the church
allowed him to emerge from his retirement. He was
received with great honor, and devoted himself to defend-
ing Jansenism from the imputation of leading to Cal-
vinistic heresy.
In I679 Arnauld was again compelled to conceal him-
self. He fled from France, and, pursued by the enmity
of the Jesuits, went from Mons to Tournai, thence to
Ghent, from Ghent to Brussels, and, after having been
driven into Holland, settled at Brussels from 1682 to
I690. In 1690 he was again compelled to leave his
refuge, but, after wandering about for four years, re-
º to Brussels, where he died on the 8th August
IO94.
ARNAULD, JACQUELINE MARIE (better known by
her religious name, Marie Angélique de Ste. Magdeſ-
eine), born 8th September 1591, was the seconddaughter
of Antoine Arnauld, the celebrated advocate. She was
early destined for the church, and assumed the dress of
a novice in 1599. By concealing her age from the
Pope, her father obtained a bull nominating her abbess
of Port-Royal when she was little more than eleven
years old. For some time after entering on office she
spent a purely secular life, performing the needful re-
ligious exercises, but taking little or no interest in them,
and gradually acquiring an intense dislike to the profes-
'sion she had adopted. At last, in 1608, a sermon
preached in the convent chapel produced a great change
in her mind. She now saw that her true duty and hap-
piness lay in the work of the convent; she inflicted on
herself severe penances, persuaded the nuns to adhere
rigorously to their vow of poverty, and excluded even
her own relatives from the cloister precincts. The
fame of the reformation wrought by her earnestness
spread abroad, and when Mme. d’Estrées, abbess of
Maubuisson, was, on account of her gross misconduct,
removed and sent into confinement among the Fi//es
Penitentes at Paris, Angélique was appointed to take
charge of the convent. From this she was forciby
ejected by Mme. d'Estrées, and had to be reinstated by
a body of the royal archers. For five years she labored
in Maubuisson, and wrought a considerable change in
the state of the convent. In 1623 she returned to Port-
Royal, and three years later, as their accommodation
became too limited for their numbers, the community
removed to the house known as Port-Royal de Paris.
In 1648 she, with a few companions, went back to Port-
Royal des Champs, and there had opportunities for
showing much kindness to the poor, who were op-
pressed by the disastrous civil wars. Angélique died
in 1661, just before the great storm of persecution
broke over Port-Royal.
ARNDT, ERNST MORITZ, a distinguished German
patriot, poet, and historical and miscellaneous writer,
was a native of the island of Rügen in the Baltic, which
at the time of his birth belonged to Sweden. He was
born at Schoritz on the 26th December 1769. The
second of a family of eight, he inherited from his father
the sound mind in the sound body, good sense, practi-
cal sagacity, warm feeling, and a strong will; and from
his mother the earnest, devout, and Christian spirit
which animated all his words and deeds. After passing
his boyhood in his father's house, familiar with the soli-
tudes of sea and wood, trained in habits of accurate ob-
servation and cheerful activity, and stimulated by books
to literary attempts of his own, he was sent, in 1787, to
the gymnasium of Stralsund. There he studied for two
years, and, after spending the next two years in the
old home, he entered, in the spring of 1791, the uni-
versity of Greifswald, whence he removed to Jena.
There he fell under the influence of Fichte, whose
teachings he received with eager love, and whose mem-
ory remained ever dear to him. Destined for the
church, he applied himself at first to the study of the-
ology, but after some years, conscious of no inward
call, he renounced that pursuit. In 1796 he became a
private tutor at Altenkirchen; visited afterwards Aus-
tria, Hungary, Italy and France, giving to the world
the fruits of his observation in a series of remarkable
volumes published in the course of the following years;
and in 1800 settled at Greifswald as “privat-docent” of
history and philology. In 1806 he was named profes-
sor extraordinary. His special faculty and vocation
distinctly revealed themselves in his bold A'istory of
Serfdom in Pomerania and Rügen (1803), for which
he was denounced by the nobles to the king of Sweden.
So convincing was the book that, in 1806, serfdom was
abolished. In his next work, Geist der Zeit (1807),
he aimed at a higher mark. He flung down the gaunt-
let to Napoleon I. who, in the campaigns of Austerlitz
and Jena, had laid Germany prostrate before him, and
in burning words he called on his countrymen to rise
and shake off the hateful yoke. So great was the ex-
citement produced by this appeal that Arndt, to escape
the vengeance of Napoleon, took refuge in Sweden.
The work passed through fifteen editions, and grew
into four volumes, to which a fifth part, entitled Pro
Aopulo Germanico, was added in 1854. Arndt, having
thus erected the banner of German freedom and unity,
devoted himself thenceforth with unflagging courage to
the great cause. In pamphlets, poems, and songs he
communicated his own enthusiasm to his countrymen;
and he zealously co-operated with Stein in the re-
organisation of the army and preparation for the final
struggle. The War of Liberation followed, and Ger-
many was free. Long years were, however, to pass
before unity was attained. One of the most famous of
Arndt’s songs was that commencing, “Was ist der
Deutschen Waterland.” The revolutionary outbreak of
1848 rekindled in the venerable patriot his old hopes
and energies, and he took his seat as one of the deputies
to the National Assembly at Frankfort. Seeing no pros-
pect of a satisfactory issue he retired with the adherents
of Von Gagern. With rare freshness and vigor he con-
tinued to lecture and to write, and on his 90th birthday
received from all parts of Germany good wishes and
love-tokens. About a month later, January 29, 1860,
he made a peaceful departure out of the world.
ARNDT, JOHN, was a famous Protestant theologian
of the 16th century, and may be regarded as the founder
of the German Pietism of a later generation. He was
born at Ballenstädt, in Anhalt, in 1555, and studied in a
variety of universities—in Helmstädt in 1576; in Wit-
tenberg in 1577, when the crypto-Calvinist controversy
528
A R N
was at its height, and where he took the side of
Melanchthon and the crypto-Calvinists; in Strasburg,
under Pappus, who was a strict Lutheran and had a
great influence over him ; in Basel, where he studied
theology under Sulcer, and also medicine. In 1581 he
went back to Ballenstädt, but was soon recalled to active
life by his appointment to the pastorate at Badeborn in
I583. After some time his Lutheran tendencies ex-
posed him to the anger of the authorities, who were of
the Reformed church. He found an asylum in Quedlin-
burg, and afterwards was transferred to St. Martin's
church in Brunswick. -
ARNE, THOMAS AUGUSTINE, musical composer,
was born in London on the 28th May 1710. In 1733
he produced his first work,+ a setting of Addison's Roº.
amond, the heroine's part being intended for his sister,
who afterwards became celebrated as Mrs. Cibber. This
Fº a success was immediately followed by a bur-
etta, entitled Z'he Opera of Operas, based on Field-
ing's Tom Thumb. His individuality of style first dis-
tinctly asserted itself in the music tö Milton's Comus,
which was performed at Drury Lane in 1738, and speed.
ily established his reputation. In 1740 he wrote the
music for Thompson and Mallet's Masque of Alfred,
which is noteworthy as containing the most popular of
all his airs—A'ule Britannia. In 1759 he received the
degree of Doctor of Music from Oxford. . Three years
later he produced, at Covent Garden, his opera of
Artaxerxes, the popularity of which is attested by the
fact that it continued to be performed at intervals for
upwards of eight years. The libretto was a translation
by Arne himself, very poorly executed, of Metastasio's
Arſe serse. In addition to his numerous operas, Arne
wrote several oratorios, which made little impression at
the time, and are now almost entirely forgotten. Dr.
Arne died on the 5th March 1778.
ARN HEM, or ARNHEIM (according to some the
Arezzaczem of the Romans, Arnoldi Villa in the Middle
Ages), the chief town in the province of Guelderland, in
the Netherlands, on the right bank of the Rhine along
the slope of the Veluwe Hills. º -
ARNICA. A genus of plants belonging to the nat-
ural order Compositae (composite family). The flowers
are clustered in heads (capitula), and are surrounded by’
an involucre composed of two rows of small leaflets
called bracts. . It yields an essential oil in small quan-
tity, and a resinous matter called armicin. Arnica has
been used as a stimulant in low fevers, and also in cases
of palsy. It is said also to act in promoting perspira-
tion. It is a popular remedy for chilblains, and it is
said to prevent the blackness of bruises. The flowers
have also been used in the form of tincture. They have
an unpleasant odor.
ARNIM, BETTINA voN, famous for her acquaintance
and correspondence with Goethe, was a member of the
Brentano family, and born at Frankfort, April 4, 1785.
Her acquaintance with Goethe continued from 1807 un-
til 1811, when it was brought to a close by her offensive
behavior to his wife. Shortly after his death she pub-
lished an extensive correspondence alleged to have
passed between the parties. Its genuineness was im-
mediately contested by Goethe’s old friend Riemer, and
the discussion leaves no doubt that it is everywhere in-
terpolated, and to a great extent wholly fictitious. Bet-
tina never could produce the originals of the letters; and
it has been demonstrated that the sonnets which she
claimed as addressed to herself, and as partly versifica-
tions of her own ideas, were in fact addressed to Minna
Herzlieb before Goethe had even seen Bettina. This
discovery effectually relieves the poet’s memory from
some very unpleasant imputations. The literary merits
of the work are in some respects very considerable.
ARNIM, or ARNHEIM, JoHAN GEORG BARON voN,
one of the most distinguished men during the period of
the Thirty Years' War, both as a general and as a
diplomatist, was born in 1586, at Boitzenburg, in the
province of Brandenburg. He entered the Swedish
army, and served under Gustavus Adolphus. In 1626
he, though a Protestant, was induced by Wallenstein to
join the imperial army. He gained great distinction by
his military and diplomatic talents, and became the close
friend and faithful ally of Wallenstein. After the
dismissal of the latter from his command in 1630, Arnim
went over to the elector of Saxony, and at the battle of
Leipsic, led the left wing of the united Saxon and
Swedish armies. But he disliked the Swedes, who dis-
trusted him ; and it was mainly by his influence that the
elector detached his forces from Gustavus Adolphus, and
that at the peace of Prague the Saxons seceded from
their alliance with Sweden. In 1632 Wallenstein, who
had been restored to his command, took the field against
his old comrade, but little was done by either, and more
than a suspicion was roused that they were playing into
each other’s hands. In February 1634 Wallenstein was
assassinated, and Arnim at once began more active
operations. In May he gained a great victory over the
imperialists at Liegnitz; but after the conclusion of
peace, not thinking himself sufficiently honored by the
elector, he withdrew to his castle of Boitzenburg. Here
he was seized by the Swedes, and imprisoned at Stock-
holm. He escaped, and was engaged in raising an army
to revenge himself when he died suddenly in 1641.
ARNIM, KARL OTTO LUDWIG von, a German
writer of travels, was born at Berlin in 1779, travelled
from 1835 to 1844 through Turkey and Greece, France,
Spain, and Italy, and died in 1861. His reputation
rests mainly on his Flüchtige Bemerkungen eines ſlich-
tig Aeisemden (1838–1850), which are highly praised for
their lively and graceful style.
ARNIM, LUDwig ACHIM voN, a distinguished Ger-
man poet and novelist, was born at Berlin in 1781. He
spent some years in travelling through parts of Germany
and collecting old popular legends and songs. A selec-
tion of these he published at Heidelberg in conjunction
with the poet Clemens Brentano, whose sister Bettina.
(noticed above) he afterwards married. His literary
activity was for some time interrupted by the war in
Germany, but in 1817 he published his last great
romance, ZXie Kromen wächter, the scene of which is
laid in the time of the Emperor Maximilian. Arnim
died in 1831.
ARNISAFUS, HENNINGUs, a German physician,
was born at Halberstadt, probably about 1580. In
I613 he was appointed one of the professors of medicine
at Helmstädt, and he is said to have constructed there
a chemical laboratory and a botanical garden. His ana-
tomical plates were very celebrated, and some of them
were extant in the time of Haller. In 1620 he was
made court physician to Christian IV. of Denmark,
and removed to Copenhagen, where he died in 1638.
ARNO (the ancient ARNUS), a celebrated river of
Italy. It rises in Monte Falterona, in the Apennines,
descends into the valley of the Casentino, in Upper
Tuscany, passes the town of Bibbiena into the plain of
Arezzo, where it receives the Chiana as a tributary, and
enters the narrow valley of Laterina.
ARNO, or AQUILA, tenth bishop and first archbishop.
of Salzburg, was one of those learned churchmen whom
Charles the Great gathered round him, and who did so
much to frame and strengthen the alliance between the
Emperor and the Pope which lay at the basis of the
Holy Roman empire of the West. The occasion of his
introduction to the emperor was the defeat of Thassilo,
duke of Bavaria, who had made war upon Charles, and
A R N
529
was compelled to sue for peace. He sent at the head
of the embassy Arno, who was then bishop of Salz-
burg, and in whose talents and fidelity he had the utmost
confidence. In 799 he presided at a synod of the
church held at Reisbach, and in 807 at the more im-
portant synod of Salzburg. The zeal which he evinced
for the conversion of the pagans of Hungary and Bo-
hemia commended him to his ecclesiastical superiors.
He established a library in Salzburg formed on the
model of the emperor's palace library, and did all he
could to further the interests of learning within his
diocese. Assisted by a deacon named Benedict, he
published a catalogue of the church lands, proprietary
rights, and so on, belonging to the church in Bavaria.
ARNO BIUS, called Afer, and sometimes the Elder,
was a native of Sicca Venerea in Numidia. The date
of his birth is uncertain, but it must have been during
the latter part of the 3d century of our era. He was a
teacher of rhetoric, and at first an opponent of Chris-
tianity. His conversion is said by Jerome to have been
occasioned by a dream ; and the same writer adds that
the bishop to whom Arnobius applied distrusted his
professions, and asked some proof of them, and that
the treatise Adversus Gentes was composed for this
purpose. But this story seems rather improbable; for
Arnobius speaks contemptuously of dreams, and besides,
his work bears no traces of having been written in a
short time, or of having been revised by a Christian
bishop. From internal evidence the time of composition
may be fixed at about 303 A.D. Nothing further is
known of the life of Arnobius. He is said to have
been the author of a work on rhetoric, which, however,
has not come down to us. His great treatise, in seven
books, Adversus Gentes (or AVationes), on account of
which he takes rank as a Christian apologist, appears to
have been occasioned by a desire to answer the complaint
then brought against the Christians, that the prevalent
calamities and disasters were due to their impiety, and
had come upon men since the establishment of their
religion. -
ARNOBIUS, the younger, a Christian priest or
bishop in Gaul, flourished about 460 A.D. He is the
author of a mystical and allegorical commentary on the
Psalms, first published by Erasmus in 1522, and by him
attributed to the elder Armobius. It has been frequently
reprinted, and in the edition of De la Barre, 1580, is
accompanied by some notes on the Gospels by the same
author.
ARNOLD OF BRESCIA, remarkable as a forerunner
of the Reformation and assailant of the Pope's temporal
power, was born about the beginning of the 12th cen-
tury, and became a priest in his native city. The fame
of Abelard's eloquence induced him to repair to France
for the sake of becoming his disciple. On his return he
bitterly attacked the temporal dominion of the Pope
and the wealth of the clergy, advocating the secularisa-
tion of all ecclesiastical property. He is said to have
also impugned the current doctrine of the sacraments,
but this appears to have been an invention of his adver-
saries. Persecuted in Italy, he returned (1140) to
Abelard, and incurred the enmity of the latter's great
antagonist, St. Bernard, whose denunciations drove him
to seek refuge at Zurich, where he acquired great in-
fluence. A popular insurrection at Rome (1146) en-
couraged him to proceed to that city, where he appeared
as a political agitator, preaching the deposition of the
Pope and the restoration of the ancient republic. He
became exceedingly popular, and aided in expelling the
Pope from the city, but no practical effect appears to
have been given to his plans. The Romans obtained,
however, a free constitution on a different model.
Upon their demanding the confirmation of this at the
accession of the new Pope, Adrian IV. (the English-
man, Nicholas Breakspear), it was refused unless upon
condition of their delivering up Arnold. The demand
being indignantly rejected, the city, for the first time in
history, was laid under an interdict. The consequent
suspension of all religious services so powerfully affected
the people as to occasion a tumult, which compelled
Arnold to take refuge in a castle in Campania (II.55).
A new emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, had meanwhile
been elected, and was on the way to his coronation in
Rome. By him Arnold was arrested and delivered up
to the Pope, and the Roman constitution suppressed.
Arnold was hanged, his body burned, and the ashes
thrown into the Tiber. In history he ranks with Rienzi
and Savonarola. His enemies have been his bio-
graphers, and they are unanimous in acknowledging his
eloquence, his personal influence, and his perfect disin-
terestedness.
ARNOLD, SAMUEL, a distinguished English com-
poser, was born at London in , 1749. He received a
thorough musical education at the Chapel Royal under
Dr. Nares, and when little more than twenty years of
age was appointed composer at Covent Garden Theatre.
Here, in 1765, he produced his popular opera, Zhe
Maid of the Mill. In 1776 he transferred his services to
the Haymarket Theatre. . In 1783 he was made com-
poser to George III., and ten years later, organist in
Westminster Abbey, where, on his death in 1802, he
was interred.
ARNOLD, THOMAS, a clergyman of the Church of
England, was born at West Cowes, in the Isle of Wight,
on the 13th of June 1795. In 1807 he was moved to
Winchester, where he remained until 181 I, having
entered as a commoner, and afterwards become a scholar
of the college. In after life he retained a lively feeling
of interest in Winchester School, and remembered with
admiration and profit the regulative tact of Dr. Goddard,
and the preceptorial ability of Dr. Gabell, who were
successively headmasters during his stay there.
From Winchester he removed to Oxford in 1811,
where he became a scholar at Corpus Christi College;
in 1815 he was elected Fellow of Oriel College; and
there he continued to reside till 1819.
He left Oxford in 1819 and settled at Laleham, near
Staines, where he was occupied chiefly in superintending
the studies of seven or eight young men who were pre-
paring for the university. His spare time was devoted
to the prosecution of studies in philology and history,
more particularly to the study of Thucydides, and of the
new light which had been cast upon Roman history and
upon historical method in general by the researches of
Niebuhr.
After nine years spent at Laleham, he was induced to
offer himself as a candidate for the head-mastership of
Rugby, which had become vacant ; and though he
entered somewhat late upon the contest, and though
none of the electors were personally known to him, he
was nevertheless successful. He was elected in Decem-
ber 1827; in June 1828 he received priest's orders; in
April and November of the same year he took his
degrees of B.D. and D.D., and in August entered on
his new office.
In one of the testimonials which accompanied his
application to the trustees of Rugby, the writer stated
it as his conviction, that “if Mr. Arnold were elected,
he would change the face of education all through the
public schools of England.”
Rugby was privileged to enjoy his superintendence for
nearly fourteen years.
In 1841 Dr. Arnold received from Lord Melbourne,
then prime minister, the offer of the chair of modern
history at Oxford, an offer which he accepted with
34 A
530
A R N — A R R
peculiar satisfaction. On the duties of this new office he
entered on 2d December 1841, by delivering his inaugural
lecture, amidst circumstances which he felt to be pecul-
iarly gratifying and flattering. Seven other lectures were
delivered dering the first three weeks of the Lent term
of 1842; the whole have been published since his death.
A few months after the delivery of his lectures,
Arnold was suddenly removed from his earthly duties
and anticipated enjoyments by an attack of angina
pectoris. The midsummer vacation had arrived, and he
was preparing to set out with his family to Fox. How, a
favorite retreat, where he had purchased some property
and built a house, in Westmoreland. After a busy day
spent in various duties, he retired to rest apparently in
perfect health. Between five and six next morning he
awoke in severe pain. All attempts to arrest the fatal
malady proved fruitless. He bore with heroic fortitude
and Christian resignation his sufferings, until eight
o'clock, when he expired. The day on which he died
was Sunday, the 12th of June 1842.
ARNOTT, NEIL, M.D., F.R.S., a distinguished
physician and physicist, was born at Arbroath, 15th May
1788. In 1801 he entered Marischal college, where he
took special interest in the natural philosophy subjects,
taught at that time by Professor Copland, a skillful ex-
perimenter. There his natural bent to physical science
was greatly strengthened. He studied medicine first at
Aberdeen, and subsequently under Sir Everard Home,
through whom he obtained, while yet in his nineteenth
year, the appointment of full surgeon to an East India-
man. After making two voyages to China he settled in
1811 to practice in London, and speedily acquired high
reputation in his profession. Within a few years .
was made physician to the French and Spanish embas-
sies. . In 1836 he was appointed a member of the Sen-
ate of the new university of London, and became a fel-
low of the Royal and Geological Societies. In 1837 he
was made a physician extraordinary to the Queen.
From his earliest youth Arnott had an intense love of
natural philosophy, constantly using illustrations and
applications of its principles. To this liking was added
an inventiveness which served him in good stead in his
profession, and to which we owe the “Arnott water-
bed,” the “Arnott ventilator,” the “Arnott stove,” &c.,
all of which, with characteristic philanthropy, he re.
frained from patenting. He was the author of several
works bearing on physical science or its applications.
He died in London, 2d March 1874.
ARNOTTO, or ANNATTO, is a dyeing material pro-
duced from the seeds of Bixa Orellana, a small tree
which grows in Central and South America. The seeds
are surrounded with a thin coating of a waxy pulp,
which is separated from them by washing in water,
passing the liquid through a sieve, and allowing the
suspended pulp to deposit. The water is then drained
away and the paste dried, till it is a thick, stiff, unctuous
mass. In this state it has a dark, orange-red color, and
is known as “roll" or “flag” arnotto, according to
the form in which it is put up, but when further dried
it is called “cake” arnotto. Arnotto is much used by
South American Indians for painting their bodies;
among civilised communities its principal use is for col-
oring butter, cheese, and varnishes.
ARNSBERG, a city of Westphalia, in Prussia, the
chief town of a government and circle of the same
name. It is situated on an eminence almost surrounded
by the River Ruhr, 44 miles S.E. of Munster, and 58
miles E.N.E. of Dusseldorf.
AROK-SZALLAS, a privileged market-town in Hun-
gary, on the Gyöngyös, 44 miles N. N.E. of Pesth, with
a population of Io,400, largely engaged in the transit
trade to Upper Hungary.
ARONA, a town in the province of Novara, near the
southern extremity of Lago Maggiore.
ARPINO, a town on the River Garigliano (Liris),
in the province of Caserta, in Italy, with a population
of Io,000, engaged in the manufacture of woollen cloth,
parchment, paper, &c. *
ARQUA, a little Italian town, about 13 miles S.W.
of Padua, with a population of 11oo, chiefly known for
that connection with Petrarch which has been so finely
commemorated in Byron's lines— — *
“They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died.”
ARQUES, a French village in the department of
Seine-Inférieure, noteworthy for its castle, founded by
William, the uncle of the Conqueror, which was the
scene of several remarkable sieges, and gave name to
the battle of 1589 in which Henry IV. of France de-
feated the duke of Mayenne and the Leaguers.
ARRACK, a name derived from the Arabic arać
(perspiration), and applied to a spirituous liquor dis-
tilled in India, Ceylon, and Java, and generally con-
sumed in Eastern countries. In Ceylon arrack is dis-
tilled from the fermented juice called toddy, drawn from
the unexpanded flower-spathes of various palms, chiefly
the Palmyra palm and the cocoa palm. On the Indian
continent a kind of arrack is made from the flowers of
the Muohwa tree, besides that derived from palm toddy;
and a large quantity of a nauseous and unpalatable spirit
is distilled from rice, which goes by the name of rice ar-
rack.
ARRAIGNMENT (from arraigner, to call to ac-
count), a law term, properly denoting the calling of a
person to answer in form of law upon an indictment.
After a true bill has been found against a prisoner by
the grand jury, he is called by name to the bar, the
indictment is read over to him, and he is asked whether
he be guilty or not of the offence charged. This is the
arraignment. His plea in answer to the charge is then
entered, or a plea of not guilty is entered for him if he
stands mute of malice and refuses to plead. If he pleads
guilty sentence may be passed forthwith ; if he pleads
not guilty, he is then given in charge to a jury of twelve
men to inquire into the truth of the indictment
ARRAN, an island on the west coast of Scotland,
near the mouth of the river Clyde, which forms part of
the county of Bute. It is about 20 miles in length, by
from 8 to II in breadth, and contains a superficial area
of 165 Square miles, or IoS,814 acres, of which about
14,431 are cultivated. Game is abundant, consisting of
blackcock and grouse. A few red deer and a number of
wild goats still find shelter among the mountains.
The geology of the island is an epitome of that of
Scotland. The mountains of the north, especially Goat-
fell, consist of granite, surrounded on the flanks by
micaceous and argilaceous slates; lying on the edges of
the slate are well seen red sandstone and conglomerate,
especially on the eastern shores, but easily traceable
across the island. On the eastern side limestone, con-
taining Carboniferous fossils, is found at several points
intercalated among the red sandstones chiefly at Corrie,
where several strata divided by shale are quarried. In
the southern part of the island the stratified formations
are overlain by a great series of trap-rocks. Several
beds of coal were formerly worked on the northeast
coast This coal lies low down in the Carboniferous
series, at the base of the Carboniferous limestone, or in
the “calciferous sandstones.” Numerous veins of most
beautiful pitchstone and pitchstone-porphyry traverse
the red sandstone, especially at Drimadoon and between
Brodick and Lamlash. On the mountains are found
jasper, agates, cairngorms, and smaller clear specimens of
rock-crystal, called the Arran diamond.
A R R
53 I
ARRAS (the Memetacum of the Romans), a fortified
city of France, chief town of the department of Pas de
Calais, and formerly capital of the province of Artois.
Its name, otherwise Atrecht, is, like Artois, a corrup-
tion of the name of the Atrebates. It is situated on both
-sides of the Scarpe, where, the river receives the Crin-
chon, 32 miles N. E. of Amiens, and IOO miles N. N.E.
of Paris. The town is well built and adorned with
many handsome edifices, such as the town-house, a
beautiful building, dating from 15 Io; the cathedral
(1833), on the site of the older Gothic, which was de-
stroyed in the Revolution; the citadel, erected by Vau-
ban, who first employed his lunettes in the defences of
the town ; an arsenal, barracks, theatre, &c. It is the
seat of a bishop, and of a court of assize; and has a royal
society, a college, a diocesan seminary, an institution for
the deaf and dumb, and schools of design and belles let-
tres, as well as a public library of upwards of 40,000
volumes, a picture gallery, museum, and botanical gar-
den. Its chief manufactures are lace, woollens, hosiery,
beet-root sugar, salt, soap, and earthenware ; and there
is a large general trade in wine, oil, grain, &c. It was
at one time so celebrated for its tapestry that in English
its name became identified with the manufacture. The
River Scarpe is navigable up to the town. Population
in 1872, 27,329.
Arras was the chief town of the Atrebates as early as
the time of Caesar, and some remains of the Roman
town, such as a temple of Jupiter, have been found. In
407 it was destroyed by the Vandals, and by the Nor-
mans in 880. It gives name to a treaty concluded in
I414 between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, to an-
other between Philip the Good of Burgundy and Charles
VII. of France in 1435, and to a third, in 1482, be-
:tween Maximilian of Austria and Louis XI. of France,
by which Burgundy and Artois were given to the Dau-
phin as a marriage portion. In 1493 it came again into
the possession of Maximilian; and in 1578 it was held
by the prince of Orange. In 1640 troops of Louis XIII.
took Arras; and by the peace of Pyrenees, in 1659,
France was confirmed in the possession of the town.
AR REST (from the French arrester, arréter, to stop
, or stay) is the restraint of a man’s person, for the pur-
pose of compelling him to be obedient to the law, and
is defined to be the execution of the command of some
court of record or officer of justice. In the United
States, except in rare instances, there is no arrest in civil
cases. In criminal cases there are no persons privileged
from arrest if the charge be felony. In misdemeanors,
legislators, during the session of the legislature, are in
most States exempt from arrest, as are also public officials
while in the discharge of duty. In most States no arrest
can be effected without a warrant, unless an officer of the
law seize the criminal in flagrante delictz. A reasonable
ground for suspicion will save an officer from action for
false imprisonment.
The following is the English law on the subject:
I. In Civil Cases.—The arrest must be by virtue of
-a precept or order out of some court, and must be
effected by corporal seizing or touching the defendant's
body, or as directed by the writ, capias et attachias, take
and catch hold of. And if the defendant make his
escape it is a rescous, or rescue, and attachment may be
had against him, and the bailiff may then justify the
breaking open of the house in which he is, to carry him
3.W2.W.
#. following persons are privileged from arrest, viz.,
1st, Members of the Royal Family and the ordinary
servants of the king or queen regnant, chaplains, lords
of the bedchamber, &c. This privilege does not extend
to servants of a queen consort or dowager. 2d, Peers of
the realm, peeresses by birth, creation, or marriage,
Scotch and Irish peers and peeresses. 3d, Members of
the House of Commons during the session of Parlia-
ment, and for a convenient time (forty days) before and
after it. Members of Convocation appear to have the
same privilege. 4th, Foreign ambassadors and their
“domestics and domestic servants.” Temporary privil-
ege from arrest is enjoyed by barristers traveling on
circuit, by parties, witnesses, or attorneys connected
with a cause, and by clergymen whilst performing divine
Servl Ce.
The arrest of any privileged person is irregular ab
initio, and the party may be discharged on motion.
The only exception is as to indictable crimes, such as
“treason, felony, and breach of the peace.”
Except in cases of treason, felony, or breach of the
peace, an arrest cannot be made on a Sunday, and if
made it is void; but it may be made in the night as well
as in the day.
II. In Criminal Cases.—All persons whatsoever are,
without distinction, equally liable to this arrest, and any
man may arrest without warrant or precept, and outer
doors may be broken open for that purpose. The arrest
may be made,- Ist, by warrant; 2d, by an officer with-
out warrant; 3d, by a private person without warrant;
Or, 4th, by a hue and cry.
I. Warrants are ordinarily granted by justices of the
peace on information or complaint in writing and upon
oath, and they must be indorsed when it is intended
they should be executed in another county (see II and
12 Vict. c. 42). They are also granted in cases of
treason or other offence affecting the Government by the
Privy Council, or one of the secretaries of state, and
also by the chief or other justice of the court of Queen's
bench in cases of felony, misdemeanor, or indictment
found, or criminal information granted in that court.
Every warrant ought to specify the offence charged, the
authority under which the arrest is to be made, the per-
son who is to execute it, and the person who is to be
arrested. -
2. The officers who may arrest without warrant are,
justices of the peace, for felony or breach of the peace
committed in their presence; the sheriff and the coroner
in their county, for felony; constables, for treason,
felony, or breach of the peace committed in their view,-
and within the metropolitan police district they have
even larger powers; and watchmen from sunset to
sunrise.
3. A private person is bound to arrest for a felony
committed in his presence, under penalty of fine and
imprisonment.
4. The arrest by hue and cry is where officers and
private persons are concerned in pursuing felons, or
such as have dangerously wounded others.
The remedy for a wrongful arrest is by an action for
false imprisonment.
ARREST OF JUDGMENT is the assigning just reason
why judgment should not pass, notwithstanding verdict
given, either in civil or in criminal cases, and from in-
trinsic causes arising on the face of the record.
ARRESTMENT, in Scottish Æazy, denotes that
process by which a creditor detains the goods or effects
of his debtor in the hands of the third parties till the
debt due to him shall be paid. It is divided into two
kinds,- Ist, Arrestment in security, used when pro-
ceedings are commencing, or in other circumstances
where a claim may become, but is not yet, enforceable;
and 2nd, Arrestment in execution, following on the
decree of a court, or on a registered document, under a
clause or statutory power of registration, according to
the custom of Scotland. By the process of arrestment
the property covered by it is merely retained in its place;
to realise it for the satisfaction of the creditor's claim
532
A R R — A R S
a farther proceeding called “Forthcoming” is neces-
sary. By old practice, alimentary funds, or those
necessary for subsistance, were not liable to arrestment.
By 33 and 34 Vict. c. 63, the wages of all laborers,
farm-servants, manuſacturers, artificers, and work-
people, are not arrestable except (1) in so far as they
exceed 2Cs. per week; but the expense of the arrest-
ment is not to be charged against the debtor unless the
sum recovered exceed the amount of the said expense;
or (2) under decrees for alimentary allowances and pay-
ments, or for rates and taxes imposed by law.
ARRIA, the wife of Caecina Paetus, who, having been
engaged in the 20mspiracy of Scribonianus against the
Emperor Claudius, 42 A.D., was condemned to death.
Arria, resolving not to survive her husband, stabbed
herself with a dagger, which she then handed to him
with the words, “Paetus, it does not pain me.” Her
daughter, also called Arria, was the wife of Thrasea;
and when he was condemned to death by Nero, she
would have imitated her mother's example, but was
dissuaded by her husband, who entreated her to live
for the sake of their children. She was sent into
banishment.
ARRIAN, a distinguished Greek historian and phil-
osopher, who lived in the time of the Emperors Had-
rian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. He was
a native of Nicomedia, born about the end of the
Ist century of our era, and was one of the most dis-
tinguished disciples of the famous Epictetus. In 124
A. D. he lived at Athens, where he made the acquaint-
ance of the Emperor Hadrian, who was so much struck
with his practical wisdom as to raise him to several
high offices; and under Antoninus he obtained even the
consulship. The only other event of his life of which
we know anything is, that he was appointed governor of
Cappadocia, and in that capacity distinguished himself
by the victory he gained over the Alani. Arrian proudly
disdained to give any information regarding himself;
and his life, written by Dion Cassius, is lost. History
and philosophy are greatly indebted to Arrian; for,
being a disciple of Epictetus, who himself did not write
any work, Arrian determined to be to him what Xeno-
phon had been to Socrates, and published his philoso-
hical lectures in eight books, of which only the first
alf is extant; but the portion which has come down to
us gives us a most exalted view of the ethical philosophy
of Epictetus and the Stoics generally.
ARROW ROOT. A large proportion of the edible
starches obtained from the rhizomes or root-stocks of
various plants are known in commerce under the name
of arrowroot. Properly the name should be restricted to
the starch yielded by two or three species of Maramta,
the chief of which is M. arundinacea, and when genuine
or West Indian arrowroot is spoken of, it is understood
that this is the variety meant. A/aranta arundinacea
is originally a native of the American continent, but it
has long been cultivated in the West Indian Islands, and
it has now spread to most tropical countries. The
plant produces a scaly, white, tuberous rhizome, and it
is at the period when this organ is gorged with starch-
cells, immediately before the season of rest, that it is
rºpe for use. In addition to about 25 percent. of starch,
the fresh roots contain a proportion of woody tissue,
, vegetable albumen, and various salts. The arrowroot
may be separated on a small scale in the same manner as
potato-starch is frequently prepared, that is, by peeling
the root and grating it in water, when the starch falls to
the bottom. The liquor is then drained off, and the
starch purified by repeated washings till it is ready for
drying. On a large scale the manufacture of arrowroot
is conducted with specially prepared machinery. The
rhizomes when dug up are washed free of earthy im-
purities and afterwards skinned.
“The fecula is subse-
sequently dried in drying-houses. In order to obtain
the fecula free from impurity, pure water must be used,
and great care and attention paid in every step of the
process. The skinning or peeling of the tubers must be
performed with great nicety, as the cuticle contains a.
resinous matter which imparts color and a disagreeable
flavor to the starch. German-silver palettes are used for
skimming the deposited fecula, and shovels of the
same metal for packing the dried fecula. The drying is
effected in pans, covered with white gauze to exclud
dust and insects.” -
Arrowroot is distinguished by the granules agglomer-
ating into small balls, by slightly crepitating when rubbed
between the fingers, and by yielding with boiling water
a fine, transparent, inodorous, and pleasant-tasted jelly.
In microscopic structure the granules present, an ovoid
form, marked with concentric lines very similar to po-
tato-starch, but readily distinguished by having a “hilum.”
marking at the thick extremity of the granule, while in
potato-starch the same appearance occurs at the thin
end.
ARROWSMITH, the name of a family of geogra-
phers. The first of them, Aaron Arrowsmith, was born
in 1750 at Winston in Durham. When about twenty
years of age he came to London, and was employed by
Cary, the engraver. In 1790 he made himself famous by
his large chart of the world on Mercator’s projection.
Four years later he published another large map of the
world on the globular projection, with a companion vol-
ume of explanation. The maps of North America and
Scotland are the most celebrated of his many later pro-
ductions. He died in 1823, leaving two Sons, Aaron.
and Samuel, the elder of whom was the compiler of the
From Comparative Atlas, of a Biblical atlas, and of
various manuals of geography. John Arrowsmith,
nephew of the elder Aaron, was born at Winston, in
1790, and in 1810 joined his uncle in London. In 1834.
he published his Zondon Atlas, the best set of maps then
in existence. He followed up the atlas with a long series
of elaborate and carefully executed maps, those of Aus-
tralia, America, Africa, and India being especially valu-
able. In 1862 he received the gold medal of the Royal
Geographical Society, of which body he was one of the
founders. He died 2d May 1873.
ARSACIDAE, the dynasty of Parthian kings, so called.
from the name of the founder, Arsaces. Very little is.
known of the circumstances attending the sudden rise of
the Parthian power, or of the leader under whom it was
effected. He is said by some to have been a Parthian.
noble, by others to have been a predatory Scythian
chief. But at all events, about 250 B.C., when the
Seleucid empire of Antiochus II. was distracted by an
Egyptian war and the successful rebellion of Bactria, the
Parthians, hitherto subject and almost unknown to his-
tory, revolted, established an º kingdom, and
made their leader, Arsaces, their first sovereign. He is
said to have been killed in battle, after a short reign of
three years, and the throne was then occupied by his
brother, Tiridates, who, like all succeeding sovereigns.
of Parthia, assumed the name Arsaces as a regal title.
The empire increased rapidly in extent and strength, and
for a time was the most formidable rival of the Roman.
power. Towards the close of the 2d century A.D. it had
fallen somewhat into decay, as is manifest from the suc-
cessful Roman invasions under Avidius Cassius and the
Emperor Severus; and it finally succumbed to the Per-
sians, who (224 A.D.) revolted under Artaxerxes, and
slew in battle Artabanus, the twenty-ninth and last of
the Arsacidae. See PARTHIA.
ARSAMASS, a town in Russia, in the government
of Nijni-Novgorod, at the confluence of two minor
A R S
533
tributaries of the Volga, the Arsha and Tesha. It has
thirty-four churches, three monasteries, several schools,
and various benevolent institutions. There are dye-
works, soap-factories, iron-works, and extensive tanne-
ries; and a large trade, stimulated by two annual fairs, is
carried on, more especially in sheep-skins and sail-cloth.
Population, Io,517.
ARSENAL (supposed to be derived from arx maza-
Zis, whence the Romaunt word arthenal, signifying
generally a “citadel,” though primarily it meant simply
a naval citadel), is an establishment for the construc-
tion, repair, receipt, storage, and issue of warlike
.Stores.
A first class arsenal, which can renew the material
and equipment of a large army must embrace a gun ſac-
tory, carriage factory, laboratory, and small arms am-
munition factory, small arms factory, harness, saddlery,
and tent factories, and a powder factory; in addition it
must possess great store-houses. In a second class arse-
nal the factories would be replaced by workshops. The
situation of an arsenal should be governed by strategi-
cal considerations. If of the first class, it should be
situated at the base of operations and supply; it must
be secure from attack, not too near a frontier, and
placed so as to draw in readily the resources of the
country. The defences of a large arsenal would be pro-
vided for by a chain of detached forts and an emceinte
of sufficient strength.
The great point in arranging stores is their proper
preservation and facility for issue. The branches of an
arsenal may be divided into A, Storekeeping; B, Con-
istruction; C, Administration. Under A we should
have the following departments and stores:—Depart-
ments of issue and receipt, pattern room, armory de-
partment, ordnance or park, harness, saddlery, and
accoutrements, camp equipment, tools and instruments,
engineer store, magazines, raw material store, timber
yard, breaking up store, unserviceable store. Under
B,-Gun factory, carrriage factory, laboratory, small
arms ſactory, harness and tent factory, powder factory,
&c. In a second-class arsenal there would be work-
shops instead of these factories. C.—Under the head
of administration would be classed the chief director of
the arsenal, the superintendents and assistant-superin-
tendents of the factories and branches of the arsenal.
Besides these, who would usually be artillery officers,
there would be required managers or foremen (civil and
1military), non-commissioned officers, artificers, work-
1men, and laborers. In addition a staff of clerks and
writers are necessary for all the office work of the es-
tablishment. In the manufacturing branches we should
want skill, and efficient and economical work, both ex-
ecutive and administrative; in the storekeeping part,
good arrangement, great care, thorough knowledge of
all warlike stores, both in their active and passive state,
and scrupulous exactness in the custody, issue, and re-
ceipt of stores.
In England the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, manu-
factures and stores the requirements of the army and
navy. Under the scheme of army localization now in
force, there are district-issuing stores for the troops for
camp equipage, field stores, and reserve ammunition.
The concentration of nearly all the English military
factories and stores at one place, Woolwich, has long
been considered an evil, and it has been proposed to
establish, at some central spot, a large military depôt
or arsenal, which should be complementary to Wool-
wich.
The United States depend largely on private industry
for war material, large trade factories existing for the
supply of small arms and guns. There were also
foundries at Reading, South Boston, and Providence
during the war; and arsenals of construction at Boston,
New York, Washington, Bridgeport, St. Louis, Alle-
ghany, Fort Monroe. These, however, have been
largely reduced.
É. most of the details of the French military organ-
isation, the system of the supply of war material is
somewhat unsettled. Previous to the war of 1870–71,
France possessed manufactories and arsenals for store
and construction. These were not, however, placed in
accordance with true strategical principles, or with
reference to the quick supply of the army. Thus the
camp equipment was mainly stored at Paris and Ver-
sailles, and carriages atº Vernon and Châteauroux.
Artillery officers and men were employed in the military
factories. It is understood that in future each territorial
district of the army will have its own arsenal or, at
least, its own depôt of military stores; but while
military factories are maintained, war material will also
be drawn from private industry.
The chief German arsenals are at Spandau, Cologne,
Dantzig. There are second class arsenals at Dresden,
Ludwigsburg, Carlsruhe, Augsburg, Munich, in the
confederated states, but the tendency is to reduce these;
and a considerable concentration has taken place at
Spandau, which now forms the great centre of the
military manufactories. In every artillery garrison and
fortress, there are artillery depôts for the storage of
material. The system of the German army is to make
regiments as independent as possible, and with their
depôt “work detachments” even re-equipment is per-
formed. Spandau embraces a gun and projectile
foundry, powder factory, laboratory, small arms
factory, and a large arsenal of construction. There
are also a powder factory at Neisse, small arms factories
at Erfurt and Dantzig, in addition to Krupp's great
factory at Essen, in Westphalia. It is said Krupp
employs good workmen, and that, so far as guns and
carriages are concerned, his factory can turn out three
to five field batteries daily. Artillery officers are largely
employed in Germany in all the work of the arsenals.
At Vienna are united in one enormous arsenal a gun-
carriage factory, laboratory, foundry, small arms factory,
&c. ... The arsenal can turn out 300,000 to 400,000 pro-
jectiles, 1400 guns, 960 field-carriages, and harness for
18oo carriages. There is also an artillery depôt in each
military district, besides laboratories, &c. Austria also
draws from the trade. She has an organized service,
called the Technical Artillery, for the performance of the
work connected with her factories and arsenals.
Russia has made considerable strides in the improve-
ment of her military manufactories within the last few
years. She possesses small arms factories at Tonla near
St. Petersburg, Sestroetz near Moscow, and at Ijewsk.
There are foundries at St. Petersburg and Olonetz. The
arsenal at St. Petersburg includes the foundry and other
military establishments. The arsenals of Briansk and
Kiev also contain military factories. Foundry establish-
ments for furnishing projectiles and guns also exist at
St. Petersburg, Alexandro-Olometz (government of Olo-
netz), Longane (government of Ekaterinoslav), Perm,
Ekaterinburg, Kamensk, Nijni-Isetsk, Werkhué-Tour-
nisk, Barentschin, Glatonstov, &c. There are imperial
powder factories at Ochta (near St. Petersburg), Schosta,
and Kasan. There are also mobile artillery arsenals,
the material of which is kept in time of peace at St.
Petersburg, Warsaw, Kiev.
Italy has small arms factories at Brescia, Torre-An-
nunziata, near Naples, and Turin ; powder factories at
Fossano and Scafati. Turin is the centre of the military
factories. *
Spain possesses an arsenal of construction at Seville, a
factory at Toledo, a foundry at Trubia, and a small arms
534
A R S — A R T
factory at Oviedo. There are also the powder factories
of Murcia and Grenada ; the laboratory of Seville; and
the factory of Orbaicete.
ARSENIC AND ITS COMPOUNDS. Although arsenic
was not recognised as a metallic element till the 18th
century, several of its compounds were known from re-
mote antiquity; and the name arsenicon was applied by
Dioscorides to the yellow sulphide of arsenic, orpiment,
on account of its very potent properties. To the present
day the term arsenic is more frequently applied to arsen-
ious acid (the white arsenic of commerce) than to the
metallic element to which it strictly applies. Although
not very abundant, arsenic is one of the most widely
disseminated of all metallic elements, few sulphur ores
being free from traces of it. Metallic arsenic is found
native in veins in metamorphic rocks in the mining dis-
tricts of Saxony and Bohemia, and other European
localities, at Zmeow in Siberia, and very abundantly in
silver mines at Chanarçillo in Chili. The ores em-
ployed in the metallurgy of arsenic are mispickel or
arsenical pyrites, smaltite, and cobaltite; the arsenic
in the case of the last two being a bye-product of the
preparation of cobalt and nickel.
Arsenic is a highly brittle metal of a steel-grey color,
and of no very great importance in the arts. It may be
prepared direct from arsemical pyrites by subliming in
closed retorts, but it is more commonly reduced with
powdered charcoal from arsenious acid. The physical
characteristics of the metal vary according to the mode
of its preparation; that produced directly from pyrites
being compact, crystalline, and nearly white, while the
metal reduced from arsenious acid is grey and pul-
verulent. It is chiefly used for mixing with lead in the
manufacture of small shot, the alloy dropping in rounder
form than pure lead, which produces tailed drops.
Arsenic is added to iron and steel for the manufacture of
chains and ornaments, the resulting combination taking
a very brilliant polish; and an alloy of copper and
arsenic produces a brittle grey metal of a brilliant silvery
hue, used in the manufacture of buttons. -
Arsenious acid, or more properly anhydride, the
arsenic or white arsenic of commerce, is the form in
which arsenic is chiefly produced in metallurgical opera-
tions.
White arsenic is one of the most violent of the acrid
poisons. Its toxicological relations, the tests for it, &c.,
will be treated of under MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE.
Arsenic acid is prepared from arsenious acid on the
manufacturing scale by oxidising with strong nitric acid.
It also is poisonous, but to a less degree than arsenious
acid; and it is noticed that people employed about it
become very fat, without any injury to health being
apparent. -
Two sulphur compounds of arsenic—realgar and
orpiment—are also of industrial importance. Realgar,
or ruby sulphur, is the disulphide of arsenic; and in its
native form it was known to the ancients. It is pre-
ared usually from arsenious acid by mixing and melt-
ing it with the required proportion of sulphur. It is
used only to a limited extent as a pigment, and is a
constituent of the Indian white fire used in fire signals
and pyrotechny. Orpiment (aztripigmentum ), the
yellow sulphide of arsenic, occurs native in many lo-
calities. It is, like realgar, artificially prepared by mix-
ing arsenious acid with the requisite quantity of sulphur,
and subliming the mixture.
ARSON has been defined as the malicious and wilful
burning of the house of another, and is at common law
an offence of the degree of felony. Some part of the
house must be actually burnt; a bare intention or at-
tempt will not constitute the offence, but the burning
of any part, however trifling, is sufficient. The burn-
ing must be malicious and wilful. If a man by wilfully
setting fire to his own house burn the house of his.
neighbor also, it will be felony. The word house, in
the definition of the offence at common law, extends
not only to dwelling-houses, “but to all out-houses
which are parcel thereof, though not adjoining thereto.”
Barns, with corn and hay in them, though distant from
a house, are within the definition. -
ART, in the most extended and most popular sense:
of the word, means everything which we distinguish
from Nature. Art and Nature are the two most com-
prehensive genera of which the human mind has formed
the conception. Under the genus Nature, or the
genus Art, we include all the phenomena of the
universe. But as our conception of Nature is indeter-
minate and variable, so in some degree is our conception
of Art. Nor does such ambiguity arise only because
some modes of thought refer a greater number of the
phenomena of the universe to the genus Nature, and
others a greater number to the genus Art. It arises
also because we do not strictly limit the one genus by
the other. The range of the phenomena to which we
point when we say Art, is never very exactly determined
by the range of the other phenomena which at the same-
time we tacitly reſer to the order of Nature. Every-
body understands the general meaning of a phrase like
Pope’s “Blest with each grace of nature and of art.
In such phrases we intend to designate familiarly as
Nature all which exists independently of our study,
forethought, and exertion—in other words, those
phenomena in ourselves or the world which we do not
originate but find; and we intend to designate familiarly
as Art, all which we do not find but originate—or in other
words, the phenomena which we do add by study, fore-
thought, and exertion to those existing independently of
us. But we do not use these designations consistently.
Sometimes we draw an arbitrary line in the action of
individuals and societies, and say, Here Nature ends and
Art begins—such a law, such a practice, such an
industry even is natural, and such an other is artificial;
calling those natural which happen spontaneously and
without much reflection, and the others artificial. But
this line different observers draw at different places.
Sometimes we adopt views which waive the distinction
altogether. One such view is that wherein all phenomena.
are regarded as equally natural, and the idea of Nature.
is extended so as to include “all the powers existing in
either the outer or the inner world, and everything
which exists by means of those powers.” In this view
Art becomes a part of Nature.
ART AND PART, a term used in Scottish Law to.
denote the aiding or abetting in the perpetration of a
crime, the being an accessory before or at the perpe-
tration of the crime. There is no such offence recog-
mised in Scotland as that of being an accessory after
the fact.
ARTA, a town of Albania, in the eyalet of Joan-
nina, deriving its present designation from a corruption
of the name of the river Arachthus on which it stands.
It is a place of some six or seven thousand inhabitants,
who are mostly Greek.
ARTA (Arachthus), a river of Albania, which rises.
partly in Mount Lakmon, and partly in the heights be-,
tween Lingon and Mitzekeli, flows south for upwards of
forty miles along the eastern side of the Kilberini
Mountains, and falls into the Gulf of Arta.
ARTA, GULF OF, the Sizzus Ambracius of the
ancients, is a large and beautiful inlet of the Ionian Sea,
twenty-five miles long and ten broad, the northern
shores of which belong to Turkey, and the southern and
eastern to Greece.
ARTAXERXES, a royal Persian name, borne first
A R T
535
by several of the kings of the Achaemenian dynasty of
the Persian empire, and found also in the later Sassan-
ian dynasty. The original and native form of the name,
as ascertained from the cuneiform inscriptions of ancient
Persia, is Artak/shatra. The Hebrew transcript, oc-
curring with slight differences of spelling in different pas-
sages of the Old Testament, is Artaž/s/asſa — the
Assyrian, Sartak/s/atra — the Scythic, Irtaksassa, –
all closely answering to the original. The Greek
Artaxerxes from which the English form is taken, is less
correct, and is misleading through the assimilation of
the latter part of the name to the other royal name
Xerxes, with which the word before us has etymolog-
ically no connection. In later times the name assumes
the slightly modified forms of Artachs/ie/r and Ardeshir.
It will be convenient first to mention the Achaemenian
kings thus designated in the Greek historians and the
Old Persian inscriptions, and then consider the questions
connected with the identification of these with the kings
of this name occurring in Scripture.
I. Artaxerxes, surnamed Longimanus (by Persian
authors, Diraz-dest), the long-handed, so called, says
Plutarch, because his right hand was longer than his
left, or perhaps the long-armed, was the son of the
famous Xerxes, the invader of Greece, and succeeded
his father in 465 B.C. According to Josephus he was
originally galled Cyrus. His reign was marked by the
revolt yEgypt under Inarus, in which the Athenians
were abettors of the Egyptians, and which was quelled
by the Persian general Megabyzus, in 455 B.C.; and by
the ratification of the peace of Callias with Athens in
449 B.C. Of the architectural and inscribed remains of
the ancient Persian empire very little is recognizable as
due to this king. He is recorded in an inscription by
his grandson, the next Artaxerxes, as the repairer (?) of
the palace, at Susa. . There is extant a fragmentary
inscription in old Persian, with an Assyrian translation,
which seems to have proceeded from him; and a legend
upon a vase at Venice, of Egyptian origin, which reads
“Artaxerxes the great king,” may with considerable
assurance be also referred to this monarch. Artaxerxes
died in 425 B.C. after a reign of forty years.
2. The next sovereign that falls to be noticed here
was the grandson of the preceding, and the son of the
intermediate monarch, Darius Nothus. His original
and private name was Arsaces, and he assumed that of
* Artaxerxes on ascending the throne. The date of his
accession is 405 B.C. It is this Artaxerxes, commonly
surnamed Mnemon, from the retentiveness of his
memory, whose reign was distinguished by the attempt
of his brother, the younger Cyrus, to gain possession of
the crown, and by the victory of Cunaxa, 401 B.C., the
death of Cyrus, and the retreat of the ten thousand
Greeks, immortalized by Xenophon.
3. This sovereign was succeeded by his son Ochus,
who, on securing the crown, took the same royal name,
and is usually known as Artaxerxes Ochus. The com-
mencement of his reign was marked by numerous
formidable revolts throughout the western provinces of
the empire, which, however, were vigorously repressed,
and after the re-subjugation of the revolted countries,
the power of the empire was advanced to an extent and
to an apparent stability unequalled since the time of the
great Darius. This Artaxerxes perished by poison in
338 B.C.
4. We find yet another instance in the classical writ-
ers of the use of Artaxerxes as a royal name during the
Achaemenian period. After Darius Codomannus, the
successor of Artaxerxes Ochus, had been finally and de-
cisively defeated by Alexănder at Arbela, he was, while
fleeing before the conqueror, traitorously slain by
Bessus, the satrap of Bactria, who thereupon, we are
told, “assumed the upright tiara and the royal robe, and
the name Artaxerxes instead of Bessus, proclaiming
himself king of Asia.”
Such are the Achaemenian kings known to the classi-
cal writers by the name Artaxerxes. But the name also
occurs in the Scriptural books of Ezra and Nehemiah,
as well as in some of the Apocryphal books, and in
Josephus; and it remains to be considered whether the
persons there referred to are to be identified with any
of the kings now mentioned, and if so, with whom? In
the book of Nehemiah, Artaxerxes, king of Persia, ap-
pears as the monarch to whom Nehemiah acted as cup-
bearer (i. 2), from whom he received a commission, in
the twentieth year of the king, to rebuild the wall and
other ruined edifices in Jerusalem (ii. 1), and whose
thirty-second year is also mentioned (v. 14, xiii. 6). In
attempting to identify this Artaxerxes with one of those
above named, our choice is at once limited by the
length of his reign to those surnamed Longimanus and
Mnemon. A sufficient proof that it is the former of
these who is meant, is found in the genealogy of Elias-
hib, the high priest when Nehemiah came to Jerusalem.
The name occurs again in an earlier part of the
same book, chapter iv. In verse 5 of that chapter
mention is made of efforts of the enemies of the
Jews to hinder the rebuilding of the temple, put forth
“all the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, even until the
reign of Darius, king of Persia.” Then in the two
succeeding verses Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes are speci-
fied as kings in whose reigns representations adverse to
the Jews were made at the court of Persia; and after
the detailed accounts of the second of these representa-
tions, and its success with Artaxerxes, it is said (ver.
24), “Then ceased the work of the house of God which
is at Jerusalem, So it ceased unto the second year of
Darius, king of Persia.” . The narrative has all the ap-
pearance of consecutive history, and the natural inter-
pretation obviously is that the two kings, Ahasuerus
and Artaxerxes, intervened between Cyrus and Darius.
It is true, mention is made in the memorial presented to
king Artaxerxes of the building of the city and the
walls, rather than of the temple, the rebuilding of which
was at the time the great enterprise of the returned ex-
iles; but this may be easily accounted for, from the
interest of the writers to make out the strongest possi-
ble case at the Persian court, , Besides, it is impossible
to believe that the city and its walls remained utterly
desolate as the Chaldeans had left them while the tem-
ple was being rebuilt. There is, indeed, express testi-
mony to the contrary. Notice is taken of the “ceiled
houses '' of Jerusalem at this period (Haggai i. 4).
eMention is also made of a “wall” of defence for its in-
habitants (Ezra ix. 9), and Josephus (Azzi. Pud., xi. 4,
4) records the “strong walls about the city” while the
temple was still unfinished. It has indeed been argued,
and that quite reasonably, that the wall mentioned in
Nehemiah i. 3, which was reported to Nehemiah as
“broken down,” is that to which reference is made in
the passages just cited from Ezra and Josephus, built by
the first colony of returned Jews, and not that destroyed
by the Chaldeans nearly a century and a half before (see
Kitto's Cyclopædia, article “Ahasuerus”). There seems,
therefore, to be nothing in the narrative to hinder the two
kings to whom it relates, and whom it places between
Cyrus and Darius, from being identified with the two
kings who did actually intervene between these mon-
archs, viz., Cambyses and the pseudo-Smerdis ; and
this is the view which is taken of the matter by the
great majority of interpreters. The difference in the
names, however, presents a difficulty which to not a
few has appeared insuperable, and from which escape
has been sought in various ways. Some, as Scaliger, Hot-
536
A R T
tinger, Mill, believing that Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes in
Ezra iv. 6, 7, means Xerxes and Artaxerxes Longimanus,
suppose also that Darius in chapters iv. 24, vi. 1, &c.,
means the successor of the latter, viz., Darius Nothus.
But the identification of the Darius with the well-known
Darius Hystaspes is sustained by so overwhelming evi-
dence (see DARIUS), that this opinion may be at once
and without hesitation rejected. Others, as Howes (see
Pictorial Bible on Ezra iv.), Biley (jour. Sac. Litera-
zure, July 1866), and many Germans,— as Kleinert,
Schultz, Hengstenberg, Auberlen, Vaihinger, Bertheau,
Reil, &c.,-believe that the paragraph, Ezra iv. 6-23,
forms an interpolation or episode, in which the chron-
icler has summed up the attempts of the adversaries of
Judah to hinder the building of the temple, as well as
what they did for the obstructing of the building of the
city under Xerxes and Artaxerxes, in order to bring to-
gether in a compendious way all their machinations
against the Jews (see Keil, ad loc.) It is impossible,
however, to reconcile this view satisfactorily with the
language of the narrative, especially of ver. 24, the
plain meaning of which is that the interruption in the
work of the house of God caused by the decree of the
king named Artaxerxes continued until, and hence was
previous to, the second year of king Darius. Some
German expositors, indeed, as Herzfeld (Gesch. d. Volkes
Asr I, 303), Merx, Schrader, &c., admit the irreconcila-
bility, and, believing that the two kings in question were
Xerxes and his son, maintain that the compiler of the
book of Ezra was guilty of a mistake in referring the
documents cited to the period preceding, instead to the
F. subsequent to, the reign of Darius. But, apart
rom all questions about inspiration, this must be con-
demned as an illegitimate procedure. Our only original
witness to the events connected with the return of the
Jewish exiles is the book of Ezra, and it is not permis-
sible to alter its testimony, or to set it aside as erro-
neous, because it presents some appearances of discrep-
ancy with what is otherwise ascertained. It is to be
added that the Apocryphal Ist Esdras, in the version
which it gives of the same events, refers them and the
king Artaxerxes to the period intervening between Cy-
rus and Darius (Esdras ii. I6–30, v. 72, 73), and that Jo-
sephus also in so far agrees that he assigns the events to
the same period, though making no mention of Artax-
erxes, and naming Cambyses as the king by whom the
work at Jerusalem was hindered (Ant. jud., xi. 2).
Retaining, therefore, the more common view, and
identifying the Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes of Ezra iv.
with Cambyses and the pseudo-Smerdis, it remains to be
considered if the difference in the names presents any in-
superable, or even any serious, objection. Confining thes
discussion to the subject of the present article (for the other
name see AHASUERUS), it has been already abundantly
evinced that Artaxerxes is a regal name, and was as-
sumed by all who are certainly known to have borne it,
in addition to their private and personal designation, on
their accession to the regal power. There is no difficulty
in supposing that the Magian Gomates, when in the absence
of Cambyses on his Egyptian expedition, he personated
Bardiya or Smerdis, the younger son of Cyrus, and
ausurped the throne; assumed also, like the later, usurper
Bessus, this as his official name, under which, of course,
the public decrees of his administration would be
couched, and which would naturally be most current
among those who, like the Jews, belonged to the for-
eign subjects of the Persian monarchy. (cf. Tyrwhitt,
Asther and. Ahasuerus, p. 333). Nor are we destitute
of express though somewhat obscure testimony, to the
fact. Two other names are found applied in the clas-
sical writers to the pseudo-Smerdis. He is called
Tanyoxares by Xenophon' (Cyrop., viii. 7) and by
Ctesias (Pers., 8–13), and Oropastes by Justin (i. 9).
The latter, as Ewald (Gesch. 7sraels, iv. p. I 18) sug-
gests, may well be supposed to be a corruption derived
from Ortosastes, which is an exact reproduction of the
Hebrew form of the name Artaxerxes (cf. the rendering
'Apſ)&Garoffa in the LXX., Ezra iv. 7, &c.) In regard
to this identification two additional and final remarks
are to be made: On the one hand, it is unreasonable to
allege, as Kiel and others do, by way of objection, that
the reign of the pseudo-Smerdis was too short (only
seven months) to allow of representations being made to
his court, and an answer returned in reference to affairs
at Jerusalem. It is to be taken into account that the
enemies of the Jews had begun their machinations in the
time of his predecessor, and their agents were doubtless
present in the Persian capital when the new king as-
cended the throne, ready to avail themselves of the new
opportunity. On the other hand, all that is known of
the policy of the usurper is in excellent harmony with
the part ascribed to him by the sacred writer. Belong-
ing to the Magian tribe, and ruling, probably, in the
interest of Median as opposed to Persian supremacy, he
naturally set himself to subvert the policy of Cyrus; and
we have expressed an indisputable testimony, in the ela-
borate inscription at Behistun engraved by the authority
of his successor Darius, that his procedure, especially
in regard to religious interests, was of the nature of
a revolution, which the son of Hystaspes glories in hav-
ing arrested and reversed (cf. Rawlinson's Anc. Mon-
archies, iv. p. 397).
In the Sassanian dynasty there are three royal per-
somages bearing the name now in question: — (I.) The
founder of the dynasty is called Artaxerxes, or Ardeshir,
surnamed Babegan, from the name of his father Babek.
He was probably tributary king of Persia, under the
Parthian rule, and he revolted against Artabanus, king
of Parthia, about 220 A.D. Artabanus was defeated
and slain in a great battle in the plain of Hormuz, and
Artaxerxes succeeded in establishing the ascendency of
Persia, and his own position as independent sovereign
in 226 A.D. (see Malcolm, op. cit. i. p. 89 ; Rawlinson,
Sixth Oriental Monarchy, p. 365, f.) (2.) Another
Artaxerxes, belonging to the dynasty of the Sassanides,
reigned for four years, 381-385 A.D.; and (3.) immedi-
ately before the Mahometan conquest, an infant prince
was raised to the throne by the same name, and mom-
inally occupied it for five months, 629 A.D. For fur-
ther details regarding these monarchs see PERSIA.
ARTEDI, PETER, an eminent naturalist, was born
in the province of Angermania, in Sweden, on the 22d
February 1705, and died the 27th September 1735.
ARTEMIDORUS, a native of Ephesus, flourished
during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. He called him-
self The Daldian, from Daldia, or Daldis, a small town
in Lydia, the birth-place of his mother, in order to
distinguish himself from Artemidorus, the geographer,
who was likewise a native of Ephesus. The work by
which he is known, the Interpretation of Dreams, is
said to have been written by command of Apollo Mystes,
who had granted to the author the power of divination.
ARTEMIS [DIANA], in Greek Mythology, twin
sister of Apollo, but born a day before him, as it was
said at Athens for the sake of explaining the fact of the
6th of each month being sacred to her, while the 7th
was his day. It might seem, too, that their mother,
Leto, had borne them in two different places, since the
birth-place of Apollo was Delos, while that of his sister
is called Ortygia. But the word Ortygia, meaning
strictly, a “haunt of swallows,” applies still to Delos,
and may well have been a synonym for that island.
Consistently with her relation to Apollo, she was con-
ceived as sharing his aspect and attributes, her occupa-
A R T
537
tions and even her beauty tending rather to what would
be appropriate for males. Both were endowed with
perpetual youth, and this, if it did not originally help to
suggest the idea of their being twins, is consistent with
a universal feeling as regards that relationship. Like
him she is armed with bow and arrows, which, jointly
with him, she used against offending mortals as in the
case of the Niobides, or of Laodamia, and the wife of
|Fétion, she slaying women — he, men.
ARTEMISIA, daughter of Lygdamis, succeeded her
husband in the kingdom of Halicarnassus, which was a
dependency of the Persian empire. She took part in
person in the expedition of Xerxes against the Greeks,
and fitted out five ships, with which she distinguished
herself in the sea-fight near Salamis, 480 B.C. When
closely pursued by the Athenians she escaped by the
stratagem of attacking one of the Persian vessels, where-
upon the Athenians concluded that she was an ally, and
gave up the pursuit. By her advice Xerxes did not
attempt another battle, but at once retired from Greece.
ARTEMISIA, the sister and wife of Mausolus, king
of Caria, immortalised herself by the honors which she
paid to the memory of her husband. She built for him,
in Halicarnassus, a very magnificent tomb, called the
Mausoleum, which was one of the seven wonders of the
world, and from which the name of Mausoleum was
afterwards given to all tombs remarkable for their gran-
deur; but she died of regret and sorrow before it was
finished. She died about 350 B.C.
ARTESIAN WELLS, the name applied to water-
springs rising above the surface of the ground by natural
hydrostatic pressure, on boring a small hole down
through a series of strata to a water-carrying bed
enclosed between two impervious layers. In Europe
this mode of well-boring was first practised in the French
province of Artois, whence the name Artesian is derived.
At Aire, in that province, there is a well from which the
water has continued steadily to flow to a height of 11
feet above the ground for more than a century; and there
is, within the old Carthusian convent at Lillers, another
which dates from the 12th century, and which still flows.
But unmistakable traces of much more ancient bored
springs appear in Lombardy, in Asia Minor, in Persia,
in China, in Egypt, in Algeria, and even in the great
desert of Sahara.
In ordinary wells the water does not rise, but remains
at the bottom of the trough dug for it in the soil, and
to raise it we must use special apparatus or pumps. In
Artesian wells, on the other hand, the water rises from
a considerable depth to the surface of the ground, and
usually spouts up to a greater or less height above it.
The theoretical explanation of the phenomenon is easily
understood.
The secondary and tertiary geological formations, such
as those underneath London and Paris, often present
the appearance of immense basins, the boundary or rim
of the basin having been formed by an upheaval of the
subjacent strata. In these formations it often happens
that a porous stratum, consisting of sand, sandstone,
chalk, or other calcareous matter, is included between
two impermeable layers of clay, so as to form a flat
porous U tube, continuous from side to side of the valley,
the outcrop on the surrounding hills forming the mouth
of the tube. The rain filtering down through the porous
layer to the bottom of the basin forms there a subter-
ranean pool, which with the liquid or semi-liquid column
pressing upon it constitutes a sort of huge natural hydros-
tatic bellows. Sometimes the pressure on the superin-
cumbent crust is so great as to cause an upheaval or dis-
turbance of the valley, and there can be little doubt
that many earthquakes, that are manifestly not of vol-
canic origin, are due to this simple cause.
It is obvious, then, that when a hole is bored down
through the upper impermeable layer to the surface of
the lake, the water will be forced up by the natural law
of water seeking its level, to a height above the surface
of the valley greater or less according to the elevation of
the level in the feeding column, thus forming a natural
fountain on precisely the same principle as that of most
artificial fountains, where the water supply comes from
a considerable height above the jet.
ARTEVELDE, JACOB vaN, a celebrated Flemish
popular leader in the 14th century, was a brewer in
Ghent. His enormous wealth, great eloquence, and
general talent for administration, easily made him the
most prominent and powerful man on the side of the
citizens in their struggle against the encroachments of
Count Louis of Flanders. The people of Ghent gave
him the command of their forces, and he banished from
the town all the nobles and adherents of the count. In
1335 he made a commercial treaty with Edward III. of
England, and with the aid of some English troops ex-
pelled Louis from Flanders. Ten years later, in 1345,
after having persuaded Edward to assume the title of
king of France, and induced the Flemings to support
the claim, he thought to cement the alliance by making
the Black Prince count of Flanders. This proposal was
badly received by a large body of the people of Ghent,
who were dissatisfied with their leader’s somewhat arbi-
trary government. A popular tumult broke out with
its usual impulsiveness, and Artevelde was slain.
ARTEVELDE, PHILIP VAN, son of the above,
lived in retirement till 1381. Some years before that
date enmity had again arisen between Count Louis of
Flanders and the somewhat turbulent citizens of Ghent,
who, under one Hyons, had expelled the count's adhe-
rents, plundered his house, and slain several of his offi-
cers. Hyons died in 1379, and in 1381 the citizens under
Peter van der Bosch (Dubois), were closely blockaded by
the count. . In this emergency Van der Bosch proposed
that theson of the great Arteveldeshould beinvited to take
the direction of affairs. Philip accepted, at once entered
on public life, and by Some strong measures secured his
power. The inhabitants of Bruges had at this time
allied themselves with the count, and Artevelde resolved
to punish them. He led out his forces quietly, and
utterly defeated the army of the count, who escaped with
difficulty. Bruges was plundered and submitted to Arte-
velde. Next year the French, taking up the cause of
Louis, invaded Flanders, and at Rosbecque completely
routed the forces of Ghent. . Many thousands were slain,
and among them Artevelde himself.
ARTHROPODA. The Aristotelian distinction of
Malacostraca, or Crustaceans, and Entoma, or Insects,
has been referred to by Agassiz as in reality more pre-
cise than Linnaeus's last classification (1766), in which
his Crustaceans form part of the Apterous group of
insects. But whereas the Greek naturalist recognised
the notchings which indicate annuli, somites, or body-
rings, in Coleoptera and the other groups to which the
class-name Insect, is now restricted, and in Worms,
under which he comprehended insect larvae, several true
Annelids, and intestinal worms (Scolecida); he failed to
appreciate this as a feature common to the Malacostraca
or Scleroderma, which he named on account of the
character of their integument. Linnaeus, on the other
hand, saw that annulation was the most prominent
common feature, and his /nsecta, therefore, were a good
natural group so long as embryology could throw no
light on the affinities of the Cirripeds and parasitic
Crustaceans — these two groups forming, together with
the intestinal worms, molluscs, zoophytes, and litho-
phytes, the class Vermes. Cuvier (1829) includes in the
third branch of his scheme, Animalia articulata,
©
538
A R T
Annelids, Crustaceans, Arachnids, and Insects (the
Myriapods being an order of this class). Latreille
(1796) proposed a scheme in which the orders of the
Insects (as now restricted) formed equivalent groups
with the Crustaceans, Arachnids, and Myriapods, which
now first appear as a distinct group, though still united
with a section of the Crustaceans. Latreiſle further, in
1801, recognized the Cirripeds as intermediate between
his Znsecta and the Molluscs. Lamarck gave the value
of classes to the Insects, the Arachnids (including therein
the 77.9/sanatra and Myriapoda), the Crustaceans, and
the Cirripeds. But he has no province answering to
the Cuvierian Articulata, since these orders are, with
Annelids, Conchifers (= Lamellibranchs), and Molluscs
( = Odontophora), members of the “sensitive animals,”
the Lernaeans and other parasitic Crustaceans being an
order of the Vermes, and therefore apathetic animals.
De Blainville, still relying chiefly on external form,
recognises four types in the sub-kingdom of the bilateral
animal: – (Artioniorpha or Artiozoaria), of which the
first is Osteozoaria (Vertebrates). The second, AEnto-
zlozoaria (Articulates), includes: Class I. HEXA-
PODA, Znsecta proprie sic dicta; 2. Octopod A, Arach-
zeida. 3. DECAPODA, Crustacea decapoda and Zimulus;
4: HETEROPODA, Squilla, Zntoniostraca, AEpizoa; 5.
TETRADECAPODA, Amphipoda and Zsopoda; 6. MyRIA-
PODA ; 7. CHAETOPODA, Amnelides; 8. APODA, Aſirudo,
Cestoidea, X4scaris. The third type, Malentozoaria, is
intermediate between the Articulates and Molluscs, and
embraces, two classes ; AVematopoda, Cirripeds; and
A olyplaxiphora, the Chitons. The classification of
which this forms a part is a compromise between
the method of Cuvier, based on the recognition of
distinct plans, and that of Ehrenberg, who sketched
each group as departing from the common plan of
the animal kingdom, only by excess of development
in one or other direction. The Articulata, viz.,
Zºzsecta, Arachnoidea, Crustacea (the Cirripeds and
Epizoa being included), Annulata, and Somalotoma
(the two latter making up all that are now known as
Annelids), he distinguished from Molluscs by the isola-
tion of their ganglia and their succession, those of the
Molluscs being dispersed. Owen's Homogangliata, as
equivalent to Articulata, is the expression of the same
difference: his Znsecta embrace two sub-orders, Myria-
£oda and Æexapoda, and the Annellata are placed
between the Epizoa and Cirripeds. Milne-Edwards
(1855) divides the AEzztomozoaria or Annellata into two
groups, (I.). Arthropoda, including Insects, Myria-
pods, Arachnids, and Crustaceans; and (2.) Vermes,
including Amnelids, Helminths, Turbellarians, Cestodes,
and Rotifers. Siebold and Stannius (1845) made the
Arthropods a primary division co-ordinate with Vermes,
and united the Myriapods with the Crustaceans.
Leuckart’s Arthropoda comprise two classes,— Crus-
tacea and /resecta, the latter combining the orders,
A4Vriapoda, Arachnida, and Hexapoda. Fitzinger's
47throzoa, or eminently motor animals, Crustaceans,
Arachnoids, and Insects, contrast with the ZXermatozoa
or Molluscs, which are eminently sensitive. Von Baer's
Articulata correspond to the Cuvierian group under
the same designation, and like it represent a type of
organisation, the longitudinal or bilaterally symmetrical,
the organs being arranged with reference to the axial
alimentary canal. The embryological system of Van
Beneden (1855) rests upon the position of the vitellus
relatively to the surface of the embryo, the Articulates
being designated by him Apicotyledones or Æðivite//iams,
the vitellus being received into the embryo on the dorsal
or upper surface, while the vertebrates receive the
yelk on the ventral or lower surface, and are there-
fore Hypocotyledones or Ajſpovitellians. As will be
pointed out afterwards, this nomenclature is un-
fortunate, since the surfaces thus contrasted are
identical, both being the haemal aspects of the body.
It may further be remarked that the term Articulata.
is manifestly one which should be abandoned, since
it is made to represent very different things, being
used by Cuvier, Ehrenberg, and Owen to include the
Annelids,--by Van Beneden, Vogt, and some more re-
cent writers, to their exclusion. Neither is Art/trozoa,
the Greek equivalent of Articulata, more commendable,
Burmeister and Fitzinger using it with the same difference.
But Arthropoda has varied only in the rank assigned to it,
not in the area it represents; thus Milne-Edwards makes
it a sub-division of the Azzzze/Zara; Van Beneden, Sie-
bold and Stannius, and Leuckart, a primary division of
the animal kingdom. But as a general designation for
those animals which are made up of nearly equivalent
somatomes or somites is needed, Macleay's term Azzzzzz-
Aosa is, perhaps, the best, since it has never been used
for two incommensurate groups. Leach, and later
(1825) Latreille, proposed Condylopoda as the name of
the group for which Arthropoda was aſterwards devised.
Custoni has overborne the rule of priority, and the latter
is now the more common name. The classifications
hitherto mentioned rest solely on an anatomical basis,
those of Von Baer and Van Beneden dealing only with
the observed facts of development. Haeckel, applying
all that was known of embryology to the construction
of the pedigree of the groups, made (1866) the Articulata
one of the five great trunks of the genealogical tree.
The Articulate phylum embraced the Infusoria and in-
testinal worms, as well as the Annelids, along with the
Arthropoda as restricted above. The Arthropoda ſur-
ther formed two groups: — Carides, the branchiate
Arthropods or Crustaceans; and 7%racheata, the Arach-
mids, Myriapods, and Insects, which breathe by tracheae.
The term Articulate disappears from Haeckel's latest
classification, in which a redistribution of the phyla is
set forth. From assumed ancestors destitute of body-
cavity (Acarlomi) descend those Vermes with body-cavity,
of whose plan Echizuodermata, Arthropodo, Mollusca,
and Vertebrata show special modifications. In 1870
Gegenbaur gave a general table, in which the Vermes
included 7unicata and Azamulata. The former led to-
wards the Mollusca, the latter was the starting point of
Arthropoda, Vertebrata, and Echinodermata ; of the
Arthropods there are four classes, Crustaceans, Arach-
nids, Myriapods, and Insects. Amidst all the varying
opinions as to the value of the group, the importance of
the limb-structure has been recognised since Latreille
dwelt upon the articulations by which the parts of these
appendages are connected.
The Arthropoda agree in the characteristic already
mentioned, the articulations of their limbs, whence the
class-name is derived. The body presents various
degrees of complexity. In the caterpillar, the metamera,
sozºites, somatomies, or annuli, owe their mobility to
differences in thickness of the integument. In the
Myriapods the numerous similar somites are flexed on
each other by the overlap of the chitin-thickened por-
tions of cuticle which protect the upper and lower
surface of each division. The somites are more or less
effaced in the abdomen of insects and spiders; head and
thorax in crabs and spiders have their composite origin
concealed. But the external signs of division of the
body no longer correspond, as in Annelids, to the dis-
tribution of the internal organs, which, with a partial
exception in the case of the nervous system, are now
unities contributing to the well-being of the whole.
Homonomy, the absence of segmentation, or the
equivalence of the divisions of the body, among
the Annelids, has been contrasted with the heter-
A R T
539
*
onomy, or segmentation of the arthropod body. The
difference, however, is only one of degree, since both
the cephalic and caudal extremities, at least of the
higher Amnelids, are true segments, i. e., fused somites
which, in addition to fusion, have undergone some
amount of specialisation. In the four classes of Arthro-
pods the head is a constant segment. It consists of
prae-Oral and post-oral somites, the ganglia of which are
represented by the supra- and sub-oesophageal masses.
The number of somites, as represented by appendages,
is not the same in the four classes, and as the variation
affects the prae-oral appendages supplied from the supra-
oesophageal ganglion the difference is of great impor-
tance.
ARTHUR, or ARTUs, a hero of the Welsh Tales,
the Chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Rom-
ances of the Round Table. His exploits, even the most
fabulous, passed with historians, before the days of his-
torical criticism; subsequently a reaction led to the figure
of Arthur being regarded as nothing but a Celtic myth.
The truth, so far as it is possible to arrive at it, lies be-
tween these two extremes. There was a real Arthur,
one of the last Celtic chiefs in Great Britiain; but there
is no single trait of his real character and exploits which
legends, working according to laws to be presently dis-
cussed, have not remodelled and transfigured or disfig-
ured; while the scarcity of documents makes it impossible
to construct a coherent historical picture. Thus the
work of comparison between the historical and the leg-
endary personages, such as has been performed for
Charlemagne by M.M. Gaston Paris and Léon Gautier,
is impossible in the case of Arthur. We can only study
the legend and analyse its elements.
There is an error, not so popular as it once was, which
supposes that myths and legends are arbitrary creations,
and does not recognise them as having an origin in reg-
ular causes, and therefore a rational history, before the
period when they are crystallised into their final legend-
ary form, or are merged in the current of a literature in
that later and artificial stage when it disinters and refash-
ions old materials. Before Arthur took his final French
form in the Romances of the Round Table, he was a
Celtic hero in the Breton, and more specially still in the
yet earlier Welsh, legends. And behind these is the
original Arthur, of whom we must be content with such
impressions as we can gather from his contemporaries,
Myrdhinn and Lywar'ch.
Lywar'ch, a bard and king, born about 480, was one
of the companions of the valiant chief, Urien of Reghed,
in Cumberland, upon whose death he composed a
pathetic lament. He survived the death of his twenty-
four sons in the last struggles against the Saxon, and in
his old age, banished and a cripple, he wrote from his
hiding-place a mournful hymn on his own and his coun-
try's decay, in which the lovers of the poetry of despair
have admired this verse worthy of Job: –4 See yonder
leaf driven by the wind; woe for him who has the like
lot! it is old, though born within the year.” But the
bard-king had only despaired after a life-long struggle,
and in like manner the bard-prophet Myrdhinn had long
sung in praise of peace before he went mad with grief,
on the night of the battle of Arderidd, where the north.
ern and Southern Celts slaughtered each other to the
profit of the Saxons. Before this fratricidal struggle
(the beginning of the 6th century) Myrdhinn had cher-
ished the dream of the resurrection of an ancient chief,
whom he called Leumenitz.
By this chief of heroes, destined to bring back union,
the bard meant his king and friend, Aurelianus Ambros.
ius, and after his death Arthur, his valiant successor,
and Myrdhinn's own pupil. The battle of Arderidd
came to dissipate the last of these illusions. One of
the contending hosts consisted of northern Celts, bent
upon imposing on all their race yet unconquered in Great
Britain the authority of Howell of Scotland, the brother
of that Gildas who soon afterwards became a convert at
once to Christianity and to Saxon interests. The other
host, that of the southern Celts, was led by Aurelianus
Ambrosius, whose favorite bard was Myrdhinn. After
the final destruction of the Celtic power, the destiny of
Myrdhinn is to reappear in legend with the Latinised
name of Merlin. Aurelianus Ambrosius and Arthur,
the two Celtic chiefs to whom the bard had been so .
loyal, undergo a like resurrection; but their lives and ex-
ploits are confounded, according to the accumulative
method of legend, with each other and with those of
Vortigern, king of Kent. The Arthur of the legend
more than realises all the prophecies of Merlin; and
these prophecies in the process of oral repetition, and
'in travelling further from the place and the time of their
origin, themselves were altered to an ampler tenor.
They underwent one great degree of change in crossing
the Channel, and another and greater in passing from
the soil and speech of Brittany into those of France,
With the tenor of the prophecies grow the proportions
of the hero. The poetic Arthur pacifies the Celts,
quells the Saxons, and ends by establishing a reign of
justice upon earth. It is a hard saying, but true, that
the key to all this is a certain sentiment which is the
mark of conquered races. The Celtic genius after its
defeat in arms would have revenge in songs. What hap.
pened was this. The Celtic chief, Vortigern, summoned
to his help the Saxon chief Hengist. Now, let it be
noted that, in the annals of the Saxon kingdom of
Kent, the fourth king in succession from Hengist is the
Saxon Ethelbert. Turning to the legend, it will be
found that the corresponding fourth king in succession
from Vortigern is the British Arthur. For in legend the
treachery of Vortigern must not be allowed to bear
fruit, the Celts after many a struggle must be left con-
querors. The honor of giving the last blow to the Saxon
invasion in Kent, West Wales, and elsewhere, is assigned
in the legend to Arthur. And why to Arthur? Because
of the ancient prophecies of the resurrection of the
fabled Lemenitz, with whom later times identified him,
and above all, because the whole legendary structure
hinged upon the impressive portraiture of Merlin, whose
historical prototype had, in fact, been the devoted fol-
lower of the historical Arthur and Aurelianus Ambros-
ius. But this edifice of fable, under which the Celts
strove to hide from themselves the real ruin of their
race, was not built up in a day. The conquered F.
repeated and enlarged upon the prophecies of Merlin;
and with these grew the figure of Arthur, enriched by
every noble trait which could be borrowed from the
stories of the bravest chiefs, and made to accord with
the prophecies. Round the main personage soon re-
volved other ideal types, and little by little was founded
the harmonious hierarchy of King Arthur and his knights,
such as it now remains in romance, and such as never
existed in reality.
ARTICHOKE. The common artichoke, Cynara
Scolymus, is a plant belonging to the Natural Order
Compositae, having some resemblance to a large thistle.
It has long been esteemed as a culinary vegetable; the
parts chiefly employed being the immature receptacle or
floret disk, with the lower part of the surrounding leaf-
scales, which are known as “artichoke bottoms.” In
Italy the receptacles, dried, are largely used in soups;
those of the cultivated plant as Carcioſo domestico, and
of the wild variety as Carcioſo spinoso. The Jersusalem
artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus, is a distinct plant
belonging to the same order, cultivated for its root-
tubers, which somewhat resemble potatoes, for which
54O
A R T
they have been proposed as a substitute. It closely
resembles the sunflower, and its popular name is a cor-
ruption of the Italian Girasole Articocco; the sunflower
artichoke. *
ARTICLES, THE THIRTY-NINE, of the Church of
England, contain the public standard of religious belief
adopted by that body. They were drawn up by Arch-
bishop Parker, sanctioned by Convocation in 1562, and
published by royal authority in the following year. The
general principals of this body of doctrine, and the form
.into which it was thrown, had been gradually developed
during the previous attempts to establish a standard of
faith in England. Soon after the authority of the Pope
Had been thrown off by the English Church, there began
to appear wide differences of opinion with regard to the
extent of reſormation required. One party, the con-
servative, held by the old practices of the Church of
Rome; another, the moderate reformers desired to
abolish these practices on account of the abuses to
which they were liable; while the various sects of the
Anabaptists were eager for radical reformation both of
doctrine and of practice. Religious turbulence and
strife prevailed to such an extent that, in 1536, a set of
TEN ARTICLES was published by royal authority, in-
tended, as was expressly stated, to “stablyshe Christen
quietnes and unitie among us, and to avoid contentious
opinions.” A considerable share in the composition of
this code was taken by Henry himself. The articles
were evidently intended as a compromise; they con-
tained much that was afterwards rejected by the church,
and do not seem to have given general satisfaction.
They were partially, through not authoritatively,
superseded by the publication, in 1537, of the Znstitution
aſ a Christain A/azz. For two or three years before
this negotiations had been carried on with the Con-
‘tinental reformers, and proposals had been made for a
general conference at which some universal articles of
faith might be considered. The conference took place
lout did not attain the end desired, for Henry, at first
favorably disposed, was swayed by the influence of the
anti-reformation party; and Cranmer, whileable to come
to agreement with the German deputation sofar as points
ºf doctrine were concerned, saw clearly that it would be a
hopeless task to try to abolish all the ancient ceremonies.
The increasing influence of the conservative party led to
the passing, by Convocation and Parliament, in 1539,
of Henry's Six ARTICLES, the “bloody statute,” or
“whip with six strings,” as they were then called, from
the cruel persecutions to which they gave rise. These
articles enforced beliefintransubstantiation, declared that
<ommunion in both kinds was unnecessary, that the
marriage of priests was unlawful, that vows of chastity
or widowhood were absolutely binding, that private
masses and auricular confession were expedient and
necessary. . The severity of these doctrines was miti-
gated by the third authorised formulary of Henry's
reign, The AVecessary Doctrine and Erudition for any
Christian Man, called the “King's Book,” and pub-
lished in 1543. The conference with the Germans,
though not entirely successful, had not been without
fruit. Among Cranmer's papers has been found a set
of Thirteen Articles bearing evident traces of the Con-
tinental ideas, and highly interesting on account of the
influence it exercised on the later formularies. Many
of these articles are drawn directly from the Augsburg
Confession, and there seems no doubt that they thus
formed an intermediate step between that Confession
and the FORTY-Two ARTICLEs of Edward. These
were drawn up by Cranmer in obedience to the com-
hand of the king and privy council, who, in 1551,
Ardered the archbishop to “frame a book of articles of
eligion, for the preserving and maintaining peace and
unity of doctrine in this church, that, being finished,
they might be set forth by public authority.” Great
care was taken in their preparation; the first draft was
sent round to the bishops, then revised by Cranmer,
submitted to Cheke and Cecil, and to the six royal
chaplains, and finally laid before the council. In 1553
the mandate enjoining subscription to them was granted
by the king, but the articles had already been printed
in English. In the same year they were published in
Latin, and appended to a short catechism of Christian
doctrine. It has been much disputed whether these
articles were sanctioned by Convocation, or were only
circulated by order of council; on the whole, the bal-
ance of probability seems to be in favor of the supposi-
tion that they had received ecclesiastical sanction.
During the reign of Mary these articles were sup-
pressed, but, on the accession of Elizabeth and the eleva-
tion of Parker to the see of Canterbury, attention was
again directed to the framing of some standard body of
truth. A series of Eleven Articles was drawn up in
I559, and was in use for some time; it had not, how-
ever, full authority, though it was enforced in Ireland
until 1615. In 1562 the houses of Convocation were
summoned, and Parker laid before them a revised copy
of the Forty-Two Articles. The changes introduced by
them were, for the most part, Lutheran in tendency, and
were probably influenced by the Würtemberg Confes-
sion of 1551. The articles, now thirty-nine in number,
were submitted to the queen, who is said to have read
and examined them.
The articles are not intended to be a complete system
of theology, but only enumerate certain truths of such
primary importance that any one denying them is thereby
excluded from the church. They do not, however,
furnish merely a negative test; they were framed not
only for the avoidance of diversity of opinion, but for
the establishment of consent regarding true religion.
ARTICULATA, the name given by Cuvier to his
third great division of the animal kingdom. Arthropoda
is the designation now generally adopted, which includes
the Crustacea, Arachnida, Myriapoda, and /insecta,
but excludes the Aztzze/ida, which Cuvier classed with
these among the Articulata. See ARTHROPODA.
ARTILLERY. The modern term Artillery is used
in two senses, firstly, to designate the matériel of ar-
tillery, i.e., the guns, &c.; secondly, the personnel and
organisation by which the power of this arm is wielded.
The word itself is derived by some from “arcus,” a bow;
by others from “ars telaria,” signifying bows, arrows,
and all implements of projectile warfare. The earliest
forms of artillery were the “engines invented by cunning
men to shoot arrows and greatstones,” of which we read
in the Old Testament; these developed, with the progress
of military art, into the more elaborate machines used
by the Romans under the names of catapu/ta, baſista,
battering-ram, &c.; and under various forms and names
this “mechanical artillery” continued in use, until the
discovery of a propelling agent so powerful as to super-
sede all others and revolutionise both the implements
and the art of war.
The history of artillery proper may be said to date
from the discovery of gunpowder. This is popularly
attributed to the two monks, Roger Bacon and Bar-
tholdus Schiraz, about the end of the 13th century (see
GUNPowder); but there is ample evidence that sub-
stance of somewhat similar composition and powers had
been known and used for purposes of war in the East
at far earlier times. The Chinese seem to have been the
first discoverers of explosive compounds as engines of
war, and to have used them for several centuries before
the Christian era; and their “thunder of the earth,”
produced by filling a huge bombshell with some such
A R T
54
compound, and exploding it at the proper moment, is
spoken of as early as the 3d or 4th centuries of our era.
According to Father Amyot, stone mortars, projecting
stone balls, were used by them in the 8th century; and
although they were first instructed in the scientific cast-
ing of cannon by missionaries in the 17th century, there
is evidence of large cannon and wall pieces of rough con-
struction having been in use as early as the 12th century.
The inhabitants of India seem to have possessed fire-
arms of some sort as early as the time of Alexander;
but the information is too meagre to admit of more
than the merest speculation as to their nature. The
celebrated Greek fire, of which we have ample accounts,
was usually in a liquid form, and vomited through long
copper tubes, with which the bows of vessels of war
were provided, or projected in fire-balls, or by means
of arrows and javelins around which flax was twisted.
It was used by the Romans of the Eastern empire
with much effect, especially with the defences of Con-
stantinople (668–675 and 716–718 A.D.), and the secret
of its manufacture was preserved with a superstitious
care for more than 400 years; but it afterwards passed
into the hands of the Mahometans, and was used by
them in their wars with the Christians. The Moors
first introduced fire-arms in western Europe; according
to Condé, they used artillery against Saragossa in 1118
A.D., and a little later they defended Niebla by means
of machines which threw darts and stones through the
agency of fire.
The application of gunpowder to projectile warfare,
and the use of cannon, became general in Europe dur-
ing the 14th century. Mention is made, however, of
isolated instances of their employment at earlier periods,
especially among the Moors. Artillery is also said to
have been used by Henry III. of England during the
rebellion of the Duke of Gloucester in 1267, and by the
Spaniards against Cordova in 1280 and against Gibral-
tar in 1306. But it is held by those well qualified to
judge, that the first unquestionable testimony of the
employment of cannon is in 1338 under Edward III. of
England. The substitution of the new engine for the
old mechanical artillery was gradual, and was not
effected without opposition; and in the 13th and early
part of the 14th centuries, we still find various machines,
such as the trebuchet, onazer, scorpion, and espringal,
whose action was dependent on the elasticity of twisted
cords, used to hurl stones, Greek fire, &c.
The earliest trace of an artillery organization, such
as now plays so important a part in all great armies, is
found in the middle of the 14th century. In 1344
Edward III. formed an artillery train and an ordnancé
establishment, numbering 34o men; but of these only
twelve were termed ºãº and gunners, the re-
mainder consisting of waggoners, engineers, and artifi-
cers of various kinds. The ordnance establishment at the
siege of Harfleur, in 1415, included twenty-five master
gunners and fifty “servitour gunners.” The gunner of
those days seems to have had general charge of the guns
and stores, with the especial duty of laying and
firing the piece in action. The manufacturing estab-
lishments, now maintained on so gigantic a scale, do
not seem to have sprung up till considerably later.
Piobert states that gun-foundries were established in
France in 1377; but we have no trace of them in Ger.
many till 1440, and record of them is wanting in Eng-
land until 1521.
The guns of the 14th century were of the rudest
make, cumbrous and inefficient, and though an advance
on the earlier machines, and useful in sieges, still played
but little part in battles. Whether Edward III. used
them at Creci or not (a point which has been much de-
bated), it may safely be affirmed that they had but little
to do with the result of that day. Progress, however,
began to show itself in the 15th century; the “bom-
bards” were replaced by brass guns, and the cumbrous
beds, upon which the earlier ordnance were transported,
gave way to rude artillery-carriages on wheels; and
iron was substituted for stone in the manufacture of pro-
jectiles. The first step towards a better organisation
and some tactical system appears to have been made
towards the end of the 15th century by Charles VIII.
of France, who used a numerous artillery in his Italian
campaigns; and Louis XII. largely owed his successes
in Italy to this arm. Francis I, still further increased
its mobility, adopting a lighter construction for field-
guns, and having them drawn by the best description of
horses; and in the defeat of the Swiss in 1515, “the
French artillery played a new and distinguished part,
not only by protecting the centre of the army from the
charges of the Swiss phalanxes, and causing them ex-
cessive loss, but also by rapidly taking up such posi-
tions from time to time during the battle as enabled the
guns to play upon the flanks of the attacking columns.”
In England also considerable attention was bestowed
on ordnance matters during this period, though the
progress was not so great. In 1456 it is stated that a
commission was issued to John Judd, as master-general
of the ordnance; and in 1483 (Richard III.), Rauf
Bigod was appointed master of the ordnance, an office
which continued down to 1852. These early masters of
the ordnance personally commanded the artillery in
expeditions and wars, besides being responsible for the
general administration of the personnel and matériel
of such artillery as then existed. Henry VII. and
Henry VIII. did much to advance the progress of artil-
lery. Tartaglia gives tables of the different cannon in
use about this time. The heavy pieces, i.e., culverins,
&c., were drawn by oxen, and corresponded to those
now in use for siege or position purposes, while the
field guns appear to have been the 2, 4, 6%, and
8 pounders, falcons, falconets, and sakers. No per-
manent artillery trains existed at this time; the per-
sonnel was obtained by withdrawing gunners from
garrisons, and supplementing them with men hired for
the occasion, and the cattle required for transport were
also hired. The artillery train on service included the
ammunition waggons, pontoons, and a large proportion
of artificers, besides the men actually required to serve
the gun, corresponding nearly to the artillery park of
the present day, and had its position assigned in camp
on the march. “On the march the train was preceded
by an advanced guard of light cavalry to protect it,
The first portion of this troop carried hatchets and
saws; the second, instruments and implements for the
construction of machines; the third, sledge-hammers,
iron wedges, and pick-axes; finally, the last were pro-
vided with pioneers’ implements. After these came
carriages loaded with guns, capstans, levers, and other
like machines; these were followed by the light pieces,
by the heavy siege guns, by ammunition waggons, by
pontoons and the necessary men for them, by the artil-
lery artificers, and, lastly, by the baggage.”
The 16th century was not marked by any great
advance in artillery science, though the number of guns
which accompanied an army had increased considerably
—as many as 1600 gunners, cannoneers, armorers, and
clerks of the ordnance, being attached to Lord Mount-
joy's army in Ireland in 1599. The artillery tactics
were simple; the guns usually deployed in advance of
the troops and fired a few rounds, but from their want
of mobility could neither accompany an advance nor
protect a retreat, and were generally captured on the
first advance of the enemy. Greater progress, how-
ever, was made in the attack and defence of fortresses
542
A R T a f
by artillery. Vertical fire was used to a considerable
£xtent, and seems to have been conducted by artificers,
while the “cannoneers” served the guns. In England
but little advance was made even in the 17th century,
and the commencement of the Great Rebellion found
the artillery of England in a very feeble and backward
state. Two books by artillerymen of those days give
us much information on its condition, and a very com-
lete account of the “Field Artillery of the Great Re-
ellion” is furnished by Captain H. W. L. Hime, R. A.
The guns chiefly used were the light pieces known
as “minion,” “saker,” and “demi-culverin,” i.e.,
# ounder, 5-pounder, and 9-pounder respectively.
e heavier pieces being used in sieges and garrisons,
and ranging from the “whole culverin,” or 15-pounder,
to the “Canon Royall,” or 63-pounder. The carriages
were cumbrous. “They were formed of two large
Cheeks or brackets; whose general outline was much the
same as the brackets of our own bracket-trails, con-
nected together by four transoms.” The transport of
the ammunition was in carts or wheelbarrows, or on
men's backs. The gunners walked beside the gun, and,
as in later times, their pace was a measure of the
mobility of the field artillery. Cartridges, when used,
were made of paper or canvas, but an iron ladle was
preferred. . The following words of command show the
£un-drill of those days: —
1. Put back your piece.
. Order your piece to load.
. Search your piece.
. Sponge your piece.
. Fill your ladle.
. Put in your powder.
. Empty your ladle.
. Put up your powder.
Thrust home your wad.
. Regard your shot.
. Put home your shot gently.
. Thrust home your last wad with three strokes.
I3. Gauge your piece.
As to the draught, twenty-three horses were required
for a cannon on good ground, fifteen or seventeen for
the demi-cannon, and nine for a culverin. The propor-
tion of guns to men was I per 1,000. In 1643, at Brad-
doch Doun, an instance occurred of the use of field
artillery first masked by cavalry; and at Roundway Lord
Wilmot handled his guns so well that he prepared the
way for his cavalry, and finally was able to seize the
.enemy's guns and turn them against him. At other
affairs, however, the artillery seems to have been com-
paratively useless, and the presence of twenty-five guns
on the Royalist side at Marston Moor was neutralized
by Cromwell's flank attack; and in no battles of this war
did the artillery assume the importance it had already
attained on the Continent.
The first half of this century forms an era in the
history of this arm in Europe. Henry IV. of France
was among the first to recognise its coming importance,
and Occupied himself diligently with improving it. His
minister, Sully, was named master-general, and during
the last ten years of his reign (1600–1610), he may be
said to have created an artillery. More than 400 guns
were turned out, including a number of field-pieces.
Maurice of Nassau also helped to develop the use of
this arm. But it was under the great Swedish warrior
Gustavus Adolphus that artillery first began to take its
true position on the battle-field. Recognising the neces-
sity for the mobility of field artillery, he introduced
“A alter” guns, “consisting of a thin cylinder of beaten
copper screwed into a brass breech, whose chamber was
strengthened by four bands of iron, the tube itself being
covered with layers of mastic, over which cords were
IW
i
;
:
rolled firmly round its whole length and equalised by a
layer of plaster, a coating of leather, boiled and var-
nished, completing the piece.” This primitive field
artillery was drawn and served by two men, and was
first used in his Polish war. The guns could naturally
bear but a small charge; the great point gained was
mobility, all guns heavier than 12-pounders being sep-
arated from field artillery. In his German campaigns
he used iron 4-pounder guns, weighing about 5% cwt.,
and drawn by two horses. Rapidity of fire was ob-
tained by the use of cartridges instead of the old method
of ladling the powder. Gustavus attached two of these
guns to each regiment, and placed them under the orders
of the colonel. Gustavus Adolphus may therefore be
said to be the father of the battalion system of guns,— a
system which had its advantages in those days of imper-
fect organisation, but, like many other things, was car-
ried down to a late date when the necessity for the sys-
tem had entirely disappeared. . But he also appreciated
the value of concentration of fire, and frequently massed
his guns in strong batteries at the centre and flanks.
He appears to have been fully alive to the necessity
of having both a heavy, and light artillery, and it
was his practice to retire his heavy guns, protecting a
retreat by the field artillery. It was in the celebrated
Thirty Years' War that his artillery showed the advan-
tages which it could win when handled properly. . The
artillery of the Imperialists was as cumbrous as that of
their Swedish adversaries was mobile. Tilly's guns were
chiefly 24-pounders, each requiring twenty transport
horses and twelve horses for the waggons, while the
service of guns was primitive and defective, and they
could hardly even be moved during the course of an
action. The first battle of Leipsic was fought the 7th
September 1631, between the allied Swedes and Saxons
under Gustavus Adolphus and the Imperialists under
Tilly. The Imperialist artillery was badly disposed on
a range of hills in rear of their position, so that any
forward movement would effectually mask the fire of the
guns. Gustavus, on the other hand, advanced his guns
more, and covered his front with IOO guns, which he
was able to use with considerable effect. The next
action in which the use of artillery is remarkable was
the passage of the Lech, a tributary of the Danube.
Tilly had taken up a position on the right bank of the
river between Augsburg and Rain, and awaited attack.
On the night of the 3d April 1632 the Swedish army
threw up earth-works, upon which were mounted
seventy-two pieces of artillery. , Gustavus, taking ad-
vantage of the re-entering bend of the river, brought
such a converging fire upon the Imperialists that he
forced them to retire and gained the passage of the
stream. At the battle of Lützen, 6th November 1632,
Wallenstein had taken advantage of certain eminences
and rising ground in his }. to post his guns in
batteries of from four to fourteen pieces, while Gusta-
vus placed powerful batteries on the wings and centre
of his line. The battle closed the glorious career of
this great warrior, who was struck down in the hour of
victory. During his life he had done much to forward
the science of artilery. He had increased its mobility
and rapidity of fire, and raised the proportion of guns
to over six per 1000 men; and though he may be said
to have been the originator of the battalion system,
with its attendant evils of dispersion of guns, he checked
this evil by keeping in hand a considerable reserve.
Further progress was made in construction and or-
ganisation during the latter part of the century. In
England the laboratory at Woolwich was established in
1672, and a great reorganisation of the artillery took
place in 1682 under the master-general, Lord Dart-
mouth. In France the improvements under Louis
A R T.
543
XIV. seem to have been made chiefly in siege artillery.
Heavy guns of position were much used, and there ap:
pears to have been a disposition to regard batteries of
this kind, covered by epaulments, as in field fortifica-
tions, as the natural rôle of artillery. Louis XIV.,
however, was the first to give a permanent foundation
to the new arm. In 1671 he raised a regiment of royal
fusiliers as artillerymen, composed of gunners and
workmen. Schools of instruction were established,
and the arm recognized as a special branch. Improve-
ments were also effected in the matériel. The calibres
were reduced in number and made uniform, and those
then adopted have remained unaltered up to the present
day, some having been rifled. Carriages were improved.
“Siege and field carriages had heavy bracket-trails, but
were provided with limbers having a straight pintail on
the top, like an old service siege limber.” Platform
waggons were used to transport guns; wrought-iron
field carriages and mortar carriages were used; and the
carriage for coast batteries was little dissimilar to the
standing gun-carriage of the present day.
The 18th century was fruitful in artillery progress. In
England it saw the Royal Regiment of Artillery perma-
nently established, and rapid strides made on the Conti-
nent in every branch of the arm. The Duke of Marl-
borough was appointed master-general of the ordnance
on the accession of Queen Anne, in 1702, and in the
same year war was declared with Germany and the States-
General. In 1706 forty-six guns and sixty mortars
formed the artillery of a force of 11,000 men, the mor-
tars being used mounted upon travelling carriages. In
I727 the organization was expanded into four complete
companies, commanded by a colonel, lieut.-colonel, and
a major, and in 1740 two more companies were added.
In 1741 the Royal Military Academy was instituted at
Woolwich for the instruction of cadets, and of officers
and men of the artillery. In 1748 a company of Royal
Artillery went to the East Indies and took part in the
siege of Pondicherry, subsequently forming the nucleus
of the Indian artilleries. In 1755 four additional com-
panies were raised for service in the East Indies, and in
I757 the regiment had increased to twenty-four compa-
nies. A Royal Irish Artillery Corps was also formed,
which gradually increased from a small nucleus to a
strength of twenty companies, and was amalgamated
with the Royal Artillery in 1801. About this period
(the middle of 18th century) the guns in use consisted of
24-pounders, I2-poundels, 6-pounders, and 3-pounders.
The guns were divided into brigades, corresponding to
the present batteries, of four, five, and six guns respect-
ively, and began to be separated into “heavy” and
“light "brigades. Each field gun was drawn by four
horses, the two leaders being ridden by artillerymen,
and had IOO rounds of shot and 30 rounds of grape.
The Prussian artillery was very backward at the be-
ginning of this century. In 1688 the Brandenburg
(Prussian) artillery numbered only 300 men; and at the
death of Frederick-William I., in 1740, there was only
one battalion of field artillery of six companies, and one
of garrison artillery of four companies. Nor did Fred-
erick the Great at first place much value upon its serv-
ices. But experience soon convinced him of the
necessity for creating an efficient and mobile field artil-
lery. He created a horse artillery which in rapidity of
movement could rival cavalry; and commenced the for-
mation of a real field artillery by the adoption of a
number of light pieces and howitzers, while the heavier
guns were relegated to parks for siege and position pur-
poses. And his wars brought forward three important
tactical principles in the employment of artillery, the
establishment of smaller batteries at important points
in the line of battle in lieu of the old formations at the
centre and flanks, opening the battle and protecting the
deployment of columns by light guns, and changing the
position of batteries according to the course of the
action.
Russia and Austria, though they produced no great
military leader like Frederick, were ahead of Prussia in
the development of this particular arm. In Russia its
importance had always been recognized, and large num-
bers of guns employed, while each dragoon regiment had
three “licornes” or howitzers attached with mounted
gunners, forming a species of horse artillery. In Aus-
tria, though the tactical employment of the artillery
was often defective, its general excellence was pre-em-
inent, and it was ably organized under Prince Lichten-
stein, the chief of artillery. But it was in France that
the experience of Frederick's wars was best utilised, and
the great strides to a more perfect system were made.
At the commencement of the century French artillery
had made but little progress. The carriages and wag-
gons were driven by waggonners on foot, and on the field
of battle the guns were dragged about by ropes or re-
mained stationary. Hollow projectiles had made their
appearance, and lead tarred balls arranged around an
axis and kept together by a net, and termed grape, were
employed. But the ammunition generally was of a
rough and primitive description. Towards the middle
of the century some improvements were made. Field
guns and carriages were lightened and the guns sepa-
rated into brigades. Seige cartridges were introduced,
the ladle being abolished, and shot with wooden bot-
toms or sabots invented. But it was under General
Gribeauval, in 1765, that the great reforms in the French
artillery were commenced. This officer had been sent
to Austria during the Seven Years' War, and had held
an artillery command under Prince Lichtenstein.
Struck with the improvements effected in Austria, he
strove, on his return, to build a complete system both
of personnel and matériel, creating a distinct matériel
for field, siege, garrison and coast artillery. Alive to
the vital importance of mobility for field artillery, he
dismissed from the park all pieces of greater calibre than
12-pounders; and reduced the length (necessary for the
service of guns in embrasures and behind parapets) and
weight of those retained. He also reduced the charge and
the windage. His reforms were resisted, and for a time
successfully; but in 1776 he became first inspector-gen-
eral of artillery, and was able to carry through the im-
provements which will ever cause his name to be cele-
brated. For many years artillery had been separated
into regimental or battalion guns, artillery of position,
garrison and siege artillery, the position guns being
distributed in large batteries on the flanks or in front of
a position, and the siege artillery collected in a park or
train. The field artillery of the new system included
4-pounder regimental guns, and for the park 8 and 12-
pounders, with 6-inch howitzers. The ammunition was
improved by the introduction of “case” or canisters of
sheet-iron holding cast-iron balls, the old grape and
case being abolished.
The carriages were constructed on a uniform model,
strengthened with iron, the limber-wheels heightened,
and the draught diminished. Iron axletrees were in-
troduced, straight pintails on the top of the limbers,
and poles took the place of shafts. Boxes on the
carriages held part of the ammunition. Travelling
trunnion poles were introduced. The horses were har-
nessed in pairs, instead of in file as formerly, and the
prolong of rope was introduced to unite the trail of the
gun and the limber in slow retiring movements. . A
new ammunition wagon, carrying fixed ammunition,
was also invented. The service of the guns was im-
proved by the introduction of cross-headed elevating
544 *
A R T
l
screws and tangent scales, the latter experiments ex-
ploding the old false ideas with regard to the absolute
flatness of the path of a projectile. The manner in
which the teams were driven remained much the same;
but the bricole was introduced, a collar with rope and
hook, to which the gunners and foot soldiers harnessed
themselves. For siege and garrison service Gribeauval
adopted the 16-pounder and 12-pounder guns, 8-inch
howitzer, and Io-inch mortar; the I2, Io, and 8-inch
Gomer mortars being introduced in 1785. Seige only
differed from field carriages in having shafts in lieu of
poles. Gribeauval introduced for garrison service a
carriage with wheels in front and a truck in rear, while
for coast service traversing platforms were adopted,
having a bolt in front and a truck in rear running upon
a circular racer. The great step made was in a uniform
construction being adopted for all matériel, and the
parts susceptible made interchangeable.
In 1765 the personnel of the French artillery was re-
organised. The field artillery with an army was divided
into regimental guns and corps or reserve artillery.
This latter portion was subdivided into divisions of
eight guns of the same calibre. A company of artillery
was also attached to each brigade of four battalions.
The battery or division was thus made the tactical unit,
with guns, munitions, and gunners complete, the horses
and drivers being added at a later date. The French
horse artillery dates from 1791. Horsemen and gun-
ners were combined, each class learning the work of
the other. Companies were attached to a battery of
six guns; and in 1793, when the divisional organisation
was adopted, artillery was attached to divisions in pro-
portionate strength, and regimental guns were aban-
doned and entirely suppressed by Napoleon in 1796.
The reforms of Gribeauval bore fruit in the wars of the
republic. The tables of construction which had been
drawn up secured a uniformity of manufacture; the re-
duction of the weight of the gun gave mobility to the
field artillery, and enabled it to be used with the great-
est effect in the new tactics which Napoleon introduced;
and the last step in the complete organisation of field
artillery was made in 1800, when the establishment of
a driver corps of soldiers put an end to the old system
of horsing by contract.
At the commencement of our wars on the Continent
in 1793, the British artillery was in anything but an
efficient condition. The guns were dispersed among the
infantry, they were horsed in single train, the ammuni-
tion was packed in rough deal boxes, the ammunition
waggons were cumbrous and ill-constructed, the drivers
were mere carters on foot with long whips, and the
whole equipment was scarcely able to break from a foot
pace. Prior to the Peninsular war, however, the exer-
tions of an able officer, Major Spearman, had done much
to bring about an improved state of things. Horse
artillery had been introduced in 1793, and the driver
corps established in 1794. The battalion or regimental
guns were abolished in 1802, and field batteries or
“brigades” of six guns were formed, horse artillery
batteries being styled troops. Military drivers were in-
troduced, the horses teamed in pairs, the drivers being
mounted on the off-horses, while eight gunners were
carried on the limbers and waggons. The equipment
was lightened and simplified, the ammunition was pro-
perly packed, and a correct system of manoeuvres, was
introduced. The invention of shrapnel shell by Major
Shrapnel in 1803, and the transformation of the rocket
from a mere signal to a destructive engine by Sir W.
Congreve in 1806, also added to artillery power.
Rifled guns were first used by the British a tillery at
the seige of Sebastopol, but with no great effect, owing
to defective construction. A few years later the intlo-
duction of the Armstrong breech-loading rifled gun (first
used in the China campaign of 1860) caused a great
alteration in the equipment of the British artillery.
The 7-inch gun of 82 cwt. was introduced for garrisor
service and even for siege purposes; 40-pounders, or
block trail travelling carriages, for batteries of position,
while 20-pounders were intended for the same or heavy
field batteries; the 12-pounder of 8 cwt. being for the
armament of field, and the 9-pounder of 6 cwt. for horse
artillery. The field carriages were provided with a gun-
metal “saddle” worked by a lever and hand-wheel for
traversing, and ball-and-socket elevating screw. The
limbers and ammunition waggons were constructed of an
improved pattern, and the whole equipment showed a
great advance in efficiency; 124 rounds per gun were
carried on the gun carriage and ammunition waggon, and
a further “reserve” in a second line of waggons. The
system of attaching small arm ammunition waggons to
field artillery was abolished, and in future separate
“ammunition columns" will convey this as well as
reserve ammunition for artillery.
In France a new era for artillery opened with the
wars of the consulate and the empire. The matérre/
underwent no great alteration, the 6-pounder being sub-
stituted for the 8 and 4-pounders for horse and divisional
artillery, and a 24-pound howitzer introduced. But be-
yond all other changes, we may note the increased tac-
tical employment of artillery under the great artillery
officer, Napoleon I. It is to his wars that we first look
for instances of the important effects produced by this
arm, in that concentration of fire which in those days
was only produced by massing guns. . After the peace
of 1815 the system of Gribeauval, which had served its
time, was further improved upon. The matéree/
adopted in 1827 consisted of 12-pounder and 8-pounder
guns, and 6-inch and 24-pounder howitzers. A six gun
battery was composed of either four 12-pounders and
two 6-inch howitzers, or four 8-pounders and two 24-
pounder howitzers. The carriages and ammunition
waggons were also improved, so that the detachments
could be mounted on them, and the mobility thus much
increased. A new mountain artillery equipment was
also adopted; a powerful 12-pounder howitzer, but
weighing only 220 lbs., was introduced, the carriage and
ammunition boxes being carried on mules; and this
equipment proved very serviceable in the Algerian cam-
paigns. In 1852 Napoleon III., when President of the
Republic, did much to simplify the matériel, and intro-
duced a 12-pounder shell gun, intended to fire solid shot
or shrapnel shell. Louis Napoleon had always made
artillery a special subject of study; and the great work
on artillery commenced and mainly carried out by him is
a standard work on the subject. In 1858 rifled guns,
12-pounders and 4-pounders, were adopted in the
Frénch service, and used with great effect against the
Austrians in the Italian campaign of the following year.
Since the war of 1870–71, where the French artillery
proved itself markedly inferior both in nambers, power,
and handling to that of their adversaries, the French
have been actively engaged in carrying on experiments,
with a view to the introduction of a superior weapon,
and have further increased their force of artillery by 120
batteries.
At the commencement of the 19th century the Prus-
sian artillery was rather powerful than mobile, the field
artillery counting 216 12-pounders, 96 heavy 6-pounders,
and only 120 light 6-pounders. After the disasters of
1806–7 this defect was remedied; and in 1816, when a
further reorganisation took place... the ninety-six guns
allotted to each army corps were in the proportion of
three heavy to eight light. The horse artillery num-
bered twenty batteries in 1809, and twenty-seven in 1816,
A R T — A R U
545
and for many years formed the bulk of the reserve artil-
lery. The personnel of the Prussian artillery has de-
veloped enormously during the 19th century. In 1808
it formed three brigades, each consisting of six field and
two horse artillery batteries. In 1814 it was increased
to nine brigades, each composed of twelve field and
three horse artillery batteries, besides a proportion of
garrison artillery and artificers, and corresponding to one
of the permanent army corps of the Prussian army. It
was with this organisation but slightly modified that
Prussia undertook the wars of 1864 and 1866. In the
latter war the Prussian artillery did not shine so much
as its Austrian adversary; and deficiencies were brought
to light which were carefully remedied in the few years
of peace which followed. In 1867 an addition was made
of three Prussian and one Saxon regiment of field artil-
lery, with four divisions of garrison artillery, consequent
on the incorporation of Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover,
Nassau, &c., and the formation of three new army corps
from these provinces. It was with this establishment
that the war of 1870–71 commenced. The South Ger-
man forces contributed four regiments of Bavarian artil-
lery and twenty-eight batteries of Würtemberg, Baden,
and Hessian artillery; and altogether seventeen regi-,
ments of field and nine of garrison artillery took part, or
were effective for service, in that war. In 1872 the
German artillery was reorganised, the field artillery of
each army corps being augmented to seventeen batteries,
and divided into two regiments.
Similar progress was made by the other great European
powers during the century. The Austrian artillery has
always been pre-eminent both in the excellence of its
matériel and in tactical handling on the field. In 1859
rifled guns were introduced; and in 1861 gun-cotton was
substituted for gunpowder, but was soon aſterwards
abandoned. In the successful war of 1806 her artillery
especially distinguished itself by its gallantry and devo-
tion, and showed itself decidedly superior to that of her
adversary. A considerable development of her artillery
has taken place within the last few years, which will be
treated of further on. Russia, which specially distinguished
itself in the Napoleonic wars by the power and good
Service of her artillery, has continued to devote the same
attention to it. In 1861 she adopted the French system
of rifled guns, but after the German war of 1866 she
abandoned it for the breech-loading system of Prussia,
and has armed her field artillery mainly from the manu-
factory of Krupp at Essen. Of late years Russia has
shown the greatest activity in all matters connected with
artillery; the re-equipment of her seige, garrison, and
coast artillery has been emergetically proceeded with, and
her fortresses re-armed; more than fooo rifled guns hav-
ing been supplied and mounted in the years 1869-70.
Her field artillery has also been increased from three to
four batteries per division, and thirty-eight batteries of
mitrailleuses added.
Modern artillery is broadly divided into field, siege,
and garrison; and field artillery, again, is divided into
mountain, horse, field (or foot), and position artillery.
The battery is essentially the unit of artillery organiza-
tion, both tactical and administrative; and brigades or
regiments are formed by combining a number of bat-
teries for convenience of administration.
A battery of field artillery comprises three elements:
viz., matérie/-guns, carriages, ammunition, and stores;
personne/– officers and non-commissioned officers, gun-
ners to serve, drivers to groom and drive, and artificers;
and transport— horses, mules, elephants, oxen, &c. The
number of guns in a battery varies from four to eight.
Mountain and position batteries have usually four or six,
field and horse batteries six or eight guns each. In
England, France, and Prussia, there are six guns to a
field or horse battery; while Russian or Austrian bat-
teries have eight guns. The latter number seems to
possess decided advantages. It admits of more conven-
ient division; and the half-battery of four guns is a small
but convenient battery for any particular service.
The distinction between horse and field or foot artil-
lery is another question at present engaging attention.
Horse artillery was created to compete with cavalry
in rapidity of motion, and for this purpose every man,
was mounted; while field batteries were supposed to
accompany the infantry, and their pace under ordinary
circumstances to be limited to that of a man on foot-
Under the new conditions of improved fire-arms, the
dash of horse artillery has no longer its former value,
while more mobility and more independence of action is
required for the field batteries. It is therefore held by
many that there should be only two classes of artillery:
horse, or very mobile field artillery, and position bat-
teries of heavy guns. s
The organisation and interior economy of a battery are
much the same in all field artillery.
A’ockets and Mitrail/eurs are generally associated
with field artillery in organisation.
Siege and Garrison Artillery.— Siege and garrison
artillery have not usually the complete and permanent
organisation that distinguishes field artillery. Usually
the matériel is kept in store, and the persozzzzel and
transport are supplied from other sources according to
requirement. In garrison artillery, the guns mounted
on fortresses and batteries, or stored in arsenals for the
purpose, furnish the matériel, and the battalions or com—
panies of garrison artillery the personnel. º
ARTOIS, an ancient province of the north of France,
corresponding to the present department of Pas de
Calais, with the exclusion of the arrondissments of
Boulogne and Montreuil, which belonged to Picardy.
The name Artois (still more corrupted in “Arras”) is
derived from the Atrebates, who possessed the district
in the time of Caesar. From the 9th to the 12th cen-
tury Artois belonged to the Counts of Flanders. It
was bestowed in 1180 on Philip Augustus of France by
Philip of Alsace, as the dowry of his niece, Isabella of
Hainault. In 1237 it was raised to the rank of a count-
ship by Saint Louis in favor of his brother Robert.
Philip, the son of Robert II., having died before his
father, the transmission of the title was disturbed. The
countship was claimed by Robert, Philip's son, and his
descendants, better known as the counts of Edu, con-
tinued to style themselves counts of Artois; but it was
actually inherited by Mahaud or Matilda, daughter of
Robert II. By her marriage with Otho IV., Artois.
passed to the house of Burgundy, in whose possession it.
remained till the marriage of Mary, the daughter of
Charles the Bold, to the Archduke Maximilian brought
it to the house of Austria. By the peace of Nimeguen
it was ceded to France in 1678. The title of count of
Artois was borne by Charles X. of France before his.
accession to the throne. -
ARU ISLANDS, a group of about thirty islands,.
nominally under the Dutch government of the Moluc-
cas, which lie south of New Guinea. Tana-busar, the
largest island, is 80 miles from north to south, and is.
crossed by three river-like creeks running east and west,
called Watelai, Vorkai, and Maykor. No part exceeds
Ioo feet in elevation, but it is only on the coast that
the ground is swampy. The principal formation is cor-
alline limestone; the eastern coast is defended by coral
reefs, and the neighboring sea is shallow, and abounds
in coral in full growth. The other islands of impor-
tance are Wamma, Pulo Bali, Oujia, and Wassia.
ARUNDEL, a town in Sussex, on the river Arun.
about 4 miles from its mouth, Io miles E. of Chichester,
35 A
546
A R U — A R Y
19 W. of Brighton, and 55 S.W. of London. It confers
on its possessor the title of Earl of Arundel. At the
time of the Conquest the castle was rebuilt by Roger de
Montgomerie, but it was taken from his son, who rebelled
against the reigning monarch, Henry I. In 1397 it was
the scene of the conspiracy organised by the earl of Arun-
del, archbishop of Canterbury, and duke of Gloucester,
to dethrone Richard II. and murder the lords of his
council, a plot which was discovered before it could be
carried into execution.
ARUNDEL, THOMAS, Archbishop of Canterbury,
Born in 1353, was the second son of Robert, earl of
Arundel and Warren. At 22 years of age he was raised
to the bishopric of Ely, to the church and palace of which
he was a great benefactor. In 1386, after the deposition
of the earl of Suffolk, he was appointed lord chancellor
of England; he was deprived of this office in 1389, but
again reinstated. In 1388 he was translated to the see
of York, and in 1396 was advanced to the primacy of
Canterbury, when he resigned the chancellorship. While
bishop of Ely, Arundel had taken a leading part in forc-
ing the king to consent to the commission of regency;
Richard never forgave this and in 1397 the parliament,
with the king's leave, impeached the archbishop, with
his brother Richard earl of Arundel, and the duke of
Gloucester, on a charge of high treason. He was sen-
tenced to be banished, and to depart the kingdom within
forty days on pain of death. He retired, first to France,
and then to the court of Rome, where Pope Boniface IX.
gave him a kind reception, and nominated him to the
Scottish . archbishopric of St. Andrews. He died at
'Canterbury on the 20th February 1413 of inflammation of
the throat, with which he was seized, as was affirmed by
the Lollards, while pronouncing sentence upon Lord
Cobham.
ARUNDELIAN or OXFORD MARBLES, part
of a collection of ancient sculptures and antiquities, in-
cluding the famous Parian Chronicle, formed by Thomas
earl of Arundel, and presented by his grandson, the
IHon. Henry Howard (afterwards duke of Norfolk), to
the University of Oxford in the year 1667. They were
purchased for the first proprietor in 1624 by Mr. (after-
ward Sir William) Petty, who, along with John Evelyn,
had been employed by the earl of Arundel to collect
marbles, books, statues, and other curiosities in Italy,
Greece, and Asia Minor. On their arrival in London in
the year 1627 they were placed in the gardens of Arundel
House, the site of which is now occupied by Arundel,
Norfolk, Surrey, and Howard Streets in the Strand. Of
the large collection now known as the Arundel or Ox-
ford marbles the most remarkable is the Parian Chron-
icle, or Marmor Chronicon. This when found consisted
of a large oblong slab of Parian marble, on which was
engraved in capital letters a chronological compendium
of the principal events of Greece during a series of 1318
years, beginning with the reign of Cecrops, I582 B.C., and
ending with the archonship of Diognetus, 264 B.C. The
marble originally measured 3 feet 7 inches and 2 feet II
inches on the two sides respectively, its breadth being 2
feet 7 inches; but the chronicle of the last 90 years is
Tost, so that the part now remaining ends with the
archonship of Diotimus, 354 years before the birth of
Christ; and in this fragment the inscription is at pres-
ent so much corroded and effaced that the sense must in
some measure be supplied by conjecture.
ARVAL BROTHERS, in Romazz Antiquities, a
college or priesthood, consisting of twelve members,
elected for life from the highest ranksin Rome, and always
apparently, during the empire, including the emperor.
Their chief duty was to offer annually public sacrifice for
the fertility of the fields. The origin of the brotherhood
was traced to Acca Larentia, the foster-mother of Romu-
lus, who, with her twelve sons, had instituted sacrifices of
this kind, and probably this legend arose from the con-
nection of Acca Larentia, as mater Zarum, with the
Lares who had a part in the religious ceremonies of the
arvales. But apart from this, there is proof of the high
antiquity of the college in the verbal forms of the song
with which, down to late times, a part of the ceremonies
was accompanied, and which is still preserved. It is
clear also that, while the members were themselves
always persons of distinction, the duties of their office
were held in high respect. And yet it is singular that
no mention of them occurs in Cicero or Livy, and that
altogether literary allusions to them are very scarce.
On the other hand, we possess a long series of what may
be called the minutes of their proceedings, drawn up by
themselves, and inscribed on stone.
ARVE, a river which rises in the Col de Balme, one
of the Savoyan Alps, and passing through the Yalley of
Chamouni, falls into the Rhone near Geneva, aſter a
course of about 50 miles. (See journ. A. Geog. Soc.,
vol. xxvii.)
ARYAN, a technical term, applied to one of the
great families of language, which extends from India to
Europe, and which, for that reason, is called also /zzdo-
Auropean. Friedrich Schlegel, who first recognized the
family relationship of these languages, assigned to them
the name of Indo-Germanic, a name still used by pre-
ference by many scholars in Germany. Bopp decided
in favor of Ziedo-Auropean as a more appropriate name
for that large family of speech. Other j have
used the names Jap/hetic, Sanskritic and A/editerranean.
The objection to Zndo-Germanic as the technical
name of the whole family is that it is too long, and yet
not sufficiently extensive. If the family is to be dis-
tinguished by the names of its two extreme members,
the name ought to be /ndo-Celtic, rather than Indo-
Germanic; if by its most important members, then, as
remarked by Bopp, the name should be /ndo-Classic.
Ando-European is an equally cumbersome name, and
less correct even than Indo-Germanic, considering that
there are many languages spoken both in India and
Europe which do not belong to that family. Sanskritic
would be a misleading name, as countenancing the idea
that all the members of this family are derived from
Sanskrit. Japhetic seems to revive the Jewish concep-
tion of the three ancestors of the human race, Shenz,
Aſam and Şaphet, and would, from the strictly Hebrew
point of view, comprehend many tribes in the north of
Asia and Europe who speak Turanian languages.
Ewald, who suggested the name of Mediterranean,
distinguishes, besides the Mediterranean, three other
families of speech, the Morthern, commonly called North
Turanian or Altaic, the Semitic, and the Copto-African.
He explains the name of Mediterranean by saying, that
“the races speaking these languages inhabited the large
central circle, surrounded by Semitic, South-Indian,
Chinese, Turko-Tartaric, and Bask languages.” The
reason why this name has not been accepted; seems to
be that locality has little to do with the essential charac-
ter of languages, and that the central position once oc-
cupied by the people who spoke these tongues belongs to
them no longer.
Aryan, as a name for a whole family of languages, has
the advantage of being short, and, being a word of
foreign origin, of lending itself more easily to any tech-
nical definition that may be assigned to it. It has been
accepted by many writers in England, France, and
India. In Germany, too, it is used in this wide sense
by Lassen and others, while some scholars have used
the term in the more restricted sense of Indo-Arazziazz,
—i.e., as comprehending the languages of India and
Persia, which constitute the south-eastern as distinct
A S.A
547
— A S C
from the north-western (Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic,
Slavonic) branch of the family.
Origin of the Word.—Aryan; as a technical term, has
been borrowed from the Sanskrit arya or ārya, the Zend
airya. In the later Sanskrit ārya means, of a good
family. It is used as a complimentary address. Origi-
nally, however, it was used as a national name, and even
as late as the time of the Laws of Manu, India is still
called cityaāzarſa, i. e., the abode of the Aryas. In the
Veda, Arya is the name by which the believers in the
gods of the Veda call themselves, in opposition to their
enemies, who are called Dāsa's or Dasyus.
As Arya had become a proper name as early as the
poems of the Peda, its original and etymological mean-
ing would be of little consequence, had it not been used
as an additional argument both in favor of and against
the technical use of Ārya. Professor Bopp derived
Arya from the root ar, to go, or even from ark, to
venerate.- The former etymology would give no ade-
quate sense, the latter is impossible. Lassen explains
àrya as adeundus, like à4ārya, teacher. But in explain-
ing a rya, it must be remembered that it cannot be sepa-
rated from ärya with a short a, and that in consequence
no etymology of ā'rya can be entertained which does
not at the same time account for àrya. This word is
used in the Yagurveda in exactly the same sense as
â'rya in the Rig-veda. -
Along the Caspian and in the country washed by the
Oxus and Yaxartes, Aryan and non-Aryan tribes were
mingled together. Their wars find their poetical record
in the Persian epic, the Shahnameh, describing the
feuds and friendships between Iran and Turan. Many
Scythian names, preserved by Greek writers, have an
Aryan character. Beyond the Oxus, in Transoxiana,
too, people are mentioned under the name of Ariacae
and Antariani. Here, however, all certain traces of
the word, as a geographical term, vanish. We have
indeed Aria as an old name of Thrace, and on the
Vistula we meet a German tribe called Arii; but nothing
is known of the origin of these names, and no conclu-
sions should be built on them.
AS, an ancient weight consisting of 12 ounces, iden-
tical with the Roman pound.
It was also the name of a-Roman coin, which was
df different weight and value of different periods. The
first introduction of coined money is ascribed to Servius
Tullius, who probably borrowed from the neighboring
Etruscans the general form and scale of value. The
old as was composed of the mixed metal acs, an alloy
of copper and tin, and was called as Zióra/is, or libra-
zizus, because actually weighing a pound or 12 ounces.
The asses were cast in a mould, and their original shape
seems to have been an irregular oblong, which was
stamped with the figure of a sheep, ox, or sow. After
the round shape was introduced, the one side was always
inscribed with the figure of a ship's prow, and the
other with the double head of Janus.
ASAFCETIDA, a gum-resin obtained principally
from AWarthex asafaetida, and probably also from one
or two other closely allied species of umbelliferous
plants. . It is produced in the southern provinces of
Persia, in Bokhara, and in Beloochistan, and the plant
grows as far south as the Chenab Valley in the Panjab.
AWarthex asafoetida grows to a height of from 5 to 6
feet, and when the plant has attained the age of 4 years,
it is ready for yielding asafoetida. The stems are cut
down close to the root, and the juice flows out, at first
of a milky appearance, but quickly setting into a solid
resinous mass. Asafoetida is a valuable nerve sedative,
and is an ingredient of most carminitive preparations.
It is extensively used in medicine.
ASBEN, a country of Central Africa, known also as
AIR, which see.
ASBESTOS, or ASBESTUs (uzzcozzsztmable), is a va-
riety of the amphibole or hornblende family of minerals,
and akin to tremolite, actinolite, and common horn-
blende. The chemical composition of the whole
family is chiefly silica, magnesia, alumina, and ferrous
oxide, but varies considerably. Those containing the
most iron are most easily fused. Asbestos consists of
fine crystalline elastic fibres, with a silky lustre, vary-
ing in color from while to grey and green, and derives
its name from being specially indestructible by fire.
A single fibre of it fuses to a white enamel, but in the
mass it is capable of resisting ordinary flame, and has
on this account been regarded from ancient times as a
most interesting substance. Woven into cloth it forms
a fireproof texture, which, to be purified, requires only
to be thrown into the fire; gloves, napery, towels,
handkerchiefs, and even dresses have been woven of it;
and it is said that the ancients used to wrap the bodies
of their dead in abestos cloth to keep their ashes sepa-
rate from those of the surrounding ſuneral pile. There
are several varieties of asbestos:—(1.) Amianthus is the
rarest and most delicate kind, its fibres being beauti-
fully white, flexible, long, and regularly laid. (2.) Cozz-
mon Asbestos is not so light, either in color or weight,
as amianthus, and is more splintery, inflexible, and ir-
regular in structure. (3.) Mountain leather and
Al/ountain cork are other varieties, where the fibres are
less flexible and regular than in either of the above.
Their color is brown or a dirty white. Mountain
wood is a soft, tough, opaque, brownish-colored variety
of asbestos, much heavier than the last, and melting to
a black slag before the blow-pipe. It is found in Tyrol,
in Dauphiny, and in Scotland at Glen Tilt, and Kil-
drummy. º
ASCALON, now ASKULAN, one of the five chief
cities of the Philistines, on the coast of the Mediterra-
nean, 12 geographical miles N. of Gaza. It was a well-
fortified town, and the seat of the worship of Derceto.
The place is now a desolate heap of ruins, with remains
of its walls and fragments of granite pillars.
ASCENSION, a solitary island in the Atlantic Ocean,
about 7% miles in length and 6 in breadth, with an area
of 34 square miles, and within the immediate influence
of the south-east trade wind. It is one of the peaks of
a submarine ridge which separates the northern and South-
ern basins of the Atlantic. The whole character of the
island is volcanic; and its surface is broken into mount-
ains, hills, and ravines. Ascension is found useful as a
station and rendezvous for the vessels employed on the
coasts of Africa and Brazil; and letters were formerly
often left by passing ships in a crevice in one of the rocks.
Population, about 500.
ASCENSION DAY, a festival of the church, held
forty days after Easter, or ten days before Whit Sun-
day, in memory of Christ’s ascension into heaven forty
days after his resurrection.
ASCETICISM, meaning the exercise or training to
which athletes subjected themselves when preparing for
the games or contests, is used metaphorically to denote
the habitual practice of exercising restraint over, or sub-
duing, the bodily desires and affections which tend to
lower objects, in order thereby to advance in the higher
life of purity and virtue. It is the means by which the
mind withdraws itself from the hindrances and tempta-
tions of the world, and clears its vision for what is spir-
itual and true. In its lowest stage it consists in the mor-
tification of the flesh by fasting, penance, and the like;
but in a higher sense it involves the uprooting of all
worldly or temporal desires, and withdrawal from the
natural relations of life. The origin of such a peculiar
548
A S C – A S G
aspect of thought or mode of action is to be found in the
wide-spread idea, not wholly Oriental, that in Unity or
Identity alone is true goodness or happiness, while in
Multiplicity or Difference is evil and misery.
ASCH, a town of Bohemia, in the circle of Eger, at
the foot of the Hainberg, with a population of upwards
of 9000, carrying on extensive manufactures of woollen,
cotton, and other fabrics, as well as of paper, leather,
and beer.
ASCHAFFENBURG, a town in the government of
Lower Franconia, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, at the
confluence of the Aschaffa with the Maine, near the foot
of the Spessart-Wald.
The principality of Aschaffenburg, deriving its name
from the city, comprehended an area of 336 geograph-
ical square miles. It formed part of the electorate of
Mentz, and in ISO3 was made over to the archchancellor,
Archbishop Charles of I)alberg. In 1806 it was annexed
to the grandduchy of Frankfort; and in 1814 was trans-
ferred to Bavaria, in virtue of a treaty concluded 19th
June between that power and Austria. Conjointly with
Lower Franconia, it now forms a circle of the kingdom
of Bavaria.
ASCHAM, ROGER, a very distinguished scholar and
writer, was born at Kirby Wiske, a village in Yorkshire,
near Northallerton, about the year 1515.
The revival of Greek and Roman literature at the
period Ascham entered upon his studies was peculiarly
favorable to the natural bent of his inclination. A
desire of excelling uniformly influenced his conduct; and,
adopting the maxim Qui docet discit, he began to teach
boys the rudiments of the Greek language, as soon as
he was acquainted with elementary parts himself. His
plan was approved by Pember, and under the direction
of this valued friend he soon became acquainted with
the best Greek and latin authors. He devoted himself
particularly to Cicero and Caesar, and from his constant
study of these writers acquired the elegant Latin style
which proved so honorable and so advantageous in the
after part of his life.
His reputation for Greek learning soon brought him
many pupils, several of whom afterwards rose to con-
siderable eminence. Of these one of the most dis-
tinguished was William Grindall, who obtained the
station of master of languages to the Lady Elizabeth,
upon the recommendation of Sir John Cheke. In 1544,
on the resignation of Cheke, he obtained the appoint-
ment of university orator, an office which he retained
with great reputation during the period he was con-
nected with the university.
By the advice of his friend Pember, he turned his
attention to the study of instrumental music, and
thereby enlivened his leisure hours, and prepared his
mind for renewed exertion. In his study he also amused
himself with embellishing the pages of his manuscripts
with beautiful drawings, and in the field he took part in
the diversion of archery. -
When the crown passed to Elizabeth, it made little
alteration in the condition of Ascham, who still re-
tained his station. He spent several hours every day
in reading the learned languages with the queen.
In consequence of a conversation which took place in
the apartment of Secretary Cecil, upon the subject of
education, Sir Richard Sackville, who was present,
requested Ascham to write a book on the general sub-
ject of education. This work is entitled The Schole-
master, and contains many excellent directions to the
instructors of youth, particularly with regard to teach-
ing languages, where he recommends the method of
double translation. It was published by his widow after
his death. By too close application in composing a
poem, which he intended to present to the queen on the
p
first to have settled at Rome as a rhetorician.
New Year’s day of 1569, he was seized with an illness
wº proved fatal. He died on the 23d of December
I 50S.
ASCHE, RABBI, was the first and chief editor of the
Zalmud. . He was born at Babylon in 353 A.D., and
was in high repute among his contemporaries for his
great learning. He began the Babylonian Talmud,
and spent 30 years of his life at it. He left the work
incomplete, and it was finished by his disciples, Rabbi
Abma and Rabbi Jose.
ASCHERSLEBEN, a manſacturing city of Prussia,
in the government of Magdeburg, formerly the chief
town of a circle. Aschersleben was probably founded
in the IIth century by Count Esika of Ballenstedt, the
ancestor of the house of Anhalt, whose grandson, Otto,
called himself count of Ascanania and Aschersleben,
deriving the former part of the title from his castle in
the neighborhood of the town. On the death of Otto
III. (1315) Aschersleben passed into the hands of the
bishop of Halberstadt, and at the peace of 1648, was,
along with the bishopric, united to Brandenburg.
ASCLEPIADES, of Prusa in Bythmia, a celebrated
physician, flourished at Rome at the end of the 2d cen-
tury B.C. He travelled much when young, and seems at
In that
profession he did not succeed, but he acquired great
reputation as a physician. He founded his medical
practice on a modification of the atomic or corpuscular
theory, according to which disease results from an ir-
regular or inharmonious motion of the corpuscles of the
body. His remedies were, therefore, directed to the
restoration of harmony, and in many cases were not
unpleasant. He trusted most to changes of diet, ac-
companied by friction, bathing, and exercise, though he
also employed emetics and bleeding. He recommened
the use of wine, and in every way strove to render him-
self as agreeable as possible to his patients. His pupils
were very numerous, and the school formed by them
was called Methodical. Asclepiades died at an ad-
vanced age from the effects of a fall.
ASCOLI, the chief town and a bishop's see in the
Italian province of Ascoli Piceno, situated on a rising
ground on the river Tronto, a few miles to the west of
º Apennines, and commanding a large and fertile
3.111.
p Asculum was the chief city of the Piceni, and a place
of great strength. It was captured by P. Sempronius
Sophus (268 B.C.), but afterwards took an important
part in the Social War, and defied for a time the Roman
consul Pompeius Strabo. It fell 89 B.C.; Judacilius, its
gallant defender, put an end to his life; its magistrates
were executed, and its inhabitants banished. At a later
period it received a Roman colony, and recovered its
prosperity. *
ASCONIUS PEDIANUS, QUINTUs, author of
some commentaries on Cicero, was born probably a
year or two before the Christian era, and died about 83
A. D. He is supposed to have been a native of Padua.
Some minor works ascribed to him have been lost; all
that are now extant consist of commentaries on some
of Cicero's orations. These notes, written in very pure
Latin, relate chiefly to matters of law, history, or anti-
quities, and are very valuable for the light they cast on
some obscure parts of Cicero.
ASELLI, ASELLIUS, or ASELLIO, GASPARO (born
1581), a physician of Cremona, afterwards professor of
anatomy at Pavia. He is best known by his important
discovery of the Zactea/ Vessels.
ASGARD, the home of the AESIR, 7.2., the Olympus
of northern mythology. The city of Asgard is fabled
to have been built on the highest part and in the middle
of Ida's plain, which is the very centre of the universe.
A S G -- A H S
549
Here the AEsir erected a court for themselves with sea!
for twelve, and one high seat for Odin, the All-fathe:
and also a lofty abode for the goddesses, called Vingoi
They worked diligently, played at games, were rich i
gold and all precious things, and happy, till three mai
ens from Jotunheim, the giants' world, crossed Ida
plain, and entered Asaheim, when corruption sprea
amongst its inmates. Asgard had many mansions, th
largest and noblest of which was Gladsheim; whilst al.
other, not so spacious, but the ſairest of all, an
brighter than the sun, was called Gimli. This wi.
stand when both heaven and earth have passed awa,
and will be the habitation of all good and upright men
through etermity. When the AEsir created men, and
placed them in Midgard, they connected the latter wit
Asgard by a bridge, Bifrösh, known to mortals as th
rainbow, which also leads to the sacred fountain of Urd.
by the ash Yggdrasil, where the gods of Asgard take
counsel together. For the other parts of Asgard, whicl
are closely interwoven with the history of the creation o'
the world and of mankind, as taught in the Odinic faith,
the reader is referred to MYTHOLOGY, in which the sub-
ject is treated more at length.
ASGILL, JoHN, an eccentric writer who flourished
during part of the 17th and 18th centuries. The exact
date of his birth is uncertain. He was bred to the law,
and gained considerable reputation, not only by his
skill in his profession, but from his first published
writings. These consisted of two pamphlets — the first
advocating the establishment of some currency other
than the usual gold and silver, the second on the registry
for titles of lands. In 1703 he took his seat in the Irish
Parliament, but was dismissed after four days on
account of his so-called blasphemous pamphlet. In
1705 he sat in the English Parliament for Bramber; but
in 1707 he was expelled, nominally on account of his
unlucky pamphlet, but really, perhaps, because of his
debts. The remainder of his life he spent in the Fleet
and King's Bench prisons, in one of which he died in
1738. He wrote a number of pamphlets on the
Pretender and on the Hanoverian succession.
ASH is the name given to several kinds of trees. The
taller or common ash (Aºraximus excelsior) belongs to
the Natural Order Oleaca, the olive family. It is
distinguished by its fruit, which is dry and winged.
Normally the fruit should be two-celled and two-seeded;
but generally, by abortion, there is only one cavity and
One seed. The Hebrew word Orezz, translated ash in
Isaiah xliv, I4, cannot refer to an ash tree, as that is
not a native of Palestine, but probably to the Syrian
pine (Zºnzes /a/effensis). The ash is indigenous in
Europe, and also extends to Asia. The tree is distin-
guished for its height and contour, as well as for its grace-
ful foliage. It is one of the most useful of British trees
as regards both timber and rapidity of growth. The
tree attains a height of from 50 to 80 feet, and flowers
in March and April, before the leaves are developed. It
thrives best in a dry loamy soil, and, as it exhausts the
soil in which it grows, it injures plants growing near
it. The American ash, a very tough timber, is largely
used in carriage building and for agricultural implements.
ASH-WEDNESDAY, the first day of Lent, is sup.
posed to have received this name from a custom in the
church of Sprinkling ashes on the heads of penitents then
admitted to penance. The early church did not com-
mence Lent until the following Sunday; the additional
days were probably included by Gregory the Great.
ASHANTEE, or SIANTI, a country in Western
Africa, in the interior of the Gold Coast, the extent and
population of which can only be approximately given.
It comprises about 70,000 English square miles, and its
population has been variously stated at from 1,000,ooo
to 3, OOO,OOO. -
Ashantee proper is covered with almost impenetrable
forest. The country round the towns in the interior,
however, is cultivated with care, the fields, being kept
clean, and yielding in abundance grain, yams, vegetables, .
and fruits. The territory yields also a considerable
quantity of gold. The Ashantees are skillful in several
species of manufacture, particularly in weaving the great
African fabric of cotton. Their pottery and works in
gold also show skill, though surpassed by those pro-
duced in the more southern countries. A large quantity
of silver-plate and goldsmith's work of great value and
considerable artistic elaboration was found in 1874 in
the king’s palace of Coomassie, not the least remarkable
objects being masks of beaten gold.
The government of Ashantee is a mixture of mon-
archy and military aristocracy; the lower orders being
held in complete thraldom, and liable to be put to death
or sold into slavery at the will of the chiefs. The king
carries on all the ordinary administration of the state;
but in questions relating to peace or war he is bound to
consult the council of the caboceers or captains. Each
of these caboceers keeps a little court, where he makes
a profuse display of barbaric pomp. Polygamy is
indulged in to an enormous extent, the king having a reg-
ular allowance of 3333 wives, but many of these are em-
ployed as guards or in menial services. The crown de-
scends to the king’s brother or his sister’s son, not to
his own offspring. *
ASHBURTON, a borough and market-town of
England, in the county of Devon, 192 miles W. S.W.
of London, and 18 from Exeter.
ASHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCH, a market-town of Eng-
land, county of Leicester, seventeen miles northwest
of Leicester, on the railway from that city to Burton.
ASH DOD. See AZOTUS.
ASHEVILLE, the capital of Buncombe county,
North Carolina, occupies a site on the western slope
of the Blue Ridge Mountains, within a short distance of
the French Broad river, and at the junction of the
Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia, and Richmond and
Danville railroads. The city contains a court house,
half a dozen churches, three schools, a female academy,
five banks, two daily and four weekly papers, besides
two monthly magazines, with hotels, stores, warehouses,
and manufacturing establishments, including furniture,
carriages, boots and shoes, brooms, tile, artificial stone,
tobacco, flour, etc., etc. Population in 1890, 12,000.
ASHFORD, a market-town of England, county of
Kent, twelve miles southwest of Canterbury, and fifty-
three from London.
ASHLAND, a prominent shipping point in Boyd
county, Ky., is situated on the Ohio river, I46 miles
north of Cincinnati, and is a railway center of some
importance, the Chesapeake and Ohio (Newport News
and Mississippi Valley), Ohio and Big Sandy, and the
Ashland Coal and Iron Company Railway lines passing
through the city. It contains two banks, two weekly
papers, five churches, a number of graded schools, a .
female seminary, quite a number of stores, and other evi-
dences of thrift and enterprise. It is the location of a
dry-dock, and extensive manufactures of pig iron and
metal products generally, while coal and iron mines, fur-
naces, etc., are operated in the immediate vicinity.
Population, 6,000.
ASHLAND, the capital of Ashland county, Ohio,
and a manufacturing city of growing importance, is
situated on the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio rail-
road, 196 miles north of Cincinnati, 66 miles south of
Cleveland, and 86 miles from Columbus, the state
capital. Being thus accessible from all the leading cities
550
in Ohio, and the immediate center of a productive agri-
cultural country, for which it is the depot of supplies, it
has grown rapidly in wealth, importance, and popula-
tion. It contains two banks, four weekly papers, also
a monthly magazine, ten churches, a high School, besides
grammar and intermediate Schools, stores, hotels, public
halls, and many prominent enterprises of an industrial
character. Among the latter are manufactures of steel
bed-springs, hullers, pumps, lumber, carriages, jute,
paper boxes, patent medicines, cigars, notions, be-
sides other goods of a light character, giving employ-
ment to a considerable force of hands, and investment
to a large amount of capital. The population in 1890
was estimated to exceed 5,000.
ASHLAND, a city of Schuylkill county, Pennsyl-
vania, is located on the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia
and Reading railroads, twelve miles from Pottsville, and
I 19 miles from Philadelphia. The city contains one
national bank, eleven churches, four school edifices, a
public hall, hotels, and many stores and private resi-
dences. The manufactories embrace foundries, machine
shops, iron and wire works, lumber mills, etc. The city
is in the center of a productive mining region, contain-
ing a large number of shafts, all of which are constantly
in operation. The population is 6,500.
ASHLAND, the capital of Ashland county, Wis.,
and one of the most enterprising cities of the Northwest,
is situated on Chequamegon Bay, Lake Superior, and
on the Wisconsin Central; Chicago, St. Paul, Minne-
apolis and Omaha; Lake Shore and Western, and
Northern Pacific railroads, 436 miles northwest of
Chicago. Its location—possessing the finest harbor on
the lake—unsurpassed transportation facilities, the pub-
lic spirit of its inhabitants, and the natural resources of
the surrounding country, have combined to erect Ash-
land into an influential and leading city within a com-
paratively brief period. There are now one daily
and three weekly papers published in the city; three
national banks and one or more private banks are re-
quired to meet the demands of business, which is steadily
increasing in volume; the commercial, mining and
manufacturing interests are largely represented. The
city contains ten churches, public buildings costing
$90,000, five school edifices representing an outlay of
$150,000, two public libraries and other incidents of
development. More than $500,000 have been invested
in manufacturing plants of various descriptions, the total
annual output of which foots up into the millions in value.
The city is lighted by gas and electricity, provided with
approved street railway, water and sewage systems, and
police and fire departments. The assessed valuation of
property for 1890 was $5,500,000, and the city tax $1.65
per $100. The population in 1890 was 16,OOO.
ASH.TABULA, the leading city of Ashtabula county,
Ohio, and one of the most prominent points in the
Western Reserve district, is handsomely situated on the
Ashtabula river, three miles from Lake Erie. The city
is located with special regard to the promotion of its
commercial and manufacturing interests, having direct
communication with all ports on the great chain of lakes
from Duluth to Buffalo and thence to the sea-board by
rail or water, while the Lake Shore and Michigan
Southern, New York, Chicago and St. Louis, and Ash-
tabula and Pittsburg railroads and their branches furnish
unsurpassed accommodations for land traffic in every
direction. Three daily, three weekly, two semi-weekly
and one monthly papers are regularly isgued, and two
banks are conducted. The city also contains churches
and graded schools, hotels and public halls, an opera
house, etc., besides rolling mills, machine shops and
brass-works, in addition to manufactories of carriage
bows, tools, lumber, agricultural implements, etc. The
*
city is lighted by gas and electricity and evidences of
enterprise are everywhere apparent. The population in
1890 was 8,386.
ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE, or ASHTON, a parlia-
mentary borough in the county of Lancaster, and hun-
dred of Salford, on the northern bank of the river
Tame, 6% miles east of Manchester, and 197 from
London.
ASIA. This division of the earth's surface embraces
the north-eastern portion of the great mass of land
which constitutes what is generally known as the Old
World, of which Europe forms the northwestern and
Africa the southwestern region.
The entire surface of the earth being about 196 mil-
lions of square miles in area (of which 51 millions are
land and 145 millions water), Asia contains about 17
millions of square miles, or say one-third of the whole
dry land and one-twelfth part of the whole surface of
the globe. Europe contains” about 3% millions of
Square miles, or close upon one-fifth of the area of
Asia; Africa, I I W4 millions; and the two Americas
together, rather more than I5 millions. The remain-
der of the land belongs to Australia, the islands of the
Eastern Archipelago and the Pacific, and the Antarctic
regions.
The northern boundary of Asia is formed by the
Arctic Ocean; the coast-line falls between the seventieth
and seventy-fifth parallels of N. latitude, and so lies
within the Arctic circle, having its extreme northern
point in Cape Sievero-Vostochny (i.e. northeast), in
latitude 78° N. On the south the coast-line is far
more irregular, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal,
and the China Sea reaching about to the northern
tropic at the mouths of the Indus, of the Ganges, and
of the Canton river; while the great peninsulas of
Arabia, of Hindostan, and Cambodia, descend to about
the tenth degree of N. latitude, and the Malay penin-
sula extends within a degree and a half of the equator.
On the west the extreme point of Asia is found on the
shore of the Mediterranean, at Cape Baba, in longitude
26° E. from Greenwich, not far from the Dardanelles.
Thence the boundary passes in the one direction
through the Mediterranean, and down the Red Sea to
the southern point of Arabia, at the Straits of Báb-el-
Mándeb, in long. 45° E.; and in the other through the
Black Sea, and along the range of Caucasus, following
approximately the 40th degree of N. latitude to the Cas-
pian, whence it turns to the north on a line not far
from the 60th meridian, along the Ural Mountains, and
meets the Arctic Ocean nearly opposite the island of
Nova-Zembla. The most easterly point of Asia is Cape
Vostochnyii (i.e. east), in long. Igo? E., at the entrance
of Behring's Straits. . The boundary between this point
and the extremity of the Malay peninsula follows the
coast of the Northern Pacific and the China Sea, on a
line deeply broken by the projection of the peninsulas
of Kamchatka and Corea, and the recession of the
Gulfs of Okotsk, Tonquin, and Siam, together with the
Yellow Sea. -
Owing to the great extent of Asia, it is not easy to
obtain a correct conception of the actual form of its
outline from ordinary maps, the distortions which
accompany projections of large spherical areas on a flat
surface being necessarily great and misleading. Turn-
ing, therefore, to a globe, Asia, viewed as a whole,
will be seen to have the form of a great isosceles spher-
ical triangle, having its northeastern apex at Cape Vos-
tochnyii, in Behring’s Straits; its two equal sides, in
length about a quadrant of the sphere, or 6,500 miles,
extending on the west to the southern point of Arabia,
and on the east to the extremity of the Malay penin-
sula; and the base between these points, occupying
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A S I
551
about 60° of a great circle, or 4500 miles, and being
deeply indented by the Arabian Sea and the Bay of
Bengal on either side of the Indian peninsula. A great
circle, drawn through Cape Vostochnyii and the south-
ern point of Arabia, passes nearly along the coast line of
the Arctic Ocean, over the Ural Mountains, through
the western part of the Caspian, and nearly along the
boundary between Persia and Asiatic Turkey. Asia
Minor and the north-western half of Arabia lie outside
of such a great circle, which otherwise indicates, with
fair accuracy, the north-western boundary of Asia. In
like manner a great circle drawn through Cape Vos-
tochnyii and the extremity of the Malay peninsula,
passes nearly over the coasts of Manchuria, China, and
Cochin-China and departs comparatively little from the
eastern boundary.
Although for the purposes of geographical nomencla-
ture, boundaries formed by a coast line—that is, by
depression of the earth's solid crust below the ocean
level—are most easily recognised, and are of special
convenience; and although such boundaries, from fol-
lowing lines on which the continuity of the land is
interrupted, often necessarily indicate important differ-
ences in the conditions of adjoining countries, and of
their political and physical relations, yet variations of
the elevation of the surface aboze the sea level fre-
quently produce effects not less marked. The changes
of temperature and climate caused by difference of ele-
vation are quite comparable in their magnitude and
effect on all organised creatures with those due to dif-
ferences of latitude; and the relative position of the
high and low lands on the earth's surface, by modifying
the direction of the winds, the fall of rain, and other
atmospheric phenomena, produces effects in no sense
less important than those due to the relative distribu-
tion of the land and sea. Hence the study of the
mountain ranges of a continent is, for a proper apprehen-
sion of its physical conditions and characteristics, as
essential as the examination of its extent and position
in relation to the equator and poles, and the configura-
tion of its coasts.
From such causes the physical conditions of a large
part of Asia, and the history of its populations, have
been very greatly influenced by the occurrence of the
mass of mountain, which includes the Himalaya and
the whole elevated area having true physical connection
with that range, and occupies an area about 2000 miles
in length and varying from IOO to 500 miles in width,
between the 65th and IOOth meridians east from Green-
wich, and between the 28th and 35th degrees of N. lat.
These mountains, which are the highest in the world,
rise, along their entire length, far above the line of per-
petual snow, and few of the passes across the main
ridges are at a less altitude than 15,000 or 16,000 feet
above the sea. Peaks of 20,000 feet abound along the
whole chain, and the points that exceed that elevation
are numerous, the highest hitherto measured being more
than 29,000 feet above the sea. A mountain range such
as this, attaining altitudes at which vegetable life ceases,
and the support of animal life is extremely difficult,
constitutes an almost impassable barrier against the
spread of all forms of living creatures. The mountain
mass, moreover, is not less important in causing a com-
plete separation between the atmospheric conditions on
its opposite flanks, by reason of the extent to which it
penetrates that stratum of the atmosphere which is in
contact with the earth’s surface and is effective in deter-
mining climatº. . The highest summits create serious
obstructions to the movements of nearly three-fourths
of the mass of the air resting on this part of the earth,
and of nearly the whole of the moisture it contains;
the average height of the entire chain is such as to make
it an almost absolute barrier to one-half of the air and
three-fourths of the moisture; while the lower ranges also
produce important atmospheric effects, one-fourth of
the air and one-half of the watery vapor it carries
with it lying below 9000 feet.
This great mass of mountain, constituting as it does
a complete natural line of division across a large part
of the continent, will form a convenient basis from
which to work, in proceeding, as will now be done, to
give a general view of the principal countries contained
in Asia. -
The summit of the great mountain mass is occupied
by 7'ibeſ, a country known by its inhabitants under the
name of Bod, or Body u/, 770ef is a rugged table-land,
narrow as compared to its length, broken up by a suc-
cession of mountain ranges, which follow as a rule the
direction of the length of the table land, and commonly
rise into the regions of perpetual Snow; between the
flanks of these lie valleys, clpsely hemmed in, usually
narrow, having a very moderate inclination, but at in
tervals opening out into wide plains, and occupied either
by rivers, or frequently by lakes from which there is no
outflow and the waters of which are salt. The eastern
termination of Tibet is in the line of Snowy mountains
which flank China on the west, between the 27th and
35th parallels of latitude and about on the 103d merid-
ian east. On the west the table-land is prolonged beyond
the political limits of Tibet, though with much the same
physical features, to about the 70th meridian, beyond
which it terminates; and the ranges which are covered.
with perpetual snow as far west as Samārkhand, thence
rapidly diminish in height, and terminate in low hills.
north of Bukhāra.
The mean elevation of Tibet may be taken as 15,000.
feet above the sea. The broad mountainous slope by
which it is connected with the lower levels of Hindos-
tan contains the ranges known as the Himalaya; the
names of Kouenlun, or Karakorum, have been given by
some geographers to the northern slope that descends to
the central plains of the Gobi, though these mountains
are not locally known under those names, Kouenlun be-
ing apparently a Chinese corruption of some Turkish or
Tibetan word, and Karakorum only one of the many
passes that lead from Western Tibet to the northward.
The extreme rigor of the climate of Tibet, which com-
bines great cold with great drought, makes the country
essentially very poor, and the chief portion of it little
better than desert. The vegetation is everywhere most
scanty, and anything deserving the name of a tree is
hardly to be found unless in the more sheltered spots,
and then artificially planted. The population in the
lower and warmer valleys live in houses, and follow ag-
riculture; in the higher regions they are nomadic shep-
herds, thinly scattered over a large area.
China lies between the eastern flank of the Tibetan
plateau and the North Pacific, having its northern and
southern limits about on the 40th and the 20th parallels
of N. lat. respectively. The country though generally
broken up with mountains of moderate elevation, pos-
sesses none of very great importance apart from those of
its western border. It is well watered, populous, and,
as a rule, nighly cultivated, fertile, and well wooded; the
climate is analogous to that of Southern Europe, with hot
summers, and winters everywhere cold and in the north
decidedly severe.
From the eastern extremity of the Tibetan mountains,
between the 95th and IOOth meridians, high ranges ex-
tend from about lat. 35° N., in a southerly direction,
which, spreading outwards as they go south, reach the
sea at various points in Cochin-China, the Malayan pen-
insula, and the east flank of Bengal. Between these
ranges, which are probably permanently snowy to about
552
A S I
the 27th degree of N. lat., flow the great rivers of the
Indo-Chinese peninsula, the Mekong, the Menám, the
Sálwen, and the Irawády, the valleys of which form the
main portions of the states of Cochin-China (including
Tonquin and Camboja), of Siam (including Laos), and
of Burmah. The people of Cochin-China are called
Anam, probably from a corruption of their name for the
capital of Tonquin, Kechao, that the Portuguese Cochin
has been derived. All these countries are well watered.
populous, and fertile, with a climate very similar to that
of eastern Bengal. The geography of the region in
Which the mountains of Cochin China and Siam join
Tibet is still very imperfectly known, but there is no
ground left for doubting that the great river of eastern
Tibet, Tachoktsangpo, supplies the main stream of the
Brahmaputra. The two great rivers of China, the Ho-
ang-ho and the Yang-tse-kyang, take their rise from the
eastern face of Tibet, the former from the north-east
angle, the latter from the south-east. The main
stream of this last is called Bri-chu in Tibet, and its chief
feeder is the Ya lung-kyang, which rises not far from the
Hoang-ho, and is considered the territorial boundary
between China and Tibet.
Aritis/: Zndia comprises approximately the area be-
tween the 95th and 70th meridians, and between the
Tibetan table land and the Indian Ocean. The Indian
peninsula from the 25th degree of latitude southwards is
a table-land, having its greatest elevation on the west,
where the highest points rise to over 8000 feet, though
the ordinary altitude of the higher hills hardly exceeds
4OOOfeet; the general level of the table-landlies between
3OOO feet as a maximum and 1000 feet.
From the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra on
the east to that of the Indus on the west, and inter-
vening between the table-land of the peninsula and
the foot of the Himalayan slope of the Tibetan plateau,
lies the great plain of northern India, which rises at its
highest point to about 1,000 feet, and includes alto-
gether, with its prolongation up the valley of Assam, an
area of about 500,000 square miles, comprising the
richest, the most populous, and most civilised districts
of . India. This great plain extends, with an almost
unbroken surface, from the most western to the most
eastern extremity of British India, and is composed of
deposits so finely comminuted, that it is no exaggera-
tion to say that it is possible to go from the Bay of
Bengal up the Ganges, through the Punjab, and down
the Indus again to the sea, over a distance of 2,000
miles and more, without finding a pebble, however
small.
The great rivers of Northern India—the Ganges, the
Brahmaputra, and the Indus—all derive their waters
from the Tibetan mountain mass; and it is a remarkable
circumstance, that the waters of almost the whole of the
summit of the plateau are carried off into British India
between the 95th and 75th meridians, and that the only
part of the drainage thrown off to the north, is that of
the northern mountain slope.
The population of India is very large, some of its dis-
tricts being probably among the most densely peopled
in the world. The country is generally well cleared,
and forests are, as a rule, found only along the flanks
of the mountains, where the fall of rain is most abun-
Slant. The more open parts are highly cultivated, and
large cities abound. The climate is generally such as
to secure the population the necessaries of life without
severe labor; the extremes of heat and drought are
such as to render the land unsuitable for pasture, and
the people everywhere subsist by cultivation of the soil
or commerce, and live in settled villages or towns.
The island of Ceylon is distinguished from the neigh-
boring parts of British India by little more than its
J
separate administration and the Buddhistic leligion of
its population. The highest point in Ceylon, rises to
about 9000 feet above the sea, and the mountain slopes
are densely covered with forest. The lower levels are in
climate and cultivation quite similar to the regions in the
same latitude on the Malay peninsula.
Of the islands in the Bay of Bengal, the Nicobar and
Andamazz groups are alone worth notice. They are
placed on a line joining the north end of Sumatra and
Cape Negrais, the southwestern extremity of Burmah.
They possibly owe their existence to the volcanic agencies
which are known to extend from Sumatra across this
part of the Indian Ocean.
The Zaccadives and Maldives. are groups of small
coral islands, situated along the 73d meridian, at no
great distance from the Indian peninsula, on which they
have a very slight and ill-defined political dependency.
The portion of Asia west of British India, excluding
Arabia and Syria, forms another extensive plateau
covering an area as large as that of Tibet, though at a
much lower altitude. Its southern border runs along
the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Tigris, and
thence westward to the north-east angle of the Levant;
on the north the high land follows nearly the 36th degree
or N. lat. to the southern shore of the Caspian, and
thence to the Black Sea and Sea of Marmora. A/g/dizz-
istdin, Ba/iſchzstain, Zrdin or Persia, Armenia, and the
provinces of Asia Minor, occupy this high region, with
which they are nearly conterminous. The eastern flank
of this table-land follows a line of hills drawn a short
distance from the Indus, between the mouth of that
river and the Himalaya, about on the 72d meridian ;
these hills do not generally exceed 4000 or 5000 feet in
elevation, but a few of the summits reach IO,OOO feet or
more. The southern and south-western face follows the
coast closely up the Persian Gulf from the mouth of the
Indus, and is formed further west by the mountain
scarp which, rising in many points to Io,000 feet, flanks
the Tigris and the Mesopotamian plains, and extends
along Kurdistan and Armenia nearly to the 40th merid-
ian; beyond which it turns along the Taurus range, and
the north-eastern angle of the Mediterranean. The
north-eastern portion of the Afghan table-land abuts on
the Himalaya and Tibet, with which it forms a con-
tinuous mass of mountain between the 71st and 72d
meridians, and the 34th and 36th, parallels of N. lat.
From the point of intersection of the 71st meridian with
the 36th parallel of latitude, which falls nearly on the
pass called Hindukosh (a name which has been extended
by geographers to the ridge on which it is placed), an
unbroken range of mountains stretches on one side
towards the north-east, up to the crest of the northern
slope of the Tibetan plateau, and on the other nearly
due west as far as the Caspian. The north-eastern por-
tion of this range is of great altitude, and separates the
head waters of the Oxus, which run off to the Aral Sea,
from those of the Indus and its Cabul tributary, which,
uniting below Peshāwar, are thence discharged south-
ward into the Arabian Sea. The western part of the
range, which received the name of Parapomisan Mount-
aims from the ancients, diminishes in height west of the
65th meridian, and constitutes the northern face of the
Aſghan and Persian plateau, rising abruptly from the
plains of the Turkoman desert, which lies between the
Oxus and the Caspian. These mountains at some points
attain a height of 10,000 or 12,000 feet. Along the
south coast of the Caspian this line of elevation is pro-
longed as the Elburz range (not to be conſused with the
Elburz of the Caucasus), and has its culminating point
| in Demavend, which rises to 18,500 feet above the Sea ;
thence it extends to the north-west to Ararat, which
rises to upwards of 17,000 feet, from the vicinity of
\ A S I
5.53
which the Euphrates flows off to the south-west, across
the high lands of Armenia. Below the north-east de-
clivity of this range lies Georgia, on the other side of
which province rises the Caucasus, the boundary of
Asia and Europe between the Caspian and Black Seas,
the highest points of which reach an elevation of nearly
19,000 feet. West of Ararat high hills extend along
the Black Sea, between which and the Taurus range
lies the plateau of Asia Minor, reaching to the AEgean
Sea ; the mountains along the Black Sea, on which are
the Olympus and Ida of the ancients, rise to 6000 or
7OOO feet; the Taurus is more loſty, reaching 8000 or
IO,Ooo feet ; both ranges decline in altitude as they
approach the Mediterranean.
This great plateau, extending from the Mediterranean
to the Indus, has a length of about 2500 miles from
east to west, and a breadth of upwards of 600 miles on
the west, and nowhere less than 250 miles. It lies gen-
erally at altitudes between 2000 feet and 8000 feet above
the sea level. Viewed as a whole, the eastern half of
this region, comprising Persia, Afghanistan, and Bal—
uchistan, is poor and unproductive. The climate is very
severe in winter, and extremely hot in summer. The
rainfall is very scanty, and running water is hardly
known, excepting among the mountains which form the
scarps of the elevated country. The population is
sparse, frequently nomadic, and addicted to plunder;
progress in the arts and habits of civilisation is small.
The western part of the area falls within the Turkish
empire. Its climate is less hot and arid, its natural
productiyeness much greater, and its population more
settled and on the whole more advanced.
The peninsula of Arabia, with Syria, its continuation
to the north-west, has some of the characteristics of
the hottest and driest parts of Persia and Baluchistan.
Excepting the northern part of this tract, which is con-
terminous with the plain of Mesopotamia (which at its
highest point reaches an elevation of about 700 feet
above the sea), the country is covered with low moun-
tains, rising to 3000 or 4000 feet in altitude, having
among them narrow valleys in which the vegetation is
scanty, with exceptional regions of greater fertility in
the neighborhood of the coasts, where the rainfall is
greatest. In Northern Syria the mountains of Lebanon
rise to about IO,OOO feet, and with a more copious water
supply the country becomes more productive. The
whole tract, excepting south-eastern Arabia, is nomi-
mally subject to Turkey or Egypt, but the people are to
no small extent practically independent, living a nomadic,
pastoral, and freebooting life under petty chiefs, in the
more arid districts, but settled in towns in the more
fertile tracts, where agriculture becomes more profitable,
and external commerce is established.
The area between the northern border of the Persian
high lands and the Caspian and Aral Seas is a nearly
desert low-lying plain, extending to the foot of the
north-western extremity of the great Tibeto-Himalayan
mountains, and prolonged eastward up the valleys of
the Oxus and Jaxartes, and northwards across the coun-
try of the Kirghiz and Kassaks, to the south-western
border of Siberia. It includes Bztáhara, Á7:22a, and
Turkistan proper, in which the Uzbeg Turks are dom-
inant, and for the most part is inhabited by nomadic
tribes, who are marauders, enjoying the reputation of
being the worst among a race of professed robbers.
The tribes of the north, subject to Russia, are naturally
more peaceable, and have been brought into some
degree of discipline. . In this tract the rainfall, is
nowhere sufficient for the purpose of agriculture, which
is only possible by help of irrigation; and the
fixed population (which contains a non-Turkish ele-
ment) is comparatively small, and restricted to the
towns and the districts near the rivers.
The most northern extremity of the elevated Tibeto-
Himalayan mountain plateau is situated about on the
73d meridian east, and 39° N. lat. This region is known
as Pāmār; it has all the characteristics of the highest re-
gions of Tibet, and so far fitly receives the Russian des-
ignation of steppe; but it seems to have no special pe-
culiarities, and the reason of its having been so long
regarded as a geographical enigmais not obvious. From
it the Oxus, or Amu, flows off to the west, and the
Jaxartes, or Sir, to the north, through the Turki state
of Kokand, while to the east the waters run down past
Kashgar to the central desert of the Gobi, uniting with
the streams from the northern slope of the Tibetan plat-
eau that traverse the principalities of Yarkezza! and
A%ofeſz, which are also Turki. Here the Tibetan
mountains unite with the line of elevation which
stretches across the continent from the Pacific, and
which separates Siberia from the region commonly
spoken of under the name of Central Asia.
A range of mountains, called Stanovoi, rising to the
heights of 4000 or 5000 feet, follows the southern coast
of the eastern extremity of Asia from Kamchatka to the
borders of Manchuria, as far as the I35th meridian, in
lat. 55° N. Thence, under the name of Yablonoi, it
divides the waters of the river Lena, which flows
through Siberia into the Arctic Sea, from those of the
river Amur, which falls into the North Pacific ; the basin
of this river, with its affluents, constitutes Mazzchzºria.
Approximately at right angles to the last named range,
another, known as the Khingan, extends between the
12oth and II 5th meridians, from the 55th to 42d par-
allel of N. lat., east of which the drainage falls into the
Amur and the Yellow Sea, while to the west is an
almost rainless region, the inclination of which is
towards the central area of the continent, which is AZozz-
go/ia.
From the western end of the Yablonoi range, on the
115th meridian, a mountainous belt extends along a
somewhat irregular line to the extremity of Pamir,
known under various names in its different parts, and
broken up into several branches, enclosing among them
many isolated drainage areas, from which there is no
outflow, and within which numerous lakes are formed.
The most important of these ranges is the Thian-sham,
or Celestial mountains, which form the northern boun-
dary of the Gobi desert; they lie along the 42d and 43d
parallels of N. lat., between the 75th and 95th merid-
ians, and some of the summits are said to exceed 20,000
feet in altitude; along the foot of this range lie the
principal cultivated districts of Central Asia, and here
too are situated the few towns which have sprung up in
this barren and thinly-peopled region. Next may be
named the Ala-tau, on the prolongation of the Thian-
shan, flanking the Sir on the north, and rising to 14,000
or 15,000 feet. It forms the barrier between the Issik-
kul and Balkash lakes, the elevation of which is about
5000 feet. Last is the Altai, near the 50th parallel,
rising to Io, Ooo or 12,000 feet, which separates the
waters of the great rivers of Western Siberia from
those that collect into the lakes of North-west Mongolia,
Zungaria, and Kalka. A line of elevation is continued
west of the Altai to the Ural Mountains, not rising to
considerable altitudes; this divides the drainage of South-
west Siberia from the great plains lying north-east of
the Aral Sea.
The central area bounded on the north and northwest
by the Yablonoi Mountains and their western extension
in the Thian-shan, on the south by the northern face of
the Tibetan plateau, and on the east by the Khingan
range before alluded to, forms the great desert of Cen-
554
A S I
tral Asia, known as the Gobi. Its eastern part is nearly
conterminous with South Mongolia, its western forms
East Turkistan. It appears likely that no part of this
great central Asiatic desert is less than 2000 feet above
the sea-level. The elevation of the plain about Kashgar
and Yarkend is from 4000 to 6000 feet. The more
northern parts of Mongolia are between 4000 and 6000
feet, and no portion of the route across the desert be-
tween the Chinese frontier and Kiákhta is below 3000
feet. The precise positions of the mountain ridges that
traverse this central area are not properly known; their
..elevation is everywhere considerable, and many points
are known to exceed IO,OOO or 12,000 feet.
In Mongolia the population is essentially nomadic,
their wealth consisting in herds of horned cattle, sheep,
horses, and camels. The Turki tribes, occupying West-
ern Mongolia, are among the least civilised of human be-
ings, and it is chiefly to their extreme barbarity and cruelty
that our ignorance of Central Asia is due. The climate
is very severe, with great extremes of heat and cold.
The drought is very great; rain falls rarely, and in small
quantities. The surface is for the most part a hard
stony desert, areas of blown sand occurring but excep-
tionally. There are ſew towns or settled villages, except
along the slopes of the higher mountains, on which the
rain falls more abundantly, or the melting snows supply
streams for irrigation. It is only in such situations that
cultivated lands are found, and beyond them trees are
hardly to be seen.
The portion of Asia which lies between the Arctic
Ocean and the mountainous belt bounding Manchuria,
Mongolia, and Turkistan on the north, is Siberia; it is
almost equal in area to the whole of Europe. It is for
the most part a low-lying diluvial plain, with a nearly
level or slightly undulating surface, which extends east-
wards from the Ural Mountain almost to Kamchatka.
Beyond the 125th meridian the plain is more broken by
hills. The extremes of heat and cold are very great. The
rainfall, though not heavy, is sufficient to maintain such
vegetation as is compatible with the conditions of tem-
perature, and the surface is often swampy or peaty. The
mountain sides are commonly clothed with pine forests,
and the plains with grasses or shrubs. The population
is very scanty; the cultivated tracts are comparatively
Small in extent, and restricted to the more settled dis-
tricts. The towns are entirely Russian. The indigenous
races are nomadic Mongols, of a peaceful character, but
in a very backward state of civilisation. The Ural
Mountains do not exceed 2000 or 3000 feet in average
altitude, the highest summits not exceeding 6000 feet,
and one of the passes being as low as 1400 feet. In the
southern half ...P the range are the chief mining districts
of Russia. The Ob, Yenisei, and Lena, which traverse
Siberia, are among the largest rivers in the world.
The southern group of the Malayan Islands, from
Sumatra to Java and Timor, extends in the arc of a
circle, between the 95th and 127th meridians, and from
the 5th degree of N. to the Ioth degree of S. lat. The
central part of the group is a volcanic region, many of
the volcanoes being still active, the summits frequently
rising to Io,000 feet or more.
Sumatra, the largest of the islands, is but thinly peo-
pled; the greater part of the surface is covered with
dense forest, the cultivated area being comparatively
small, confined to the low lands, and chiefly in the vol-
canic region near the centre of the island. 7ava is the
most thickly peopled, best cultivated, and most advanced
island of the whole Eastern Archipelago. It has
attained a high degree of wealth and prosperity under
the Dutch Government. The people are peaceful and
industrious, and chiefly occupied with agriculture. The
highest of the volcanic peaks rises to 12,000 feet above
the sea. The eastern islands of this group are less pro-
ductive and less advanced.
Aorneo, the most western and the largest of the
northern group of islands which extends between the
meridians of IIo° and 150° E., as far as New Guinea or
Papua, is but little known. The population is small,
rude, and uncivilised; and the surface is rough and
mountainous, and generally covered with forest except
near the coast, to the alluvial lands on which settlers
have been attracted from various surrounding countries.
The highest mountains are supposed to rise to about
IO,OCO feet, but the ordinary elevations seem not to
exceed 4000 or 5000 feet.
Of Celebes less is known than of Borneo, which it
resembles in condition and natural characteristics. The
highest known peaks rise to 8000 feet, some of them
being volcanic.
A-apua is perhaps somewhat smaller than Borneo.
It extends almost to the same meridian as the eastern
coast of Australia, from the north point of which it is
separated by Torres Straits. Very little is known even
of its coasts. The mountains in the interior are said to
rise to 20,000 feet, having the appearance of being per-
manently covered with snow; the surface seems gener-
ally to be clothed with thick wood. The inhabitants
are of the Negrito type, with curly or crisp and bushy
hair; those of the west coast have come more into com-
munication with the traders of other islands, and are
fairly civilised. Eastward, many of the tribes are bar-
barous savages, with whom it is almost impossible for
foreigners to hold intercourse.
The Philippine islands lie between the 15th and 20th
degrees of N. lat., between Borneo and southern China.
The highest land does not rise to a greater height than
6OOO feet; the climate is well suited for agriculture, and
the islands generally are fertile and fairly cultivated,
though not coming up to the standard of Java either in
wealth or population. The Spanish Government is
established over the greater part of the group, though a
considerable numerical proportion of the people is in
some districts beyond their active control.
Aormosa, which is situated under the northern tropic,
near the coast of China, is traversed by a high range of
mountains, reaching nearly 13,OOO feet in elevation. On
its western side, which is occupied by an immigrant
Chinese population, are open and well-cultivated plains;
on the east it is mountainous, and occupied by inde-
pendent indigenous tribes in a less advanced state.
The islands of Japan lie between the 30th and 45th
parallels. The whole group is traversed by a line of
volcanic mountains, some of which are in activity, the
highest point being about 13,OOO feet above the sea.
The country is well watered, fertile, and well cultivated.
The people are industrious and intelligent, and show
much capacity for mechanical and ornamental art. They
have recently attracted special attention from the sudden
efforts made by their Government to accept and intro-
duce Western civilisation.
Materials are wanting for anything like a connected
sketch of the geological structure of the continent of
Asia, and little more can be done than to indicate a few
facts which tend to throw light on the probable epochs
at which the land has assumed its present configuration.
There is evidence of the very recent formation, speak-
ing geologically, of the great plains of Northern India,
of Mesopotamia, and of portions of Central Asia and
Siberia. The existence of deposits containing large
mammalian remains of the older Pliocene or Miocene
divisions of the Tertiary period, has been ascertained at
many places on the low lands of British India, in Bur-
mah on the east, along the foot of the Himalaya, and
near the Gulf of Cutch on the west, which indicates
# A S I
555
that very great changes of level and of conditions of
surface have taken place in those localities since the later
Tertiary epoch. The far wider spread of the older ter-
tiaries proves that far greater alterations have occurred
since the Eocene period. Nummulitic limestones are
found from Burmah to Eastern Bengal; they are con-
tinuous along the flank of the table-land of Baluchistan,
through Sindh to the Himalaya ; they are frequent
throughout Persia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and along
the Caspian ; they are found at great elevations in the
Himalaya – in one locality at more than 16,000 feet
above the sea ; all this indicates that over a vast region,
which is now dry land, often rising to very great alti-
tudes, there existed a sea area at a period which, geo-
logically speaking, appertains to the more recent epochs
of the earth’s history. IIence the present configuration
of the land must be due to movements of a subsequent
date ; and it is thus shown that the vast elevation of the
great Tibetan table-land is due to changes which are
among the latest to which the earth's surface has been
subjected. No doubt the Caspian and Aral seas ſormed
Dart of the ancient ocean which once occupied a great
part of what is now Western Asia.
The occurrence of a regular succession of the older
fossiliferous deposits, from Upper Silurian upwards to
the Triassic and Jurassic, and even to the Cretaceous
formations, along the line lying to the north of the
highest Himalayan ranges, gives ground for the supposi-
tion that an ancient sea-coast may have existed along
this line ; and that from a still earlier period there was
dry land to the South, where the Himalaya now stands.
Thus these mountains may have continued, as a chain of
Some importance, to occupy their present position from
a period anterior to the Silurian epoch, while their
existing very great elevation is probably due to the
disturbances which have taken place since the middle of
the Tertiary period. .
There is no sufficient evidence of the former extent
or distribution of the land south of the Himalaya.
But from the absence of marine fossiliferous deposits of
the older epochs, it has been inferred that the greater
part, at least, of the peninsula of India may have been
an area of dry land from a very remote time up to the
middle of the Tertiary period, during which the great
basaltic formations of Central India are supposed to
have been thrown up ; a partial submergence then seems
to have occurred, followed by a re-elevation, which
gave the continent its present form. The fossil remains
that have been found indicate the presence, in the
Triassic or Permian age, of a great continental area,
extending from Europe, and forming a connection
across the Indian Ocean between South Africa and the
peninsula of India. Grounds also exist for supposing
that the Indian peninsula was formerly united by dry
land with Australia, and that, when these conditions
prevailed, the peninsula was separated by sea from the
rest of Asia. Other evidence of this is to be ſound in
the distribution of the races of men, and of plants and
animals.
The occurrence of a large area of Silurian and other
Palaeozoic rocks in Northern Siberia, extending to the
Altai mountains, with an apparent absence of the
Mesozoic, has been explained as probably due to the
existence of a marine area during the Palaeozoic epoch,
at the close of which it was replaced by an area of
land; this was again submerged in the latest Tertiary
period, during which a great part of the country was
covered with the diluvial deposits, in which are found the
remains of large mammalia.
The presence of coal in many parts of China and Mon-
golia is a further indication of great former changes of
condition of the surface in that part of the continent.
Evidence exists of a former far greater extension of
glaciers on the Himalaya, possibly at the period during
which the great glacial phenomena of Europe occurred ;
but too little is known to enable us to affirm that this
indicates any general period of cold that affected the
northern hemisphere as far south as the Himalaya,
though the facts are sufficiently striking to suggest such
a conclusion. Another explanation of the decrease of
Hinmalayan glaciers is that it was a consequence of the
diminution of the fall of snow, consequent on the
gradual change of climate which must have followed a
gradual transformation of an Ocean area into one of dry
land. This last-named circumstance would also account
for the great changes in the quantity of rain-fall, and in
the flow of the rivers, of which there are many indica-
tions in Western India, in Persia, and the regions east
of the Caspian.
A remarkable feature of Asia is the line of volcanic
activity which extends along its eastern coast through
Kamchatka, the Kurile and Japanese island, Formosa,
and the Philippines, to the Malay archipelago. Thence
the line is prolonged to the west, through Java and
Sumatra to the Bay of Bengal, where it ends about in
lat. 209 N. on the coast of Aracan. To the east, and
South there also seems to be a connection with the vol-
canic regions of New Zealand and the islands of the
Pacific, and possibly with that of the antarctic land.
There is no authentic evidence of active volcanoes in the
interior of the continent.
Although these facts give an extremely incomplete
view of the geological structure of Asia, they will afford
some slight idea of the great changes that have taken
place throughout all parts of the continent, and serve
to convey a warning of the necessity for taking such
changes into account, when attempts are made to under-
stand the manner in which animals and plants are dis-
tributed on the earth's surface, and how their develop-
ment may have taken place. The phenomena of living
creatures as now observed are the results of various.
causes which have been in operation through a long
period of time. Those causes which still continue to be
in action may, in some respects, call for special attention,
as determining the precise conditions under which
organisations now have to exist, and as being those
which now tend to destroy what has been, and to sub-
stitute something different in its place. But what
remains necessarily depends on what preceded it, and the
knowledge of the conditions and forms of life in the past
is an essential element of the proper understanding of
life as it now is.
C/imate is among the most important of the condi-
tions affecting all forms of life. . Under this general
term is designated the complicated series of phenomena
which arise in the air surrounding any locality, and in
the watery vapor diffused through that air. These phe-
nomena, which include the variations of temperature
and moisture, the winds, the rain, and electrical condi-
tion of the air, depend essentially on the action of solar
heat on the atmosphere and the materials of the terres-
trial globe. The main conditions which determine the
climate of any place, are position on the earth in respect
to latitude, elevation above the sea level, and character
of the surface in relation to its power of absorbing or
radiating heat. Owing to the extreme mobility of the
air, its temperature and the quantity of moisture it con-
tains are further influenced in a very important degree
by the proximity of large areas of land and water and
mountain ranges, and by the position of such areas or
ranges in relation to the direction of the earth’s motion
on its axis. On no portion of the globe are the di-
versities of climate due to these causes more remarka-
ble, or brought intomore striking contrast, than in Asia.
556
As I
Among the places on the globe where the tempera-
ture falls lowest are some in Northern Asia, and among
those where it rises highest are some in Southern Asia.
The mean temperature of the north coast of Eastern
Siberia is but a few degrees above the zero of Fahren-
heit; the lowest mean temperature anywhere observed
is about 49 Fahr., at Melville Island, north of the
American continent. The isothermals of mean annual
temperature lie over Northern Asia on curves tolerably
regular in their outline, having their western branches
in a somewhat higher latitude than their eastern ; a re-
duction of 1° of latitude corresponds approximately—
and irrespective of modifications due to elevation—to
a rise of V4°Fahr., as far say as lat. 30° N., where the
mean temperature is about 750 Fahr. Further south
the increase is slower, and the highest mean tempera-
ture anywhere attained in Southern Asia is not much
above 829 Fahr.
The variations of temperature are very great in Sibe-
ria, amounting near the coast to more than Iooº Fahr.,
between the mean of the hottest and coldest months, and
to still more between the extreme temperatures of those
months. In Southern Asia, and particularly near the
sea, the variation between the hottest and coldest monthly
means is very much less, and under the equator it is re-
duced to about 5°. In Siberia the difference between
the means of the hottest and coldest months is hardly
anywhere less than 60° Fahr. On the sea of Aral it is
80° Fahr. ; and at Astrakhan, on the Caspian, more than
50°. At Tiflis it is 45°. In Northern China, at Pe-
king, it is 55°, reduced to 30° at Canton, and to 20° at
, Manilla. In Northern India the greatest difference does
not exceed 40°; and it falls off to about 15° at Calcutta,
and to about Io9 or 129 at Bombay and Madras. The
temperatures at the head of the Persian Gulf approxi-
mate to those of Northern India, and those of Aden to
Madras. At Singapore the range is less than 5°; and at
Batavia in Java, and Galle in Ceylon, it is about the
same. . The extreme temperatures in Siberia may be con-
sidered to lie between 70° and 90° Fahr. for maxima,
and between – 40° and – 70° Fahr. for minima. The
extreme of heat near the Caspian and Aral seas rises to
nearly IOOP Fahr., while that of cold falls to —20°Fahr.,
or lower. Compared with these figures, we find in
Southern Asia IIo° or I 12° Fahr. as a maximum hardly
ever exceeded. The absolute minimum in Northern In-
dia, in lat. 30°, hardly goes below 32°; at Calcutta it is
about 40°, though the thermometer seldom falls to 50°.
At Madras it rarely falls as low as 65°, or at Bombay
below 60°. At Singapore and Batavia the thermometer
very rarely falls below 70° or rises above 90°. At Aden
the minimum is a few degrees below 70°, the maximum
not much exceeding 90°.
These figures sufficiently indicate the main character-
istics of the air temperatures of Asia. Throughout its
northern portions the winter is long and of extreme
severity; and even down to the circle of 35° N. lat., the
minimum temperature is almost as low as zero of
Fahrenheit. The summers are hot, though short in the
Inorthern latitudes, the maximum of Summer heat being
comparatively little less than that observed in the tro-
pical countries further south. The moderating effect of
the proximity of the ocean is felt in an important degree
along the southern and eastern parts of Asia, where the
land is broken up into islands or peninsulas. The great
elevation above the sea level of the central part of Asia,
and of the table-lands of Afghanistan and Persia, tends
to exaggerate the winter cold; while the sterility of the
surface, due to the small rain-fall over the same region,
operates powerfully in the opposite direction in increas-
ing the summer heat. In the summer a great accumula-
tion of solar heat takes place on the dry surface soil,
from which it cannot be released upwards by evaporation,
as might be the case were the soil moist or covered
with vegetation, nor can it be readily conveyed away
downwards as happens on the ocean. In the winter
similar consequences ensue, in a negative direction, from
the prolonged loss of heat by radiation in the long and
clear mights—an effect which is intensified wherever
the surface is covered with snow, or the air little charged
with vapor. In illustration of the very slow diffusion
of heat in the solid crust of the earth, and as affording a
further indication of the climate of Northern Asia, re-
ference may here be made to the frozen soil of Siberia,
in the vicinity of Yakutsk. In this region the earth is
frozen permanently to a depth of more than 3So feet, at
which the temperature is still 59 or 69 Fahr. below the
freezing point of water, the summer heat merely thaw-
ing the surface to a depth of about 3 feet. At a depth
of 50 feet the temperature is about 15° Fahr., below
the freezing point. Under such conditions of the soil,
the land, mevertheless, produces crops of "wheat and
other grain from fifteen to forty fold.
The very high summer temperatures of the area north
of the tropic of Cancer are sufficiently accounted for,
when compared to those observed south of the tropic, by
the increased length of the day in the higher latitude,
which more than compensates for the loss of heat due to
the smaller midday altitude of the sun. The difference
between the heating power of the Sun's rays at noon on
the 21st June, in latitude 20° and in latitude 45°, is
only about 2 per cent; while the accumulated heat re-
ceived during the day, which is lengthened to 15% hours
in the higher latitude, is greater by about II per cent.
than in the lower latitude, where the day consists only of
I3% hours. -
Although the foregoing account 9f the temperatures
of Asia supplies the main outline of the observed phe-
nomena, a very important modifying cause, of which
more will be said hereafter, comes into operation over
the whole of the tropical region, namely, the periodical
summer rains. These tend very greatly to arrest the
increase of the summer heat over the area where they
prevail, and otherwise give it altogether peculiar charac-
teristics. - -
The great summer heat, by expanding the air upwards,
disturbs the level of the planes of equal pressure, and
causes an outflow of the upper strata from the heated
area. The winter cold produces an effect of just an op-
posite nature, and causes an accumulation of air over the
cold area. The diminution of the barometric pressure
which takes place all over Asia during the summer
months, and the increase in the winter, are hence, no
doubt the results of the alternate heating and cooling of
the air over the continent. -
The cultivated plants of the Indian region include
wheat, barley, rice, and maize; varićus millets, Sorghzam,
Penicillaria, Panicum, and Eleusine; many pulses,
peas, and beans; mustard and rape; ginger and tur-
meric; pepper and capsicum; several Cºctºacº
tobacco, Sesamum, poppy, Crotoloria, and Cannabis,
cotton, indigo, and sugar; coffee and tea; oranges,
lemons of many sorts; pomegranates, mango, figs,
peaches, vines, and plantains. The more common
palms are Cocos, Phaenix, and Barassus, supplying
cocoa-nut and toddy. Indian agriculture combines the
harvests of the tropical and temperate zones. North of
the tropic the winter cold is sufficient to admit ºf the
cultivation of almost all the cereals and vegetables of
Europe, wheat being sown in November and reaped
early in April. In this same region the summer heat
and rain provide a thoroughly tropical climate, in which
rice and other tropical cereals are freely raised, being as
a rule sown early in July, and reaped in September or
A S I
557
October. In southern India, and the other parts of
Asia and of the islands having a similar climate, the dif-
ference of the winter and summer half years is not suf-
ficient to admit of the proper cultivation of wheat or bar-
ley. The other cereals may be seen occasionally, where
artificial irrigation is practised, in all stages of progress
at all seasons of the year, though the operations of agri-
culture are, as a general rule, limited to the rainy months,
when alone is the requisite supply of water commonly
forthcoming.
The trees of India producing economically useful tim-
ber are comparatively few, owing to the want of dura-
bility of the wood, in the extremely hot and moist cli-
mate. The teak, Zectona grandis, supplies the finest
timber. It is found in greatest perfection in the forests
of the west coasts of Burmah and the Indian peninsula,
where the rainfall is heaviest, growing to a height of
IOO or 150 feet, mixed with other trees and bamboos.
The sál, Shorea robusta, a very durable wood, is most
abundant along the skirts of the Himalaya from Assam
to the Punjab, and is found in Central India, to which
the teak also extends. The sal grows to a large size,
and is more gregarious than the teak. Of other useful
woods found in the plains may be named the babool,
Acacia, toon, Cedreſa; and sissoo, Zalbergia. The
only timber in ordinary use obtained from the Hima-
laya proper is the Deodar, Cedrus, not distinct from
the cedar of Lebanon. Besides these are the sandal-
wood, Santalum, of Southern India, and many sorts
of bamboo found in all parts of the country. The
chinchona has recently been introduced with complete
success; and the mahogany of America reaches a large
size, and gives promise of being grown for use as
timber.
The flora of the rainless region of Southwestern Asia
is continuous with the desert flora of Northern and
Eastern Africa, and extends from the coast of Senegal
to the meridian of 75° E., or from the great African
desert to the border of the rainless tract along the Indus
and the southern parts of the Punjab. It includes the
peninsula of Arabia, the shores of the Persian Gulf,
South Persia, and Afghanistan, and Baluchistan. On
the west its limit is in the Cape de Verde Islands, and it
is partially represented in Abyssinia.
Nearly all the mammals of Europe also occur in
Morthern Asia, where, however, the Palaearctic fauna is
enriched by numerous additional species. The character-
istic groups belong mostly to forms which are restricted
to cold and temperate regions. Consequently the Quad-
rumana, or monkeys, are nearly unrepresented, a single
species occurring in Japan, and one or two others in
Northern China and Tibet. Insectivorous bats are mu-
merous, but the frugivorous division of this order is only
represented by a single species in Japan. Carnivora are
also numerous, particularly the frequenters of cold cli-
mates, such as bears, weasels, wolves, and foxes. Of the
Insectivora numerous forms of moles, shrews and hedge-
hogs prevail. The Rodents are also well represented by
various squirrels, mice, and hares. Characteristic forms
of this order in Northern Asia are the marmots (Arcto-
mys) and the pikas, or tailless hares (Zagomays). The
great order of Ungulata is represented by various forms
of sheep, as many as ten or twelve wild species of Ovis
being met with in the mountain chains of Asia; and
more sparingly by several peculiar forms of antelope, such
as the saiga (Saiga tatarica), and the Gazella gutturosa,
or yellow sheep. Coming to the deer, we also meet with
characteristic forms in Northern Asia, especially those be-
longing to the typical genus Cervus. The musk deer
(Mosc/ints) is also quite restricted to Northern Asia, and
is one of its most peculiar types.
The ornithology of Northern Asia is even more closely
allied to that of Europe than the mammal fauna. Nearly
three-fourths of the well-known species of Europe extend
throughout Siberia into the islands of the Japanese em-
pire. Here again we have an absence of all tropical
forms, and a great development of groups characteristic
of cold and temperate regions. One of the most peculiar
of these is the genus Phasianus, of which splendid birds
all the species are restricted in their wild state to North-
ern Asia. The still more magnificently clad gold pheas-
'ants (Z'hauma/ea), and the eared pheasants (Crossopti-
Aon), are also confined to certain districts in the mount-
ains of North-eastern Asia. . Amongst the Passeres, such
forms as the lark, stone chats, finches, linnets, and gros-
beaks, are well developed, and exhibit many species.
The mammal fauna of the Indian region of Asia is
much more highly developed than that of the Palaeartic.
The Quadrumana are represented by several peculiar
genera, amongst which are Semnopiſ/hecus, Aſylobaſes,
and Simia. Two peculiar forms of the Lemurine group
are also met with. Both the insectivorous and frugivor-
ous divisions of the bats are well represented. Amongst
the Insectivora very peculiar forms are found, such as
Gymnura and Zºupaia. The Carnivora are likewise
numerous; and this region may be considered as the
true home of the tiger, though this anmal has wandered
far north into the Palaerctic divisions of Asia. Other
characteristic Carnivora are civets, various ichneumons,
and the benturong (Archfictis.) Two species of bears
are likewise restricted to the Indian region. In order
of rodents, Squirrels are very numerous, and porcupines
of two genera are met with. The Indian region is the home
of the Indian elephant — one of the two sole remaining
representatives of the order Proboscidea. Of the Ungu-
lates, four species of rhinoceros and one of tapir are
met with, besides several peculiar forms of the swine
family.
Of the domesticated animals of Asia may first be men-
tioned the elephant. It does not breed in captivity,
and is not found wild, west of the Jumna river in North-
ern India. The horse is produced in the highest perfec-
tion in Arabia, and the hot and dry countries of West-
ern Asia. Ponies are most esteemed from the wetter
regions of the east, and the hilly tracts. Asses are
abundant in most places, and two wild species occur.
The horned cattle include the humped oxen and buffa-
loes of India, and the yak of Tibet. A hybrid between
the yak and Indian cattle, called zo, is commonly reared
in Tibet and the Himalaya. Sheep abound in the more
temperate regions, and goats are universally met with ;
both of these animals are used as beasts of burden in the
mountains of Tibet. The reindeer of Northern Siberia
call also for special notice; they are used for the saddle
as well as for draught. -
Asia, including its outlying islands, has become the
dwelling-place of all the great families into which the
races of men have been divided. By far the largest
area is occupied by the Mongolian group. These have
yellow-brown skins, black eyes and hair, flat noses, and
oblique eyes. They are short in stature, with little hair
on the body and face. In general terms they extend,
with modifications of character probably due to admixt-
ure with other types and to varying conditions of life,
over the whole of Northern Asia as far south as the
plains bordering the Caspian Sea, including Tibet and
China, and also over the Indo-Malayan peninsula and
Archipelago, excepting Papua and some of the more
eastern islands.
"Next in numerical importance to the Mongolians are
the races which have been called by Professor Huxley
Al/e/azzochroic and Xanthochroic. The former includes
the dark-haired people of Southern Europe, and extends
over North Africa, Asia Minor, Syria to South-western
558
A S I
Asia, and through Arabia and Persia to India. The
latter race includes the fair-haired people of Northern
Europe, and extends over nearly the same area as the
Melanochrol, with which race it is greatly intermixed.
The Xanthochroi have fair skins, blue eyes, and light
hair; the others have dark skins, eyes, and hair, and
are of a slighter frame. Together they constitute what
were once called the Caucasian races. The Melan-
ochroi are not considered by Professor Huxley to be
one of the primitive modifications of mankind, but
rather to be the result of the admixture of the Xan-
thochroi with the Australioid type, next to be mentioned.
The third group is that of the Australioid type.
Their hair is dark, generally soft, never woolly. The
eyes and skin are dark, the beard often well developed,
the nose broad and flat, the lips coarse, and jaws heavy.
This race is believed to form the basis of the people of
the Indian peninsula, and of some of the hill tribes of
Central India, to whom the name Dravidian has been
given, and by its admixture with the Melanochroic
group to have given rise to the ordinary population of
the Indian provinces. It is also probable that the
Australioid family extends into South Arabia and
gypt.
The last group, the Negroid, is represented by the
races to which has been given the name of Megrito,
from the small size of some of them. They are closely
akin to the negroes of South Africa, and possess the
characteristic dark skin, woolly, but scanty beard and
body hair, broad flat noses, and projecting lips of the
African ; and are diffused over the Andaman Islands, a
part of the Malay peninsula, the Philippines, Papua, and
some of the neighboring islands. • The Negritos ap-
pear to be derived from a mixture of the true Negro
with the Australian type.
The distribution of the Mongolian group in Asia
offers no particular difficulty. There is complete present,
and probably previous long-existing, geographical con-
tinuity in the area over which they are found. There is
also considerable similarity of climate and other condi-
tions throughout the northern half of Asia which they
occupy. The extension of modified forms of the Mon-
golian type over the whole American continent may be
mentioned as a remarkable circumstance connected with
this branch of the human race.
The Mongolians of the northern half of Asia are
almost entirely nomadic, hunters and shepherds or herds-
men. The least advanced of these, but far the most
peaceful, are those that occupy Siberia. Further south
the best known tribes are the Mánchus, the Mongols
proper, the Moguls, and the Turks, all known under the
name of Tartars, and to the ancients as Scythians, occu-
pying from east to west the zone of Asia comprised be-
tween the 40th and 50th circles of N. lat. The Turks
are Mahometans; their tribes extend up the Oxus to the
borders of Aſghanistan and Persia, and to the Caspian,
and under the name of Kirghis into Russia, and their
language is spoken over a large part of Western Asia.
Their letters are those of Persia. The Mánchus and
Mongols are chiefly Buddhist, with letters derived from
the ancient Syriac. The Mánchus are now said to be
gradually falling under the influence of Chinese civilisa-
tion, and to be losing their old nomadic habits, and even
their peculiar language. The predatory habits of the
Turkish, Mongolian and Mánchu population of Northern
Asia, and their irruptions into other parts of the conti-
nent and into Europe, have produced very remarkable
results in the history of the world, to which further ref-
erence will be made hereafter.
The Chinese branch of the Mongolian family are a
thoroughly settled people of agriculturists and traders.
They are partially Buddhists, and have a peculiar mono-
syllabic, uninflected language, with writing consisting of
symbols, which represent words, not letters.
The countries lying between India and the Mongolian
area are occupied by populations chiefly of the Mongo-
lian and Chinese type, having languages fundamentally
monosyllabic, but using letters derived from India, and
adopting their religion, which is almost everywhere
Buddhist, from the Indians. Of these may be named
the Tibetans, the Burmese, and the Siamese. Cochin-
China is more nearly Chinese in all respects.
The Malays, who occupy the peninsula and most of
the islands of the Archipelago called after them, are
Mongols apparently modified by their very different cli-
mate, and by the maritime life forced upon them by the
physical conditions of the region they inhabit. As they
are now known to us, they have undergone a process of
partial civilisation, first at the hands of the Brahminical
Indians, from whom they borrowed a religion, and to
some extent literature and an alphabet, and subse-
quently from intercourse with the Arabs, which has led
to the adoption of Mahometanism by most of them.
The name of Aryazz has been given to the races
speaking languages derived from, or akin to, the ancient
form of Sanskrit, who now occupy the temperate zone
extending from the Mediterranean, across the highlands
of Asia Minor, Persia, and Afghanistan, to India. The
races speaking the languages akin to the ancient Assy-
riam, which are now only represented by Arabic, have
been called Semitic, and occupy the countries south-
west of Persia, including Syria and Arabia, besides ex-
tending into North Africa. Though the languages of
these races are very different they cannot be regarded as
physically distinct, and they are both without doubt
branches of the Melanochroi, modified by admixture
with the neighboring races, the Mongols, the Australi-
oids, and the Xanthochroi.
The Aryans of India are probably the most settled
and civilized of Asiatic races. This type is found in its
purest form in the north and north-west, while the
mixed races and the population referred to the Australi-
oid type predominate in the peninsula and Southern
India. Among the hill tribes of Central India are some
which appear to have a Mongolian origin, and to have
come in from the north-east, such as the Koles and
Bhils. The spoken languages of Northern India are
very various, differing one from another in the sort of
degree that English differs from German, though all are
thoroughly Sanskritic in their vocables, but with an
absence of Sanskrit grammar that has given rise to con-
siderable discussion. The languages of the south are
Drawidian, not Sanskritic. The letters of both classes
of languages, which also vary considerably, are all
modifications of the ancient Pāli, and probably derived
from the Dravidians, not from the Aryans. They are
written from left to right, exception being made of Urdū
or Hindustaní, the mixed language of the Mahometan
conquerors of Northern India, the character used for
writing which is the Persian. From the River Sutlej
and the borders of the Sindhian desert, as far as Burmah
and to Ceylon, the region of the great bulk of the
people of India is Hindu or Brahminical, though the
Mahometans are often numerous, and in some places
even in a majority. West of the Sutlej the population
of Asia may be said to be wholly Mahometan, with the
exception of certain relatively small areas in Asia
Minor and Syria, where Christians predominate. The
language of the Punjab does not differ very materially
from that of Upper India: West of the Indus the dia-
lects approach more to Persian, which language meets
Arabic and Turki west of the Tigris, and along the
Turkoman desert and the Caspian. Through the whole
of this tract the letters are used which are common to
A S I
559
Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, written from right to
left.
The presence of the Negroid type in isolated Asiatic
areas, so far removed from the existing Negro region,
appears to require for its explanation the former exten-
sion of dry land from Africa across the area now occu-
pied by the Indian Ocean, and the later disappearance
of such land by changes of level of the earth’s surface.
If, again, the relation of the Dravidian (non-Aryan)
population of Southern and Central India to that of
Australia be real,— and the relationship seems to be
sufficiently established,— the presence in India of this
race seems also to require the former occurrence of great
alterations in the distribution of Sea and land across the
equatorial region of the Indian Ocean, and probably an
alteration or repetition of movements such as our bet-
ter knowledge of other parts of the earth shows us to
have been normal rather than abnormal. That changes
on a very great scale have taken place in Southern Asia
in the very latest geological periods is well established,
and as was before observed, these hypotheses are sup-
ported by direct geological evidence, and corroborated
by the facts of botanical and zoological distribution.
Of prehistoric man little has yet been discovered in
Asia; but a sufficient number of stone and bronze
implements or weapons has been found in various parts
of India to show that the first steps of the human race
in civilisation are everywhere almost identical.
The feeble light thrown on the earliest history of the
Aryan race exhibits it as a pastoral people occupying the
valleys and mountains along the Oxus. In its proximity
to the south were the Semitic races, distributed from
Syria to the Euphrates and Persia, and perhaps further
east. These two races are seen to have spread across
Southern Europe, North Africa, and South-western
Asia; the Aryans supplying their language to the
greater part of Europe and of the temperate zone of
Asia, from the Mediterranean to India ; the Semites
giving theirs to Arabia, Syria, and North Africa. It is
supposed that the population of the area referred to was
thus distributed by reason of migration caused by
pressure from Mongolian tribes on the north, such as is
known to have arisen since the historical period.
Possibly the movements may have been due to changes
in the climate, and the gradual diminution of the rain-
fall (of which there is evidence), which might have
rendered the area originally occupied by the Aryans
unable to support them. But it may be regarded as
certain that the Brahminical race, formerly dominant in
Upper India, entered that country from the north-west
as invaders. The ascertained connection of the
languages of India and of the intermediate tract with
the ancient Aryan or Vedic language, the fact that the
the founders of the Brahminical faith fixed themselves
in or near the mountains of Northern India, the greater
predominance of the Aryan type in this region, the
separation of a privileged higher from a servile lower
class or caste, and the general evidence of the diffusion of
Indian civilisation from west to east, with many other
circumstances, tend to corroborate such a view. An
intrusion of Aryans into the countries originally occu-
pied by the Semites seems also to have taken place in
Iran or Persia. As the Aryan language developed
into the Sanskrit in India, so in Persia it gave birth to
the Zendic or Hehlvi, the language of the sacred books
of the Fire-worshippers; and as the Aryans seem to
have borrowed the Dravidian letters in the former
country, so they adopted those of the Semites, or
ancient Assyrians, in the other. The European
branch of the Aryans, the Hellenic races, likewise
appear to have no letters of their own, and to have
borrowed a Semitic alphabet from the Phoenicians.
The Bactrian Aryans used an archaic quasi-Phoenic an
alphabet in North India till 250 B.C., about which time
the Pali letters, on which the Devanagari alphabet was
based, are known to have been current.
The races that formerly occupied the plains of Meso-
potamia and the neighboring mountains — the Baby-
lonians and Assyrians — are, next to the Egyptians,
those whose monuments and inscriptions supply the
earliest definite records of mankind, going back possibly
nearly 4000 years from the present time. These, and
the corresponding remains of the Egyptians, which are
of even greater antiquity, taking us back perhaps 6000
years or more, indicate that powerful kings then ruled
over these countries, with frequent changes in the
boundaries of the separate states, under conditions not
very greatly different from those that continued until the
kingdoms disappeared before the progress of Roman or
Mahometan power. How long these races may have
taken to arrive at the state of civilisation in which they
were as they first become known to us it is impossible
to say ; but there is nothing to suggest that their condi-
tion is to be accounted for otherwise than by prolonged
gradual transformations, such as they and all other races
are known to have undergone in the time subsequent to
that from which our historical records commence.
The earliest event in Hindu chronology which has
any pretence to being called historical is the war of the
Māhābhārat. The account of this is contained in a
poem, written about 500 B.C., which is one of the Vedas.
It seems to have been a contest between two branches
of the house reigning in Northern India, and to have
occurred about I400 B.C.
Of the western parts of Asia it will suffice to say that
about 600 B.C. the kingdoms known under the names of
Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and Persia, began to coalesce,
and were at length united under Cyrus, the Persian, the
“Great King,” whose territories are said to have extended
from the Mediterranean to the Indus.
During this period the civilisation and learning of
Egypt and Western Asia had penetrated into Greece,
where was developed, from the branch of the Aryan
race which occupied that country, the most extraordi-
marily intellectual community which has ever existed.
The successful resistance of Greece to the advance of the
Persians probably prevented the spread of the western
Asiatics over Europe, and left that continent open to the
evolution of the far higher type of civilisation which is
its characteristic. The destruction of the Persian
monarchy by Alexander took place about 330 B.C.
After the Indian expedition and death of the great
Greek conqueror, his Asiatic kingdom fell to pieces, and
numerous petty sovereignties were formed out of it.
About fiſty years before the Christian era, the Romans
for the first time appeared on the arena of Asia, took
possession of Syria, and soon after occupied a large part
of Asia Minor, and at length established themselves on
the Tigris. During this interval the more eastern part
of the old Persian kingdom, called by the Romans
Parthia, had again acquired an independent existence,
and its monarch, once more assuming the title of the
“Great King,” fruitlessly attempted to drive the
Romans out of Asia. In the year 274 A.D. later suc-
cesses of the Romans in the East were celebrated by
the famous triumph of the Emperor Aurelian, in which,
it is said, ambassadors appeared from all parts of Asia,
even from China. The conflicts between the Persians
and Romans continued long after the division of the
Roman empire 395 A.D., without any material change of
the boundaries of the contending parties. The Romans on
Byzantines never advanced beyond Armenia or the Tigris;
nor could the Persians permanently retain possessions to
56O
AS I
the west of those limits, though once (620) they had pene-
trated to the walls of Constantinople.
While these conflicts were in progress, events of an
altogether different character had arisen, which have
brought a small portion of Western Asia into prom-
inent notice in the world's history. Christianity had its
origin in Syria, among the Jews, a tribe of Semitic
race, whose sacred writings and history are of extreme
antiquity, and have been preserved and well known by
reason of the special interest created in them. The
Christian faith spread rapidly over Asia Minor, and soon
extended to all parts of the Roman empire, in which it
was at length accepted as the state religion about
32O A.D.
Among the efficient agencies of Western progress no
doubt can exist that Christianity was one of the most
active. . It necessarily happened that the religion which
established itself on the ruins of the superstitions of the
Old World should have an important influence on the
new forms of society that arose; and as the Christian
faith gradually became dominant and at length the only
religion of Europe, it shared greatly, both through its
doctrines and its organisation, in bringing about the intel-
lectual and social advance that has there taken place.
But Christianity, though it had its origin in Western
Asia, has produced no such consequences there. The
progress which it had made to the eastward during the first
six centuries was very soon after cut short by the found-
ing of a rival proselytising religion by Mahomet, 620
A. D., whose followers and successors effectually arrested
the spread of the Christian faith in this direction.
The Arabs, under the influence of the fanatical preach-
ings of their prophet, now burst ſorth upon the coun-
tries around them; in less than a century, 730 A.D.,
they had possessed themselves of Persia and Transoxi-
ana, pènetrated to the Indus, driven the Byzantine armies
out of Asia Minor and Syria, overcome Egypt, advanced
along Northern Africa to the Atlantic, had conquered
Spain, and even entered France. Nor was this a mere
temporary Success. Though the Arabs were at once
repelled from France, the Mahometans held their ground
in Spain for more than seven centuries, and have not
9nly been dominant to the present day in all other parts
of their earliest conquests, but have since added largely
to the area in which the religion of Mahomet had been
adopted. ſº
It was to the immediate successors of Mahomet that
our race is indebted for the impulse given to science,
which was so long wholly neglected or deliberately con-
demned by Christian authority in Europe.
The Arab empire, under the khaliſs of Baghdad, cul-
minated about 800 A.D., but hardly maintained its
integrity fifty years more. On its disruption a Turki
dynasty established itself in Ghazni, from which sprung
Mahmūd, who first invaded India in Iool, and extended
his rule to the Oxus and Persia. His successors (not
de-cendants) established the Mahometan kingdom of
Delhi in 1200, which gradually extended overall North-
ern India in the next two centuries. After Mahmuid’s
death another Turki house, that of the Seljuks, estab-
lished itself in Persia, Asia Minor, and Syria, about
IC50, extended its authority to Egypt 1170, and re-
tained its vitality till 1300. The Crusades, between
I IOO and 1300, set up a small Christian power in Syria,
with which the Seljuk Turks were in a state of almost
constant conflict, the famous Saladin (Sálah-u-din) hav-
in g been one of their chieſs. In the wars between the
followers of the crescent and the cross, it is hard to say
which inflicted the greatest atrocities on the unfortunate
inhabitants of the country around the Holy Sepulchre.
Two centuries before the Christian era the Mongo-
lian races of Central Asia are known to have begun the
series of predatory incursions on their neighbors, which
so long made them the terrors of all parts of the Old
World less barbarous than their own. The most
important of these irruptions took place about 1220.
Chenghiz Khán, a Mongolian chief, having made him-
self master of Central Asia, established his capital at
Kárakorum, the precise site of which is doubtful. . In
1215 he took possession of Northern China, and then
turned westward; he overran the whole of Turkistan,
the countries along the Oxus, Afghanistan, and Persia,
and added them to his empire. After his death, in
1227, his successors dividing his kingdom among them,
continued their advance to the west. They swept
away the remains of the Arab khaliſs of Baghdad in
1258, and overthrew the Seljuks in Asia Minor in 1300;
several of their expeditions for plunder reached India;
and they spread themselves over South-eastern Europe
into Russia, Hungary, and Poland, and entered Siberia.
During this º as they became settled, they
abandoned the simple deistical faith of their fathers,
and adopted the religion of the races they had con-
quered.
In the year 1370 there rose, above the ordinary level
of the successors of Chenghiz, another chief, who
claimed descent from the great khan, but was more in-
debted for his position to his own force of character.
From an obscure position in Samārkhand, Timür, com-
monly spoken of as Tamerlane by European writers, had
acquired in the course of twenty years the sovereignty
of Afghanistan, Transoxiana, of Persia as far as the
Euphrates, and of Eastern Turkistan to Kásáhgr. His
armies reached to Siberia, and he carried his devasta-
tions into the heart of Russia, almost to the walls of
Moscow. In the years 1398-99, excited by fanaticism
and the love of repine, he made his celebrated march
into India, an account of which, with his other exploits,
exists, written by himself. He plundered and burnt
Delhi, which city was surrendered under a solemn
promise of protection; he carried off innumerable cap-
tives, ravaged the neighboring country, and massacred
the Hindo inhabitants to wash out the stains of Mus-
sulman blood spilt by his sword; and finally quitted
India, leaving anarchy, famine, and pestilence behind
him, having in four short months overwhelmed , the
provinces of Northern Hindustan, by calamities which
prostrated the kingdom of Delhi for nearly a century.
From these ruins the ruthless barbarian turned to the
extreme west of Asia, which he ravished with greater
ferocity, if possible, than India. . After the overthrow
of the Seljuk Turks in 1300, the descendants of Cheng-
hiz ruled in Asia Minor for some years. Amid the dis-
orders that accompanied the successions of this dynasty,
there started up another adventurer, Osman or Othman,
who established himself in the north-western region of
Asia Minor, overlooking the Euxine and Sea of Mar-
mora. The descendants of Osman had already become
important chiefs, in 1360, when they had driven the
Byzantines out of Asia and, under Amurath, established
themselves in Europe in the provinces adjoining Con-
stantinople, and had also extended their sway eastward
to the Euphrates. It was against Bajazet, the successor
of Amurath, that Timár turned his arms (1400). Alep-
po and Damascus were utterly destroyed by him. From
Syria, passing the plains of Mesopotamia, where it is
said he erected a pyramid of 90,000 heads on the ruins
of Babylon, he pursued the Osmanlis into Anatolia;
there Bajazet was defeated and made prisoner. Timür
having established his supremacy throughout Western
Asia and made the Greek emperor his tributary, turned
back to Samārkhand, and died in 1405, on his way to
attack China. The successors of Bajazet soon recovered
their hold on Asia Minor and Syria, and in I453 took
A S I
561
Constantinople, and put a final end to the Byzantine
power, establishing in its place the Ottoman empire,
extending over Greece, the Danubian provinces, and
Asia Minor.
Nothing is more remarkable in the history of human
societies than the manner in which the ancient civilisa-
tion of India has maintained itself through the centuries
which have elapsed since the inroads from the West
began, the records of which form so large a part of
Indian history. Long before the time to which the
annals of any part of Europe go back, India had
made considerable material and intellectual progress,
and the fundamental characteristics of the community at
present are probably but little different from what they
were 2000 or 3000 years ago. The natural wealth of
the country, its open character, and the smaller energy
and physical force of its inhabitants, have made it a
continual prey to the more warlike nations without, and
constant internal wars have completed its political disor-
ganisation, so that the remains of any truly national
governments have, with a few fragmentary exceptions,
long ceased to exist. But probably few countries that
have been subjected to such vicissitudes have changed so
little. The well-being of the indigenous population has
been preserved in a remarkable degree by that inaptitude
to change which appears to be inherent in their race,
and which suggests the necessity of the efflux of a very
long period of time for the growth of those customs,
which have been so little modified since they became
fixed in the form described in the ancient Sanskrit writ-
ings.
The early history of China affords little to call for
remark in such a review as the present. The date of
the writings of Confucius is fixed at 550 B.C. The great
wall, constructed to oppose the inroads of Mongols
from the north, was the work of the Hán dynasty about
200 B.C. About 585 A.D., the whole of China
was united into one empire, having previously been gov-
erned by many petty chiefs. The first successful inva-
sion of the Mongols under Chenghiz Khan took place
in 1234 A. D., and he retained possession of the north-
ern half of the empire, handing it to his son, Kublai-
Khan, in 1260, who completed the conquest of the
whole country in 1279, and founded the Mongolian
dynasty. In his reign Marco Polo, the Venetian trav-
eller, visited China, having traversed the whole of Asia,
and from him are derived our first authentic accounts of
those countries. The Mongolian dynasty fell, from
internal insurrection, in 1366 A.D., when a national gov-
ernment was again set up, once more to be overthrown
by an invasion of the Mánchus from the north, about
1643, when commenced the Mánchu dynasty, which has
existed till the present time, and from the establishment
of which the political importance of the Chinese empire
began. The supremacy of the present dynasty of China
over Central Asia, and the neighboring states of Eastern
Turkistan, dates apparently from about 1680; but it has
recently been thrown off in the extreme west by the
Turkish races, and is very doubtfully maintained in
other distant provinces, and has further been seriously
limited in late years by the advances of Russia.
The islands of Japan have maintained an independ-
ent position from remote antiquity. Formosa is half
occupied by the Chinese, half in possession of independ-
ent tribes. The whole island has quite recently, after a
threatened conflict with Japan, been recognised as sub-
ject to China.
The history of Asia thus far is the record of events
brought about by the conflict of forces almost wholly
developed within the continent itself. . But external influ-
ences came into operation by which an altogether new
set of conditions was created, leading to consequences
among the most remarkable of any in the world’s his-
tory. The germs of civilisation, which had their origin
in Western Asia and Egypt, were thence carried by the
Greeks into Europe. In Asia arose the first systems of
religion and conceptions of philosophy, which have given
scope and food to man’s intellectual development ; and
in it were taken the first steps in the formation of the
sciences of observation. But it is to Greeks, instructed
in Asiatic learning, that the world is indebted for its
further advances. And as Asia no more contributed to
this movement which she had started, so she had but
little share in its results, or in the benefits it conferred on
mankind.
The extension of Russian authority into Northern
Asia began about the year 17OO, and by the end of the
century Russian settlements extended across Siberia to
Kamchatka. The advance of this power on the west of
Asia into the borders of Turkey, Persia, and Turkistan,
and on the east into the outlying provinces of China, is
of much later date, and must be regarded as a natural
and necessary consequence of the position of a powerful
and civilised state brought into contact with barbarous
neighbors.
The first introduction and subsequent growth of
European power and influence in Eastern and Southern
Asia have been almost wholly the result of maritime dis-
covery and enterprise. Under the stimulus of expected
commercial gain, and guided by the intelligence of mar-
iners who, like Columbus, were acquainted with the
astronomical teachings of the Arabs, and who, in defi-
ance of the Christian church, believed in the sphericity
of the earth, the first of a great series of voyages of
discovery was undertaken, which in 1492 gave to Europe
its knowledge of America. A few years later the dis-
covery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope
by Vasco di Gama, in 1498, opened out Asia to the
commercial enterprise of the maritime nations of Europe.
The trade with the East, which had hitherto found a
route overland along the Black Sea and Caspian, or up
the Red Sea by Egypt, or by the Persian Gulf to Syria,
and had been seriously affected by the irruptions of the
Mongols, had been centred with the merchants of Genoa
and Venice. The opening of the sea route destroyed
the monopoly previously established by the Italians, and
the Portuguese naturally were the first to benefit by their
discovery. The other maritime nations soon followed
in their track. A new impetus was thus given to inter-
course with Asia, which in a short time altogether
changed the current of events in that continent.
The Portuguese landed on the Malabar coast of
Hindostan in 1498, and speedily made themselves mas-
ters of the Indian Ocean, which they swept with their
fleets from Arabia to China. They took Ormuz and
Aden, became. Supreme on the Malabar and Coromandel
coasts, in Ceylon and the Malayan islands, and
established powerful settlements at the mouth of the
Ganges. They first reached China in 1516, and were
permitted to establish about twenty years later a factory
at Macao, which they still maintain. From that time
the intercourse between China and Europe by sea has
been regularly and gradually extended. The power of
the Portuguese in India, after lasting nearly a century,
fell into insignificance, partly by the arms of the
Mahometans, partly by the efforts of the Dutch and
English — to which latter nation they ceded the island
of Bombay in 1661, on the treaty of marriage of
Charles the Second.
The Dutch, the Danes, the Spaniards, the French,
and the British, all acquired in a similar manner, and
(excepting the Danes) still retain settlements of various
degrees of importance in India, the Malay peninsula
and Archipelago, and China, of which those of the
36 A
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A S I
I3ritish in India, Ceylon, and China, of the Dutch in
Java and the neighboring islands, of the French in Cam-
boja, and the Spaniards in the Philippine Islands, alone
call for mention. The celebrated Jesuit missionaries,
who were long the only authorities on China, first reached
Canton in 1579, though Christian teachers had pene-
trated into the country several centuries before, even, it
is said, as early as 635 A.D., and churches were built
and converts made in 1274, as reported by Marco Polo.
The Jesuits, from their superior knowledge, soon made
themselves a powerful body in the state, and their in-
fluence was great till about 1700, after which, owing at
first apparently to conflicts regarding the limits of the
Pope's jurisdiction over the Chinese, they lost favor, and
eventually were subjected to positive persecution. They
have never regained their former authority. The later
intercourse of Europeans with China has introduced
some of the forms of Western progress, and opened the
empire to commerce.
ASIA MINOR is the name commonly given by geog-
raphers to the portion of Western Asia which
projects from the main mass of the continent towards
the west, between the Black Sea and the eastern basin
of the Mediterranean, and which at its north-western
extremity approaches so closely to Europe as to be
separated from it only by the two narrow straits of the
Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. While its boundaries
on three sides—the Black Sea on the N., the Ægean
Sea or Archipelago on the W., and the Mediterranean
on the S.—are clearly defined by nature, its eastern
boundary is wholly arbitrary and uncertain. The ranges
of mountains which extend ſrom the Gulf of Scanderoon,
at the north-eastern extremity of the Mediterranean,
across to the Black Sea near Trebizond, are so far from
forming a continuous range like the Pyrenees, that they
are broken into a number of irregular groups and
masses, Some of which may be regarded as continuations
of the Taurus on the south, while others are connected
with the highlands and mountains of Armenia on the
north; and the great river Euphrates forces its way
through the central mass of mountains, nearly at right
angles to the general direction of the chain. Hence it
is impossible to separate Asia Minor on this side from
the adjoining regions of Armenia and Mesopotamia by
any real or physical boundary, and for this very reason
the political limits have in all ages been very vague and
fluctuating. For the purpose of geographical descrip-
tion it may suffice to take a line roughly drawn along
the mountain ranges from the Gulf of Scanderoon or
issus to the Euphrates, between Samosata and Malati-
yeh, thence to follow the line of that river to the point
near Erzinjan, where it first turns to the south, and
thence to draw an imaginary line to the Black Sea, a
little to the eastward of Trebizond. The tract extend-
ing along the coast eastwards from the latter city to
Batoum, though included within the limits of Turkey in
Asia, belongs in a geographical sense to Armenia rather
than to Asia Minor. But whatever line of demarcation
be assumed, it must be carefully borne in mind that it
does not correspond to any natural boundary.
The term Asia Minor, notwithstanding its ancient
form, is of comparatively modern introduction, and was
unknown to the principal Greek and Roman geographers.
The name of Anatolia, which is not unfreqently used
by modern geographers as synonymous with Asia Minor,
is obviously a Greek term derived from a word meaning
the sunrise, and thus corresponding exactly to the mod-
ern term of “the Zevant.” It appears to have first
come into use under the Byzantine empire, and is first
found in the works of Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the
Ioth century. It has been retained in general usage by
the Turks, but is employed very irregularly, being
sometimes applied in an administrative sense only to the
portion of the peninsula westward of the Halys, at other
times extended even beyond the limits which we have
assigned to Asia Minor. The use of the latter appella-
tion is therefore decidedly preferable as a geographical
tern]. i
The territory comprised within the limits above pro-
posed is about 650 English miles in length, from Mala-
tiyeh on the Euphrates to the promontory opposite the
Island of Scio; but if the line be drawn from Cape
Sigeum, at the entrance of the Dardanelles, to the
boundary beyond Trebizond, the distance amounts to
more than 720 miles. Its greatest breadth from Cape
Anamur (Anemurium) on the South coast, to Cape
Kerembeh (Carambis) on the north, is just about 6° of
latitude, or 420 English miles; but a line drawn from
the head of the Gulf of Scanderoon to the nearest point
of the Black Sea (at Ordu) does not exceed 300 miles.
This may, therefore, be considered as the isthmus by
which the peninsula of Asia Minor is joined to the
main continent. But very erroneous notions prevailed
in ancient times, and even down to a comparatively
recent date, with regard to the width from sea to sea,
so that the peninsular character of the region to the
west of it was greatly exaggerated. Herodotus stated
that it was only five days’ journey for an active man
from the east of Cilicia to Sinope on the Euxine; other
authors extended this to seven days; and Pliny gives
the distance from Amisus to the Gulf of Issus at only
2Oo Roman miles (about 185 English miles). Even in
the last century the great geographer D’Anville dimin-
ished the width of the isthmus between the two seas by
a whole degree, or about 70 English miles.
Asia Minor, therefore, can only be termed a peninsula
in the same vague and general sense in which that
expression is applied to the peninsula of Spain and
Portugal. It has been already observed that there are
several points of analogy between the two, not only
from their forming respectively the westernmost portions
of the two continents of Europe and Asia, and occupy-
ing much the same position in latitude, but still more
in regard to their general conformation and structure.
In both cases the interior of the country is occupied by
a vast table-land, which forms, as it were, the nucleus
of the whole, while ranges of mountains border this
elevated tract on all sides, and these again are sepa-
rated from the sea by valleys or plains at a low level,
which are in many cases regions of surpassing fertility.
The central plateau of Asia Minor is, however, more
extensive than that of the Spanish peninsula, and
occupies a much greater portion of the whole country.
Beginning on the east with Cappadocia, the whole of
which extensive province is more than 3000 feet above
the sea, it is continued to the foot of Mount Taurus, by
the high table-lands of Lycaonia and Isauria, the former
of which is even superior in elevation to Cappadocia;
while to the north of these two districts it comprises
the whole of Galatia, and by far the greater part of
Phrygia, together with portions of the adjoining pro-
vinces of Mysia and Bithynia. No part of this exten-
sive region is situated less than 2000 feet above the sea,
except where it is occasionally cut into by deep valleys
on its northern or western borders.
A tract of such great extent naturally presents great
diversity of surface, and is not only varied by extensive
undulations, and occasionally by deep valleys, but is
traversed in different directions by numerous ranges of
mountains, some of them rising to a considerable altitude
above the ordinary level of the surrounding plains.
These ranges separate the different portions of the great
central plateau from one another, and thus divide them
into several basins, the waters of which have no direct
A S I
563
communication with each other. One of the most
remarkable features in the physical geography of the
interior is the fact, that one of the basins thus parted
off ſrom the rest, extending nearly 250 miles in length and
150 in breadth, from the sources of the Sangarius and
Halys on the north to the great chain of Mount Taurus,
has no communication with the sea,- the streams by
which it is watered having no outlet, and consequently
forming a chain of lakes extending from near Synnada
in Phrygia through the whole of Lycaonia, to beyond
Tyana in Cappadocia. The most considerable of these
lakes is that called, by Strabo, Tatta, and by the Turks,
Tuzlah, or the salt pan,—an epithet well deserved from
its extreme saltness, which exceeds even that of the
Dead Sea. It is about 45 miles in length by 18 in
breadth, but varies much with the season, being very
shallow, so that a considerable portion of its surface is
dry in summer and covered with incrustations of salt.
North of the region of these lakes lies a dry and
naked tract, consisting principally of undulating downs,
traversed by the branches and tributaries of the Sanga-
rius and Halys, but otherwise scantily supplied with
water, and almost wholly destitute of trees. A portion
of this region was in ancient times specially designated
as Axylus, or the woodless; but the same epithet might
with almost equal propriety be applied to the whole
tract extending from Dorylaeum and Cotiaeum, through
the north of Phrygia and Galatia, to the confines of
Pontius and Cappadocia, a distance of nearly 300 miles.
These vast treeless downs afford pasturage at the pres-
ent day, as they did in the time of Strabo, to numerous
flocks of sheep, but they are for the most part unculti-
vated, and in many places, utterly barren and desolate.
The few towns that are found within their limits are,
however, sometimes surrounded by luxuriant gardens
and fruit-trees in great variety.
Mountains.—The orthography of Asia Minor is ex-
tremely complicated, and is still but imperfectly known,
though the researches of recent travellers, especially of
Hamilton and Tchihatcheff, have of late years thrown
much light on the subject. But very few of the highest
ranges have as yet been accurately measured, and the
barometrical determinations of the altitudes of numerous
points in the interior, which have been made by Hamil-
ton, Ainsworth, and Tchihatcheff, often differ so much
from one another, as to render it doubtful how far we
can place reliance upon them. At the same time, we
are now able, in a general way, to describe and dis-
tinguish the more important mountain ranges of the
peninsula—a task for which there existed no sufficient
materials down to a late period.
By far the most important of these mountain ranges,
and that which constitutes one of the leading geograph-
ical features of Asia Minor, is the great chain known
to modern as well as ancient geographers by the appel-
lation of Mount Taurus. Beginning at the south-western
extremity of the peninsula, in the province of Lycia, it
extends in a direction nearly parallel with the south
coast as far as the south-eastern angle at the confines of
Cilicia with Syria, a distance of more than 400 English
miles. Throughout this extent it forms a continuous
range of very considerable elevation, constituting a
complete natural barrier between the Mediterranean
and the great upland plains of the interior; while in
some parts, as in Lycia and the western portions of
Cilicia, it sends down numerous arms and branches
quite to the sea-shore; in others, on the contrary,
leaving a broad strip of alluvial plain between the foot
of the mountains and the sea. Its positive elevation is
very imperfectly known, none of the summits of the
great central range having as yet been measured with
any degree of accuracy, and the numbers given in the
best maps resting only on the more or less vague esti-
mates of different travellers. It is probable, however,
that throughout the greater part of its extent the sum-
mits of the main range attain to an elevation of from
7ooo to 8ooo feet, while many of the higher summits
are estimated to exceed Io,000, and in Some instances,
at least, to approach to II,000 feet.
At a short distance from the chain of the Taurus and
Anti-Taurus to the west, but wholly unconnected with
them geologically, or in a true geographical sense, is a
remarkable series of volcanic peaks or groups, extending
in a direction from N. E. to S.W., through an extent of
more than 150 miles. The northernmost and most
elevated of these was known to the ancients as Mount
Argaeus, and is still called by the Turks Erdjish-dagh.
It is the highest mountain in Asia Minor, attaining to
very nearly (iſ it does not exceed) 13,000 feet, and its
base is upwards of 60 miles in circumference. ... About
60 miles S.W. of this rises the volcanic mass of Hassan-
dagh, the highest peak of which attains an elevation
of above 8000 feet, and which has covered the whole
country to the north-east with a vast extent of volcanic
deposits. Beyond this, toward the S.W., is situated the
volcanic group of Karadja-dagh, of very inferior altitude,
but interesting as exhibiting a well-marked series of
volcanic cones, having in some instances very well pre-
served craters, extending through a range of above
35 miles, as far as the village of Kara Boumar. . About
25 miles S.W. of this rises the insulated mass of Kara-
dagh, of similar volcanic character, and estimated to
attain to a height of about 8000 feet.
Nearly at right angles with the series just described is
the range called the Sultan-dagh, which extends through
a space of more than 120 miles from the neighborhood of
Afiom Kara Hissar to that of Konieh.
We now come to consider the numerous mountain
chains that branch off from the borders of the great
central plateau to the west, and descend to the shores of
the AEgean, leaving between them valleys of surpassing
beauty and fertility, which were in ancient times thickly
studded with towns and cities of Greek origin. As
these valleys widen out in approaching the Sea, the
mountain chains that separate them become clearly
marked, and can be readily distinguished; but as we
attempt to trace them back towards the interior, it will
be found that they often arise in the same knot or cluster of
mountain masses, and are in fact only branches radiating
from the same point. But as there is no great central
chain from which they can be regarded as emanating, it is
convenient to describe them separately,– the more so as,
from the familiarity of the Greek writers with this portion
of Asia Minor, almost every range has some distinctive
appellation by which it is well known to scholars.
Almost the whole of the northern provinces of Asia
Minor, extending along the coast of the Black Sea—
Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus — are extremely
mountainous, and occupied through the greater part of
their extent by successive ranges of mountains, filling up
the space between the sea-coast and the borders of the
great table land of the interior. In a general view these
may be characterized as forming a series of vast undula-
tions, more or less parallel with the line of coast, which
preserves a general direction from west to east. But
when examined more in detail, they will be found to be
complicated and broken in a manner that renders their
description very difficult, while few of them have any his-
torical importance or special geographical interest. It
will suffice here to mention a few of the most important.
Aizers. —The rivers of Asia Minor are of very little
importance in comparison with those of countries of sim-
ilar extent in Europe. This is owing principally to the
existence of the great table-land in the interior, the cli-
564
A S I
mate of which is remarkably dry, and a considerable part
of which, as has already been pointed out, does not dis-
charge its waters to the sea. The much steeper inclina-
tion of the river-beds, resulting from the high elevation
of their sources, tends, moreover, to give them the char-
acter of mere torrents, rather than of placid and naviga-
ble streams, while at the same time none of them are
fed, like the Rhine and the Rhone, by the unfailing sup-
ply of glaciers. The want of navigable riversis, indeed,
one of the great defects of the country, and one which,
so far as the interior is concerned, must always remain a
disadvantage not to be surmounted.
Much the largest river of the peninsula is the Halys,
called by the Turks the Kizil Irmak, or “Red River,”
which derives additional interest from its having formed
in early ages the boundary between the kingdoms of
Lydia and Persia. It takes its rise in the mountains on
the borders of Cappadocia and Pontus, in the district
called by Strabo Camisene, about 70 miles above the
modern town of Sivas, and flows in a direction nearly
S.W. for above 200 miles, till it passes within 20 miles
of the city of Kaisariyeh; soon after which it turns to
the N.W., and then makes a vast bend round till it
assumes a north-easterly direction, which it pursues as
far as the town of Osmandjik. Here it makes a sharp
and sudden turn, caused by its encountering the range
of mountains which extends from Paphlagonia into
Pontus, and which it traverses by a winding course
through narrow gorges, between precipitous cliffs, until
it emerges into the level country near the sea, which it
enters about half way between Amisus (Samsoun) and
Sinope. Its whole course (as measured on the map,
without taking account of the minor windings) is not
less than 560 miles, though, from its describing so great
a curve, the direct distance from its sources to its mouth
is only about 180 miles. In length of course, therefore,
it is about equal to such rivers as the Elbe and the
Loire, but it is far inſerior to them in body of water, in
which respect it scarcely equals the second class rivers
of France. Even in the lower part of its course its
breadth frequently does not exceed IOO yards.
At a short distance east of the mouth of the Halysis
that of another of the most considerable streams that
fall into the Black Sea — the Iris of ancient geograph-
ers, now known as the Yeschil Irmak, or “Green
River.” This has its source in the same range of mount-
ains as the Halys, but flows from thence towards the
N.W. It passes within a short distance of the town of
Tokat, and under the walls of Amasia, the birth-place
of Strabo, near which it bends abruptly to the N.E., as
far as the site of the ancient Eupatoria, where it re-
ceives a tributary stream from the E., and thence pur-
sues a course nearly due north for about 40 miles, till it
enters the Black Sea about 15 miles east of Samsoun.
It has a course altogether of about 200 miles.
The most important of the northern rivers of Asia
Minor, after the Halys, is the Sangarius, which still
retains its ancient name in the corrupted form of Sakaria.
It falls into the Black Sea, W. of Heraclea, about
80 miles from the mouth of the Bosphorus. It has its
sources in the uplands of Phrygia, not far to the N. of
Afiom Kara Hissar, and flows by a very winding course
through the great table-land of Galatia, as far as a place
called Bei Bazar, about 50 miles W. of Angora, where
it turns abruptly to the west, and traverses the mount-
ainous regions of Phrygia and Bithynia, till, after
approaching within a short distance of the Sea of Mar-
mora, it again turns to the N.E.; and pursues its course
to the Black Sea.
The most considerable rivers which have their outlet
to the Sea of Marmora are the Rhyndacus and Macestus,
which unite their waters at a distance of about 15 miles
from the sea. They both take their rise in the range of
mountains known as the Demirdji-dagh, the Macestus
having its source in a small lake called the Simau Göl, a
few miles north of Simau (Synnaus), the Rhyndacus in
the neighborhood of AEzani, about 25 miles further east.
They flow at first in widely divergent directions, but
ultimately both turn towards the north; and the Rhyn-
dacus (now called Adranas Tchai), which is the most
considerable of the two, aſter forming the Lake of
Apollonia (an extensive sheet of water), receives the
waters of the Macestus a few miles lower down.
All these rivers which we have just been considering
are remarkable for the great amount of alluvial matter
which they bring down, and the extensive deposits which
they in consequence form where they enter the sea.
Of the rivers of Lycia the only one which deserves
notice is the Xanthus, which rises in Mount Taurus, and
falls into the sea about 12 miles below the city of the
SalThe Ilal Ine.
The rivers which flow from the main chain of Taurus.
to the Mediterranean are very numerous, and many of
them in winter bring down a large body of water. But
they have necessarily but short courses, and few of them
have much geographical importance. Of those which
traverse the plain of Pamphylia it will be sufficient to
mention the Cestrus and the Eurymedon, both of them
considerable streams, pursuing parallel courses to the
sea, which they enter within less than 20 miles of one
another.
The broad alluvial plain which forms the eastern por-
tion of Cilicia is traversed by several rivers, two of
which, the Sarus and Pyramus, now known as the Sihun
and Jihun, are among the most important rivers of Asia
Minor.
Maćes.—The lakes of Asia Minor are numerous, but
of no great importance. The most extensive is the
great salt lake already noticed, on the borders of Lycao-
nia and Cappadocia, which is bounded on the east by
a considerable range of mountains called Khodja-dagh,
while on the west it is separated only by some low hills.
from the broad upland plains, or steppes, of Lycaonia.
Beyond these to the west, but separated from them by
the range of the Emir-dagh, is a string of three lakes of
no great extent, having a general direction from N. W.
to S.E., and following the line of the valley of Phrygia
Paroreios. They bear the names of Eber Göl, Ak-Shehr
Göl, and Ilgun Göl, and are all basins of fresh water
passing into mere marshy pools during the dry season.
Much more important than these are the two lakes now
known as the Egerdir Göl and Kereli Göl (from towns
of those names built upon their banks), which are situ-
ated between the range of the Sultan-dagh and the north-
ern offshoots of the Taurus, and are both of them exten-
sive mountain lakes of not less than 30 miles in length.
The northernmost of the two (the Egerdir Göl, which is
described as the most picturesque and beautiful of the
lakes of Asia Minor) is situated at an elevation of about
28oo feet above the sea, while the level of the neighbor-
ing Kereli Göl, which is separated from it by an inter-
vening range of mountains, is at least 800 feet higher.
Both are perfectly fresh, and their waters clear and deep,
though the one has no outlet, and the other communi-
cates only by a small rivulet with the much smaller lake
called Soghla Göl, the waters of which occasionally dis-
appear altogether. They are without doubt carried off
by subterranean channels. About 30 miles S.W. of the
Egerdir Göl is the Lake of Buldur, adjoining the town of
that name; and at a short distance north of this lies the
Tchöruk Su Göl, or Lake of Chardak, the waters of
which are extremely salt, so that large quantities of Salt
are collected there, and sent from thence to Smyrna. ,
CZimate and Matural Productions.—The climate of
A S I
565
Asia Minor necessarily presents great differences. All
travellers have remarked on the striking contrast as
they passed from the warm and fertile regions of the
west and south to the cold and bleak uplands of the
interior. The great central plateau, which constitutes
so large a part of the country, is not only much colder
than regions in corresponding latitudes in Europe, but
is characterised by a great dryness, in consequence of
the moisture from the Mediterranean being in great part
intercepted by the continuous mountain chain of the
Taurus. The result of this, combined with its great
elevation above the sea, is to render the summers excess-
ively hot, and the winters extremely cold. In both
these respects the climate of the central parts of Asia
Minor presents a close analogy with that of Central
Spain, as well as with the still more extreme case of the
neighboring Armenia. On the other hand, the plains
and low valleys on the south coast, which are in a lati-
tude corresponding to that of Sicily and the south of
Spain, have a mean temperature considerably higher
than those countries, and the summer heat at Tarsus is
said greatly to exceed that of Cadiz or Gibraltar, and to
be nearly equal to that of Cairo. Systematic observations
for any length of time are, however, almost wholly
wanting. The north coast, on the contrary, is subject to
the depressing influence of the cold winds and fogs of
the Euxine, which, as is well known, bring down the
mean temperature of Constantinople (and still more its
winter temperature) far below that of places in corre-
sponding latitudes on the Mediterranean.
The vegetation of the different parts of the peninsula
naturally varies with the climate and the soil. The
southern coasts present most of the plants and shrubs
characteristic of the southern portions of the Mediter-
ranean, with the exception of the prickly pear and
American aloe (both of them originally exotics imported
into Europe), which form so important a feature in the
landscape of Sicily and the south of Spain, as well as of
Syria, but are very rare in Asia Minor, while the dwarf
palm (Chazzaroźs Aze milis) is wholly wanting. The
date palm is occasionally found, but does not ripen its
fruit even at Tarsus, where the summer temperature is
almost tropical.
Higher up on the mountain slopes and the uplands
£acing the sea is the chief realm of the oak and pine
forests, with which a large part of the chain of Taurus
is covered. The walnut is the most plentiful and con-
spicuous tree around the villages, while vineyards and
tobacco fields yield rich produce. The high upland
plains, on the contrary, are generally bare and treeless,
but the villages are frequently surrounded with walnut
trees, Lombardy poplars, apples, apricots, and willows.
The vine is still grown in many spots in these elevated
regions, though in others it will not thrive. Large
tracts of the table-land of the interior, as has been
already mentioned, are either quite barren and desolate,
or open treeless downs, affording pasture only to sheep.
The northern coast districts present a wholly different
climate, and from the influence of the Black Sea and
the cold of Russia, have much more of the character
of the temperate regions of Europe than of that of
Rome or Naples which correspond to them in latitude.
But the mountains are covered with extensive forests of
Oak, chestnut, beech, box, and other trees, while the
valleys produce fruit trees in extraordinary abundance
and variety.
Among the vegetable productions that are of import-
ance in a commercial point of view, may be mentioned
saffron, which is so largely cultivated at a town in Bithy-
nia as to have given it the name of Safaranboli; opium,
which has in like manner given name to Afiom Kara
Hissar; madder, extensively grown at Ak Shehir; the
orchis called salep; and cotton, of which considerable
quantities are now produced in the warmer districts near
the sea. Mulberries also are extensively cultivated, and
large quantities of silk produced in the neighborhood of
Broussa, where there are now established large silk
manufactories, as well as at Tokat, Amasia, and other
places. The dried figs and raisins for which Smyrna is
so celebrated are grown principally in the valley of the
Maeander near Aidin.
The wild animals of Asia Minor are in general the
same as are found in most parts of Europe, though a
few mark its connection with the most eastern parts of
Asia. Wolves, wild boars, bears and foxes are abundant;
but with them is associated the jackal, which is found
in large troops in all parts of the country. The lion,
which was certainly an inhabitant of Asia Minor in
ancient times, is no longer found in any part of the
peninsula, and though the tiger is said to exist in the
Cilician Taurus, the fact does not rest on any good
authority. But leopards still occur not unfrequently in
the mountain country of Taurus, and from thence
range along the mountains to the west, so that they
have been occasionally shot, even in the neighborhood
of Smyrna. The high mountains are frequented by the
ibex and chamois, while the true wild goat (Capra
Zgagrus) is found on those of Cappadocia and Cilicia.
The moufflon, also, is not uncommon in Cappadocia;
but the wild ass, which existed there in the time of
Strabo, is no longer found within the limits of the penin-
sula. The gazelle abounds in the plains of Cilicia,
while both fallow and roe deer are found in the forests
in large numbers. -
Ancient Divisions and Ethnography.—The division
of Asia Minor which is commonly adopted by geographers,
and which is followed in the present article, is that
given by Strabo, which coincides in the main with
those of Ptolemy and Pliny. According to this the
whole peninsula is considered as comprising— I. Pontus,
on the Euxine, adjoining the frontiers of Armenia, and
extending west as far as the Halys; 2. Paphlagonia,
from the Halys to the Parthenius; 3. Bithynia, from
the Parthenius to the Rhyndacus; 4. Mysia, which, with
the subordinate districts of the Troad and AEolis, or the
land occupied by the AEolian Greek colonists, comprised
the north-western angle of the peninsula; 5. Lydia, of
which Ionia in like manner formed the sea coast; 6. Ca-
ria, including the Dorian Greek colonies; 7. Lycia;
8. Pamphylia; 9. Cilicia — the last three provinces ex-
tending along the southern coast, from the Gulf of Macri
to the frontiers of Syria; while in the interior were —
IO. Pisidia, comprising only the rugged mountain coun-
try above Pamphylia ; I I. Phrygia, forming the west-
ern portion of the great table-land; 12. Galatia;
I3. Cappadocia; I4. Lycaonia and Isauria, two
barren and mountainous regions on the north side of
Mount Taurus. (For farther particulars as to the extent
and limits of these different regions the reader must be
referred to the respective articles.)
Our information concerning the origin and ethno-
graphical relations of the nations that we find occupying
the peninsula at the earliest period is very imperfect, and
rests almost wholly on the vague statements of ancient
authors, none of the nations in question, with the excep-
tion of the Lycians, having left any trace of their lan-
guage.
The population of Asia Minor at the present day can
hardly be said to retain any traces of the earlier nations
that composed it, though according to some writers, the
Zeybeks,—— a race presenting some marked peculiarities,
who occupy the south-western corner of the peninsula —
are the lineal representatives of the ancient Carians.
They, however, speak only Turkish. The bulk of the
*
566
A S K
population is composed of Turks, Greeks, and Arme-
nians, among whom the Turks preponderate greatly in
numbers, and (unlike what is the case in European
Turkey) compose the mass of the agricultural and rural
population, while the Greeks and Armenians are found
principally in the towns, where almost all the trade is in
their hands. But besides these elements, which consti-
tute the fixed and permanent population of the peninsula,
there is a considerable portion consisting of nomad and
half nomad tribes, which are known under the names of
Turcomans, Yourouks or Euruques (the name is very
variously written), and Kurds. The last of these are
found principally in the eastern and south-eastern
districts, the Turcomans in the north-eastern and central
provinces, and the Yourouks in the west and south-west
of the peninsula. They are all exclusively pastoral
races, but the Turcomans have in general their villages
in which they spend the winter months, wandering over
the great plains of the interior with their flocks and
herds during the Summer months. The Yourouks, on the
contrary, are a truly nomad race, dwelling all the year
round in tents, and removing from place to place accord-
ing to the season. Their tents are made of black goats'
hair, and their principal covering is a heavy cloak of the
same material. Besides large flocks of sheep and goats,
they breed many camels, and one of their principal
occupations is burning charcoal, in the course of which
they do enormous injury to the forests.
Zistory.— It is remarkable that a country like Asia
Minor, possessing such great natural advantages, and to
a great extent so clearly limited by nature, can hardly be
said to have any history of its own. It was never at any
period united undér one independent sovereign, but was
always either divided among a number of minor poten-
tates, or, as under the Roman, Byzantine, and Turkish
rule, constituted merely a subordinate portion of a more
extensive empire. Its western and northern shores were
from a very early period occupied by Greek colonies,
which gradually formed an almost unbroken chain of set-
tlements along its coasts and islands from Rhodes to
Trebizond. But these exercised comparatively little in-
fluence upon the nations of the interior; and the first
historical event that can be considered as affecting the
fortunes of the peninsula in general, was the rise of the
Lydian monarchy, which attained to so great a predom-
inance that for a short time Croesus, the last monarch of
the dynasty (560-546 B.C.), had subdued the whole of
Asia Minor west of the Halys with the exception of
Lycia. But having, unfortunately, engaged in war with
Cyrus, king of Persia, he was entirely defeated, and his
dominions conquered by the Persian monarch. From
this time the whole of Asia Minor, from the frontiers of
Syria to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus, continued
for more than two centuries to form part of the Persian
monarchy, until its overthrow by Alexander the Great,
333 B.C. It was during this period divided into Satrapies,
the boundaries of which were, however, very uncertain
and fluctuating, like those of the Turkish governments
in modern days. In the division of the Macedonian
empire after the death of Alexander, Asia Minor became
a chief object of contention among his generals, but was
ultimately included in the dominions of Seleucus, and
the greater part of the peninsula continued for a consid-
erable period to be subject to the Seleucidan kings of
Syria. A small independent monarchy had, however,
been established at Pergamus, soon after 280 B.C., and
when the Romans entered Asia and defeated Antiochus
III. at the battle of Magnesia (190 B.C.), they trans-
ferred a considerable part of his dominions to Eumenes,
king of Pergamus, whose kingdom was thus extended
to the Taurus. The monarchy of Pergamus thus con-
stituted continued to subsist till aſter the death of Atta-
lus III., when it was annexed to the Roman dominions
under the name of the province of Asia (130 B.C.)
Bithynia, however, still continued a separate kingdom,
as did also Pontus, which for a short period rose under
the great Mithridates to be a really formidable power.
But after the defeat and death of Mithridates, in 63 B.C.,
the greater part of his kingdom, as well as that of Bithy-
nia, was annexed to the Roman dominion; and though
some petty dynasties were allowed to linger on till after
the Roman empire, the whole of Asia Minor was virtu-
ally subject to Rome from the time of Augustus. There
ensued a long period of tranquility and prosperity under
the Roman and Byzantine empires, during which it suf-
fered less than almost any other part of the empire from
the inroads and ravages of barbarians. Even after the
rise of the Mahometan power, though Asia Minor was re-
peatedly traversed by the armies of the Arab conquerors,
who twice laid siege to Constantinople, it was never per-
manently annexed to the dominion of the caliphs, like
the adjoining provinces of Syria and Mesopotamia, and
the whole country, as far as the passes of Mount
Amanus, continued subject to the Byzantine empire,
until it was overrun by the Seljukian Turks in IO74 A.D.
The conquest of Asia Minor by the Turks was not a
mere passing inroad, but a permanent occupation of the
country, in which they established themselves in such
numbers that they have ever since formed the predomi-
nant element in the population, and have to a great ex-
tent supplanted or absorbed all the previously existing
races. But the dynasty of the house of Seljuk, estab-
lished by the first conqueror Soliman, who had fixed his
capital at Nice, within IOO miles of Constantinople,
did not long retain its undivided sovereignty, and its
power was broken by the armies of the first Crusade
(1097 A.D.), which took Nice, defeated the Turks in a
great battle at Dorylaeum, and then swept over the land
almost without opposition, up to the very walls of Anti-
och. The Byzantine emperor recovered possession of the
whole circuit of the coast, from Trebizond to the Syrian
gates; and the Seljukian sultans of Roum, as they
termed themselves, who had removed their capital to
Iconium, in the heart of the interior, found themselves
cut off from the sea on all sides. Their dominion was
gradually broken up, and divided among a number of
small independent chieftains, until the rise of the Otto-
man dynasty at the commencement of the 14th century
once more consolidated the power of the Turks in
Asia. The history of Asia Minor from this period is
inseparably connected with that of the Turkish empire,
and will be given under the head of TURKEY. To the
same article we must refer our readers for the modern
division of the country and the present system of ad-
ministration, as well as for such statistical information
concerning its present state as it is possible to collect in
the absence of all official or trustworthy authorities.
ASKEW, or ASCUE, ANNE, one of the numerous
sufferers for the cause of the Reformation in the reign of
Henry VIII., was a lady of great worth and beauty, of
a good family in Lincolnshire, and in correspondence
with Queen Catherine Parr and the chief ladies of the
court. At first a Roman Catholic, she had gradually
become convinced of the falsity of transubstantiation ;
and her husband, irritated at her change of religious
opinions, compelled her to leave his house. On coming
to London to seek for a divorce she was arrested, and
interrogated by Chancellor Wriothesley, and Bishop
Bonner, at the instigation of whom, under threats of
torture, she signed a qualified recantation. She was im-
prisoned, and wrote to the king, says Hume, “that as to
the Lord's Supper she believed as much as Christ him-
self had said of it, and as much of His divine doctrine
as the Catholic church had required.” But while she
A S M — A S P
567
could not be brought to acknowledge the king's explica-
tions, this declaration availed her nothing, and was
rather regarded as a fresh insult. She was cruelly
racked in the presence, and it was said by the hand, of
the chancellor himself, in order to extort confession of
those ladies about court with whom she corresponded.
Her fortitude and fidelity probably saved the lives of the
queen and others. She disclosed nothing, although her
limbs were so dislocated by the rack that, when con-
demned to be burnt alive she could not stand, and was
carried in a chair to Smithfield, where on 16th July 1546,
she and four others underwent this terrible mode of
execution with undaunted courage.
ASMAI or HSMAYI (full name ABU SAID ABD-EL-
MELEK IBN KORAïB EL-ASMAſ), is one of the most im-
portant representatives of Arabic literature in the 8th
century of the Christian era. He was born at Basra
740 or 741 A.D., and attained, by his extensive erudition,
to the high rank of preceptor to Harun-al Rashid,
whose court was in that generation the great focus of
intellectual activity in the East.
ASMODEUS, or Asch MEDAI, an evil demon who
appears in later Jewish tradition, and concerning whom
there has been much vague and fanciful speculation.
The name, probably, means the destroying angel or the
tempter. He is sometimes called the prince of demons,
and identified with Beelzebub ; but there are many
other fables regarding his origin. In the apocryphal
book of Zobiz occurs the well-known story of his love
for Sara, the beautiful daughter of Raguel, whose seven
husbands were slain in succession by him on their
respective bridal nights. At last Tobias, by burning
the heart and liver of a fish, drove off the demon, who
fled to Egypt. d
ASMONEUS, or Assamon EUs, the first of the
dynasty or family of the Asmoneans, who ruled over the
Jews for about 130 years. His great-grandson was the
celebrated Mattathias (died 167 B.C.), the first of the
Maccabees; and the direct line of princes descended
from him was closed in 37 B.C. by the execution of
Antigonus. Agrippa Herodes I. and II. were con-
nected with the Asmoneans through their ancestress,
Mariamme, wife of Herod the Great. -
ASOLO, the ancient Ace/um, a fortified town of
Northern Italy, in the province of Treviso, about 19
miles distant from the city of that name.
ASP (Vipera aspis), a species of venomous snake,
closely allied to the common adder of this country,
which it represents throughout the southern parts of
Europe, being specially abundant in the region of the
Alps. The term “Asp” seems to have been employed
by Greek and Roman writers, and by writers generally
down to comparatively recent times, to designate more
than one species of serpent; thus the asp, by means of
which Cleopatra is said to have ended her life, and so
avoided the disgrace of entering Rome a captive, is now
generally supposed to have been the cerastes, or horned
viper of Northern Africa, a snake about £fteen inches
long, exceedingly venomous, and provided with curious
horn-like protuberances over each eye, which give it a
decidedly sinister appearance.
which the word “asp?has been most commonly applied,
is undoubtedly the haje (AVaja haje) of Egypt, a poison-
ous snake, from three to four feet long, with the skin of
its neck loose, so as to render it dilatable at the will of
the animal, as in the cobra di capello of India, a species
from which it differs only in the absence of the spectacle-
like mark on the back of the neck. *,
ASPARAGUS. The young shoots of Asparagus
Officinalis (Nat. Ord. Liliacea) have from very remote
times been in high repute as a culinary vegetable, owing
to their delicate flavor and diuretic virtue. The plant
The species, however, to
grows wild on the south coast of England; and on the
waste steppes of Russia it is so abundant that it is eaten
by cattle like grass.
ASPASIA, a beautiful woman of Athens, celebrated
in history by her connection with Pericles, was a native
of Miletus, and settled in Athens, following the exam-
ple of her countrywoman, Thargelia, who had become
very famous during the time of the Persian wars. Her
beauty, but still more her remarkable accomplishments,
gained for her an extraordinary reputation, which was
increased after her association with Pericles, who, hav-
ing divorced his wife, united himself to Aspasia as closely
as was possible under Athenian law, according to which
marriage with a barbarian was illegal and impossible.
Much of the administration of Pericles has been ascribed
to her eloquent instruction and political sagacity, and
her enemies did not scruple to lay to her charge the
Samian and Peloponnesian wars. Although this exag-
gerates her power, yet her talents must have been extraor-
dinary, for she drew to her house the most noble and
learned in Athens, who were willing to learn from her.
Even Socrates was not exempt from herinfluence. The
political supremacy of Pericles, which exposed him
to many assaults, attracted enmity to Aspasia. She
was accused of impiety and other base crimes,
and would probably have been condemned, had not
the judges been swayed by the tears and entreaties
of Pericles himself. After the death of that states-
man's two sons by his lawful wife, he procured the pass-
ing of a law, by which the children of irregular mar-
riages might be rendered legitimate. His son by Aspa-
sia was thus allowed to assume his father’s name. After
the death of Pericles, Aspasia is said to have formed a
similar connection with one Lysicles, wealthy, but of
ignoble birth, whom she raised by her instructions to a
prominent place in the state. This episode is somewhat
obscure, especially as Lysicles seems to have fallen in
battle in 428, the year after the death of Pericles.
Nothing further is known of the history of Aspasia.
ASPASIUS, a Peripatetic philosopher, and one of
the most prolific commentators on Aristotle, flourished
probably towards the close of the first century A.D., or
perhaps during the reign of Antoninus Pius.
ASPASIUS, a celebrated rhetorician and sophist,
was born at Ravenna, and flourished during the early
part of the 3d century A.D.
ASPEN TREE, called also the trembling-leaved
poplar (Populus trement/a), is a native of Britain, and
is found generally in moist places, sometimes at a con-
siderable elevation, 16oo feet or more, in Scotland. It
flowers in Britain in March and April. The name
“trembling” is applied to it on account of the constant
movement of the leaves even with a gentle breeze.
ASPENDUS (or, as the name appears on the more
ancient coins, ESTFENDYs), a city of Pamphylia, in
Asia Minor, situated on an isolated hill near the river
Eurymedon (Capri-su) at the extremity of the plain of
Perga. It was founded by a colony from Argos, five
centuries before the Christian era, and attained to great
prosperity, as is attested, not only by the statements of
Greek and Roman writers, but also by the noble ruins
that still occupy the site.
ASPER, HANS, a Swiss painter, was born in 1499 at
Zürich, where he died on the 21st March 1571. He
wrought in a great variety of styles, but excelled chiefly
in flower and fruit pieces, and in portrait painting.
Many of his pictures have perished, but his style may
be judged from the illustrations to Gessner's Aſistoria
Anima/ium, for which he is said to have furnished the
designs, and from portraits of Zwingli and his daughter
Regula Gwalter, which are preserved in the public
library of Zürich.
568 f
A S P — A S S
ASPHALT, or ASPHALTUM, the German Bergºech,
or mineral pitch, so called from the Lacus Asphaltites or
Dead Sea, where it was found in ancient times, is a
product of the decomposition of vegetable and animal
substances. It is usually found of a black or brownish-
black color, externally not unlike coal, but it varies in
consistency from a bright pitchy condition, with a sharp
conchoidal fracture, to thick viscid masses of mineral tar.
Asphalt melts at or a little below the boiling point of
water, and it burns with a rather smoky flame. It is
regarded as the ultimate result of a series of changes
which take place, under certain conditions, in organized
matter, producing— Ist, naphtha ; 2d, petroleum; 3d,
mineral tar; and 4th, asphalt or hard bitumen. The
whole of these substances merge into each other by
insensible degrees, so that it is impossible to say at
what point mineral tar ends and asphalt begins.
Naphtha, which is the first of the series, is in some
localities found flowing out of the earth as a clear,
limpid, and colorless liquid. As such it is a mixture
of hydrocarbons, some of which are very volatile
and evaporate on exposure; it takes up oxygen from the
air, becomes brown and thick, and in this condition it
is called petroleum. A continuation of the same process
of evaporation and oxidation gradually transforms the
material into mineral tar, and still later into solid glassy
asphalt. Asphaltic deposits exist widely diffused through-
out the world, more especially in tropical and sub-trop-
ical regions. . It is ſound in a state of great purity in the
interstices of the older rocks, but its occurrence is not
characteristic of any particular formation or period. The
most remarkable deposit of asphalt exists in Trinidad,
where it ſorms a lake 99 acres in extent, and of unknown
depth, intersected with rivulets of water.
Of greater importance industrially than simple asphalt
is asphalt stone,—a limestone impregnated with bitu-
minous matter, which occurs in large quantitles at several
European localities.
Two principal methods are adopted in laying asphalt
pavements, 1st, the mastic process; 2d, the hot com-
}. process. The mastic process is essentially as
ollows:— The bed of the road-way is prepared with a
smooth level foundation of concrete, which must be
thoroughly dry before the application of the asphalt.
The mastic is prepared for application by heating the
asphaltic stone and breaking it into small pieces, which
are then melted up with a quantity of mineral tar, to
which some sand is added. The molten mass is then
poured over a section of the prepared concrete uni-
formly to the requisite depth; the surface is smoothed,
and covered with a coating of fine sand which is
stamped into the asphalt. The proportions of sand
used vary with the composition of the asphaltic stone
employed and the position occupied by the pavement.
The other mode of laying pavements, now extensively
adopted, consists in spreading hot powdered asphaltic
stone on the prepared surface, which is then heavily
pressed till it forms a homogeneous elastic coating.
Roadways so prepared are very durable, smooth,
cleanly, and noiseless, but the material is not well
adapted for other than level streets on account of the
difficulty of foothold.
ASPHYXIA, a term in medicine which, though liter-
ally signifying loss of pulsation, is applied to describe
the arrestment of the function of respiration from some
hindrance to the entrance of air into the lungs. (See
PHYSIOLOGY and MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE.)
ASPINWALL, or Colox, a city and free port on the
northern coast of Panama, one of the United States of
Colombia. It is built on the well-wooded coral island
of Manzanilla, in lat. 9° 22' 53° N., and long. 79° 52'
58° W., owes its origin to the Panama Railway Com-
pany, who founded it (1850) for the convenience of
their traffic, and derives its more usual name from W. H.
Aspinwall, one of their principal shareholders. In spite
of the unhealthiness of its situation,-- now, indeed,
largely diminished,—and the dangerous winds from the
north to which it is at some seasons exposed, it has
quite superseded the neighboring port of Chagres, and
become the centre of a considerable local trade. The
banana, especially, is cultivated in the neighborhood
and largely exported to New York. The population,
composed mainly of Jamaica and Spanish negroes, was
stated at 6500 in 1872. A telegraph line extends from
Aspinwall to Kingston in Jamaica.
ASS, The DOMEST1c – Asimus zulgaris, Gray—
differs chiefly from the horse in its smaller size, in the
presence of long hair, forming a tuft, only at the ex-
tremity of the tail, and in the absence of warts on its
hind legs. Its fur, usually of a gray color, is charac-
teristically marked with a longitudinal dorsal streak of
a darker hue, with a similar streak across the shoulders,
but white and black varieties also occur. The ass has
been from time immemorial under the dominion of man,
and it is doubtful whether the original wild stock is
anywhere to be found at the present day, - the speci-
mens that have been described as wild being probably
descendants of individuals that have escaped from the
domestic state. A wild variety of ass (as in its ta'zzio-
pus), found in Abyssinia, has the long acute cars and
the bray peculiar to the domestic kinds. It is said also
to have cross bands on its legs, a feature occasionally
met with in our tame breeds; and this fact has led
Darwin and others to conclude that in the wild ass of
Abyssinia the original of the domestic animal is to be
found; the stripes which occasionally appear on the
legs of the latter being regarded as instances of rever-
sion to the ancestral type. The marked aversion of the
domestic ass to cross the smallest streamlet, an aver-
sion which it shares with the camel, and the evident de-
light with which it rolls itself in the dust, seem to
point to arid deserts as its original home. The ass has
generally been the object of neglect and ill treatment;
and attempts have seldom been made to improve the
breed by selecting and matching the fine: specimens.
It has thus gradually sunk into the dull ... * clostinate
creature which we are accustomed to see. Its reputa-
tion for stupidity is not, however, of recent origin.
The ancient Egyptians hated it, and symbolised an ig-
norant person by the head and ears, and the Romans
thought it a bad omen to meet an ass. In the Middle
Ages the Germans of Westphalia made the ass the
symbol of St. Thomas, the unbelieving apostle; and
the boy who was last to enter the school on St. Thomas’
day was called the “Ass Thomas.” That the ass pos-
sesses qualities, which, if developed by careful selection
and humane treatment, would make it a worthy com-
panion of the horse as the servant of man, is seen in
the too rare instances in which it has received proper
attention. In Southern Europe—especially in Spain,
Italy, and Malta, the ass is carefully bred, and has
thus been greatly improved. No less than £200,
it is said, is sometimes paid in Spain for a stallion ass.
In the State of Kentucky, where mules are in great re-
quest as beasts of burden, asses, imported from the
South of Europe, are reared with scrupulous care, and
with such success, that from an average height of four-
teen hands, the Kentuckians have raised these animals
to fifteen and even sixteen hands.
ASSAM, a province of British India. Until the be-
ginning of 1874 Assam formed the north-east division
of the territories under the Lieutenant-Governor of Ben-
gal. In that year it was erected into a separate admin-
istration, presided over by a Chief Commissioner, who
A S S
569
acts directly under the Governor-General of India in
council. The district of Cachar was added to the old
division of Assam, and now forms part of the Chief
Commissioner's jurisdiction. It consists of the upper
valleys of the Brahmaputra for a length of about 500
miles from where that river enters the north-eastern
frontier of British India. These valleys vary in breadth,
but generally occupy a space of about 60 miles between
the Himälays on the north, and the water-shed which
separates the Brahmaputra from the river system of
Cachar. Assam, therefore, is bounded on the N. by
the sub-Himälayan ranges of the Bhutiá, Aká, Daphlá,
and Miri tribes; on the E. by the unsurveyed ſorests
and mountains which separate British India from north-
ern Burmah ; on the S. by the hills inhabited by the
Nágás, Jaintiyas, and Káhsiés, which separate Assam
from Silhet ; and on the W. by the Gáro hills and Kuch
Behar. Assam may be considered, however, either as
a natural province or as an artificial political division.
In its former aspect, in which it will be dealt with in
this article, it has an area of 48,473 square miles, with
a population in 1872 of 2,412,480 souls. It is the out-
lying province of India to the north-east, so that while
the pressure of population in several of the inner divis-
ions of Bengal varies from 500 to 573 persons per Square
mile, in Assam it is barely 50. Even deducting 12,058
miles of hill country in Lakimpur and Cachar districts,
the pressure of population is only 66 persons per square
mile in the more cultivated parts of Assam. Taken as
a political division, it is locally administered by a Chief
Commissioner, with his headquarters at Gauhátí.
The most important article of commerce produced
in Assam is tea. The rice crop covers a very great
proportion of the cultivated land, but it is used for local
consumption. The tea plantations occupy only a very
small area, but they are the one great source of wealth
to the province, and the necessities of tea cultivation
are the chief stimulants to the development of Assam.
The plant was discovered in 1823 by Mr. Robert Bruce,
who had proceeded thither on a mercantile exploration.
The country, however, then formed part of the Bur-
mese dominions. But war with this monarchy shortly
afterwards broke out, and a brother of the first discov-
erer, happening to be appointed to the command of a
division of gun-boats employed in some part of the
operations, followed up the pursuit of the subject, and
obtained several hundred plants and a considerable
quantity of seed. Some specimens were ultimately for-
warded to the superintendent of the botanic garden at
Calcutta.
The zoology of Assam presents some interesting feat-
ures. Wild elephants abound and commit many depre-
dations, entering villages in large herds, and consuming
everything suitable to their tastes. Many are caught by
means of female elephants previously tamed, and trained
to decoy males into the snares prepared for subjecting
them to captivity. A considerable number are tamed
and exported from Assam every year, but the specula-
tion appears to be rather precarious, as it is said about
twice the number exported are annually lost in the
course of training. Many are killed every year in the
forests for the sake of the ivory which they furnish ;
and the supply must be very great which can afford so
many for export and destruction without any perceptible
diminution of their number. The rhinocerosis found in
the denser parts of the forests, and generally in swampy
places. This animal is hunted and killed for its skin
and its horn. The skin affords the material for the
best shields. The horn is sacred in the eyes of the
natives. Contrary to the usual belief, it is stated
that, if caught young, the rhinoceros is easily tamed,
and becomes strongly attached to his keeper. Tigers
abound, and though many are annually destroyed for
the sake of the Government reward, their numbers
seem scarcely, if at all, to diminish. Their destruction
is sometimes effected by poisoned arrows discharged
from an instrument resembling a cross-bow, in which
the arrow is first fixed, and a string connected with the
trigger is then carried across the path in front of the
arrow, and fastened to a peg. The animal thus struck
is commonly found dead at the distance of a few yards
from the engine prepared for his destruction. Leopards
and bears are numerous; and the Arctonix Collaris of
Cuvier, a small animal somewhat resembling a bear,
but having the snout, eyes and tail of a hog, is found.
Among the most formidable animals known is the wild
buffalo, which is of great size, strength, and fierceness.
Many deaths are caused by this animal, and a reward is
given for its destruction.
The INHABITANTS of the entire province number
nearly two and a half millions, of whom more than one
million and three-quarter are Hindus ; 250,490 are
Muhammadans, 1788 are Christians, and the remain-
ing third of a million are hill tribes, professing aborig-
inal faiths. The native population is so exceedingly
sparse that the demand for labor on the tea gardens has
given rise to a system of importing coolies from western
Bengal. A series of laws regulate the terms of the con-
tract between the planter and the imported laborer, pre-
vent abuses in recruiting coolies among the ignorant
peasantry of the west, and provide for their health and
comfort during their transit to the distant districts of
Assam. Under these Acts 4988 laborers were imported
into the tea districts of Assam (including Cachar) in 1871,
the total number of imported laborers employed on the
tea plantations at the end of that year being 39,426.
The Assam peasant, living in a half-populated prov-
ince, and surrounded by surplus land, is indolent, good-
natured, and, on the whole, prosperous. He raises suffi-
cient food for his wants with very little labor, and, with,
the exception of a few religious ceremonies, he has no
demand made upon him for money, saving the light rental
of his fields. Under the peaceful influences of British
rule, he has completely lost his ancient warlike instincts,
and forgotten his predatory habits. In complexion he is
a shade or two fairer than the Bengali. His person is
in general short and robust, but devoid of the grace and
flexibility of the Hindu. A flat face, with high cheek-
bones, presents a physiognomy resembling the Chinese,
and suggests no idea of beauty. His hair is abundant,
black, lank, and coarse, but the beard is scanty, and
usually plucked out, which gives him an effeminate ap-
pearance. The women form a striking contrast to the
men ; there is more feminine beauty in them than is com-
monly seen in the women of Bengal, with a form and
feature somewhat approaching the European. --
ASSA ROTTI, Ottavio GiovaNNI BATTISTA, the
founder of schools for the education of deaf-mutes in
Italy, was born at Genoa in 1753. He received an ex-
cellent education; and after qualifying himself for the
church, he entered the society of the Pietists, “Scuole
Pie,” who devoted themselves to the training of the
young. His superior learning rendered his services very
valuable, and he was appointed to lecture on theology
to the students of the order. In 1801 he heard of the
Abbe Sicard’s experiments in the training of deaf-mutes,
and resolved to try something similar in Italy. He
began with one pupil, and had by degrees collected a
small number round him, when, in 1805, Napoleon,
hearing of his endeavors, ordered a convent to be given
him for a school house, and funds for supporting twelve
scholars to be taken from the convent revenues. . This
order was scarcely attended to till 1811, when it was
renewed, and in the following year Assarotti, with a
57O
A S S
considerable number of pupils, took possession of the
new school. Here he continued, with the exception of
a short interval in 1814, till his death in 1829. A pen-
sion, which had been awarded him by the king of Sar-
dinia, he bequeathed to his scholars.
ASSASSINS, a secret military and religious sect
formed in Persia and Syria during the 11th century A.D.
To understand clearly its nature and tenets, it is neces-
sary to refer to the doctrines of the Ismaelites, of whom
it was a branch, and who were themselves an offshoot
from the great body of the Shiites. The Shiites, one of
the two sects into which the Mahometans had separated,
held in opposition to the Sunnites, or orthodox, that the
true and only legitimate successor of the Prophet was
his son-in-law, Ali. They did not succeed in establish-
ing by force the claims of this family; and, under the
dynasties of the Ommiade and Abbaside caliphs, they
were compelled to keep their opinions secret. The large
body of Shiites was further divided into several distinct
parties, differing principally with regard to the recog-
nised line of succession from Ali; of these the most
powerful was that of the Ismaelites, so called because
they held that the Imamat descended in an unbroken line
from Ali to Ismael, his seventh successor. The adher-
ents of this sect were most widely spread in Persia, and
naturally the special object of their opposition was the
Abbaside caliphate of Baghdad, but no active steps were
taken by them, until under, one of the Persian magi,
Abdallah-ibn-Maimun Kadah, they had been organised
into a secret Society, with definite political objects and
peculiar religious or philosophical views. Abdallah, like
many of his countrymen, was a free-thinker, and he suc-
ceeded in establishing among the Ismaelites a faith, or
rather a philosophy, wholly oppposed to the doctrines of
Islam. The fundamental principles of his creed appear
to have been — (1.) The rejection of all fixed rules
either of religion or morality; all actions were therefore
indifferent, only the internal disposition was of any
value. (2.) The belief that the Imams of the line of
Ismael were at present invisible, and that, consequently,
it was the duty of true believers to yield implicit obedi-
ence to the vicegerents on earth of these secret rulers.
(3.) The allegorical interpretation of the Koran, whereby
any doctrine might be either defended or rejected.
The first open attempt to put their principles into
practice was made by one Ahmed, surnamed Karmath,
whence his followers were called Karmathites. After a
Sanguinary struggle with the caliphs, lasting during
many years, this revolt was quelled. But about the
same time an adherent of the sect, named Abdallah, a
lineal descendant of Ismael, escaped from prison, into
which he had been thrown, and, making his way to
Egypt, succeeded in placing himself upon the throne of
that country. Under the name of Obeid-Allah-Mahdi,
he ſounded the dynasty of the Fatimites, who took their
title from their ancestress, the daughter of Mahomet.
Ismaelism thus secured a firm footing in the west, and
its doctrines were propagated there with great success.
At Cairo a grand lodge was formed in which their philo-
sophical principles were perſected, and the process of
initiation carried on in its several grades.
The speculative principles of this body were identical
with those of the Ismaelites, but their external policy was
marked by one peculiar and distinctive feature—the em-
ployment of secret assassination against all enemies. In
organisation they resembled the western lodge at Cairo.
At the head was the supreme ruler, the Sheikh-a/-Jeba/,
i.e. Chief, or, as it is commonly translated, O/d Man of
the Moz//7tains. Under him were three Dai-a/-Kirba/,
or, as they may be called, grand priors, who ruled the
three provinces over which the sheikh's power extended.
Next came the body of Dais, or priors, who were fully
initiated into all the secret doctrines, and were the em-
issaries of the faith. Fourth were the A'ſ.As, associates
or fellows, who were in process of initiation, and who
ultimately advanced to the dignity of dais. Fifth came
the most distinctive class, the Fedavies, or Fedais (i.e.,
the devoted ones), who were the guards or assassins
proper. These were all young men, and from their
ranks were selected the agents for any deed of blood.
They were kept uninitiated, and the blindest obedience
was exacted from and yielded by them. When the
sheikh required the services of any of them, the selected
ſedais were intoxicated with the hashish, an opiate made
from the juice of hemp leaves, and from which the name
Assassin is derived. When in this state they were intro-
duced into the splendid gardens of the sheikh, and sur-
rounded with every sensual pleasure. Such a foretaste
of Paradise, only to be granted by their supreme ruler,
made them eager to obey his slightest command; their
lives they counted as nothing, and would resign them at a
word from him. Finally, the sixth and seventh orders
were the Zasiks, or novices, and the common people.
As for the initiated, they knew the worthlessness of
positive religion and morality; they believed in nothing,
and scoffed at the practices of the faithful. The Assas-
sins soon began to make their power felt. The death by
poison of the Sultan Malik-Shah was ascribed to this
dreaded society, and contributed to increase their evil
fame. Sultan Sanjar, his successor, made war , upon
them, but he was soon glad to come to terms with ene-
mies whose operations were invisible, and against whom
no precaution seemed available. -
During the fourteen years' reign of the second
leader, Hassan, the Assassins were frequently unfortu-
mate in the open field, and their castles were taken and
plundered; but they acquired a stronghold in Syria,
while their numerous murders made them an object of
dread to the neighboring princes, and spread abroad
their evil renown. A long series of distinguished men
perished under the daggers of the ſedals; even the most
sacred dignity was not spared. The Caliph Mostar-
schen-ali-Mansur was assassinated in his tent, and not
long after, the Caliph Rashid, suffered a similar ſate.
Busurg-Omid was succeeded by his son Mahomet I.,
who, during the long period of 25 years, ruthlessly car-
ried out his predecessor's principles. In his time Mas-
siat became the chief seat of the Syrian branch of the
society. Mahomet's abilities were not great, and the
affections of the people were drawn towards his son
Hassan, a youth of great learning, skilled in all the
wisdom of the initiated, and popularly believed to be
the promised Imam become visible on earth. . The old
sheikh prevented any attempt at insurrection by slaying
250 of Hassan's adherents, and the son was glad to
make submission. When, however, he attained the
throne, he began to put his views into effect. On the
17th of the month Ramadan, he assembled the people
and disclosed to them the secret doctrines of the initi-
ated; he announced that the doctrines of Islam were
now abolished, that the people might give themselves
up to feasting and joy, for he was the promised Imam,
the Caliph of God upon earth. To substantiate these
claims he gave out that he was not the son of Mahomet,
but was descended from Nezar, son of the Egyptian
Caliph Mostansar, and a lineal descendant of Ismael.
After a short reign of four years Hassan was assas-
sinated by his brother-in-law, and his son Mahomet II.
succeeded. One of his first acts was to slay his ſather's
murderer, with all his family and relatives; and his long
rule, extending over a period of 46 years, was marked
by many similar deeds of cruelty. He had to contend
with many powerful enemies, especially with the great
Atabeg Sultan Noureddin, and his more celebrated suc-
A S S
57.1
cessor, Jusuf Salaheddin, or Saladin, who had gained
possession of Egypt after the death of the last Fatimite
caliph, and against whom even secret assassination
seemed powerless. During his reign, also, the Syrian
branch of the society, under their dai, Sinan, made
themselves independent, and remained so ever after-
wards. It was with this Syrian branch that the Crusad-
ers made acquaintance; and it appears to have been
their emissaries who slew Count Raymond of Tripoli
and Conrad of Montserrat.
Mahomet III. died from the effects of poison, admin-
istered, it is believed, by his son, Jelaleddin Hassan III.,
who succeeded. He restored the old form of doctrine,—
Secret principles for the initiated, and Islamism for the
people, – and his general piety and orthodoxy procured
for him the name of the new Mussulman. During his
reign of 12 years no assassinations occurred, and he
obtained a high reputation among the neighboring
princes. Like his father, he was removed by poison,
and his son, Alaeddin Mahomet III., a child of nine
years of age, weak in mind and body, was placed on the
throne. Under his rule the mild principles of his
father were deserted, and a fresh course of assassination
entered on. In 1255, after a reign of 30 years, Alaed-
din was slain, with the connivance of his son, Rokmeddin,
the last ruler of the Assassins. In the following year
Hulaku, brother of the Tartar, Mangu Khan, invaded
the hill country of Persia, took Alamut and many other
castles, and captured Rokneddin. He treated him
kindly, and, at his own request, sent him under escort
to Mangu. On the way, Rokneddin treacherously
incited the inhabitants of Kirdkuh to resist the Tartars.
This breach of good faith was severely punished by the
khan, who ordered Rokneddin to be put to death, and
sent a messenger to Hulaku commanding him to slay all
his captives. About 12,000 of the Assassins were
massacred, and their power in Persia was completely
broken.
ASSAULT, in English Law, is defined as “an
attempt or offer with force or violence to do corporal
hurt to another, as by striking at another with a stick
or other weapon, though the party misses his aim.”
Notwithstanding ancient opinions to the contrary, it is
now settled that mere words, be they ever so provoking
will not constitute an assault. Coupled with the attempt
or threat to inflict corporal injury, there must in all
cases be the means of carrying the threat into effect.
A battery is more than a threat or attempt to injure the
person of another; the injury must have been inflicted,
but it makes no difference however small it may be, as
the law does not “draw the line between degrees of
violence,” but “totally prohibits the first and lowest
stage of it.” Every battery includes an assault. A
common assault is a misdemeanor, and is punishable by
one year’s imprisonment with hard labor, but several
penalties are provided for the various kinds of aggra-
wated assaults. -
ASSAYE, a village of Haidarābād, in the Nizām’s
dominions, in Southern India. The place is celebrated
as the site of a battle fought on the 23d September
1803 between the combined Marhatta forces under
Sindhiá and the Rájá of Berar and the British under
Major-General Wellesley, afterwards the Duke of
Wellington.
ASSAYING. This term is used in metallurgy to
denote a chemical operation in which the quantity of one
ingredient of a mineral or alloy is determined ; it is
chiefly used in reference to the precious metals, gold
and silver, and it is in this connection that the subject
will here be treated of. In the wider acceptance of the
term in which it is used amongst practical metallurgists,
assaying means almost the same thing as the quantita-
tive estimation of one constituent of a compound, when
the process adopted is one which has to be frequently
repeated in a laboratory, and the results are required for
commercial purposes. In this sense we speak mot only
of the assay of gold and silver, but of other metals,
such as lead and copper, of non-metallic elements, such
as sulphur and iodine, and even of compounds such as
nitre. The operations of assaying were, until recently,
chiefly performed by what is called the dry method, but
of late years the processes of volumetric analysis have
been so largely introduced into the metallurgical labora-
tory, that the wet method is almost as much used as the
dry method. In the process of assaying the precious.
metals described in the following pages, the reader will
have both these terms explained, for gold is assayed in
the dry, while silver is assayed in the wet way.
The precious metals, gold and silver, being almost
universally used as convenient representatives of value,
and as such passing frequently between one country and
another, it is of the utmost importance to ascertain,
quickly and accurately, the marketable value of any
sample of gold or silver bullion. Were these metals.
invariably used in their pure state, their commercial
value would be in direct proportion to their weight, and
all that would have to be known would be the actual
value of a pound of gold or silver; but the metals exist
in commerce in the form of alloys or mixtures contain-
ing an indefinite amount of base metal. Gold is gen-
erally alloyed with copper and silver, whilst silver is
generally alloyed with copper. The problem is, there-
fore, to ascertain by some ready process, which admits.
of extreme accuracy as well as moderate rapidity, the
exact proportion of pure gold present in an alloy, ore,
or mixture containing this metal; and inasmuch as
silver is also a precious metal, the assay of gold almost
always involves the assay of the silver which accompa-
nies it, for in many cases the amount of silver present.
may be sufficient to increase the commercial value of
the substance under assay. It is very seldom, however,
that the copper or the other metal present is in sufficient
quantity to be of value, unless, indeed, the substance
under assay be a copper ore or pyrites containing only
traces of gold. In the case of silver assay, when the
base metal is copper, it is generally neglected. It is,
however, frequently necessary to examine silver for
gold, for, formerly, the methods of parting these two
precious metals were by no means so exact as they are
now, and on this account old silver frequently contains
an amount of gold which it will pay well to extract by
modern methods. The principle of assaying gold and
silver is very simple theoretically, but in practice great
experience is necessary to ensure accuracy, and there is.
no branch of business which more demands personal
and undivided attention.
The only artificial alloys of gold which will be speci-
ally noticed here are the standard gold, and alloys of
gold with silver or copper used for jewellery. The
standard of alloys of gold is expressed in fractions of
unity. It is assumed that there are 24 carats in unity,
and ##nds in the carat. Standard gold, in the 24 carats,
contains 22 carats of pure or fine gold, as it is called,
and two carats of alloying metal, either silver or copper,
or a mixture of the two. Standard gold is, therefore,
called 22-carat gold. In a similar way articles of
jewellery are denominated 12-carat, 16-carat, 18-carat,
&c., according to the proportion of fine gold alloyed
with the inferior metal. An ordinary assay report of
gold expresses the variation from the standard, and not
the fine metal contained in it, and it is, therefore,
marked as either better or worse than standard. The
standard of gold being 22 carats fine and 2 alloy, an
ingot of gold found to contain only 21 carats pure gold
572
A S S
would be reported worse I carat. . If it contained 23%
-carats, it would then be reported better 134 carat.
The processes by which gold is generally assayed are
cupc//ation, when the alloy consists of copper, and
farting, when the alloy consists of silver. Generally
speaking, both operations are necessary. We will
describe them as they would be perſormed in practice.
When the standard of the alloy to be examined is not
approximatively known, a preliminary assay must be
made to ascertain the quantity of lead necessary to fuse
with the gold alloy. But in most cases this is unneces-
sary, as, from the circumstances of the case, the standard
of the alloy is generally known within sufficiently close
limits. *
The process of cupellation is briefly as follows:– The
gold alloy is fused with a quantity of lead, and a little
silver if silver is already present. The resulting alloy,
which is called the lead button, is then submitted to fu-
sion on a very porous support, made of bone-ash, and
called a cuſe/. The fusion being effected in a current of
air, the lead oxidises. The heat is sufficient to keep the
resulting oxide of lead fused, and the porous cupel has
the property of absorbing melted oxide of lead without
taking up any of the metallic globule, exactly in the same
way that blotting-paper will absorb water whilst it will
not touch a globule of mercury. The heat being contin-
ued, and the current of air always passing over the sur-
face of the melted lead button, and the oxide of lead or
Zitharge being sucked up by the cupel as fast as it is
formed, the metallic globule rapidly diminishes in size
until at last all the lead has been got rid of. Now, if
this were the only action, little would have been gained,
for we should simply have put lead into the gold alloy,
and then taken it out again; but another action goes on
whilst the lead is oxidising in the current of air. Other
metals, except the silver and gold, also oxidise, and are
carried by the metal litharge into the cupel. If the lead
is therefore rightly proportioned to the standard of alloy,
the resulting button will consist of only gold and silver,
and these are separated by the operation of parting,
which consists in boiling the alloy (after rolling it to a
thin plate) in strong nitric acid, which dissolves the sil-
ver and leaves the gold as a coherent sponge. To effect
this parting properly, the proportion of silver to gold
should be as 3 to 1. The operation by which the alloy
is brought to this standard is termed quartation or in-
7uartation, and consists in fusing the alloys in a cupel
with lead and the quantity of fine silver or fine gold nec-
essary to bring it to the desired composition.
The amount of lead having been determined, the alloy
is wrapped up in a known quantity (say one-half of that
required for its purification), formed into a case somewhat
resembling a thimble, great care being taken to make the
joints firm and close so that no gold shall escape. The re-
quisite quantity of silver is added at the same time. When
a number of assays are made at the same time, they are
arranged, enveloped in their lead cases, on a board divided
into compartments corresponding in number and posi-
tion with the cupels into which they are intended to be
charged. As the assayer generally makes two or more
trials of the same piece, so that greater accuracy may be
secured, it is his practice to give one assay a side place in
the muffle, and the second a middle one, in order to check
any irregularity in the result. When a sufficient number of
assays are weighed and arranged upon the board in the man-
ner referred to, and the furnace as well as the cupels raised
to the necessary point of heat, the charging tongs are
then taken, and the rest of the lead and silver apportioned
to each assay placed individually upon the cupels, begin-
ning at the back of the muffle. The lead added in this
'case is not flattened, but is a piece of known weight—
various sizes of which, as well as cases, are kept in stock
by the assayer. The lead so placed in the furnace rap-
idly melts, and becomes covered with a grey oxide, but
soon after appears fluid and bright. At this point the
assays are added by means of a pair of tongs, great care
being taken that no part overhangs or touches the edge
of the cupel. The assays are thus drawn into the mass
of molten lead, and any particles of gold are in this
manner prevented from adhering to the sides of the
cupels in charging, sufficient despatch being used to ob-
viate the fusion of the assay in its transition. The as-
says being charged in order on their respective cupels,
and the furnace previously filled with fuel, the door of
the muffle is partly closed, and the progress of the cupel-
lation watched. Too much air must not enter, or the
muffle will be chilled and the progress retarded, whilst if
too little enters the operation will be too slow.
At first dense fumes will be observed to rise from the
melted metal, indicating the oxidation and subsequent
volatilisation of the lead. These after continuing some
time are followed by the appearance of small luminous
points on the surface, which increase in size and brill-
iancy as the operation progresses. Then a minute
stream of red fused oxide of lead is seen to flow from
the top of the metal globule and circulate round, when
it is carried down and absorbed by the cupel. This is
caused by the oxidation of the lead by the air, which at
the same time oxidises the other metals, except silver,
which accompanies the gold. As the cupellation ad-
vances the fumes gradually lessen in density till they
disappear altogether. The melted button at this stage
is observed to become more convex and round, and as
the last vestiges of the lead and alloy are being carried
off, it assumes a cloudy appearance on the surface,
charging to large bright points of the fused oxide, till at
length it is nearly freed from all impurity. At this
point the gold-silver alloy displays some singular and
beautiful characteristics. Deprived of all the base alloy
save the last minute portion that tarnished its lustre, it
has become bright and pure, and finally it gives forth
from its surface iridescent circulating bands of light,
which indicate the successful completion of the opera-
tion. The globules, after being cooled, are removed
from the cupels with a pair of pincers and carefully
cleaned. They are then placed in their compartments
and weighed with the greatest nicety. Finally, they
are submitted to the operation of parting. This is
effected by boiling with strong nitric acid, which dis-
solves the silver and leaves the gold as a sponge. The
gold-silver globule is first passed through a flattening
mill, and reduced to long thin strips, which are annealed
and then rolled up into a corkscrew spiral, so that the
acid may penetrate between each fold. The spirals are
now transferred in order to small platinum cups arranged
on a frame, so that they can be simultaneously lowered
into and removed from the nitric acid. They are kept
in the hot, acid for the requisite time, them washed, and
the residual gold sponge, which possesses considerable
coherence, and retains the shape of the original spiral,
is carefully dried and finally weighed with the greatest
possible accuracy.
We shall now proceed to describe briefly the process
of silver assay. The cupellation process does not dif-
fer except in details from that of gold,—the outline
already given will, therefore, be a sufficient description.
Like gold, silver occurs in two classes of combinations,
— mineralised, as in red silver ore, chloride of silver,
argentiferous gaſena, &c., or as metallic silver and its
alloys. In metallurgical establishments, where silver
occurs in small proportions with metallic sulphides, such
as those of lead or copper, the process of cupellation is
generally adopted, not only for quantitative estimation
of the amount of silver present in the ore, but also for
$ • A S S
573.
its extraction on the large scale. In the assay of silver
bullion, however, the process of cupellation is now
almost entirely superseded by a volumetric process,
devised by the distinguished French chemist, Gay-
Lussac, by whose influence it was introduced in the
Paris Mint. The process consists in determining the
fineness of silver bullion by the quantity of a standard
solution of common salt necessary to precipitate
fully and exactly the silver contained in a known
weight of alloy. This process is based on the following
principles : — -
The alloy previously dissolved in the nitric acid is
mixed with a standard solution of common salt, which
precipitates the silver as chloride, a compound perfectly
insoluble in water and even in acids. The quantity of
chloride of silver precipitated is determined not by its
weight, which would be less exact, and occupy too much
time, but by the weight or volume of the standard solu-
tion of common salt necessary to precipitate exactly the
silver previously dissolved in nitric acid. The term of
complete precipitation of the silver can be readily rec-
Ognised by the cessation of all cloudiness when the saltso-
lution is gradually poured into that of the nitrate of silver.
One milligramme of that metal is readily detected in 150
grammes of liquid, and even a half or a quarter of a
milligramme may be detected if the liquid be perfectly
bright before the addition of the salt solution. By vio-
lent agitation during a minute or two, the liquid, ren-
dered milky by the precipitation of chloride of silver,
becomes sufficiently bright after a few moments’ repose
to allow of the effect of the addition of half a milli-
gramme of silver to be perceptible. Filtration of the
liquid is more efficacious than agitation; but the latter,
which is much more rapid, generally suffices. The
presence of copper, lead, or any other metal, with the
exception of mercury in the silver solution, has no sensi-
ble influence on the quantity of salt required for precip-
itation; in other words, the same quantity of silver,
pure or alloyed, requires for its precipitation a constant
quantity of the standard salt solution, Supposing that
I gramme of pure silver be the quantity operated on, the
solution of salt required to precipitate exactly the whole
of the silver ought to be of such strength that, if it be
measured by weight, it shall weigh exactly Ioo grammes,
or if by volume, IOO cubic centimetres. This quantity
ef salt solution is divided into IOoo parts, called thou-
sandths. The standard of an alloy of silver is generally
the number of thousandths of solution of salt necessary
i precipitate the silver contained in a gramme of the
alloy.
ASSELYN, HANs, a celebrated Dutch painter, was
born at Antwerp in 1610, and died at Amsterdam in 1660.
ASSEMANI, the name of a Syrian Maronite family
of famous Orientalists.
(I.) JOSEPH SIMON, a Maronite of Mount Lebanon,
was born in 1687. When very young he was sent to
the Maronite college in Rome, and was transferred
thence to the Vatican Library. In 1717 he was sent to
Egypt and Syria to search for valuable MSS., and re-
turned with about 150 very choice ones. The success of
this expedition induced the Pope to send him again to the
East in 1735, and he returned with a still more valuable
collection. On his return he was made titular arch-
bishop of Tyre and librarian of the Vatican Library.
He instantly began to carry into execution most exten-
sive plans for editing and publishing the most valuable
MS. treasures of the Vatican.
(2.) Joseph ALOYSIUS, brother of Joseph Simon, and
professor of Oriental languages at Rome. He died in
1782.
(3.) STEPHEN Evodius, nephew of Joseph Simon
and Joseph Aloysius, was the chief assistant of his
uncle Joseph Simon in his work in the Vatican Library.
(4.) SIMON, grandnephew of Joseph Simon, was
born at Tripoli in 1752, and was professor of Oriental
languages in Padua. He died in 1820.
ASSEN, a town of the Netherlands, capital of the
province of Drenthe, containing 6836 inhabitants.
ASSENS, a town of Denmark, on the west coast of
Fühnen, the ordinary port for the traffic between that
island and Schleswig.
ASSER, JoHN, or ASSERIUS MENEVENSIS, was born
in Pembrokeshire, and educated in the monastery of St.
David’s by the Archbishop Asserius, who, according to
Leland was his kinsman. Here he became a monk,
and by his assiduous application soon acquired universal
fame as a person of great abilities and profound learning.
King Alfred, always a munificent patron of genius,
about the year 88o sent for him to court, and made him
his preceptor and companion. As a reward for his serv-
ices, the king appointed him abbot of two or three
different monasteries, and at last promoted him to the
episcopal see of Sherborne, where he died in the year
IO.
ASSESSOR, among the Romans, was a term gener-
ally applied to a trained lawyer who sat beside a gover-
nor of a province or other magistrate, to instruct him in
the administration of the laws.
ASSETS, a technical English law word, derived
through the old Norman phraseology from the same
source as the French assez, enough, and signifying the
property of a debtor available for the satisfaction of his
creditors. Thus the property of a bankrupt is termed
his assets, and is the fund out of which his liabilities
must be paid. When the person dies, the goods which
come to executors or administrators are called assets /er-
sonal ; the lands descending to the heir, are assets real.
ASSIDEANS, is a transcription of the Hebrew c/asſ-
dám, piozas ones, a word frequent in the Psalms. In the
first book of Maccabees the name of Assideans appears
as the designation of a society of men zealous for the
law, and closely connected with the scribes (I Mac. vii.
12, 13). It is plain from these passages that this society
of “pious ones,” who held fast to the law under the
guidance of the scribes in opposition to the “godless”
Hellenising party, was properly religious, not a political
organisation.
ASSIGNMENT, AssIGNATION, ASSIGNEE, are
terms which, as derivatives of the verb assign, are of
frequent technical use in the law of the different parts
of the United States. To assign is to make over, and
the term is generally used to express a transference by
writing in contradistinction to a transference by actual
delivery. In England the usual expression is assign-
ment, in Scotland it is assignation. The person mak-
ing over is called the assignor or cedent; the recipient,
the assign or assigzzee. - -
ASSISI (ancient Assisium), a city of Italy in the
province of Perugia. . It contains about 6000 inhabi-
tants, depending chiefly for subsistence on the devotees,
who, to the number of many thousands, make annual
pilgrimages to the church which contains the tomb and
bears the name of St. Francis, the founder of the Fran-
ciscan order, who was born at Assisi in II 82.
ASSIZE or AsSISE (from assideo, to sit together; Old
French, assire, to set, assis, seated), literally signifies a
“session,” but is an equivocal noun, meaning sometimes
a jury, sometimes the sittings of a court, and sometimes
the ordinances of a court or assembly. -
Assizes are sometimes used in a wider legislative
connection by early chroniclers and historians,—the
“assisae of the realme,” e.g. occasionally meaning the
organic laws of the country. In a still more extended
sense, the “Assizes of Jerusalem ’’ is the name given
º
S74
A S S — A S T &
to the code of laws framed for the kingdom of Jerusa.
lem at the instance of Godfrey of Bouillon, the Cru-
sader.
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS, or MENTAL Associ-
ATION, is a general name used in psychology to express
the conditions under which representations arise in con-
sciousness, and also is the name of a principle of
explanation put forward by an important school of
thinkers to account generally for the facts of mental
Hiſe.
ASSUAY, formerly the most southern department of
Ecuador, in South America. It is now broken up into
the two provinces of Cuença and Loxa. Cuença, Loxa,
Jaca, and Borga, were its principal towns. Its chief
productions were cinchona bark and silver.
ASSUM PTION, a festival of the Christian church,
observed on the 15th August, in honor of the miracu-
lous ascent of the Virgin Mary into heaven. It rests
upon a purely traditional account of the ascent, first
recorded by Gregory of Tours. Its present place in the
calandar was fixed, early in the 8th century. The
Roman and Greek Churches both celebrate this festival,
ASSYRIA. . The two great empires which grew up
on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates can be sepa.
rated as little historically as geographically. It is pro-
posed, therefore, to treat both under the heading
BABY LONIA. From the beginning their history is
closely intertwined; and the power of the one is a
measure of the weakness of the other. This interdepen-
dence of Assyrian and Babylonian history was recog-
mised by ancient writers, and has been confirmed by mod-
ern discovery. But whereas Assyria takes the first place in
the classical accounts to the exclusion of Babylonia, the
decipherpment of the inscriptions has proved that the
converse was really the case, and that, with the excep-
tion of some six or seven centuries, Assyria might be
described as a province or dependency of Babylon.
(SEE BABYLONIA.)
AST, GEORGE ANTHONY FREDERICK, a German
philosopher and philologist of considerable distinction,
was born at Gotha in 1778. He was educated at the
gymnasium of that town, and afterwards at the uni-
versity of Jena. He distinguished himself as a student,
and in 1802 he became a privat-docent in his alma
mater. Three years later he was appointed professor of
classical literature in the university of Landshut, where
he remained until 1826, when that institution was trans-
ferred to Munich. In this latter city he spent the rest of
his life. In recognition of his services as a teacher and
author he was made an aulic councilor, and a member
of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He died on the
39th of December 1841. Ast was an independent
although not an original thinker. He was more of a
scholar and critic than a philosopher. He belonged to
the school of Schelling, but was ready to welcome truths
from the most diverse quarters.
ASTARTE [ASHTAROTH] was the chief goddess of
the Phoenicians in Zidon, where was a temple in her
honor. In Tyre also she had a temple, and from thence
her worship was transplanted to Carthage. At what
time it may have been introduced among the Jews is
not known, but its power of attracting them may be
seen by reference to 2 Kings xxiii. 13; 1 Kings xi. 5;
Judges ii. 13. Among classical writers the usual epithet
of Astarte was Carlestis or Urania, but while that dis-
tinguishes her only as a goddess of the heavens, it would
seem that her name itself signifies “star.” Her symbol
in her temple at Tyre was a star. With the goddess
Venus (Aphrodite), as worshipped at Paphos in Cyprus,
Astarte had in common the character of a deity of the
sky (Orania), and perhaps, also the patronage of im-
morality (“Ashataroth, the abomination of the Zidon-
ians.”) The Romans, in calling her Juno Coelestis, ap-
pear to have been guided by her connection with Baal,
and her position as queen of heaven. At the time of the
19th Egyptian dynasty Ashtaroth was introduced, with
other Asiatic deities, into the religious system of the
Egyptians, and had a temple at Memphis. But no rep-
resentation of her occurs on the Egyptian monuments.
The Assyrian goddess Ishtar seems to have been the
same as Astarte.
ASTELL, MARY, an English authoress, born at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1668. She was instructed by
her uncle, a clergyman, in Latin and French, logic,
mathematics, and natural philosophy. In her twentieth
year she went to London, where she continued her
studies. Her efforts were especially directed to the
mental improvement of her sex, and she published, in
1697, a work entitled A Serious Proposal to the Zadies,
wherein a Method is offered for the Zmprovement of
their Mizzds. With the same end in view she elaborated
a scheme for a ladies' college, which was favorably
entertained by Queen Anne, and would have been
carried out had not Bishop Burnet interfered.
ASTER, a genus of composite plants (Composita),
found largely in North America, and scattered sparingly
over Asia, Europe, and South America. They are
usually perennial, and their flowers are arranged in
numerous heads (capitula). Asters receive the name of
Michaelmas and Christmas daisies, because they have
heads like daisies, and, when the weather is mild, they
flower up to these periods of the year. They are, con-
sequently, valuable plants in a garden.
ASTERIUS, of Cappadocia, was a heathen sophist
and teacher of rhetoric in Galatia. About the year
300 he was converted to Christianity, and became the
disciple of Lucian, the founder of the school of
Antioch.
ASTERIUS, Bishop of Amasia, in Pontus, in the
end of the 4th and in the beginning of the 5th century.
His fame rests chiefly on his Homilies, which were
greatly esteemed in the Eastern Church.
ASTEROIDS, the name given to a large number of
small planets, which revolve round the sun in orbits
lying between those of Mars and Jupiter. They are
all extremely small, their brightness seldom exceeding
that of stars of the eighth magnitude; their paths, which
cross and recross each other, extend over a belt about
250,000,000 miles in breadth; and the eccentricities of
the orbits of many of them, and the inclinations of their
planes to the plane of the ecliptic, are much greater
than those of the larger planets. All the asteroids have
been discovered during the present century. (See
AstroNOMY). -
ASTHMA, a disorder of respiration characterised by
severe paroxysms of difficult breathing, usually followed
by a period of complete relief, with recurrence of the
attacks at more or less frequent intervals. The term is
often incorrectly employed in reference to states of em-
barrassed respiration, which are plainly due to permanent
organic disease within the chest, and which have none
of the distinctive characters of true asthma. The onset
of an attack of asthma is usually sudden, although there
may exist certain premonitory symptoms which warn
the sufferer of its approach, such as a feeling of discom-
fort, drowsiness, irritability, and depression of spirits.
The period when the asthmatic paroxysm comes on is
generally during the night, or rather in the early hours
of morning. The patient then awakes in a state of great
anxiety and alarm, with a sense of weight and tight-
ness across the chest, which he feels himself unable to
expand with freedom. Respiration is performed with
great difficulty, and is accompanied with , wheezing
noises. His distress rapidly increases, and he can no
A S T
575
longer retain the recumbent position, but gets up, and
sits or stands with his shoulders raised, his head thrown
back, and his whole body heaving with his desperate
efforts to breathe. His countenance is pale or livid,
and wet with perspiration, while his extremities are
cold; his pulse is rapid and weak, and frequently irre-
gular or intermitting. All his clothing must be loose
about him; he cannot bear to be touched, and the very
presence of others around him seems to aggravate his
distress. His one desire is to breathe fresh air; and he
will place himself by an open window and sit for hours
in the middle of the night, unmindful of the exposure.
II is appearance is alarming in the extreme, and it often
seems as if each breath would be his last. The paroxysm,
after continuing for a variable length of time, often ex-
tending over many hours, begins to abate, the breathing
becomes easier, and the subsidence of the attack is fre-
quently marked by the occurrence of coughing with
expectoration. When the expectoration is abundant,
the asthma is called /iu/zid, but where there is a little or
none it is termed dry. After the cessation of the attack
the patient appears to be and feels comparatively well.
In cases, however, of long standing the subject of asthma
comes to bear permanent evidence of its effects. He is
easily put out of breath on exertion and he requires to
lie with his head elevated, circumstances to be ascribed
to organic changes in the chest, which oft-recurring
attacks of asthma are liable to induce. The asthmatic
paroxysms, although occasionally periodic, do not gen-
They may
recur each successive night for several days, or there may
be no return for many weeks or months, this being to a
large extent dependent on a renewal of the exciting
cause. Asthma is much more common in men than in
women. It may be developed at any age, but is most
frequently observed in early and middle life.
The treatment of asthma consists in the employment
of remedies to allay the paroxysms, and in the adoption
of measures likely to prevent their recurrence. . During
the attack the patient should be placed in as favorable
circumstances for breathing as practicable. He usually
selects the position easiest for himself. Abundance of
air should be admitted to the apartment, and he should
be interfered with as little as possible. Morphine should
be given in 96-grain doses every hour or two till relieved,
or chloroform or sulphuric ether inhaled during the par-
oxysm. When the premonitory symptoms are felt,
smoking stramonium (or Jamestown weeds) will aid in
warding off the attack, while extract of hyoscyamus
(henbane), in small doses, should be taken. Extract of
gelsemium (white jessamine) is also useful, together (in
some cases) with ipecacuanha, in dose large enough to
produce slight nausea. Tobacco fumes are also useful
in some cases to produce a relaxation of the pectoral
muscles and afford relief. If morphine is administered,
no more than three-quarters of a grain should be given,
unless by a physician.
ASTI, a large and well-built town of Italy, in the
province of Alessandria (Piedmont), situated on the left
bank of the Tanaro. It is the see of a bishop, the chief
town of a circondario, and a station on the Turin and
Alessandria railway. Population about 31,000.
ASTOR, Joh N JACOB, an enterprising American
merchant, founder of the Astor Library at New York,
was born at the village of Walldorf near Heidelberg, on
the 17th July 1763. His father was a peasant, and his
early years were spent in the common labors of the
farm. At sixteen he joined an elder brother, a musical
instrument maker, in London, and at twenty sailed for
the United States. On the voyage he became acquainted
with a fur-trader, by whose advice he devoted himself
to the same business. By his energy, industry, and
sound judgment he gradually enlarged his schemes, did
business in all the fur markets of the world, and
amassed an enormous fortune,— the largest up to that
time made by any American. He devoted many years
to carrying out a project for organising the fur trade
from the Lakes to the Pacific Ocean, and thence by way
of the Sandwich Islands to China and India. In 181 I
he founded at the mouth of the Columbia River a settle-
ment, named after him Astoria, which was intended to
serve as the central depôt ; but in the following year the
settlement was taken and occupied by the English. The
settlement is now, however, in the United States, in
Clatsop County, Ore. A series of disasters frustrated
the gigantic scheme. Astor made vast additions to his
wealth by investments in land in New York city. He
made many charitable bequests by his will, and among
them a gift of $50,000 to the poor of his native village
in Germany. But the deed by which he will be chiefly
remembered was the foundation and endowment by his
will of the Astor Library at New York, for which he
bequeathed the sum of $400,000. The building, erected
in Lafayette Place (1850–53), is in the Byzantine style of
architecture. Washington Irving was appointed first
president, and the formation and arrangement of the
library was entrusted to Mr. G. Cogswell. The
building has since been enlarged at the cost of the eldest
son of the founder. Mr. Astor spent the last twenty
five years of his life in retirement, and died at New
York, March 29, 1848.
ASTORGA (the ancient Asturica Augusta) a city of
Spain, in the province of Leon, in a plain near the
Tuento.
ASTORGA, EMANUELE D', a distinguished musical
composer, was born at Palermo about 1680. In 1793
he entered the service of the duke of Parma, and while
at his court produced many compositions. . The duke,
suspecting that an attachment existed between his
daughter and Astorga, dismissed the musician, but gave
him a letter of recommendation to Leopold of Austria.
The emperor received him kindly, and at his court
Astorga produced his pastoral opera of Daphne. In
1705, on the death of his patron, he visited Florence,
and then London, where he wrote his Stabat Matez, the
best of all his works. He resided in Spain, and died
in Bohemia. The date of his death is quite uncertain.
ASTORIA, the capital of Clatsop county, Qre.; is
handsomely situated on the south bank of the Columbia
river, ten miles from the Pacific Ocean, and forty miles
from Portland. The city is a port of entry for the Co-
lumbia river country, and the headquarters for the sal-
mon-fishing industry on the North Pacific coast. It
contains two banks, two daily and five weekly papers,
and many stores and places of public resort. The city
also contains half a dozen churches, a new custom-house,
city hall, high school and academies, hotels, private res-
idences, etc. The canning of Salmon is an important
line of business carried on here, there being no less than
twenty establishments thus engaged, giving employment
to nearly 4,000 hands. . The manufactures embrace
lumber and lumber products, iron, fish-oil, and other
commodities. The city is lighted by gas, and a street
railway system is in operation. . A large steamship and
passenger traffic is conducted also. Population, 7,971;
ASTRABAD, or ASTERABAD, a small Province of
Persia, bounded on the N. by the Caspian Sea and the
desert, on the S. by the Elburz Mountains, W. by
Mazanderan, and E. by the river Gourgan. The coun-
try, although mountainous, and interspersed with dense
forests, in which it is scarcely possible to travel, pos-
sesses beautiful and fertile valleys, producing rice,
wheat, and other grains in abundance, or spread out
in a boundless expanse of verdure, the pasturage of
576
A S T
numerous flocks and herds. The province is famous for
furnishing a supply of matchlocks for the king's body-
guard. It is the ancient Hyrcania, and the native
country of the Kajers, a Turkish tribe, of whom the
king is the head, and on whom he considers he can rely
in times of danger.
ASTRABAD, or ASTERABAD, the capital of the above
province, is situated near the mouth of the River Gour-
gan, which flows into the Caspian, and at the head of a
sheltered bay, convenient for shipping. It is a strag-
gling town, about 3% miles in circuit, and picturesque
in appearance, from the buildings which intermingle
with trees and gardens.
ASTRAKHAN, a government of European Russia,
bounded on the S.E. by the Caspian Sea, N. E. by
Orenburg, N. by Saratov, and W. by the country of
the Don Cossacks, and S.W. by the government of the
Caucasus. It has an area of about 84,948 Square miles,
divided into two nearly equal parts by the Volga, and
consists chiefly of sandy deserts, interspersed with saline
lakes; but in the delta, and on the banks of the rivers,
grapes and other fruits of Southern climates are raised.
The population in 1867 was estimated at 573,954, com-
prising Russians, Tartars, Georgians, Armenians, Per-
sians, Hindus, &c., who engage in the rearing of horses,
Cattle, and sheep, and also in fishing for sturgeon,
which forms the principal source of the wealth of the
government. The vicissitudes of climate are great;
with a mean annual temperature of 48° Fahr., the sum-
mer averages 70°, and the winter 13° Fahr. The gov-
ernment is divided into four districts: Astrakham,
Krasnoi-Yar, Zenotaiesk, and Chemyi-War. Its capi-
tal, Astrakhan, is the only place of much importance.
ASTRAKHAN, the capital of the above government, is
situated on a small island in the Volga, about 30 miles
above the influx of that river into the Caspian. It is
a large, rambling, wood-built city, “dusty in summer,
windy in autumn, frozen-up in winter, and knee-deep in
mud in spring.” Population estimated at 50,000 or
6O,OOO.
ASTROLOGY, the so-called science by which various
nations, in various ways, have attempted to assign to the
material heavens a moral influence over the earth and its
inhabitants. For long ages astronomy and astrology
were identified. Isidore of Seville is the first to dis-
tinguish between the two; nor did astronomy wholly rid
itself of astrology, till, with the system of Copernicus,
the conviction that the earth itself is one of the heavenly
bodies was finally established. Even at the present day
a few may be found who, from a superstitious reverence
for the past, or the spirit of contradiction, pride them-
selves on their adherence to the belief in stellar influences.
It is no longer necessary to protest against an error
which is dead and buried, but let us pause a moment and
ask what we mean by an error. With Spinoza we would
say that erroneous ideas consist in the fancies and
opinions which the senses suggest to the mind in a con-
fused, imperfect, and ill-ordered manner. To this sort
of knowledge Spinoza gives the name of vague ex-
perience. This vague experience is further complicated
by the employment of signs, which flatter the fancy, and
of which we formideas like those which the objects them-
selves presented at first to our imagination. If to these
two elements—vague experience and the misleading use
of signs — we add the instinctive impulse which led
primitive man to imagine a universe created according to
the analogy of his mind, we have before us the three
causes which led the Indians, Greeks, Egyptians,
Chaldeans, and their Alexandrian disciples, the Arabs and
their followers, during the middle ages and the
Renaissance, to lend themselves to the illusions of
astrology, and by a preposterous philosophy to deduce
the laws of nature from a theory of morals.
Astrology is generally divided into natural astrology,
the science which predicts the motions of heavenly bodies
and eclipses of sun and moon, and judicial astrology,
which studies the influence of constellations on the des-
tiny of men and empires. But it is obvious that both of
these branches presuppose an advanced stage of astro-
nomical knowledge, and a state of society not necessarily
better, but more complex than that in which the first
worshippers of the heavens were placed. It follows,
then, that both natural astrology and judicial astrology
must have been preceded by a science less learned in
heavenly motions, and at the same time more moral in
the best sense of the word. Astronomers have taken
very little pains to trace their favorite science to its
.source by help of the copious astrological commentaries
in which the earliest observers embodied their theories of
the heavens. Philosophers, with the single exception of
Schopenhauer, have shown the same indifference. Of
modern writers who have treated of astrology, some,
like M. Alfred Maury, have sought to place its errors in
a ridiculous light; others, like Eusèbe Salverte, have
exposed the quackeries which rendered it a possible pro-
fession; and lastly, a few, like Eliphas Lévi and M. P.
Christian, simply attempt to build up again with words
a belief which has ceased to rest either on facts or ideas.
Neither class of writers is likely to advance the history
of human reason. The time has come for a calm and
dispassionate survey of an illusion which for a while
seemed probable, and may even be said to have dome
good service in its day. How did the error arise 2
Whence its persistency? These are questions which
demand an answer, if only in order to preserve modern
science from illusions which, though differing in form,
are in their essence similar.
Let us revert to the first infancy of science. From the
general tendency of primitive man to bring all knowledge
under a single head, we may safely conclude that the first
study of the heavens embraced and dominated over
every other attempt at science. The cosmogonists pre-
tended to explain the earth by the heavens, but as they
were bound to proceed from the known to the unknown,
they did, in fact, explain the heavens by the earth and,
in particular, by men. Hence, in many mythologies,
the universe is an egg, and in that of Finland a duck’s
egg, the spots on the shell representing the constellations.
Later on we find the eternal revolution and renovation
of the universe symbolised by a serpent biting its tail.
Lastly, the universe as a perfect and harmonious order,
is conceived as the highest organism to be found on
earth, a huge animal. This cosmical animal in turn,
owing to the interlacing of religious ideas, images, and
symbols, was supposed to influence the different parts of
the body. This gives us the clue to the first steps of
medical science, which, like the other sciences, began
by being astrological. In short, the first encyclopædia
was astrology. There is a well-known story of the case
of two brothers who fell ill at the same instant.
Posidonius, the astrologer, on being consulted, pro-
nounced that they were born under the same constella-
tion. Hippocrates, the physician, concluded, from the
coincidence, that they must be twins; yet even Hippo-
crates could not rid himself of the terrestrial theory of
the heavens. The Egyptians peopled the constellations
of the zodiac with genii; the ram (Arnum) was lord of
the head; the bull (Apis), of the neck and shoulders;
the twins (Hercules and Apollo), of the arms and hands;
and lastly, to the fishes were assigned the ſeet. The
Persians, again, ascribed to the empyrean generally the
influence over the citadel of the body—the head.
Dionysius, the Areopagite, indulging his religious pro-
A S T
577
clivities, established hierarchies of genii in the constella-
tions. The Assyrians were led by their form of govern-
ment to place thirty-six conciliar-gods in the twelve signs
of the zodiac, and to the interpreter-gods, whose province
it was to inspect and survey the various divisions of the
heavens, they allotted the wandering planets. Whenever
a new discovery was made in medicine or science, the
province of the god-stars was immediately enlarged; thus
the Egyptians, observing the symmetry of the human
body, and connecting this with the dualism of human
faculties, at once made the sun (Ra) the lord of the fore-
head, the moon mistress of the brain, and Mercury of
the tongue; but to Saturn they assigned only the left
eye; to Jupiter was given the right; Mars had the
right nostril, Venus the left. Meanwhile, in another
quarter of the globe a religion was growing up, a
religion of mild anthropomorphism, wholly removed
from Oriental transcendentalism. It is in Greece,
whose deities had been gradually moulded and drilled
so as to serve as types of men and manners, that we
must look for the key of astrology. Jupiter, the
embodiment of authority, and Crynos, or Saturn, the
impersonation of malignant opposition to authority, are
the two most prominent figures of ancient mythology.
Venus was placed below Mars; that is, the sensual
passion was subjected to martial ardor. The astrologers
of the Renaissance deviated from the Egyptians in
assigning the right nostril to Venus, and the left to
Mars: the reason was, that, with Cardan and Vanini,
Venus represented rather the German Friga than the
Eastern Mylitta, -chaste love rather than luxury.
Vanini, the Lucian among astrologers, the hero, who
exclaimed, as he was being led to the stake, “Courage
—-let them see how a philosopher can die,” has in his
works crushed Aristotle by the help of Averroes, and
Averroes and Cardan by the help of good sense. And
yet the good-humored satirist, who suffered for his
free speech by having his tongue cut out, and being then
burnt at the stake, was, notwithstanding, the disciple of
Averroes, and the admirer of Cardan. So true is it that
reason in its early stages of civilisation is the good genius
of the privileged few, who, unlike many moderns, have
more sense than they give themselves credit for, a
privilege which they dearly purchased by persecution, or,
worse still, by neglect.
We may now describe the ordinary proceedings of an
astrologer. The zodiac was first arranged in much the
same fashion as the cards in the game of Tarots. The
four ages of man had each three houses in the zodiac.
Each of this triple series was composed of a cardinal, a
succeeding, and a declining or cadent house. Disastrous
signs predominated over auspicious. . For kings and
nobles these signs were modified, but they took care to
preserve a copy of the horoscope to be modified as cir-
cumstances required. Pascal remarks,—“They say that
eclipses portend misfortunes, because misfortunes are
common, so that, as some ill chance often happens, they
are often right, whereas if they said that they portended
good fortune, they would be generally wrong. They
only assign good fortune to rare conjunctions of the
stars, and this is how their predictions rarely fail.”
Those ages during which astrologers were dominant by
the terror they inspired, and sometimes by the martyr-
dom they endured when their predictions were either too
true or too false, were in truth the saddest in the world’s
history. Faith, to borrow their own language, was ban-
ished to Virgo, and rarely shed her influence on men.
Cardan, for instance, hated Luther, and so changed his
birthday in order to give him an unfavorable horoscope.
In Cardan's times, as in those of Augustus, it was a
common practice for men to conceal the day and hour of
their birth, till, like Augustus, they found a complaisant
tries has been the immediate end of the world.
astrologer. But, as a general rule, astrologers did not
give themselves the trouble of reading the stars, they
contented themselves with telling fortunes by faces.
They practised chiromancy, and relied on afterwards
drawing a horoscope to suit. As physiognomists their
talent was undoubted, and we may again call Vanini as
a witness that there is no need to mount to the housetop
to cast a nativity. “Yes,” he says, “I can read his face;
by his hair and his forehead it is easy to guess that the
sun at his birth was in the sign of Libra and near Venus.
Nay, his complexion shows that Venus touches Libra.
By the rules of astrology he could not lie.” No doubt,
by the rules of chiromancy, a calm forehead, clustering
locks, a clear and sanguine complexion, are signs of sin-
cerity. If we combine Apollo and Venus, i.e., manli-
ness and tenderness, the product is sincerity. If we
wish to see this type of character to perfection, we have
only to look at a good portrait of Spinoza.
In conclusion, we shall give a few salient facts con-
cerning the astrologers and their predictions, remarkable
either for their fulfilment, or for the ruin and confusion
they brought upon their authors. We may begin with
one taken from Bacon’s Essay of Prophecies: —“When
I was in France, I heard from one Dr. Pena that the
queen mother, who was given to curious arts, caused
the king her husband's nativitie to be calculated, under
a false name; and the astrologer gave a judgment, that
he should be killed in a duell; at which the queene
laughed, thinking her husband to be above challenges
and duels; but he was slaine, upon a course at tilt, the
splinters of the staffe of Montgomery going in at his
bever.” A favorite topic of the astrologers of all coun-
As
early as 1186 the earth had escaped one threatened
cataclysm of the astrologers. This did not prevent
Stoffler from predicting a universal deluge for the year
1524—a year, as it turned out, distinguished for
drought. His aspect of the heavens told him that in
that year three planets would meet in the aqueous sign
of Pisces. The predition was believed far and wide,
and president Aurial, at Toulouse, built himself a
Noah’s ark—a curious realisation, in fact, of Chaucer's
merry invention in the Miller’s Zale. In China any
false prediction of the astrologers was punished with
death. But, as Juvenal remarks in his Sixth Satire,
the astrologers' chief power depends on their persecution.
H. Höfer cannot persuade himself that the Chinese
possessed any extensive astronomical knowledge which
they afterwards forgot. Still, the position of the astrol-
ogists, that is, the astronomers, in China sufficiently
explains this relapse in astronomy. They preferred to
trust to chance, and live in honor with credulous em-
perors, at the risk of being hanged by those they failed to
please. Inordinate rewards and inordinate punishments
made them indifferent to all pure love of science, and
life with Orientals has always been reckoned a small
stake in the game. Not only was Tycho Brahe from his
fifteenth year devoted to astrology, but adjoining his ob.
servatory at Uranienburg, the astronomer royal of Den-
mark had a laboratory built in order to study alchemy, and
it was only a few years before his death that he finally
abandoned astrology. We may here notice one very
remarkable prediction of the master of Kepler That
he had carefully studied the comet of 1577 as an astron-
omer, we may gather from his adducing the very small
parallax of this comet as disproving the assertion of the
Aristotelians that a solid sphere enveloped the heavens.
But besides this, we find him in his character of astrol-
oger drawing a singular prediction from the appearance
of this comet. It announced, he tells us, that in the
north, in Finland, there should be born a prince who
should lay waste Germany and vanish in 1632. Gus-
37 A
578
A S T
tavus Adolphus, it is well known, was born in Finland,
overran Germany, and died in 1632. The fulfilment of
the details of this prophecy was, of course, nothing but
a lucky hit, but we may convince ourselves that Tycho
Brahe had some basis of reason for his prediction. He
was no dupe of vulgar astrology, but gifted rather with
a happy inspiration like that of Paracelsus, who saw in
himself the forerunner and prototype of the scientific
ascendency of Germany. Born in Denmark of a noble
Swedish family, a politician, as were all his contemporaries
of distinction, Tycho, though no conjuror, could foresee
the advent of some great northern hero. Moreover, he
was doubtless well acquainted with a very ancient tradi-
tion, that heroes generally came from the northern
frontiers of their native land, where they are hardened
and tempered by the threefold struggle they wage with
soil, climate, and barbarian neighbors.
Kepler explained the double movement of the earth
by the rotation of the sun. At one time the sun pre-
sented its friendly side, which attracted our planet,
sometimes its adverse side, which repelled it. He also
peopled the planets with souls and genii. He was led
to his three great laws by musical anologies, just as
later on an organist of Hanover, William Herschel,
passed from music to astronomy. Kepler, who in his
youth made almanacs, and once prophesied a hard win-
ter, which came to pass, could not help putting an
astrological interpretation on the disappearance of the
brilliant star of 1572, which Tycho had observed.
Theodore Beza thought that this star, which in Decem-
ber 1573 equalled Jupiter in brilliancy, predicted the
second coming of Christ. Astronomers were only then
beginning to study variable and periodic stars, and dis-
turbances in that part of the heavens, which had till
then, on the authority of Aristotle, been regarded as
incorruptible, combined with the troubles of the times,
must have given a new stimulus to belieſ in the signs in
heaven. Montaigne (AEssais, lib. i. chap. Io) relates a
singular episode in the history of astrology. Charles
V. and Francis I., who both bid for the friendship of
the infamous Aretin, surnamed the divine, both like-
wise engaged astrologers to fight their battles. In
Italy those who prophesied the ruin of France were sure
to be listened to. These prophecies affected the public
funds much as telegrams do nowadays. “At Rome,”
Montaigne tells us, “a large sum of money was lost on
*Change by this prognostication of our ruin.” The
marquis of Saluces, notwithstanding his gratitude to
Francis I. for the many favors he had received, including
his marquisate, of which the brother was despoiled for
his benefit, was led in 1536 to betray his country, being
scared by the glorious prophecies of the ultimate suc-
cess of Charles V. which were then rife. The influence
of the Medici made astrologers popular in France.
Richelieu, on whose council was Gaſſarel, the last of
the cabalists, did not despise astrology as an engine of
government. At the birth of Louis XIV. a certain
Morin de Villefranche was placed behind a curtain to
cast the nativity of the future autocrat. A generation
lack the astrologer would not have been hidden behind
a curtain, but have taken precedence of the doctor. La
Bruyère dares not pronounce against such beliefs, “for
there are perplexing facts affirmed by grave men
who were eye-witnesses.” In England William Lilly
and Robert Fludd were both dressed in a little brief
authority. The latter gives us elaborate rules for the
detection of a thief, and tells us that he has had
personal experience of their efficacy. “If the lord of
the sixth house is found in the second house, or in com-
pany with the lord of the second house, the thief is one
of the family. If Mercury is in the sign of the Scorpion
he will be bald, etc.” Francis Bacon abuses the astrol-
ogers of his day no less than the alchemists, but he does
so because he has visions of a reformed astrology and
a reformed alchemy. Sir Thomas Browne, too, while
he denies the capacity of the astrologers of his day, does
not venture to dispute the reality of the science. The
idea of the souls of men passing at death to the stars,
the blessedness of their particular sphere being assigned
them according to their deserts (the metermpsychosis of
J. Reynaud), may be regarded as a survival of religious
astrology, which, even as late as Descartes's day,
assigned to the angels the rôle of moving the planets
and the stars. Joseph de Maistre, the last and ablest
champion of old-fashioned Orthodoxy, believed in comets
as messengers of divine justice, and in animated planets,
and declared that divination by astrology is not an
absolutely chimerical science. Lastly, we may mention
a few distinguished men who ran counter to their age in
denying stellar influences. Aristarchus of Samos,
Martianus Capella (the precursor of Copernicus), Cicero,
Favorinus, Sextus Empiricus, Juvenal, and in a later
age La Fontaine, a contemporary of the neutral La
Bruyère, were all pronounced opponents of astrology.
In England Swiſt may fairly claim the credit of having
given the death-blow to astrology by his famous squib,
entitled Prediction /or the Year 1708, by /saac Bicker-
s/aff, Esq.. He begins by professing profound belief in
the art, and next points out the vagueness and the
absurdities of the philomaths. He then, in the happiest
vein of parody, proceeds to show them a more excellent
way:—“My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I mention
it to show how ignorant these sottish pretenders to
astrology are in their own concerns: it refers to Part-
ridge the almanac-maker. I have consulted the star of
his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly
die upon the 29th of March next about eleven at night
of a raging fever. Therefore I advise him to consider
of it and settle his affairs in time.” Then followed a
letter to a person of quality giving a full and particular
account of the death of Partridge on the very day and
nearly at the hour mentioned. In vain the wretched
astrologer protested that he was alive, got a literary
friend to write a pamphlet to prove it, and published
his almanac for 1709. Swift, in his reply, abused him
for his want of manners in giving a gentleman the lie,
answered his arguments serialim, and declared that the
evidence of the publication of another almanac was
wholly irrelevant, “for Gadbury, Poor Robin, Dove,
and Way do yearly publish their almanacs, though
several of them have been dead since before the Revolu-
tion.”
Seeing that astrology once permeated all sciences, all
religion, and all politics, it is not strange if traces of it
crop up when we should least expect them. To astro-
logical politics we owe the theory of heaven-sent rulers,
instruments in the hands of Providence, and saviors of
society. Napoleon as well as Wallenstein believed in
his star. Even now that the science is dead it lives on
in our language. . . Many passages in our older poets are
unintelligible without some knowledge of astrology.
Chaucer wrote a treatise on the astrolabe; Milton con-
stantly refers to planetary influences; in Shakspeare's
A?ng Lear, Gloucester and Edmund represent respect-
ively the old and the new faith. We still contemplate
and consider; we still speak of men as jozial, saturazine,
or mercuria/, we still talk of the ascendency of genius,
or a disas/roºts defeat.
ASTRONOMY is the science which deals with the
distribution, motions, and characteristics of the heavenly
bodies. •
HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY.
Astronomy may probably be regarded as the most
ancient of the sciences. Even the least civilised races
A S T 579
must have recognised the regular vicissitudes of day
and night (and, therefore, the diurnal course of the sun),
while before long the variety of succession of the
seasons would be noted, and their cause — the oblique
annual motion of the same luminary — would be
recognised. The moon in the sun's absence is so
conspicuous and so useful that her motions, her various
phases, and her regular disappearance and return after
equal intervals of time, must have been watched in the
earliest times with attention and interest. The occurrence
of the eclipses and other unusual phenomena would stimu-
late closer scrutiny. The spectacle of the starry heavens,
seemingly unchangeable, save for the motions of a few
wandering orbs along a certain zone of the star sphere,
earlier suggested and associated between the ſates of
men and nations and these emblems of unchanging
destiny on the one hand and of the changeful lot of
mankind on the other. Thus astrology had its origin,
— a superstition which bore the same relation to astron-
only that alchemy bore to chemistry. Like alchemy,
astrology was of service — superstition though it was
— in encouraging observation and in leading to dis-
coveries of interest.
But though mankind was probably first impelled by
motives of mere curiosity to observe the courses of the
stars, no great length of time could have elapsed ere they
Terceived that the regular and uniform revolutions of the
heavens might be rendered subservient to their own
wants and convenience. By the help of the stars
the shepherd, during the night, could count the hours,
the traveller track his course through the uniform wastes
of the desert, and the mariner guide his bark over the
ocean : the husbandman, also, learned to regulate his la-
bors by the appearance of certain constellations, which
gave him waſ ming of the approaching seasons. The in-
dications derived from the simple observation of such
phenomena were doubtless extremely vague ; but as civ-
ilisation advanced, the necessity of determining accu-
rately the length of the solar year and of the lunar month,
in order to regulate the calendar and the religious festi-
vals, led to the accumulation and comparison of differ-
ent observations, whereby errors were gradually dimin-
ished, and the foundations laid of a more perfect science.
Astronomy thus presenting so many objects of curios-
ity and interest, and having so many practical uses, could
not fail to be one of the sciences first cultivated by man-
kind. Its origin is, consequently hid amidst the obscu-
rity of remote ages, and is, in fact, coeval with the earli-
est development of the human intellect. The records or
traditions of almost every ancient nation furnish some
traces of attention to the state of the heavens, and of
some rude attempts to discover the laws, the order, and
the period of the most remarkable phenomena, such as
eclipses of the sun and moon, the motions of the plan-
ets, and the heliacal risings of the principal stars and
constellations. The Chaldeans and Egyptians, Chinese,
and Indians, Gauls and Peruvians, equally regard them-
selves as the founders of astronomy, an honor, how-
ever, of which Josephus deprives them all, in order to
ascribe it to the antediluvian patriarchs. The fables re-
lating to the two columns of brick and marble which
these sages are said to have erected, and on which they
engraved the elements of their astronomy, to preserve
them from the universal destruction by fire and water to
which they are said to have learned from Adam the earth
was doomed, are not worth the trouble of repetition ;
nor is there any better proof than the assertion of that
credulous historian, of their acquaintance with the an-
zzus magnetts, the astronomical cycle of 600 years, which
brings back the sun and moon to the same points of the
heavens so nearly, that its discovery implies a pretty
..correct knowledge of the solar and lunar motions.
ſ
Passing over those details of traditional observations or
unimportant facts, we proceed to give a brief account of
the state of astronomy among some early nations who
have undoubtedly contributed to the improvement of the
science, or who, at least, have transmitted to future ages
some records of their astronomical labor.
Astronomy of the Chaldeans, Egyptiazzs, Phaºzuzcians,
Chinese, and /ndians.
According to the unanimous testimony of the Greek
historians, the earliest traces of astronomical Science are
to be met with among the Chaldeans and Egyptians.
The spacious level and unclouded horizon of Chaldea
afforded the utmost facilities for observing the celestial
phenomena ; and its inhabitants, enjoying the leisure
afforded by a pastoral life, and stimulated by the vain
desire of obtaining a knowledge of the future from the
aspects of the stars, assiduously cultivated astronomy
and astrology. By a long series of observations of
eclipses, extending, according to the testimony of Some
authors, over nineteen centuries, or even a longer period,
they had discovered the cycle of 223 lunations, or eight-
een solar years, which, by bringing back the moon to
nearly the same position with respect to her nodes, her
perigee, and the sun, brings back the eclipses in the
same order. This is supposed to be the period which
they distinguished by the name of Saros. They had
others, to which they gave the names of Sossos and
AVeros, but nothing positive is known with regard to
their nature or extent. It is certain, however, that these
Chaldaic periods, whateyer they were, were purely em-
pirical. Detected by thé comparison of recorded obser-
vations, they imply neither theory nor science, unless,
indeed, a simple arithmetical operation is to be consid-
ered as such ; nor is there any reason to suppose that
the Chaldeans employed any process of computation
whatever in their predictions of eclipses. Having once
established their cycle they were in possession of a sim-
ple means of predicting all those which occurred in the
course of it, with as great a degree of accuracy as they
considered requisite.
The Eygptians were in ancient times the rivals of the
Chaldeans in the cultivation of astronomy; and although
they have left behind them still ſewer monuments of
their labors, they have obtained, through the exagger-
ated statements of the Greeks, even a greater reputa-
tion. The Greeks acknowledge themselves indebted to
the Egyptians for their science and civilisation; but
regarding themselves likewise as descendants of that
ancient people, they indulged their vain-glory in magni-
fying the accounts of the antiquity and knowledge of
their supposed ancestors. It is not improbable that
some traditional observations of the heavens, along with
some arts indispensable to society even in its earliest
stages, were carried into Europe by tribes migrating
ſrom the banks of the Nile; and it is certain that the
early philosophers of Greece travelled into Egypt for the
purpose of acquiring a more perfect knowledge of
astronomy than could be obtained in their own country.
But the facts from which it can be inferred that the
Egyptians had much to communicate, are few and ill-
attested. They are also blended with so much absurdity
and fable, that no accurate notions can be formed, from
the accounts that have been transmitted to us, of the
real advances which that people had made in astronomi-
cal science. The priests were the depositaries of the
national knowledge; and they carefully concealed it from
the common people by shrouding it in allegories, traces
of which, it has been remarked, may be detected in the
institutions even of the present day.
The Phoenicians are also generally enumerated among
the nations who cultivated astronomy at a very early
58O
A S T
period, though it does not appear, ſrom any facts men-
tioned by ancient authors, that they devoted themselves
specially to the observation of the heavens, or made
any discoveries relative to the motions of the planets.
That they excelled in the art of navigation is certain,
from the commercial intercourse which they carried on
with many places on the coasts of Africa and Spain,
and with the principal islands of the Mediterranean;
and it may readily be allowed that in their long voyages
they would direct their course during the night by the
circumpolar stars. If they had any speculative notions
of astronomy, these were probably derived from the
Chaldeans or Egyptians.
In China, astronomy has been cultivated from the re-
motest ages, and has always been considered a science
indispensably necessary to the civil government of the
state. . The Chinese boast of a series of eclipses, re-
corded in the amnals of the nation, extending over a
period of 3858 years, all of which, they affirm, were
not only carefully observed, but were calculated and
figured previous to their occurrence. The same motives
which led the Chaldeans and Egyptians to attend to
the celestial phenomena, namely, the regulation and
division of time, had equal influence among the Chi-
nese, and we accordingly find the care of the calendar
occupying the attention of their earliest princes. The
emperor Fou-Hi, whose reign commenced about 2857
years before our era, is said to have assiduously studied
the motions of the celestial bodies, and labored to in-
struct his ignorant subjects in the mysteries of astron-
omy. But as they were not yet enlightened enough to
comprehend his theories, he was obliged to content
himself with giving them a rule for the computation of
time by means of the numbers Io and 12, the combina-
tion of which produces the cycle of 60 years, which is
the standard or unit from which they deduce their hours,
days, and months. , Tradition is silent with respect to
the sources from which Fou-Hi derived his own knowl-
edge. In the year 2608 B.C., Hoang-Ti caused an obser-
vatory to be built, for the purpose of correcting the calen-
dar, which had already fallen into great confusion, and
appointed one set of astronomers to observe the
course of the sun, another that of the moon, and
a third that of the stars. It was then discovered
that the twelve lunar months do not exactly corre-
spond with a solar year; and that, in order to
restore the coincidence, it was necessary to inter-
calate Seven lunations in the space of nineteen
years. If this fact rested on undoubted evidence, it
would follow that the Chinese had anticipated the
Greeks by 2000 years in the discovery of the Metonic
cycle. The reign of Hoang-Ti is also rendered mem-
orable by the institution of the Mathematical Tribunal,
for promoting the science of astronomy, and regularly
predicting eclipses, to which an extraordinary impor-
tance has always been attached in China. The mem-
bers of this celebrated tribunal were made responsible
with their lives for the accuracy of their predictions,
by a law of the empire, which ordained that “whether
the instant of the occurrence of any celestial phenome-
non was erroneously assigned, or the phenomenon itself
not foreseen and predicted, either negligence should be
punished with death.” In the reign of Tchong-Kang,
the two mathematicians of the empire, Ho and Hi,
were the victims of this sanguinary law—an eclipse
having taken place which their skill had not enabled
them to foresee. The emperor Yao, who mounted the
throne, according to the Chinese annals, about the year
2317 B.C., gave a new impulse to the study of astron-
omy, which had begun already to decline. He ordered
his astronomers to observe with the utmost care the
motions of the sun and moon, of the planets and the
stars, and to determine the exact length of each of the
four seasons. To this emperor are attributed the Chi-
nese division of the zodiac into 28 constellations, called
the houses of the moon, and the severe laws already
noticed in regard to the erroneous prediction of the celes-
tial phenomena. From the time of Yao the Chinese
year consisted of 365% days. They also divided the
circle into 365% degrees, so that the sun daily described
in his orbit an arc of one Chinese degree. Their com-
mon lunar year consisted of 36434; days; and by com-
bining this number with 365%, they formed the period
of 4617 years, after which the sun and moon again oc-
cupy the same relative positions.
The earliest Chinese observations we are acquainted
with, sufficiently precise to afford any result useful to
astronomy, were made by Tcheou-Kong, whose reign
commenced about the year I 100 before our era. Two.
of these observations are meridional altitudes of the
sun, observed with great care at the village of Loyang,
at the time of the summer and winter solstices. The
obliquity of the ecliptic thus determined at that remote
epoch is 23°54'3". I5 — a result which perfectly agrees.
with the theory of universal gravitation. Another ob-
servation made about the same time relates to the posi-
tion of the winter solstice in the heavens; and it also
corresponds to within a minute of a degree with the
calculations of Laplace. Laplace considers this extra-
ordinary conformity as an indubitable proof of the
authenticity of those ancient observations. The golden
age of Chinese astronomy extended from the reign of
Fou-Hi to the year 480 B.C., that is, over a space of
2500 years. It is only, however, towards the latter
part of this long period that the history of China be-
comes in any degree authentic; and the true date which
must be assigned for the commencement of observations.
on which any reliance can be placed, is the year 722
B.C., that is 25 years posterior to the era of Nabonas-
Sar. From that period to the year 400 B.C., Confucius,
reckons a series of 36 eclipses, and of these 31 have been
verified by modern astronomers. After this the science
fell into great neglect, notwithstanding the inveterate
tenacity with which the Chinese in general adhere to
their ancient customs. The decline of their astronomy
is ascribed, whether justly or not, to the barbarous policy
of the emperor Tsin-Chi-Hong-Ti, who, in the year 221
B.C., ordered all the books to be destroyed, excepting
those only which related to agriculture, medicine, and
astrology, the only sciences which he considered as be-
ing of any use to mankind. In this manner, it is said,
the precious mass of astronomical observations and pre-
cepts which had been accumulating for ages was irre-
trievably lost.
On considering attentively the accounts which have
been given of the Chinese astronomy, we find that it
consisted only in the practice of observations which led
to nothing more than the knowledge of a few isolated
facts. The missionaries who were sent out by the Jesuits
about the end of the 17th century, to whom we are in-
debted for what is known of the early history of China,
either seduced by some appearances of truth, or thinking
it prudent to conciliate the people whom they were at-
tempting to convert, adopted their marvellous relations
regarding the antiquity of their science, and spread them
over Europe. As the history of the nation *. to
become more authentic, their astronomy shrinks into its
real, insignificant dimensions. Superstitiously attached
to their ancient usages, and blindly adopting the habits.
of their ancestors, the Chinese continued to observe the
heavens from century to century without making the
slightest advances in theoretical knowledge. In later
times they have adopted many improvements, for which
they are entirely indebted to foreigners. During the
}
A S T *
58 I
time of the caliphs many Mohametans passed into China,
carrying with them the astronomical methods and knowl-
edge of the Arabians. The missionaries introduced the
science of Europe; and the most that can be said in
praise of the Chinese is, that their Government some-
times relaxed so far its spirit of jealousy and exclusion,
as to afford protection to these strangers, adopt their
arts, and place them at the head of the Mathematical
Tribunal.
The astronomy of the Indians forms one of the most
curious problems which the history of science presents,
and one which, notwithstanding much discussion, still
continues involved in great uncertainty. Of the science
of the ancient nations of which we have already spoken,
the accounts which have come down to our times are
founded on conjecture and tradition; for few monu-
ments remain to confirm or confute the glowing descrip-
tions which authors have given of its high antiquity and
great perfection. But the claims of the Indians rest on
a more solid foundation. We are in possession of the
tables from which they compute the eclipses and places
of the planets, and of the methods by which they effect
the computation ; we have, in short, an Indian astron-
omy committed to writing, which represents the celestial
phenomena with considerable exactness, and which,
therefore, could only be produced by a people far
advanced in science. But the difficulty the problem
presents is the determination of the sources whence this
science originated and the epoch of its existence—the
question whether it was created by the people who now
blindly follow its precepts without understanding its
principles, or was communicated to them by another
race of a more original genius through channels with
which we are unacquainted. Some authors regard India
as the cradle of all the sciences, particularly of astron-
omy, which they suppose to have been cultivated there
from the remotest ages; others date the origin of the
Indian astronomy from the period when Pythagoras
travelled into that country, and carried thither the arts
and sciences of the Greeks; a third opinion is, that
astronomy was conveyed to India by the Arabians in
the 9th century of our era, and that the Brahmins are
only entitled to the humble merit of adapting the rules
and practices of that people to their own peculiar
methods of calculation.
** stronomy of the Greeks.
The origin of astronomy in Greece, as in other early
nations, ascends beyond the period of authentic history.
The true ſoundations of Grecian science were laid by
Thales, who was born at Miletus 640 years before our
era. He formed a sect which has been distinguished
by the title of the “Ionian School.” His doctrines
regarding astronomy contain a few truths which do
Thonor to his sagacity and observation, though they are
mixed with much error and absurdity. He taught that
the stars are formed of fire; that the moon receives her
light from the sun, and is invisible at her conjunctions,
because she is hid in the sun's rays. He also taught the
sphericity of the earth, which he placed at the centre of
the universe. He divided the sphere into five zones, by
the arctic and antarctic circles, and the two tropics; and
held that the equator is cut obliquely by the ecliptic,
and perpendicularly by the meridian. He is also said
to have observed eclipses; and Herodotus relates that
The predicted the famous one which put a stop to the
war between the Medes and the Lydians. It does not
appear, however, that he ventured to assign either the
day or the month of the eclipse, so that his prediction
amust have been confined to the year. According to
Callimachus, he determined the positions of the stars
which form the Lesser Bear, by which the Phoenicians
guided themselves in their voyages. It is difficult,
however, to conceive how Thales, unacquainted with
instruments, could determine the positions of stars with
so much accuracy as to render any essential assistance
to the navigator. It is probable that he only pointed
out the configuration and some of the more brilliant
stars of that constellation, among which he might
remark that which is nearest the pole of the heavens.
Thales was succeeded by Anaximander, to whom also
is attributed a knowledge of the sphere and of the
zodiac. According to Diogenes Laertius, he, like his
master Thales, supposed the earth to be spherical, and
placed at the center of the universe; but Plutarch ascribes
to him the less philosophical opinion of its resemblance
to a column. He supposed the sun to be of equal
magnitude with the earth. He invented the gnomon,
and placed one at Lacedaemon to observe the sol-
stices and equinoxes. The circumstance which best
entitles Anaximander to the gratitude of posterity is the
invention of geographical charts. Anaximenes suc-
ceeded Anaximander in the Ionian school, and main-
tained nearly the same doctrines. Pliny says he was the
first who taught the art of constructing dials, an inven-
tion which as we have just seen, has also been ascribed
to Anaximander. These two philosophers probably
revived the knowledge of an instrument, the use of
which had been forgotten amidst the general rudeness
and ignorance of their countrymen. Before their time
the Greeks only marked the divisions of the day by the
different lengths of the Sun's shadow. Anaxagoras was
the disciple and successor of Anaximenes. If this philo-
sopher really entertained the ridiculous opinions ascribed
to him by Plutarch, the Ionian school must rather have
retrograded than advanced in sound philosophy from
the time of Thales. He is said to have believed that
the sun is a mass of red-hot iron, or of heated stone,
somewhat bigger than the Peloponnesus, that the heaven
is a vault of stones, which is prevented from tumbling
only by the rapidity of its circular motion, and that the
is prevented from advancing beyond the tropics by a
thick and dense atmosphere, which forces him to retrace
his course. These alleged opinions are probably greatly
exaggerated; but it does not appear that Anaxagoras
contributed much to extend the knowledge of the
heavens. His disregard for the superstitious notions of
his age brought its usual penal consequences. Having
shown the reason of the eclipses of the moon, he was
accused of ascribing to natural causes the attributes and
power of the gods; and having taught the existence of
only one God, he was accused of impiety and treason
towards his country. Sentence of death was pro-
nounced on the philosopher and all his family; and it
required the powerful interest of his friend and disciple
Pericles to obtain a commutation of the sentence into
one of perpetual banishment.
While the Ionian sect was so successfully employed in
cultivating and propagating a knowledge of nature in
Greece, another, still more celebrated, was founded in
Italy by Pythagoras. Pythagoras is said to have ac-
quired in Egypt the knowledge of the obliquity of the
ecliptic, and of the identity of the morning and evening
stars. What he chiefly deserves to be commemorated
for in the history of astronomy, is his philosophical doc-
trine regarding the motion of the earth. . He taught pub-
licly that the earth is placed at the centre of the universe;
but among his chosen disciples he propagated the
doctrine that the sun occupies the centre of the planet-
ary world, and that the earth is a planet revolving round
the sun. This system which still retains his name, being
called the old or Pythagorean system of the universe, is
that which was revived by Copernicus. It is, however,
only just to the latter to observe, that there is a vast
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difference between the bare statement of the possibility of
a fact, and the demonstration of its existence by irre-
fragable arguments. Pythagoras having remarked the
relation which subsists between the tone of a musical
chord and the rapidity of its vibration, was led by anal-
ogy to extend the same relation to the planets, and to
suppose that they emit sounds proportional to their re-
spective distances, and form a celestial concert too melo-
dious to affect the gross organs of mankind. Another
fancy into which he was led by his passion for analogies,
was the application of the five geometrical solids to the
elements of the world. The cube symbolically repre-
sented the earth; the pyramid, fire; the octahedron,
air; the icosahedron, or twenty-sided figure, water; and
the dodecahedron, or figure with twelve faces, the exter-
ior sphere of the universe. Pythagoras left no writings;
and it is doubtful whether he really entertained many of
the opinions and reveries which have usually been
ascribed to him. Philolaus of Crotona, a disciple of
Pythagoras, embraced the doctrine of his master with
regard to the revolution of the earth about the sun. He
supposed the sun to be a disk of glass which reflects the
light of the universe. He made the lunar month con-
sist of 29% days, the lunar year of 354 days, and the
solar year of 365% days. Nicetas of Syracuse seems to
have been the first who openly taught the Pythagorean
system of the universe. Cicero, on the authority of
Theophrastus, the ancient historian of astronomy,
gives him the credit of maintaining that the apparent
motion of the stars arises from the diurnal motion of
the earth about its axis; but this rational doctrine seems
to have been first broached by Heraclides of Pºntus,
and Ecphantus, a disciple of Pythagoras.
The introduction of the Metonic cycle forms an era in
the history of the early astronomy of Greece. The
Chaldeans, as we have already stated, established several
lunisolar periods; and the difficulty of reconciling the
motions of the sun and moon, or of assigning a period
at the end of which these two luminaries again occupy
the same positions relatively to the stars, had long em-
barrassed those who had the care of regulating the festi-
vals. Meton and Euctemon had the merit of first obvi-
ating this difficulty, at least for a time; for the motions
of the sun and moon being incommensurable, no period
can be assigned which will bring them back to precisely
the same situations. These two astronomers formed a
cycle of nineteen lunar years, twelve of which contained
each 12 lunations, and the seven other each 13, which
they intercalated among the former. It had long been
known that the synodic month consisted of 29% days
nearly; and in order to avoid the fraction, it had been
usual to make the twelve synodic months, which com-
pose the solar year, to consist of 29 and 30 days alter-
nately; the former being called deficient and the latter
• full months. Meton made his period consist of 125 full
and I IO deficient months, which gives 6940 days for the
235 lunations, and is nearly equal to 19 solar years.
This cycle commenced on the 16th of July in the year
433 B.C. . It was received with acclamation by the peo-
ple assembled at the Olympic games, and adopted in all
the cities and colonies of Greece. It was also engraved
in golden letters on tables of brass, whence it received
the appellation of the golden number, and has been the
basis of the calendars of all nations of modern Europe.
It is still in ecclesiastical use, with such modifications as
time has rendered necessary.
Eudoxus of Cnidus, about the year 370 B.C. ob-
tained great reputation as an astronomer. According
to Pliny, he introduced the year of 365% days into
Greece. Archimedes says that he supposed the diame-
ter of the sun to be nine times greater than that of the
moon, which shows that he had in some degree over-
come the illusions of sense. The titles of three of his
works have been preserved,—the Period or Circumſer-
ence of the AEarth, the Phenomena, and the Mirror. His
observatory was still standing at Cnidus in the time of
Strabo. He is noteworthy for his contempt of the Chal-
dean predictions, and for having contributed to separate
true astronomy from the reveries of judicial astrology.
Eudoxus seems to have been the first who attempted to
give a mechanical explanation of the apparent motions
of the planets. He supposed that each planet occupies
a particular part of the heavens, and that the path which
it describes is determined by the combined motion of
several spheres performed in different directions. The
sun and moon had each three spheres: one revolving
round an axis which passes through the poles of the
earth, and which occasions the diurnal motion; a.
second revolving round the poles of the ecliptic, in a
contrary direction, and causing the annual and monthly
revolutions; the third revolving in a direction perpen-
dicular to the first, and causing the changes of declina-
tion. Each of the planets had a fourth sphere to explain
the stations and retrogradations. As new inequalities
and motions were discovered, new spheres were added,
till the machinery became so complicated as to be alto-
gether unintelligible. -
Although Plato can hardly be cited as an astronomer,
yet the progress of the science was accelerated by means
of the lights struck out by his penetrating genius. He
seems to have had just notions of the causes of eclipses;
and he imagined that the celestial bodies originally
moved in straight lines, but that gravity altered their
directions, and compelled them to move in curves. He
proposed to astronomers the problem of representing
the courses of the stars and planets by circular and
regular motions. Geometry was assiduously cultivated
in the school of Plato; and on this account he claims a
distinguished place among the promoters of true as-
tronomy.
Astronomy is also under some obligations to Aristotle.
In a treatise which he composed on this science, he
recorded a number of observations which he had made;
and, among others, mentions an occultation on Mars by
the moon, and another of a star in the constellation
Gemini by the planet Jupiter. As such phenomena are
of rare occurrence, their observation proves that he had
paid considerable attention to the planetary motions. . .
A great number of astrónomers flourished about this
time whose labors and observations prepared the way
for the reformation of the science which was shortly
after effected by Hipparchus. , Helicon of Cyzicus is
renowned for the prediction of an eclipse, which took
place, as Plutarch affirms, at the time announced. His-
tory records the names of only three individuals in
ancient Greece who predicted eclipses, Thales, Heli-
con, and Eudemus. Eudemus composed a history of
astronomy, a fragment of which, consisting of only a
few lines, is preserved by Fabricius in the Bibliotheca.
Graeca. In this it is mentioned that the axes of the
ecliptic and equator are separated from each other by
the side of a pentedecagon, which is equivalent to say-
ing that they contain an angle of 24°. This is the first
value which we find assigned by the Greeks to the obli-
quity of the ecliptic. It is given in round numbers, and
may easily be supposed to contain an error of a quarter
of a degree. e
Calippus is celebrated for the period which he formed
of four Metonic cycles. Having observed, by means of
an eclipse of the moon which took place about six years.
before the death of Alexander, that the Metonic cycle
contained an error of a fourth of a day, he introduccd.
the period of 940 lunations, containing four Metonic
cycles, diminished by one day. He likewise formed a
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583
collection of observations on the heliacal risings of the
planets. Theophrastus wrote a history of astronomy,
and supposed the Milky Way to be produced by the
imperfect junction of the two hemispheres, which
allowed the light to penetrate from the firmament be-
yond. Autolycus of Pitane wrote two books,— one on
the movable sphere, the other on the risings and settings
of the stars. These are the most ancient of the astro-
nomical works of the Greeks which have come down to
our times.
Pytheas of Marseilles, about the time of Alexander
the Great, determined the length of the solstitial shad-
ows in various countries by means of the gnomon. He
found the shadows equal at Marseilles and Byzantium —
a circumstance which does not give a favorable idea of
the accuracy of his observations, inasmuch as the differ-
ence of the latitudes of the two places amounts to 2%
degrees. The observation is, however, interesting, as it
is the most ancient of the kind which has been pre-
served after that of Tcheu-Kong, and as it confirms the
successive diminution of the obliquity of the ecliptic.
Pytheas undertook several voyages for the purpose of
obtaining geographical and astronomical information, and
advanced northwards as far as Iceland. His accounts
have been treated as fabulous by Strabo and Polybius,
but the accuracy of the greater number of them has
been confirmed by modern observation and experience.
He was the first who distinguished the climates by the
different lengths of the days and nights.
Astronomy in the School of Alexandria.
The first astronomers of the Alexandrian school were
Aristillus and Timocharis, who flourished under the first
Ptolemy, about 300 years before Christ. The chief
object of their labors was the determination of the rela-
tive positions of the principal stars of the zodiac instead
of merely announcing their risings and settings, as had
been the practice of the Orientals and the ancient
Greeks. The observations of these two astronomers
conducted Hipparchus to the important discovery of the
precession of the equinoxes, and served as the basis of
the theory which Ptolemy, some centuries afterwards,
gave of that phenomenon.
Aristarchus of Samos, the next in order of the Alex-
andrian astronomers, composed a treatise On the Mag-
ziztudes and ZXistances of the Sten and Moore, which
has been preserved to our times. In this treatise he
describes an ingenious method which he employed to
obtain the relative distances of the two luminaries. At
the instant when the moon is dichotomised, that is,
when the exact half of her disk appears to a spectator
on the earth to be illuminated by the sun’s light, the
visual ray passing from the centre of the moon
to the eye of the observer is perpendicular
to the line which joins the centre of the moon and sun.
At that instart, therefore, he measured the angular
distance of the two bodies, and finding it to be 879, he
concluded, by the resolution of a right-angled triangle,
that the distance of the sun is between eighteen and
nineteen times greater than that of the moon. This
method is perfectly correct in theory, but it is difficult
to be assured of the exact instant of the moon’s
dichotomy, and in an angle of such magnitude a very
small error greatly affects the result. The error of
Aristarchus is very considerable, the true angle being
about 87° 50'. The estimated distance of the sun is by
consequence far too small ; yet the determination,
faulty as it was, contributed to expand greatly the ex-
isting notions relative to the boundaries of the universe,
for the Pythagoreans had taught that the sun is only
three, or at most three and a half times more distant
than the moon. Another delicate observation made by
Aristarchus was that of the magnitude of the sun’s
diameter, which, as we learn from Archimedes, he
determined to be the 720th part of the circumference of
the circle which the sun describes in his diurnal revolu-
tion. This estimate is not very far from the truth, and
the observation is by no means an easy one. He em-
braced the doctrine of Pythagoras respecting the earth's
motion, and appears to have entertained juster notions
than any of the astronomers who preceded him, regard-
ing the magnitude and extent of the universe. The
treatise On the Magnizudes and ZDistances is published
in the third volume of the works of Dr. Wallis, with a
Latin translation by Commandine, and some notes.
Eratosthenes, the successor of Aristarchus, a native
of Cyrene, was invited to Alexandria by Ptolemy Euer.
getes, who appointed him keeper of the royal library.
He is supposed to have been the inventor of armillary
spheres, a species of instrument extensively used by the
ancient astronomers. By means of an instrument of
this kind he observed the distance between the tropics
to be to the whole circumference of a great circle as 11 to
83,- a ratio equivalent to 47° 42' 39", half of which
gives 23° 51' 19".5 for the obliquity of the ecliptic.
This is a very important observation, and confirms the
gradual diminution of , the obliquity as indicated by
theory. Eratosthenes is celebrated as the first who
attempted, on correct principles, to determine the
magnitude of the earth. Having remarked, by some
means with which we are unacquainted, that Syene, the
most southern of the cities of ancient Egypt, is situated
nearly on the same meridian as Alexandria, he conceived
the idea of determining the amplitude of the celestia
arc intercepted between the zeniths of the two places,"
and of measuring at the same time their distance on the
ground,-operations which would afford data for the
determination of the whole length of the terrestrial
meredian. Syene was known to be situated exactly
under the tropic; for at the summer solstice the gnomon
had no shadow, and the sun’s rays illumined the bottom
of a deep well in that city. On the day of the solstice
he found the meridional distance of the sun from the
zenith of Alexandria to be 79 12", or a fiftieth part of
the circumference. It had also been ascertained by the
benza fists or surveyors of Alexander and the Ptolemies,
that the itinerary distance between Alexandria and Syene
was 5000 stadia; therefore 5000 × 50 = 250,000 stadia
form the circumference of a great circle of the earth, or
the length of the terrestrial meridian. Unfortunately,
on account of the uncertainty respecting the length of
the stadium here employed, we possess no means of esti-
mating the degree of approximation afforded by this
rude though ingenious attempt.
About this time the science of astronomy was en-
riched by the discoveries of some of the distinguished
geometricians whose labors have so greatly extended
the glory of the Alexandrian school. Euclid, the cele-
brated author of the AElements, lived in the reign of the
first Ptolemy. He composed a book on the sphere,
which probably served as a model for the future works of
the same kind, and was the first who treated in a geo-
metrical manner the phenomena of the different inclina-
tions of the sphere. Conon of Samos, the friend of
Archimedes, collected the records of eclipses, which had
been observed by the ancient Egyptians; and Callima-
chus ascribes to him the constellation of Berenice’s hair.
Archimedes also claims a high rank among the cultiva-
vators of astronomy. His celebrated planetarium,
which represented the motions of the sun, moon, planets,
and starry sphere, has been a frequent theme of the
praises of the poets.
Apollonius of Perga solved the important problem
of the stations and retrogradations of the planets by
584
A S T
means of epicycles and deferents; and he is entitled to
the glory of having formed the alliance between geometry
and astronomy, which has been productive of the great-
est advantages to both.
Astronomy, which had as yet only consisted of a
knowledge of isolated facts, acquired a systematic form,
and almost a new existence, from the genius of Hip-
parchus, perhaps the greatest of all ancient philosophers
in the sciences which are not purely speculative. This
illustrious founder of astronomical science was born at
Nicaea in Bithynia, and observed at Rhodes. Flamsteed
and Cassini, probably misled by some ambiguous expres-
sions of Plolemy, have related that his observations
were made at Alexandria; and this opinion seems gen-
erally to have been adopted by historians. The question
has been examined carefully, and at considerable length,
by Delambre (Astronomie Ancienne), who comes to the
conclusion that there is no reason whatever to infer that
Hipparchus ever saw Alexandria. Ptolemy, in report-
ing the observations of Hipparchus, supposed Rhodes
and Alexandria to be situated on the same meridian,
and consequently does not find it necessary to mention
the place at which the observations were made. Hip-
parchus commenced his brilliant career by verifying the
determination of the obliquity of the ecliptic made by
Eratosthenes. He next directed his attention to the
length of the tropical year. By comparing one of his
own observations of the summer solstice with a similar
one made by Aristarchus 140 years before, he found
that the anciently received value of 365% days was too
great by seven minutes. This leaves the tropical year a
value still too great ; but it is probable that the error
arose from the inaccuracy of the observation of Aris-
tarchus; for the observations of Hipparchus, compared
with those of the moderns, make the length of the
tropical year amount to 365 days, 5 hours, and 49 min-
utes, which is only 12 seconds greater than the truth.
By a careful observation of the solstices and equinoxes,
he discovered that the year is not divided by these points
into four equal parts, the sun occupying 94% days in
passing from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice,
and only 92% from the same solstice to the equinox of
autumn. The sun, consequently, remained 187 days in
that part of the ecliptic which lies between the equator
and the north pole, and therefore only about 178 in the
other part. This observation led Hipparchus to the
great discovery of the eccentricity of the solar orbit.
He accounted for the apparent inequality of the sun’s
motion by supposing that the earth is not placed exactly
at the centre of the circular orbit of the Sun, and that,
consequently, his distance from the earth is subject to
variation. When the sun is at his greatest distance, he
appears to move more slowly; and when he approaches
nearer, his motion becomes more rapid. The distance
of the earth from the centre of the orbit is called the
eccentricity; it produces an equation between the real
and apparent motions which is called the “equation of
the centre.” He determined the magnitude of this
equation in terms of the radius of the ecliptic, and fixed
the position of the line of the apsides, or that which
joins the two opposite points of the orbit which are at
the greatest and least distance from the earth. With
these data he formed the first tables of the sun which
are mentioned in the history of astronomy. The dis-
covery of the eccentricity also led Hipparchus to that
of the inequality of the lengths of the solar days at
different seasons of the year. In the interval which
elapses between the sun's passage over the meridian and
his return to it the following day, the sun advances by
his own proper motion towards the east nearly a degree.
But the rate of this motion is unequal, varying between
57 and 61 minutes of a degree; and the accumulation of
the inequalities forms what is called the equation of
time, that is, the difference between the true time, as
shown by the sun, and the mean time, shown by a well-
regulated clock, the motions of which are equal and
uniform.
The attention of Hipparchus was next directed to the
motions of the moon; and on this subject his researches
were attended with equal success. From the comparison
of a great number of the most circumstantial and accu-
rate observations of eclipses recorded by the Chaldeans,
he was enabled to determine the period of the moon’s
revolution relatively to the stars, to the sun, to her
nodes, and to her apogee. These determinations are
among the most valuable results of ancient astronomy,
inasmuch as they corroborate one of the finest theoreti-
al deductions — the acceleration of the mean lunar
motion — and thus furnish one of the most delicate tests
of the truth of Newton's law of gravitation. It was
indeed, by a comparison of the observations of Hippar-
chus with those of the Arabian and modern astrono-
mers that Dr. Halley was led to the discovery of that
important phenomenon. Hipparchus also determined
the eccentricity of the lunar orbit, and its inclination to
the plane of the ecliptic; and the values which he
assigned to these elements, making allowance for the
evection and the inequalities of the moon’s motion in
latitude, are within a few minutes the same as those
which are now observed. He had also an idea of the
second inequality of the moon’s motion, namely, the
evection, and made all the necessary preparations for a
discovery which was reserved for Ptolemy. He like-
wise approximated to the parallax of the moon, which
he attempted to deduce from that of the sun, by deter-
mining the length of the frustrum cut off from the come
of the terrestrial shadow by the moon, when she tra-
verses it in her eclipses. From the parallax he con-
cluded that the greatest and least distances of the moon
are respectively equal to 78 and 67 semi-diameters of the
earth, and that the distance of the sun is equal to 1300
of the same semi-diameters. The first of the determi-
nations exceeds the truth, the second falls greatly short
of it, the distance of the sun being nearly equal to
24,000 terrestrial semi-diameters. It may, however, be
remarked that Ptolemy, who undertook to correct Hip-
parchus with regard to the parallax, deviated still far-
ther from the truth.
The apparition of a new star in the time of Hipparchus
induced him to undertake the formation of a catalogue
of all the stars visible above his horizon, to fix their
relative positions, and mark their configurations, in
order that posterity might have the means of observing
any changes which might in future take place in the
state of the heavens. This arduous undertaking was
rewarded by the important discovery of the procession
of the equinoxes, one of the fundamental elements of
astronomy. By comparing his own observations with
those of Aristillus and Timocharis, he found that the
first point of Aries, which, in the time of these astrono-
mers, or 150 years before, corresponded with the vernal
equinox, had advanced two degrees, according to the
order of the signs, or at the rate of 48 seconds a year.
This determination is not very far from the truth; for,
according to modern observations, the rate of the pro-
cession is about 50. I seconds annually. His catalogue
contained IoSo stars, not, as has sometimes been
erroneously stated, Io22, the number in that of Ptolemy,
in which the nebulous and some obscure stars are
omitted. He also commenced a series of observations
to furnish his successors with the means of forming a
theory of the planets. Hipparchus likewise invented
the planisphere, or method of representing the starry
firmament on a plane surface, which afforded the means
A S T
585
of solving the problems of spherical trigonometry in a
manner often more exact and more convenient than the
globe itself. He was the first who demonstrated the
methods of calculating triangles, whether rectilinear or
spherical; and he constructed a table of chords, from
which he drew nearly the same advantages as we derive
at present from the tables of sines. Geography is also
indebted to him for the happy idea of fixing the position
of places on the earth by means of their latitudes and
longitudes; and he was the first who determined the
longitude by the eclipses of the moon.
After the death of Hipparchus nearly three centuries
elapsed before any successor arose worthy of the name.
During this long period astronomy made no essential
advancement. Some rough observations, scarcely
superior to those of the Chaideans, and a few meagre
treaties, are the only monuments which exist to testify
that science had not fallen into utter oblivion in an age
so fertile of poets and orators. Geminus and Cleome-
des wrote treatises, which have been preserved to our
times; Agrippa and Menelaus are said to have observed;
the Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar and
the Egyptian astronomer Sosigenes; and Posidonius
measured a degree, and remarked that the laws of the
tides depend on the motions of the sun and moon.
Ptolemy was borne at Ptolemais in Egypt, and flour-
ished at Alexandria about the 130th year of our era,
under the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus. This
illustrious ornament of the Alexandrian school is enti-
tled by his own discoveries to the high rank among
astronomers which has universally been assigned to
him; but the most signal service which he conſerred on
science was the collection and arrangement of the
ancient observations. Out of these materials he formed
the Meyd'Am 215 v to:315, or Great Composition, a collec-
tion which exhibits a complete view of the state of astron-
omy in the time of Ptolemy, and which contains the
germ of most of the methods in use at the present day.
The hypothesis which Ptolemy adopted for the purpose
of explaining the apparent motions, was that which had
been followed by Hipparchus. To account for the uni-
form circular motion, Apollonius imagined the ingenious
apparatus of epicycles and deferents; and Hipparchus
advanced a step farther, by placing the centre of the
sun's circle at a small distance from the earth. Ptolemy
adopted both hypotheses, and supposed the planet to
describe an epicycle by a uniform revolution in a circle,
the centre of which was carried forward uniformly in an
eccentric around the earth. By means of these suppo-
sitions, and by assigning proper relations between the
radii of the epicycle and deferent circle, and also
between the velocity of the planet and the centre of its
epicycle, he was enabled to represent with tolerable
accuracy the apparent motions of the planets, and par-
ticularly the phenomena of the stations and retrograda-
tions, which formed the principal object of the
researches of the ancient astronomers. The notions of
Apollonius and Hipparchus were thus reduced to a
systematic form, and the proportions of the eccentrics
and epicycles of all the planets assigned, by Ptolemy;
on which account the system has been generally as-
cribed to him, and has obtained the name of the Atole-
27taic System of the universe.
The most important discovery which astronomy owes
to Ptolemy is that of the evection of the moon. Hip-
parchus had discovered the first lunar inequality, or the
equation of the centre, which serves to correct the
mean motion at the syzygies, and had also remarked
the necessity of another correction for the quadratures.
He even undertook a set of observations, with a view
to ascertain its amount and its law; but death put a
stop to his labors before he had brought them to a suc-
cessful issue. Ptolemy completed the investigation,
and discovered that the eccentricity of the lunar orbit
is itself subject to an annual variation, depending on
the motion of the line of the apsides. The variation of
the position of the apsides produces an inequality of
the moon’s motion in her quarters, which has been tech-
nically denominated the evection. The equation given
by Ptolemy, though of course empirical, is remarkably
exact.
Ptolemy employed a very simple process for determin-
ing the moon's parallax, which was probably suggested
to him by the situation of Alexandria, where he ob-
served. He determined the latitude of a place a little
to the south of that city, Over the zenith of which the
moon was observed to pass when her northern declination
was the greatest possible. But when the moon is in
the zenith, or in the same straight line with the observer
and the centre of the earth, she has no parallax ; con-
sequently the obliquity of the ecliptic and the latitude of
the station being known the moon's greatest northern
latitude was also determined. The next step was to
observe the moon's meridian altitude fifteen days aſter
the first observation, when her southern latitude was
necessarily the greatest possible. The observation gave
the apparent altitude of the moon, but her greatest
northern and southern declinations being supposed
equal, her true altitude, as seen from the centre of the
earth, was easily computed from the previous observa-
tion, and the difference between the true and apparent
altitudes gave the amount of the parallax.
The observations of Hipparchus relative to the motion
of the stars in longitude, or the regression of the
equinoctial points, were confirmed by Ptolemy, although
he mistook his amount, and diminished a quantity
which Hipparchus had already estimated too low.
According to Hipparchus the regression is at the rate
of two degrees in 150 years. Ptolemy reduced it to one
degree in 90 years. This disagreement would seem to
indicate an error of more than a degree in the observa-
tions, which can with difficulty be admitted, consider-
ing the accordance which subsists among the different
observations cited by Ptolemy in support of his own
determination. For this and some other reasons
Ptolemy has been accused of altering the observations
of Hipparchus, and accommodating them to his own
theory; and there would appear to be but too just
grounds for the imputation. The error with regard to
the regression may, however, have arisen from the
circumstance, that I Lipparchus had assigned too great a
value to the length of the year, whence the motion of
the sun with regard the equinoxes would be made too
slow, and the longitudes employed by Ptolemy conse-
quently diminished. &
Ptolemy has been called The Prince of Astronomers,
— a title which may perhaps be justified by the uni-
versal and long-continued prevalence of his system, but
to which he has no claim from the number or value of
his own observations. After a laborious and minute
examination of the Almagest, Delambre doubts whether
anything is contained in that great work, beyond the
author's own statement, from which it can be decisively
inferred that Ptolemy ever observed at all. He, indeed,
frequently makes mention of observations made by him-
self; but his solar tables, rate of the precession,
eclipses, determination of the moon’s motion and par-
allax, and above all, his catalogue of stars, render it
impossible to doubt that the greater part of the results
which he has given as observations are merely computed
from the tables of Hipparchus. He never in any in-
stance cites a single observation more than is just nec-
essary for the object he has immediately in view, and
consequently, by precluding all comparison of one
586
A S T
observation with another, has deprived us of the
means even of guessing at the probable amount of the
errors of his solar, lunar and planetary tables. If an
astronomer, as Delambre justly remarks, were to
adopt the same course at the present day, he would be
certain of forfeiting all claim to confidence; but Ptolemy
stood alone ; he had neither judges nor rivals; and now
no one condescends to calculate the few observations he
has left us. . His catalogue contains only Io22 stars, and
is therefore less extensive than that of Hipparchus, but
it is exceedingly valuable on account of its details.
Astronomy of the Arabians.
The most celebrated of the Arabian astronomers was
Albategni, or Muhammed Ben Geber Al-Batani, so
called from Batan, a city of Mesopotamia, where he was
born about 850. He was a prince of Syria, and resided
at Rakka in Mesopotamia; but many of his observa-
tions were made at Antioch. , Having studied the Syn-
taxis of Ptolemy, and made himself acquainted with the
methods practised by the Greek astronomers, he began
to observe, and soon found that the places assigned to
many of the stars in Ptolemy's tables were considerably
different from their actual situations, in consequence of
the error which the latter had committed with regard to
the precession of the equinoxes. Albategni measured
the rate of the precession with greater accuracy than
had been done by Ptolemy; and he had still better suc-
cess in his attempt to determine the eccentricity of the
solar orbit, his value of which differs extremely little
from that which results from modern observations. In
assigning the length of the year, however, he ſell into
an error of more than two minutes; but this proceeded,
as has been shown by Dr. Halley, from too great confi-
dence in the observations of Ptolemy. Albategni also
remarked that the place of the sun's apogee is not im-
movable, as former astronomers had supposed, but that
it advances at a slow rate, according to the order of the
signs,— a discovery which has been confirmed by the
theory of gravitation. A new set of astronomical tables,
more accurate than those of Ptolemy, likewise resulted
from the indefatigable labors of Albategni; and his ob-
servations, important in themselves, are doubly inter-
esting on account of the fact that they form a link of
connection between those of the astronomers of Alex-
andria and of modern Europe. The works of Alba-
tegni were published in 1537 under the title of De Scien-
Zia Ste/Zarzazme. -
Ibn-Junis, who flourished at the beginning of the 11th
century, constructed a set of tables, and composed a sort
of celestial history, in which he has recorded numerous
observations of his own and of other astronomers be-
longing to the same country. This work, imperfectly
known through some extracts, long excited the curiosity
of astronomers, as it was supposed to contain observa-
tions tending to establish the acceleration of the mean
motion of the moon. A manuscript copy of it belong-
ing to the University of Leyden, was, in 1804, trans-
mitted to the French Institute, and translated by Pro-
fessor Caussin. It contains 28 observations of eclipses
from the year 829 to IOO4; seven observations of the
equinoxes; one of the summer solstice ; one of the
obliquity of the ecliptic made at Damascus, by which
the value of that element is found to be 23° 35'; and
likewise a portion of tables of the sun and moon, with
some other matter illustrative of the state of astronomy
among the Arabians. . The observations which regard
the acceleration of the mean lunar motion are two
eclipses of the sun and one of the moon, observed by
Ibn-Junis, near Cairo, in the years 977, 978, and 979,
and they agree with theory in confirming the existence
of that phenomenon.
Ulugh Begh, a Tartar prince, and grandson of the
great Tamerlane, not only encouraged the study of
astronomy, but was himself a diligent and successful ob-
server. At Samarcand, the capital of his dominions,
he established an academy of astronomers, and caused
the most magnificent instruments to be constructed for
their use. By means of a gnomon 180 feet in height,
he determined the obliquity of the ecliptic to be 23° 30'
2O", the precession of the equinoxes at 19 in 70 years,
and obtained elements for the construction of tables
which have been found to be scarcely inferior in accu-
racy to those of Tycho Brahe. The ancient astronomy
had produced only one catalogue of the fixed stars, that
of Hipparchus. Ulugh Begh has the honor of having
formed a second, after an interval of sixteen centuries.
Revizyal of Astronomy in Europe.
After the death of Ulugh Begh, astronomy received
no farther accessions in the East. But the seeds of
knowledge had now begun to take root in a more pro-
pitious soil, and Europe, destined to carry the develop-
ment of the human energies to its fullest extent, began
to awake from the lethargy in which it had continued
during so many ages.
The 14th century produced no astronomers from
whose labors the science gained any accessions. George
Purbach, or Beurbach, so named from a small town in
Austria, where he was born in 1423, obtained great
celebrity as a professor. He studied at Vienna, and
after giving proofs of exceptional talent, he travelled
into Italy, where he was favorably received by Cardinal
de Cusa, who himself cultivated astronomy. On his
return to Vienna he undertook a translation of the
A/magest, and although ignorant both of Greek and
Arabic, his perfect acquaintance with the subject enabled
him to correct many errors which had been introduced
through the carelessnéss or ignorance of former trans-
lators. Purbach had the good fortune to have a disci-
ple who executed many of the plans which had been
interrupted by his premature death. . This was the cele-
brated John Müller of Königsberg, better known by the
name of Regiomontanus. Attracted to Vienna in his
youth by the great reputation of Purbach, he continued
to study there during ten years, and on the death of his
master repaired to Rome for the purpose of acquiring
the Greek language, and of making himself, through it,
acquainted with the Almagest. ... At Rome he continued
his observations, and translated into Latin the works of
Ptolemy, the Comics of Apollonius, and some other
treatises of ancient science. In 1471 he retired to Nu-
remberg, where, with the aid of Bernard Walther, a
wealthy burgess, he founded an observatory and fur-
nished it with excellent instruments principally of his
own invention, by means of which he was enabled to
detect many errors in the ancient tables. After the
death of Regiomontanus, Walther continued to observe
at Nuremberg during thirty years. His observations
were collected by order of the senate of Nuremberg,
and published by Schöner in 1544, a second time by
Snellius, and, lastly, along with those of Tycho Brahe.
In 1484 Walther began to make use of clocks, then a
recent invention, to measure time in celestial observa-
tions. He was also the first who employed the planet
Venus in determining the longitudes of the stars.
Nuremberg had the honor of producing another astro-
nomer of some celebrity. John Werner was the first
who explained the method, which was afterwards
brought into general use by Maskelyne, of finding the
longitude at sea, by observing the distance of a fixed
star and the moon. He published some mathematical
and geographical treatises, and made a number of obser-
A S T
587.
vations to determine the obliquity of the ecliptic and
the precession of the equinoxes.
We come now to the period of the overthrow of the
Ptolemaic system and the total renovation of the science
of astronomy, which was due to the labors of Coper-
nicus. The system which is associated with the name of
Copernicus is now so familiar to every one, that it is
almost unnecessary to describe it. - The heaven, com-
posed of stars perfectly at rest, occupies the remotest
bounds of space, then the orbit of Saturn, next Jupiter,
Mars, and Earth (accompanied by its moon), Venus,
Mercury, and, lastly, the Sun immovable at the centre.
By this arrangement the stations and retrogradations of
the planets became simple mathematical corollaries,
following from the differences of the radii or other
orbits and their unequal motions. The diurnal rotation
of the earth explained more simply and rationally the
apparent daily revolution of the heavens; and the pre-
cession of the equinoxes was referred to a small variation
in the inclination of the earth's axis to the plane of the
ecliptic. But the simplicity of the system, and its con-
sequent probability, were the only arguments which
Copernicus was able to bring forward in proof of its
reality. The motion of the earth can, indeed, never be
made an object of ocular demonstration; but after
Richer's discovery of the diminution of gravity towards
the equator, it was impossible to doubt longer of the
existence of its rotary motion; and when Roemer had
measured the velocity of light, and Bradley, observed
the phenomena of aberration, the evidences of its annual
revolution were rendered equally convincing. Great,
however, as were the merits of Copernicus, it must
be acknowledged that he left his system in a very
imperfect state. After the example of the ancients,
he assumed as an axiom the uniform circular motion
of the planets; and as the only motions, which are ob-
served are in a state of incessant variation, he was
obliged, in order to explain the inequalities, to suppose
a different centre to each of his orbits. The sun was
placed within the orbit of each of the planets, but not
in the centre of any of them, consequently he had no
other office to perform than to distribute light and heat;
being excluded from any influence on the system, he
became as it were a stranger to all the motions. Yet
notwithstanding these and other imperfections, the
establishment of the doctrine of the earth’s motion,
with an evidence which dissipated the illusions of sense,
was a great step towards the true knowledge of the
planetary system ; and when we consider the ignorance
and prejudices of the age, we cannot hesitate to admit
his claim to a high rank among philosophers. But
whether the actual services which he rendered to astron-
omy are commensurate with the great ſame he has
obtained, may admit of doubt. He revived an ancient
opinion opposed to the prejudices and religious dogmas
of his times, and fortified it with new and strong,
though not absolutely convincing, proofs. It seldom
happens, however, with regard to those sciences which
ultimately appeal to experience, that general reasoning,
even of the soundest kind, tends much to their real
advancement; and there is little reason for thinking that
astronomy would have been less perfect, or that any
discoveries since made in it would have been retarded a
single day, even if Corpernicus had never lived. His
great merit, like that of Lord Bacon, consists in the
sound views which he took of nature, and in advancing
so far before the general attainments of his age. For
the events of his life see COPERNICU.S.
Tycho Brahe stands next in chronological order on the
roll of those who have contributed to the progress of
astronomy. As an indefatigable and skilful observer,
he is justly considered as far superior to any astronomer
who had preceeded him since the revival of the science in
Europe. His ample fortune gave him the means of pro-
curing the best instruments which the age could produce;.
and by his ingenuity and persevering application, he was.
admirably qualified to employ them to the best advan-
tage. He computed the first table of refractions, and if
it extended only to 45°, the reason was, that the effects.
of refraction, at a higher altitude, were altogether in-
sensible to his instruments. His solar tables were
brought to so great a degree of exactness, that he affirms.
he could never detect an error in them exceeding a
quarter of a minute; but there is reason to suspect some
exaggeration in this statement, particularly as Cassini, a
century after, with much better means, could scarcely
answer for errors of a whole minute. He contributed
greatly to the improvement of the lunar tables, and
detected a considerable inequality in the moon’s motion
in longitude, to which he gave the name of Varzazion,
by which it has ever since been distinguished. He also
discovered an equation in latitude similar to the evection
which has been observed by Hipparchus, and fixed its.
amount with great accuracy. He remarked the fourth
inequality of the moon in longitude, although he failed in
his attempt to ascertain its amount, or assign its law.
He represented the inequalities of the motions of the
nodes, and the inclination of the lunar orbit, by the
motion of the pole of that orbit in a small circle around
the pole of the ecliptic. He demonstrated that the
region of the comets is far beyond the orbit of the moon,
and determined the relative and absolute positions of 777
fixed stars with scrupulous exactness, which gave his,
catalogue an immense superiority over those of Hippar-
chus and Ulugh Begh; and he left to his successors a.
regular series of observations of the planets, amassed for
the purpose of establishing the truth of his own system,
but of which Kepler made a better use by employing them
to establish the system of Copernicus. For an account.
of his lite, see BRAHE, TYCHO.
The great mass of accurate observations accumulated
by Tycho furnished the materials out of which his dis-
ciple Kepler may be said to have constructed the edifice.
of the universe. The observations of the Danish as-
tronomer had furnished the latter with the means of
establishing with certainty the truth or inaccuracy of the
various hypotheses which he successively imagined; and
the diligence with which he labored in comparing and
calculating these observations during 20 years, was.
finally rewarded by some of the most important discov-
eries which had yet been made in astronomy. Deceived
by an opinion which had been adopted by Copernicus,
and had never been called in question by the ancients,
that all the celestial motions are performed in circles, he
long fruitlessly endeavored to represent by that hypoth-
esis the irregular motions of Mars; and after having
computed with incredible labor the observations of
seven oppositions of that planet, he at length discovered
that the motions could only be accurately represented by
supposing the planet to move in an ellipse, having the
sun in one of its foci. Having arrived at this important
result, he next proceeded to consider the angular motion
of the planet, and finding that it was not uniform in.
respect of any point situated within the orbit, he con-
cluded that uniform motion, till then universally re-
ceived as an axiom, had no existence in nature. He
perceived, however, that the areas described in equal
times by the radius vector of the planet, at its greatest
and least distances, were equal; and subsequent observa-
tions enabled him to demonstrate that this equality
extended to every point of the orbit. It was therefore
discovered that Mars moves in an elliptic orbit, of which
the sun occupies a focus, and in such a manner, that the
arca described by a line drawn from the centre of the
*
588
A S T
planet to that of the sun is always proportional to the
time of description. The same conclusions he found to
be true in respect of the orbit of the earth; and there-
fore he could no longer hesitate to extend them by
analogy to the other planets. These are two of the
three general principles which are known by the name
of the “Laws of Kepler.”
It was some years later before Kepler arrived at the
knowledge of the analogy which subsists between the
distances of the several planets from the Sun, and the
periods in which they complete their revolutions. To
the discovery of this analogy he attached the greatest
importance, and regarded all his other labors as incom-
plete without it. After having imagined numberless
hypotheses, it at last occurred to him to compare the
different powers of the numbers which express the dis-
tances and times of revolutions; and he found, that the
squares of the periodic times of the planets are always
in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean dis-
tances from the sun. This is the third law of Kepler.
He demonstrated it to be true of all the planets then
known. It has been found to be equally true in regard
to those which have been since discovered, and likewise
to prevail in the systems of the satellites of Jupiter and
Saturn. It is, indeed, as can be shown mathematically,
a necessary consequence of the law of gravitation —
directly as the masses, and inversely as the squares of
the distances.
By these brilliant discoveries, the solar system was
reduced to that degree of beautiful simplicity which had
been conceived by Copernicus, but from which that
great astronomer had found himself constrained to
depart. The sun could not occupy the common centre
of the circular orbits, but his place is in the common
focus of the elliptic orbits of all the planets; and it is to
this focus that every motion is to be referred, and from
this that every distance is to be measured. The dis-
covery of the elliptic motion, of the proportionality of
the areas to the times, and the method of dividing an
ellipse, by straight lines drawn from the focus to the
periphery, into segments having a given ratio, formed
the solution of a problem which had been the constant
object of the labors of all astronomers from Ptolemy to
Tycho, namely, to assign the place of the planet at any
instant of time whatever. The tables which he com-
puted for the elliptic motions form the model of those
in present use. Some additions have been made in con-
sequence of perturbations which the geometry of Kepler
was inadequate to estimate, and which were only par-
tially detected by the genius of Newton. It has been
considered matter of surprise that Kepler did not think
of extending the laws of the elliptic motion to the
comets. Prepossessed with the idea that they never
return aſter their passage to the sun, he imagined that
it would only be a waste of time to attempt the calcula-
tion of the orbits of bodies which had so transitory an
existence. He supposed the tail to be produced by the
action of the solar rays, which, in traversing the body
of the comet, continually carry off the most subtile par-
ticles, so that the whole mass must be ultimately anni-
hilated by the successive detachment of the particles.
He therefore neglected to study their motions, and left
to others a share of the glory resulting from the discovery
of the true paths of the celestial bodies.
The observations of eclipses had formed the principal
object of the earliest astronomers, but it was Kepler
who first showed the practical advantages which may be
Kierived from them, by giving an example of the method
of calculating a difference of meridians from an eclipse
of the sun. The method extends to occultations of the
stars, and is deservedly considered as the best we pos-
sess for determining geographical longitudes and correct-
ing the tables. He composed a work on optics, replete
with new and interesting views, and gave the first idea of
the telescope with two convex glasses, which has since
been advantageously substituted for that of Galileo.
Prompt to seize every happy idea of his contemporaries,
he perceived with delight the advantages which practical
astronomy would derive from the new invention of the
logarithms and he immediately constructed a table,
from which the logarithms of the natural numbers, sines,
and tangents could be taken at once.
Kepler was not merely an observer and calculator; he
inquired with great diligence into the physical causes of
every phenomenon, and made a near approach to the
discovery of that great principle which maintains and
regulates the planetary motions. He possessed some
very sound and accurate notions of the nature of
gravity, but unfortunately conceived it to diminish
simply in proportion to the distance, although he had
demonstrated that the intensity of light is reciprocally
proportional to the surface over which it is spread, or
inversely as the square of the distance from the luminous
body. In his famous work De Ste//a Martis, which
contains the discovery of the laws of the planetary
motions, he distinctly states that gravity is a corporeal
affection, reciprocal between two bodies of the same
kind, which tends, like the action of the magnet, to
bring them together, so that when the earth attracts a
stone, the stone at the same time attracts the earth, but
by a force feebler in proportion, as it contains a smaller
quantity of matter. Further, if the moon and the
earth were not detained in their respective orbits by an
animal or other equipollent force, the earth would mount
towards the moon one fifty-fourth part of the Interval
which separates them, and the moon would descend the
fifty-three remaining parts, supposing each to have the
same density. He likewise very clearly explains the
cause of the tides in the following passage:—“If the
earth ceased to attract its waters, the whole sea would
mount up and unite itself with the moon. The sphere
of the attracting force of the moon extends even to the
earth, and draws the waters towards the torrid zone, so
that they rise to the point which has the moon in the
zenith.” It is not difficult to imagine how much these
views must have contributed to the immortal discovery
of Newton. (See KEPLE.R.)
Contemporary with Kepler was the illustrious
Galileo whose discoveries, being of a more popular
nature, and far more striking and intelligible to the
generality of mankind, had a much greater immediate
effect on the opinions of the age, and in hastening the
revolution which was soon about to change the whole
face of physics and astronomy. While residing at
Venice, he heard it reported that Metius, a Dutch
optician, had discovered a certain combination of lenses,
by means of which distant objects were approximated
to the sight. This vague and scanty intelligence sufficed
to excite the curiosity of Galileo, who immediately set
about inquiring into the means whereby such an effect
could be produced. His researches were attended with
prompt success, and on the following day he had a
telescope which magnified about three times. It was
formed by the combination of two lenses, a plano-
convex and plano-concave, fitted in a leaden tube. In
a second trial he obtained one which magnified seven
or eight times; and subsequent essays enabled him to
increase the magnifying power to 32 times. On direct-
ing his telescope to the moon, he perceived numerous
inequalities on her surface, the diversified appearances
of which led him to conclude almost with certainty that
the moon is an opaque body similar to the earth, and
reflecting the light of the sun unequally, in consequence
of her superficial asperities. The planet Venus exhib-
A S T
589
ited phases perfectly similar to those of the moon.
These phases had been form-srly announced by Coperni-
cus as a necessary consequence of his system; and the
actual discovery of their existence made it impossible
to doubt the revolution of Venus round the sun. He
detected the four satellites or moons of Jupiter, and, in
honor of his patron, gave them the name of the
“Medicean Stars.” The discovery of these little bodies
circulating round the huge orb of Jupiter afforded
him a strong analogical proof of the annual revolution
of the earth, accompanied by its moon. He perceived
spots on the disk of the sun, from the motions of which
he deduced the rotation of that body about its axis in the
space of 27 days. The singular appearances of Saturn
were beheld by him with no less pleasure than astonish-
ment. His telescope was not sufficiently powerful to
separate the ring from the body of the planet; and to
explain the appearances he supposed Saturn to be com-
posed of three stars almost in contact with one another.
These discoveries proved that the substances of the
celestial bodies are similar to that of the earth, and
demolished the Aristotelian doctrine of their divine
essence and incorruptible nature. They enlarged the
ideas of mankind respecting the planetary system, and
furnished the most convincing arguments in favor of the
doctrines of Copernicus.
Science is indebted to Galileo for two other discoveries
of a different kind, less brilliant perhaps, but of far
greater importance than those which we have yet enu-
merated. These are the isochronism of the vibrations of
the pendulum, and the law of the acceleration of falling
bodies. His telescopic discoveries could not have re-
mained long unknown ; in fact, with the exception of
those of the phases of Venus, and of the triple form of
Saturn, they were all fiercely disputed, even during his
own lifetime. It is now universally admitted that he
was the first who discovered the satellites of Jupiter, and
the spots of the sun ; but the very circumstance of other
claimants to these discoveries having arisen, proves that
they were within the reach of ordinary observers. For
an account of his eventful life see GALILEO.
While astronomy was making these rapid advances in
the hands of Kepler and Galileo, an event occurred in
Scotland which contributed, though less directly, no less
powerfully, to the acceleration of its progress. This
was the invention of logarithms by Lord Napier, baron
of Merchiston; “an admirable artifice,” says Laplace,
“which by reducing to a few days the labor. of many
months, doubles the life of the astronomer, and spares
him the errors and disgust inseparable from long calcu-
lations,— an invention of which the human mind has the
more reason to be proud, inasmuch as it was derived
exclusively from its own resources.” It may be added,
that without this, or some equivalent artifice, the compu-
tations rendered necessary by more correct observations
would far exceed the limits of human patience or indus-
try, and astronomy could never have acquired that pre-
cision and accuracy by which it is now distinguished
above all the other branches of human knowledge.
The same epoch presents to us a great number of
excellent observers, who, although they did not produce
any revolution in the state of astronomy, still rendered
it useful Service. Scheiner is celebrated for his observa-
tions of the solar spots, and his disputes with Galileo.
John Bayer of Augsburg published a description of the
constellations, accompanied by maps, in which the stars
are marked by Greek letters, a simple idea, which has
been universally adopted. Lansberg, a Flemish math-
ematician, published in 1632 a set of astronomical
tables, which, though filled with inaccuracies, rendered
good service to science by apprising Horrox of the
transit of Venus over the sun's disk, which that young
astronomer and his friend Crabtree had the satisfaction
of observing on the 24th of November 1639. They
were the first who ever witnessed that rare phenomenon.
Snellius is celebrated for his measurement of the earth.
Gassendi, who had the merit along with Descartes of
hastening the downfall of the Aristotelian philosophy in
France, made some useful observations, particularly one
of a transit of Mercury in 1631. His works, which fill
six folio volumes, abound with curious and useful
researches. Riccioli, a Jesuit, born at Ferrara in 1598,
contributed to the progress of astronomy, not so much.
by his own discoveries, as by collecting and rendering an
account of those of others. He rejected the system of
Copernicus, and was more zealous in maintaining the
doctrines of the church than in investigating nature;
but his works form a vast repertory of useful informa-
tion. His AWowzam A.Zwuagestuzy, is a collection of the
observations, opinions, and physical explanations of the
phenomena, together with all the methods of computa-
tion then known. He was assisted in his labors by
Grimaldi, who discovered the inflection of light, and he
gave to the principal spots of the moon the names which
are now used by astronomers. 3.
The most accurate observations that were ever made
prior to the adaptation of the telescope to astronomical
instruments were those of Hevelius, a rich citizen of
Dantzic, who devoted his life and a large fortune to the
service of astronomy. Having fitted up an observatory,
and furnished it with the best instruments which could
be procured, he commenced a course of observations,
which he followed assiduously upwards of forty years.
In his Selenographia he has given an accurate de-
scription of the face and spots of the moon, accom-
panied with excellent delineations of her appearance in
her different phases and librations. The idea of mak-
ing drawings of the different phases of the moon had
previously occurred to Gassendi and Peiresc, but they had
not been able to execute the project; indeed, the diffi-
culty attending it was such, that it occupied Hevelius,
who was an excellent draughtsman, as well as ob-
server, during a great number of years. Hevelius
made an immense number of researches on comets; and
finding that the observations could not be represented
by rectilinear or circular orbits, he supposed them to
move in parabolas. During a temporary absence from
Dantzic he had the misfortune to lose, in a great fire
which occurred in the city, his observatory, instruments,
manuscripts, and almost the entire copy of the second
volume of his Mac/lizza Carlestis, which contained the
results of his protracted labors. He was now in his old
age, but his zeal did not give way under the terrible
calamity. He patiently recommenced all his calcula-
tions, reconstructed tables of the Sun, and prepared for
publication his Pirmamentum Sobiesciaſzum, or celestial
chart, which did not appear till after his death. Towards
the latter part of his life the use of telescopic sights
began to be generally adopted. Hevelius, however,
resisted the innovation, and continued to employ plain
sights. This preference given to the ancient method by
so skilful an observer induced Dr. Halley to visit him at
Dantzic, for the purpose of ascertaining, by a compari-
son of observations made at the same time and place,
which of the two methods gave the most correct results.
Dr. Halley observed with the telescope, and Hevelius
with his own instruments; but such was the dexterity he
had acquired through long practice, that the difference
of their observations seldom amounted to more than a
few seconds, and in no case to so much as a minute.
Notwithstanding this agreement, it is to be regretted
that Hevelius did not adopt the new method; for, on
account of the greater precision given to instruments by
the use of the telescope, his observations, which were
590
A. S. T
imade without it, cannot now be admitted in the con-
struction of tables, and consequently are for the most
part useless to astronomy. .
Few individuals have rendered more important ser-
vices to science than Huyghens. His improvement of
the telescope and his application of the pendulum to
'clocks were valuable additions to the machinery of
astronomical investigation. By means of his telescopes
he discovered that the extraordinary appearance exhibited
by Saturn was occasioned by a ring surrounding the body
of the planet, and inclined to the ecliptic in an angle
which he estimated at 21°. He published his observa-
tions of this planet in a work entitled Systema Saturnium,
which still shows some traces of that species of reasoning
from final causes which so greatly disfigures the writings
of Kepler. For example, on discovering the satellite, he
conceived that as the number of satellites now equalled
the number of planets, it was vain to look for more, the
equality being necessary to the harmony of the system.
He lived, however, to witness the discovery of four more
satellites belonging to the same planet. (See HUy-
‘G.H.E.N.S.)
The application of telescopes and micrometers to
graduated instruments forms an important epoch in the
history of astronomy. This happy improvement was
first brought into use by Picard in 1667. Morin, indeed,
had applied a telescope to the quadrant so early as 1634,
and perceived the stars in full day in 1635. In 1669
Picard began to observe the stars on the meridian in the
day time, with a quadrant, to which, in concert with
Azout, he had applied an astronomical telescope having
cross wires in its focus. , Huyghens invented the plate
micrometer in 1650; Malvasia that with the fixed wires
in 1662; and Azout that with the movable wire in 1666.
{See Delambre, Astronomie du Moyen Age, p. 618;
note by Bouvard.) It is principally to these ingenious
inventions and the fine application of the pendulum to
clocks by Huyghens in 1656, that we must attribute the
rapid progress since made in practical astronomy, and
the extreme precision of modern observations. Picard
was also the first who introduced the modern method of
determining the right ascensions of the stars, by observ-
ing their meridional passages, and employed the pendu-
lum for that purpose. He likewise introduced the
method of corresponding altitudes, and is entitled to be
regarded as the founder of modern astronomy in France.
Roemer, the friend and pupil of Picard, discovered the
progressive motion of light in 1675, and measured its
velocity by means of the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites.
He was the first who erected a transit instrument, which
gave a new accuracy to observations of right ascension.
The Royal Observatory of Paris was completed in
1670, and its direction intrusted to Dominic Cassini,
who enriched astronomy with a great number of valuable
observations and new discoveries. He determined the
motions of Jupiter’s satellites from observations of their
•eclipses, and constructed tables of them, which were
found to be remarkably exact. He observed that the ring
of Saturn is double, and discovered four of the satellites
of that planet. He also determined the rotation of
Jupiter and Mars, and made a number of observations
on Venus with the same view. He observed the zodiacal
light, and made a near approximation to the parallax of
the sun. We also owe to him the first table of refrac-
tions calculated on correct principles, and a complete
theory of the libration of the moon. Galileo had only
observed the libration in latitude; Hevelius explained
the libration in longitude, by supposing that the moon
always presents the same face to the centre of her orbit,
of which the earth occupies a focus. Cassini made the
important remark, that the axis of rotation of the moon
is inclined to the ecliptic, and that its nodes coincide
with those of the lunar orbit, so that the poles of the
orbit, ecliptic, and equator of the moon, are on the
same circle of latitude, the pole of the ecliptic being
situated between the other two. Though the greater
number of these discoveries were only of secondary
importance, Cassini, nevertheless, obtained an extraor-
dinary reputation. Lalande remarks, that in his hand
astronomy underwent the most signal revolutions, and
that his name is, in France, almost synonymous with
that of creator of the science. Delambre has, however,
expressed a different and far more accurate view of the
real services of Cassini in the following terms : —
“The revolution in astronomy was brought about by
Copernicus, by the laws of Kepler, by the pendulum of
Huyghens, by the micrometers of Azout and Picard, by
the sectors and mural of Picard and his method of cor-
responding altitudes, by the transit instruments of
Roemer; and Cassini appears to us an entire stranger
to all these innovations. He followed another route;
he devoted a long life to painful observations, which at
last deprived him of sight. Let us not refuse him the
praise he has so well merited, but let us reserve a place
in our esteem for labors less brilliant perhaps, but of
greater and more permanent utility, and which evince
at least equal talent and sagacity.”
Cassini was assisted in his observations by his nephew,
James Philip Maraldi, who determined the regression of
the nodes, and the progressive motion of the apsides of
the orbit of Jupiter. This astronomer also corrected
the theory of Mars, and observed the sun’s parallax.
He rejected the hypothesis of the progressive motion of
light, as being insufficient to explain the inequalities of
Jupiter's satellites; and he conceived the design of form-
ing a new catalogue of the stars, which, however, was
never executed. He died in 1729.
There is no period in the history of mankind so dis-
tinguished by great and important discoveries, or so
remarkable for the rapid development of the human
intellect, as the 17th century. We have already noticed
the invention of the pendulum, and its application to
regulate the motion of timekeepers; the invention of the
telescope, bringing within the range of vision the
phenomena of new worlds; of logarithms, by which
computations are so much abridged; and of the mechani-
cal contrivances for measuring minute angles in the
heavens. The same century witnessed the application
of algebra to geometry, the discovery of the laws of
the planetary motions, the infinitesimal calculus, the
acceleration of falling bodies, the sublime theory of
central forces, and the great principle of gravitation
which connects the celestial orbs, and regulates the
motions which it had been the business of the astrono-
mer to observe since the earliest ages of the world.
The service which the discovery of these primary laws
rendered to the progress of astronomy can scarcely be
exaggerated. Many of the inequalitics of the planetary
motions, in consequence of their minuteness and the
slowness with which they occur, could not have been
detected by observation ; others might perhaps have
been perceived, but we should still have been ignorant
whether their constant accumulation might not ulti-
mately change the state of the system, and, by destroy-
ing all confidence in the tables, demolish the fabric
which had been reared at such a vast expense of time
and labor. But when these inequalities are detected by
theory, and separated from the mean motions with which
they were blended, it becomes an object of the highest
interest to confirm their existence by the most delicate
and accurate observations. Hence, a more refined
practice has constantly followed every theoretical dis-
covery. Besides, it is the perfection of theory, and not
the mere knowledge of isolated facts, which gives
A S T
59 I
astronomy its greatest value in the eyes of the philoso-
pher. Numerous and important as its applications are,
they have but a subordinate interest, in comparison with
the knowledge of those general laws to which every
particle of matter in the universe is subject, and by the
discovery of which man has penetrated so deeply into
the mysteries of nature.
By the discovery of the law of gravitation, Newton
laid the foundations of physical astronomy ; and by the
consequences which he deduced from that law, he pro-
ceeded far in the erection of the superstructure. He
showed that the motions of all the bodies of the plan-
'etary system are regulated by its influence; he deter-
mined the figure of the earth on the supposition of its
homogeneity: he gave a theory of the tides, discovered
the cause of the precession of the equinoxes, and deter-
mined some of the principal lunar inequalities and plan-
etary perturbations. Many of his theories were leſt in
an imperſect state; for it is not in matters of science
that it is given to the same individual to invent and
bring to perfection ; their complete development re-
quired that several subsidiary sciences should be farther
advanced ; but it has been the triumph of his system,
that every subsequent discovery has only tended to
strengthen and confirm it.
While physical astronomy was undergoing a complete
revolution in the hands of Newton, the practical part
was receiving great improvement from Flamsteed, the
first astronomer royal, who conducted the Greenwich
Observatory. This celebrated institution, from which
so many important discoveries have emanated, was
erected under the reign of Charles II., in 1675. Flam-
'steed was appointed to it in 1676, and continued with
indefatigable zeal to discharge the duties of the office
during the long period of 33 years. In the course of
this time he made an immense number of excellent ob-
servations, the results of which are given in the His/oria
Carlestis, the first "edition of which was published in
I712, at the expense of Prince George of Denmark, the
husband of Queen Anne. The second appeared in
I723, some time after the death of the author, in three
volumes folio. The first volume contains the observa-
tions which he made, first at Derby, and afterwards at
Greenwich, of the fixed stars, planets, comets, spots of
the Sun, and Jupiter’s satellites. The second volume
contains the transits of the planets and stars over the
meridian, and the places of the planets deduced from
these observations. The third contains a historical
notice, in which he gives a description of the instru-
ments used by Tycho and himself; catalogues of fixed
stars by Ptolemy, Ulugh Begh, Tycho, the landgrave of
Hesse, and Hevelis; together with the British Catalogue,
containing the places of 2884 stars. The labors of Flam-
steed were, however, confined entirely to the practical part
of astronomy. He made no improvements in theory; but
he is entitled to the merit of having been the first who
brought into common use the method of simultaneously ob-
serving the right ascension of the sun and a star, a method
by means of which the determination of the positions of
the stars is reduced to the observation of meridional tran-
sits and altitudes. He was likewise the first who explained
the true principles of the equation of time; and he im-
proved the lunar tables by introducing into them the
annual equation which had been suggested by Horrox.
Flamsteed was succeeded in the observatory by Halley,
who held a prominent place among English astronomers.
From early youth he applied himself with ardor to the
study of mathematics and astronomy; and having pro-
cured a few instruments, he began to make observations,
by which he was led to remark the inaccuracy of the
tables of Jupiter and Saturn. In his 19th year he pub-
lished a direct and geometrical method of finding the
eccentricities and aphelia of the orbits of the planets;
and in the year following he undertook a voyage to
St. Helena, with a view to form a catalogue of the stars
in the southern hemisphere. The station was unfortu-
nately chosen, for, owing to the incessant rains and
ſogy atmosphere of that island, he was able to deter-
mime the places of only 36O stars in the course of a
whole year. He had, however, the satisfaction of
observing a transit of Mercury over the sun's disk, a
phenomenon which suggested to him the important idea,
that the transits of the inferior planets might be advan-
tageously employed in determining one of the most
essential elements of the planetary system, viz., the
parallax of the sun, and consequently the diameters of
the orbits. The method has since been successfully
employed in the case of Venus: the transits of Mer:
cury, though much more frequent, are not so well
adapted to the purpose. The other additions which he
made to astronomical knowledge are chiefly recorded in
his Synopsis Astronomia Come electe,_ a work abounding
in profound and original views, and which, in respect of
theory, formed perhaps the most remarkable accession to
the science that had been made since the time of Kepler.
In this work he revived an ancient opinion, that the
comets belong to the solar system, and move in very
eccentric orbits round the sun, returning after Stated but
long intervals. He also ventured to predict that the
comet of 1681 would again return to its perihelion in
1759,-the first prediction of the kind ever verified.
In 1720 Halley was appointed to succeed Flamsteed in
the Royal Observatory; and though then in the 64th
year of his age, he undertook, with a view to improve
the lunar theory, to observe the moon through a whole
revolution of her nodes, erroneously supposing that after
such a revolution the errors of the tables would again
appear in the same order. He was the first who, by a
comparison of ancient and modern observations, re-
marked the acceleration of the mean motion of the
moon, and thus called the attention of mathematicians
to an important and curious phenomenon, the physical
cause of which was at length detected by the powerful
analysis of Laplace. He was also the first who pointed
out the secular inequalities of Jupiter and Saturn, occa-
sioned by their mutual pertubations,— a theory that
formed the subject of several profound memoirs of Euler
and Lagrange, and for the complete development of
which astronomy is likewise indebted to Laplace. (See
HALLEY.)
The discoveries of Bradley, who succeeded Halley as
astronomer royal, form a memorable epoch in the his-
tory of the science. It was reserved to him to give the
theoretical explanation of a singular motion of the polar
star which had been first observed by Picard, who had
remarked that the inequality was annual, and amounted
to about 40 seconds, but had been unable to refer it to
any law. Hooke, in 1674, a few years after the obser-
vations of Picard, imagined that he had discovered a
parallax in some of the stars; and Flamsteed,
following the ideas of Hooke, explained, by means of
parallax, the minute changes of position which he had
observed in Polaris and some circumpolar stars. Man-
ſredi and Cassini demonstrated the error of Flamsteed,
but were not more successful in their attempts to explain
the motion in question. Samuel Molyneux conceived
the idea of verifying all that had been said respecting
the supposed parallaxes, and for this purpose commenced
a series of observations at Kew, with an excellent 24-
feet sector constructed by Graham. Bradley, who hap-
pened at that time to reside at Kew, took part in these
observations, the result of which was, that the remarks
of Picard were confirmed beyond the possibility of
doubt. It was, however, abundantly evident that the
592
A S T
Apparent motions observed were not connected in any
Amanner with parallax ; it therefore became an object of
the greatest interest to determine their physical cause,
and assign their law and period. The first idea that
occurred was to inquire whether they arose from a
change of position in the earth's axis; but this supposi-
tion was found to be inadequate to the explanation of
the phenomena. Molyneux having been in the mean-
time appointed a lord of the Admiralty, the observations
were discontinued at Kew ; they were, however, shortly
after resumed by Bradley at Wanstead, with a smaller
but more convenient instrument; and after they had
been continued several years, it was found that the star
(7 Draconis) on which they were principally made,
appeared to describe annually a small ellipse, the trans-
verse axis of which amounted to 40". This was an
important determination; for the ellipse afforded the
means of computing at all times the aberration of any
star whatever, whether in longitude, latitude, declina-
tion, or right ascension. Bradley also pointed out the
physical cause of the aberration, and demonstrated that
it resulted from the combination of the motion of light
with the annual motion of the earth. This very remark-
able and important discovery was made in 1728.
Bradley, anxious to verify his ingenious theory, con-
tinued his observations, and soon felt the difficulty that
had so much embarrassed Picard. The places of the
stars, calculated according to his formula for the aberra-
tion, could not be reconciled with the observations.
The errors continued to augment during nine years, after
which they went on diminishing during the nine years
following. This inequality, of which the period, like
that of the nodes of the moon, was 18 years, was readily
explained by supposing a slight oscillaton of the earth’s
axis, occasioned by the action of the moon on the pro-
tuberant parts surrounding the equator of the terrestrial
spheroid. After assiduously observing its effects dur-
ing, twenty years, Bradley found that the phenomena
could be accurately represented by giving the pole of
the equator a retrograde motion about its mean place
in an ellipse whose axes are 18" and 16", and complet-
ing its revolution in the period of 18 years. This result
was communicated to the Royal Society in 1748. To
these two grand discoveries of Bradley, the aberration
and nutation, modern astronomy is greatly indebted for
its accuracy and precision; and as Delambre remarks,
they assure to their author a distinguished place, after
Hipparchus and Kepler, among the astronomers of all
ages and all countries. For the biography see BRADLEY,
JAMES.
While England was witnessing the brilliant discov-
eries of Bradley, France produced a number of
excellent astronomers, by whose successful labors every
department of the science was signally promoted.
Among these Lacaille is distinguished, both by his
scientific zeal and the importance of his observations.
In 1751 he undertook a voyage to the Cape of Good
Hope, the primary objects of which were to determine
the sun’s parallax, by means of observations of the paral-
laxes of Mars and Venus, while similar observations
were made in Europe, and to form a catalogue of the
Southern circumpolar stars. No undertaking for the
benefit of science was ever more successfully executed.
In the course of a single year, Lacaille, without assist-
ance, observed upwards of IO,Ooo stars, situated between
the tropic of Capricorn and the pole, and computed the
places of 1942 of them. The details of his observations
were published in the Caelum Australe Stelliferum,
which appeared in 1763. During the same time he
measured a degree of the meridian, and made numerous
observations of the moon simultaneous with those of
Lalande (who observed at Berlin), in order to determine
the moon's parallax by means of direct observations
made at the extremities of a meridional arc of upwards
of 859. Astronomy is likewise indebted to Lacaille for
a table of refractions, which he computed from a com-
parison of above 300 observations made at the Cape
and at Paris. In 1757 he published his Astronomia Fuzz
damenta, in which he gave rules and tables for comput.
ing the apparent motions of the stars, which continued
to be employed till Lambert supplied the corrections
depending on the mutation, and Delambre those depend-
ing on the aberration.
The question of the figure of the earth furnished am-
ple materials for the practical as well as the speculative
astronomer during the 18th century. The results of the
measurement of the meridian by Cassini were at variance
with the theories of Newton and Huyghens; and the
Academy of Sciences resolved on making a decisive ex-
periment by the actual measurement of the lengths of two
degrees, one at the equator, and another in as high a
latitude as could be reached. In the year 1735, three
astronomers—Godin, Boguer, and La Condamine—were
commissioned by the French Government to accomplish
the first of these objects in Peru; and the year follow-
ing, Maupertuis, Clairaut, Camus, and Lemonnier went
to Lapland to execute the second under the polar circle.
Notwithstanding the greater difficulties they had to con-
tend with, the first party were the more successful; but
the result of both operations established the compres-
sion of the earth at the poles. Boguer published the
details of the Peruvian measurement in an admirable
work On the Figure of the Earth, in which he has also
inserted an account of a great number of experiments
made by him in the same country to determine the length
of the seconds' pendulum, and the effects of the attrac-
tion of mountains on the plumb-line. Boguer is likewise
the author of an excellent treatise on light. The details of
the labors of numerous other observers in the various
countries of Europe will be found under their respective
names. Here it is sufficient to indicate briefly the share
each had in the development of the science.
Delisle formed a school of astronomy in Russia, and
left a method of computing the heliocentric places of
the sun's spots and of Mercury and Venus in their tran-
sits over the sun's disk, and likewise of determining, by
means of the stereographic projection, the directions
of their paths when they enter and leave the disk.
Wargentin, secretary of the Academy of Sciences
of Stockholm, devoted himself specially to the cor-
rection of the tables of the satellites of Jupiter. The
theory of the satellites was not then far advanced ;
but when theory failed him, he profited by the
remarks of others and by his own reflections, and
endeavored by repeated trials to find empirical equa-
tions capable of reconciling the tables with the best ob-
servations. By confining himself almost exclusively to
this subject he acquired a high reputation, and was
ranked among the first astronomers of an epoch which
abounds in great names. His tables of the satellites
have, on account of their superior accuracy, been em-
ployed in determining the masses and other elements,
which serve as the basis of the analytical theories.
Maskelyne, the second English astronomer royal after
Bradley, was appointed, in 1761, to observe the transit
of Venus at the island of St. Helena, and endeavor to:
verify the existence of a small parallax of the star
Sirius, which seemed to be indicated by the observations
of Lacaille at the Cape. Unfortunately, the state of
the weather prevented him from observing the transit;
and his observations on Sirius were abandoned in con-
sequence of the discovery of a defect in the zenith
sector which he had carried out with him for the pur-
pose of making the observations in question. The
A S T
593
main objects of his voyage were thus frustrated; but
some indirect advantages, notably the improvement of
the sector by Ramsden, resulted from it, which com-
pensated in some measure for the disappointment. At
St. Helena he made several interesting observations of
the tides, the variation of the compass, the moon's
horary parallaxes, &c. In going out and returning
home he paid particular attention to the different methods
of finding the longitude at sea, and practised that which
depends on observations of the lunar distances from
known stars, taken with Hadley’s sextant, or some
other reflecting instrument. In the year 1765 he was
appointed astronomer royal, and soon after recommended
to the Board of Longitude the general adoption in the
navy of the lunar method of finding the longitude, and
proposed that tables for facilitating that method should
be calculated and published in the Mautical A/manac.
This recommendation was adopted, and the AWautical
A/manae continued to be published under his superin-
tendence during forty-eight successive years.
Sir William Herschel, born in Hanover in 1738, has
rendered his name immortal by the discovery of a new
planet beyond the orbit of Saturn, and thereby doubling
the ancient boundaries of the solar system. Having
settled in England at Bath, he began to devote his leis-
ure to the construction of telescopes and the polishing
of reflecting mirrors. Endowed with equal skill and
patience, he soon. obtained instruments superior to any
that had been known before, by means of which he was
led to the most brilliant discoveries that have been made
in the heavens since the time of Galileo. Being em-
ployed in making a review of the sky with a powerful
telescope, he perceived, on the 13th of March 1781,
near the feet of Gemini, a star of the fifth magnitude,
having a disk perfectly well defined, and differing in
appearance from other stars which afforded the same
quantity of light. On observing it with a telescope
whose magnifying power was 932, he perceived its diam-
eter was enlarged while that of the stars underwent no
change. These circumstances were sufficient to draw
his attention to the star, and nothing more was requisite
to enable him speedily to discover that it had a slow
motion. He at first Supposed it was a comet, and
acquainted Dr. Maskelyne with the discovery. The cir-
cumstance was soon made known at Paris; and it was
gradually perceived, that as the distance of the star did
not sensibly vary, it was necessary to regard it as a sev-
eath planet. Herschel, in honor of his patron George
III., gave it the name of the Georgium Sidus ; but the
mythological appellation of Uranus has prevailed. On
the 11th of January 1787 he discovered two satellites
revolving round the new planet, and subsequently found
that it was accompanied by four others. It was soon
noticed that Uranus had been observed by Flamsteed,
Mayer, and Lemonnier, who had each supposed it to be
one of the fixed stars. Their observations enabled De-
lambre to correct the elements of the orbit, and calcu-
late tables of its motion. By means of his powerful
telescopes Herschel determined the figure and rotation
of Saturn, discovered the parallel belts on his surface
and perceived that the ring is double. In 1789 he dis-
covered two new satellites belonging to this planet,
revolving near the ring. From some appearances indi-
cated by the fixed stars, Herschel was led to conclude
that the whole solar system is in motion about some dis-
tant centre, and that its direction is at present towards
the constellation Hercules, – a conclusion which recent
investigations have verified. His observations on nebulae
and double stars opened up a new field of research,
boundless in extent, and interesting by reason of the
variety of the objects it presents to the attention of the
observer. The extraordinary activity with which he
pursued his favorite occupations is attested by 67 mem-
oirs communicated by him from time to time to the
Royal Society.
Few individuals have contributed so much to the per-
fection of modern astronomy as Delambre, for many
years perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences.
Associated with Mechain, he was employed during the
troubles of the French Revolution in measuring the
meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona, a labor which
was prosecuted with admirable zeal in the face of in-
numerable difficulties, and even dangers of the most
formidable kind. By an immense number of excellent
observations he determined the constants which enter
into the formulae deduced from theory by the profound
researches of Lagrange and Laplace, and also formed a
set of tables much more exact than any that had ap-
peared before them. His Astronomie Théorique et
A ratigue, in three quarto volumes, contains the best
rules and methods which have yet been devised for
the guidance of the practical astronomer; and his His-
toire, in six large quarto volumes, gives an acsount of
every successive improvement which has been made in
the science, and a full abstract of every work of cele-
brity which has been written respecting it, from the first
rude observations of the Greeks to the end of the last
century. It is invaluable to the historian, and will
always attest the profound learning and laborious re-
search of its author.
The observatory which was established at Palermo
about the year 1790, under the active superintendence
of Piazzi, holds a distinguished rank among the similar
institutions of Europe. Piazzi, born in 1746, took the
habit of the religious order of the Theatins at Milan,
and finished his novitiate in the convent of St. Anthony.
Among his preceptors he had the advantage of counting
Tiraboschi, Beccaria, Le Soeur, and Jacquier; and from
these illustrious masters he speedily acquired a taste for
mathematics and astronomy. After holding several
professorships in the colleges of the Jesuits at Rome
and Ravenna, he was appointed, in 1780, professor of
the higher mathematics in the Academy of Palermo. A
few years after his appointment he obtained from the
prince of Caramanico, viceroy of the island, permission
to found an observatory, and undertook a voyage to
France and England in order to provide the instru-
ments necessary for the new establishment. Having
procured a vertical circle, a transit, and some other
instruments from Ramsden, he returned to Palermo and
commenced his observations. His first care was to
prepare a new catalogue of stars, the exact positions of
which he justly considered as the basis of all true
astronomy. In prosecuting this object he did not con-
tent himself with a single observation, but before he
fixed the position of any star, observed it several times
successively; and, by this laborious but accurate method,
he constructed his first great catalogue of 67.48 stars,
which was crowned by the Academy of Sciences of
France, and received with admiration by the astrono-
mers of all countries. His constant practice of repeat-
ing his observations led to another brilliant result, the
discovery of an eighth planet. On the 1st of January
1801, Piazzi, searching for the star 87 of the catalogue
of Mayer, cursorily observed a small star of the eighth
magnitude between Aries and Taurus. On the follow-
ing day he remarked that the star had changed its
position, and accordingly supposed it to be a comet.
He communicated his observations to Oriani, who,
seeing that this luminous point had no nebulosity like
the comets, and that it had been stationary and retro-
graded within comparatively small limits like the planets,
computed its elements on the hypothesis of a circular
orbit. He found that this hypothesis agreed with the
38 A -
594
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observations, and other astronomers soon confirmed its
accuracy. He gave the planet the name of Ceres Fer-
dimandea, in honor of Ferdinand, king of Naples, in
whose dom’nions he had made the discovery, and who
proposed to commemorate the event by a gold medal,
struck with the effigy of the astronomer; but Piazzi,
preferring the interests of science to vain honors which
could add nothing to his glory, requested that the
money destined for this purpose should be employed in
the purchase of an equatorial, which was still wanting
to his observatory. In 1814 he published a new cata-
logue, extended to 7646 stars, a splendid monument of
indefatigable zeal and activity. He made an uninter-
rupted series of solstitial observations from 1791 to
1816, for the purpose of determining the obliquity of the
ecliptic, which, compared with those of Bradley, Mayer,
and Lacaille, in 1750, give a diminution of 44" in a year.
We will conclude this part of the article by briefly
adverting to the researches of some illustrious mathema-
ticians who have developed the theory of Newton, and
by whose investigations physical astronomy has been
raised to its present position. Although the law of
gravitation, as proposed by Newton, had from the first
been admitted by all the most eminent astronomers of
Britain, it was for a long time either opposed or neg-
lected on the Continent. In fact, great improvements
were required both in analysis and mechanics before it
admitted of other applications than had been made by
its great author, or could be regarded as anything more
than a plausible hypothesis. Newton demonstrated
that if two bodies only were projected in space, mutually
attracting each other with forces proportional directly
to their masses and inversely to the squares of their dis-
tance, they would each accurately describe an ellipse
round the common centre of gravity; and the spaces
described by the straight line joining that centre and the
moving body would be proportional to the time of
description, according to the second law of Kepler.
But when it is attempted to apply Newton’s law to the
case of the solar system, great difficulties immediately
present themselves. Anyone planet in the system is not
only attracted by the sun, but also, though in a much
smaller degree, by all the other planets, in consequence
of which it is compelled to deviate from the elliptic
path which it would pursue in virtue of the sun's at-
traction alone. Now, the calculation of the effects of
this disturbing force was the problem which geometers
had to resolve. In its most general form it greatly
transcends the power of analysis; but there are particu-
lar cases of it (and those, too, the cases presented by
nature), in which, by reason of certain limitations in the
conditions, it is possible to obtain an approximate solu-
tion to any required degree of exactness. For example,
the Sun? Moon, and Earth form in a manner a system
by themselves, which is very slightly affected by the ag-
gregate attractions of the other planets. In the same
way the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn, form another system,
in which the motions are very little influenced by the
action of any other body. In these two cases, then the
number of bodies to be taken into consideration is only
three ; and in this restricted form, the problem, cele
brated in the history of analysis under the denomination
of “the Problem of Three Bodies,” is susceptible of be-
ing treated mathematically. With the hope of improv-
ing the lunar tables, and of completing the investiga-
tions which Newton had commenced in the Principia,
three distinguished geometers—Clairaut, D'Alembert,
and Euler—about the middle of the last century, under-
took, simultaneously, and without the knowledge of each
other, the investigation of the problem of three bodies,
and commenced that series of brilliant discoveries which
our own times have seen completed.
Clairaut's solution of the problem of three bodies
was presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1747, and
was applied to the case of the moon. From this
solution he deduced with great facility, not only the in-
equality of the variation, which Newton had obtained
by the application of a more complicated though very
ingenious method, but also the evection, the annual
equation, and many other inequalities which Newton
had not succeeded in connecting with his theory. It
happened, however, curiously enough, that in the cal-
culation of one effect of the disturbing force, namely,
the progression of the moon's apogee, Clairaut was led
into an error which produced a result that threatened
to overturn the system of gravitation. The error con-
sisted in the omission of some of the terms of the series
expressing the quantity in question, which he wrongly
supposed to have only an insensible value; and by rea-
son of this omission, his first approximation gave only
half of the observed progressive motion of the apogee.
As this result was confirmed by D'Alembert and Euler,
who had both fallen into the same error, it seemed to
follow, as a necessary consequence, either that the phe-
nomenon depended on some other cause than the dis-
turbing force of the sun, or that the law of gravitation,
was not exactly proportional to the inverse Square of
the distance. The triumph which this result gave to
Cartesians was not of long duration. Clairaut soon
perceived the cause of his error; and by repeating the
process, and carrying the approximations farther, he
found the computed to agree exactly with the observed
progression,--a result which had the effect of dissipat-
ing for ever all doubts respecting the law of gravitation.
The researches of Clairaut were followed by a set of lunar
tables, much more correct than any which had been
previously computed.
The return of the comet of 1682, which Halley had
predicted for the end of 1758 or beginning of 1759,
afforded an excellent opportunity for putting to the test
both the theory of gravitation and the power of the new
calculus. Clairaut applied his solution of the problem
of three bodies to the perturbations which this comet
sustained from Jupiter and Saturn, and, after calcula-
tions of enormous labor, announced to the Academy of
Sciences, in November 1758, that the comet would
return in the beginning of the following year, and pass
through its perihelion about the 15th of April. It
returned according to the prediction, but passed its peri-
helion on the 13th of March. The correction of an
error of computation reduced the difference to nineteen
days; and if Clairaut had been aware of the existence of
the planet Uranus, he might have come still nearer the
truth.
Besides these important researches on the system of
the universe, Clairaut composed an admirable little trea-
tise on the figure of the earth, in which he gave the dif-
ferential equations, till then unknown, of the equilib-
rium of fluids, whether homogeneous or heterogeneous,
supposing an attractive force, following any law what-
ever, to exist among the molecules. He applied these
equations to the earth; demonstrated that the elliptic
figure satisfies the conditions of equilibrium ; and
assigned the ellipticity of the different strata of which
the earth may be supposed to be formed, together with
the law of gravitation at the exterior surface. He like-
wise discovered the important theorem which establishes
a relation between the oblateness of the terrestrial
spheroid and the increase of gravitation towards the
poles, on every supposition which can be imagined
relative to the interior construction of the earth. By
means of this theorem the ellipticity of the spheroid is
deduced from observations of the lengths of the seconds
pendulum at different points of the earth's surface.
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595
D'Alembert, as has already been mentioned, presented
a solution of the problem of three bodies to the Academy
of Sciences at the same time as Clairaut. In the year
1749 he published his treatise on the precession of the
equinoxes—a work remarkable in the history of analy-
sis and mechanics. By means of his newly invented
“Calculus of Partial Differences,” and the discovery of
a fertile principle in dynamics, he determined from the-
ory the rate of the precession, rather more than 50' in
a year. He also determined the nutation of the earth's
axis, which had been discovered by Bradley, and
assigned the ratio of the axes of the small ellipse which
the true pole of the earth describes around its mean
place in the same time in which the nodes of the lunar
orbit complete a revolution. The solution of this prob-
lem led to the determination of the ratio of the attract-
ive forces of the sun and moon, which D’Alembert
found to be that of seven to three very nearly; whence
he inferred that the mass of the earth is 70 times greater
than that of the moon. He proved likewise that the
precession and mutation are the same in every hypothe-
sis concerning the interior constitution of the earth. In
1754 he published the first two volumes of his Researches
on the System of the World. . In this work he applied
the formulae by which he had calculated the motions of
the moon to the motions of the planets disturbed by
their mutual attraction, and pointed out the simplest
method of determining the pertubations of the motions
of a planet occasioned by the action of its own satellites.
D'Alembert also treated the subject of the figure of the
earth in a much more general manner than had been
done by Clairaut, who had confined his investigations
to the case of a spheroid of revolution. He determined
the attraction of a spheroid of small eccentricity, whose
surface can be represented by an algebraic equation of
any order whatever, even supposing the spheroid to be
composed of strata of different densities.
The first memoir of Euler on the planetary perturba-
tions was transmitted to the secretary of the Academy of
Sciences in July 1747, some months before Clairaut and
D’Alembert had communicated their solutions of the
problem of three bodies, and it carried off the prize
which the academy had offered for the analytical theory
‘Of the motions of Jupiter and Saturn. In this memoir
Euler gave the differential equations of the elements of
the disturbed planet, but withheld the analysis by which
he had been conducted to them. This analysis, however,
he subsequently expanded in two memoirs, the first of
which appeared in the Berlin Memoirs in 1749, and the
second in those of St. Petersburg in 1750. Of these sup-
plementary memoirs the first is remarkable on several
accounts. It contains the first example of a method
which has been fruitful of important consequences —
namely, that of the variation of the arbitrary constants
in differential equations, and the development of the
radical quantity which expresses the distance between
two planets in a series of angles, multiples of the elonga-
tions. The expressions which he gave for the several
terms of this series were simple and elegant; and he
demonstrated a curious relation subsisting among any
three consecutive terms, by means of which all the terms
of the series may be calculated from the first two. He
was thus enabled to develop the perturbing forces in
terms of the sines and cosines of angles increasing with
the time, and thereby to surmount a very great analyti-
cal difficulty. Notwithstanding, however, the great
merit of Euler's memoir, several of the formulae express-
ing the secular and periodic inequalities were found to
be inaccurate; and in order to procure a correction of
these errors, and give greater perfection to so important
a theory, the academy again proposed the same subject
for the prize of 1752. This prize was also carried off by
Euler. In the memoir which he presented on this
occasion, he considered simultaneously the motions of
Jupiter and Saturn, and determined, in the first instance,
the amount of their various inequalities, independently
of the consideration of the eccentricities of their orbits.
Pushing the approximation farther, and having regard
to the inequalities depending on the eccentricities, he
arrived at a most important result relative to the periodic
nature of the inequalities occasioned by the mutual per-
turbations of the planets; which laid, the foundation of
the subsequent discovery by Lagrange and Laplace of
the permanent stability of the planetary system. He
demonstrated that the eccentricities and places of the
aphelia of Jupiter and Saturn are subject to constant
variation, which is confined, however, within certain .
fixed limits; and he computed that the elements of the
orbits of the two planets recover their original values
after a lapse of about 30,000 years. In the year 1756
the Academy of Sciences crowned a third memoir of
Euler on the same subject as the two former, namely, the
inequalities of the motions of the planets produced by their
reciprocal attractions. This memoir analytically con-
sidered is also of great value. The method which he
followed and illustrated has since been generally adopted
in researches of the same nature, and consists in regard-
ing as variable, in consequence of the disturbing forces,
the six elements of the elliptic motion, viz.,-Ist, the
major axis of the orbit, which, by the law of Kepler,
gives the ratio of the differential of the mean longitude
to the element of the time; 2d, the epoch of this
longitude ; 3d, the eccentricity of the orbit; 4th, the
motion of the aphelion; 5th, the inclination of the orbit
to a given fixed plane; and, 6th, the longitude of the
node. By considering separately the variations in-
troduced into each of these elements by the disturbing
forces, Euler obtained some important results; but even
in this memoir his theory was not rendered complete.
He did not consider the variation of the epoch; and the
expression which he gave for the motion of the aphelion
did not include that part of it which depends on the
ratio of the eccentricities of the orbits of the disturbed
and disturbing planet. Besides, the third memoir, like
the two former, contained several errors of computation,
which, by leading to results known to be wrong,
probably prevent the author himself from being aware
of the full value of the ingenious methods of procedure
which he had described. Euler concluded this impor-
tant memoir by making an extended application of his
formulae to the orbit of the earth as disturbed by the
action of the planets. From some probable suppositions,
first employed by Newton, relative to the ratios of the
masses of the planets to that of the sun, he determined
the variation of the obliquity of the ecliptic at 48" in a
century, - a result which agrees well with observation.
By this determination the secular variation of the ob-
liquity of the ecliptic, which had been regarded by
Lahire, Lemonnier, D'Alembert, and other eminent
astronomers as uncertain, was placed beyond doubt.
The three memoirs which we have mentioned contain
the principal part of Euler's labors on the perturba-
tions; but physical astronomy is indebted to him for
many other researches. He gave a solution of the
problem of the precession of the equinoxes, and made
several important steps in the lunar theory, with which
he seems to have occupied himself before he undertook
the investigation of the planetary perturbations. . . In the
year 1772, when entirely blind, he directed his son,
Albert Euler, and two illustrious pupils, Krafft and
Lexell, in the composition of a work of enormous
labor on the same subject, which was undertaken with
a view to discover the cause of the moon’s acceleration.
This work was concluded with a set of lunar tables
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deduced entirely from theory; but they were found to
be far inferior to those of Mayer, and in some-respects
hardly equal to those of Clairaut.
The first theory of Euler formed the basis of the
excellent lunar tables whieh were calculated by Tobias
Mayer, and first published in the Memoirs of the Academy
of Göttinger in 1753. Mayer was a skilful astronomer,
and determined the co-efficients of the arguments of the
different lunar inequalities from his own observations.
He continued to correct and improve his tables till the
time of his death, which happened in 1762, when a copy
of them, containing his last corrections, was presented
by his widow to the Board of Longitude in London.
They were printed along with the author's lunar theory
in 1765. Subsequently, the Board of Longitude directed
Mason, who had been assistant to Bradley, to revise them,
under the superintendence of Dr. Maskelyne. Mason
compared them with about 1200 of Bradley's observa-
tions, corrected the co-efficients of Mayer, and introduced
some new equations which had been indicated by that
astronomer, but which he had considered as too uncertain,
or of too small a value, to render it necessary to load his
tables with them. Mayer's tables, thus corrected, were
published in P784, and for a long time continued to be
the most accurate that had appeared.
The solution of the problem of three bodies by
Clairaut, D'Alembert, and Euler, gave rise to many other
important works relative to the theory of the moon, into
the merits of which, however, our limits will not permit us
to enter. Thomas Simpson, Walmesley, Frisi, Lambert,
Schulze, and Matthew Stewart treated the subject with
more or less success; but the complete explication of the
theory of the lunar and planetary perturbations was
reserved for two mathematicians, whose discoveries per-
fected the theory of gravitation, and explained the last
inequalities which remained to be accounted for in the
celestial mottons, –Lagrange and Laplace.
In the year 1764, the Academy of Science of Paris,
which had so successfully promoted the great efforts that
had already been made to perfect the theory of attraction,
proposed for the subject of a prize the theory of the
libration of the moon. Lagrange had the honor of
carrying off the prize; but although he treated the subject
in a manner altogether new, and with extraordinary
analytical skill, he did not on this occasion arrive at a
complete solution of the problem. In 1766 he obtained
another prize for a theory of Jupiter's satellites. In the
admirable memoir which Lagrange presented to the
academy on this subject, he included in the differential
equations of the disturbed motion of a satellite the
attracting force of the sun, as well as of all other satellites,
and thus, in fact, had to consider a problem of six bodies.
His analysis of this problem is remarkable, inasmuch as
it contained the first general method which was given for
determining the variations which the mutual attractions
of the satellites produce in the forms and positions of
their orbits, and pointed out the plan which has since
been so successfully followed in the treatment of similar
questions.
Of all the grand discoveries by which the name of
Lagrange has been importalised, the most remarkable
is that of the invariabfeſty of the mean distances of the
planets from the sun. We have already mentioned that
Euler had perceived that the inequalities of Jupiter and
Saturn, in eonsequence of their mutual actions, are ulti-
mately compensated, though after a very long period.
In prosecuting this subject, which Euter had left imper-
ſect, Laplace had discovered that, on negleeting the
fourth powers in the expressions of the eccentricities and |
inclination of the orbits and the squares of the disturbing
masses, the mean motions of the planets and their mean
distances from the sun are invariable. In a short mem-
gravitation to its remotest consequences.
oir of 14 pages, which appeared among those of the
Berlin Academy for 1776, Lagrange demonstrated gen-
erally, and by a very simple and luminous analysis, that
whatever powers of the eccentricities and inclinations
are included in the calculation of the pertubations, no
Seculiar inequality, or term proportional to the time, can
possibly enter into the expression of the greater axis of
the orbit, or, consequently into the mean motion con-
nected with it by the third law of Kepler. From this
conclusion, which is a necessary consequence of the pecu-
liar conditions of the planetary system, it results that
all the changes to which the orbits of the planets are
subject in consequence of their reciprocal gravitation,
are periodic, and that the system contains within itself no
principle of destruction, but is calculated to endure for
ever.
In 1780 Lagrange undertook a second time the sub-
ject of the moon’s libration; and it is to the memoir
which he now presented to the Berlin Academy that we
must look for the complete and rigorous solution of this
difficult problem, which had not been resolved before in
a satisfactory manner, either on the footing of analysis
or observation. In the same year he obtained the prize
of the Academy of Sciences on the subject of the pertur-
bation of comets. In 1781 he published in the Ber-
lin Memoirs, the first of a series of five papers on the
secular and periodic inequalities of the planets, which
together formed by far the most important work that
had yet appeared on physical astronomy since the pub-
lication of the Principia. This series did not, properly
speaking, contain any new discovery, but it embodied
and brought into one view all the results and peculiar
analytical methods which had appeared in his former
memoirs, and contained the germs of all the happy ideas
which he afterwards developed in the Mécanique Analy-
tigate.
On account of the brilliant discoveries and important
labors which we have thus briefly noticed. Lagrange
must be considered as one of the most successful of
, those illustrious men who have undertaken to perfect
the theory of Newton, and pursue the principle of
But the value
of his services to science is not limited to his discoveries
in physical astronomy, great and numerous as these
were. After Euler, he has contributed more than any
other to increase the power and extend the applications
of the calculus, and thereby to arm future inquiries with
an instrument of greater efficiency, by means of which
they may push their conquests into new and unexplored
fields of discovery.
With the name of Lagrange is associated that of
Laplace, their rival labors dividing the admiration of
the scientific world during half a century. Like Newton
and Lagrange, Laplace raised himself at an early age to
the very highest rank in science. Before completing
his 24th year, he had signalised himself by the impor-
tant discovery of the invariability of the mean distances
of the planets from the sun, on an hypothesis restricted,
indeed, but which, as we have already mentioned, was
afterwards generalised by Lagrange. About the same
time he was admitted into the Academy of Sciences,
and thenceforward devoted himself to the development
of the Haws which regulate the system of the world, and
to the composition of a series of memoirs on the most
important subjects connected with astronomy and
analysis. His researches embraced the whole theory of
gravitation; and he had the high honor of perfecting
what had been left incomplete by his predecessors.
Among the numerous inequalities which affect the
motion of the moon, one still remained which no
philosopher as yet had been able to explain. This was
the acceleration of the mean lunar motion, which had
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597
been first suspected by Halley, from a comparison of
the ancient Babylonian observation, recorded by Hip-
parchus, with those of Albategni and the moderns.
The existence of the acceleration had been confirmed by
Dunthorne and Mayer, and its quantity assigned at Io”
in a century, but the cause & it remained doubtful.
Lagrange demonstrated that it could not be occasioned
by any peculiarity in the form of the earth; Bossut
ascribed it to the resistance of the medium in which he
supposed the moon to move; and Laplace himself at
first explained it on the supposition that gravity is not
transmitted from one body to another instantaneously,
but successively, in the manner of sound or light.
Having afterwards remarked, however, in the course of
his researches on Jupiter's satellites, that the secular
variation of the eccentricity of the orbit of Jupiter
Occasions a secular variation of the mean motions of the
satellites, he hastened to transfer this result to the
moon, and had the satisfaction to find that the acceler-
ation observed by astronomers is occasioned by the
seculiar variation of the eccentricity of the terrestrial
orbit. This conclusion has, however, been partly
invalidated by the recent researches of Adams of Cam-
bridge.
Another discovery relative to the constitution of the
planetary system, which does infinite honor to the sa-
gacity of Laplace, is the cause of the secular inequali-
ties indicated by ancient and modern observations in the
mean motions of Jupiter and Saturn. On examining
the differential equations of the motions of these
planets, Laplace remarked, that as their mean motions
are nearly commensurable (five times the mean motion
of Saturn being nearly equal to twice that of Jupiter),
those terms of which the arguments are five times the
mean longitude of Saturn, minus twice that of Jupiter,
may become very sensible by integration, although
multiplied by the cubes and products of three dimen-
sions of the eccentricities and inclinations of the orbits.
The result of a laborious calculation confirmed his con-
jecture, and showed him that in the mean motion of
Saturn there existed a great inequality, amounting at its
maximum to 48' 2".3, and of which the period is 929
years; and that in the case of Jupiter there exists a corre-
sponding inequality of nearly the same period, of which
the maximum value is 19'46", but which is effected by a
contrary sign, that is to say, it diminishes while the first
increases, and z/ice versdi. He also perceived that the
magnitude of the co-efficients of these inequalities, and
the duration of their periods, are not always the same,
but participate in the secular variations of the elements
of the orbit.
The theory of the figures of the planets, scarcely less
interesting than that of their motions, was also greatly
advanced by the researches of Laplace. He confirmed
the results of Clairaut, Maclaurin, and D’Alembert,
relative to the figure of the earth, and treated the ques.
tion in a much more general way than had been done by
those three great mathematicians. From two lunar in-
equalities depending on the non-sphericity of the earth,
he determined the ellipticity of the meridian to be aſſa
very nearly.
Newton, in the Principia, explained the cause of the
phenomena of the tides, and laid the foundations of a
theory which was prosecuted and extended by IDaniel
I3ernouilli, Maclaurin, Euler, and I)'Alembert; but as
none of these geometers had taken into account the ef-
fects of the rotatory motion of the earth, the subject
was in a great measure new when it was taken up by
Laplace in 1774. Aided by D'Alembert's recent discov-
ery of the calculus of partial differences, and by an im-
proved theory of hydrodynamics, he succeeded in ob-
taining the differential equations of the motion of the
fluids which surround the earth, having regard to all the
forces by which these motions are produced or modified,
and published them in the memoirs of the academy in
1775. By a careful examination of these equations, he
was led to the curious remark, that the differences be-
tween the heights of two consecutive tides about the
time of the solstices, as indicated by Newton's theory,
are not owing, as Newton and his successors had sup-
posed, to the inertia of the waters of the ocean, but de-
pend on a totally different cause, namely, the law of the
depth of the sea, and that it would disappear entirely if
the sea were of a uniform and constant depth. He also
arrived at the important conclusion, that the fluidity of
the sea has no influence on the motions of the terrestrial
axis, which are exactly the same as they would be if the
sea formed a solid mass with the earth. The same
analysis conducted him to the knowledge of the con-
ditions necessary to ensure the permanent equilibrium of
the waters of the ocean. He found that if the mean
density of the earth exceeds that of the sea, the fluid,
deranged by any causes whatever, from its state of
equilibrium, will never depart from that state but by very
small quantities. It follows from this, that, since the
mean density of the earth is known to be about five
times greater than that of the sea, the great changes
which have taken place in the relative situation of the
waters and dry land must be referred to other causes
than the instability of the equilibrium of the ocean.
The chief steps in the progress of the study of tides
since the time of Laplace have consisted in co-ordinat-
ing the results of observation, and analysing them
into their partial phenomena, by the help of Newton’s
and Bernouilli’s theory. This labor has been greatly
advanced by Dr. Whewell, and also by Sir John Lub-
bock. The former has constructed maps of “cotidal
lines,” which, indicating the relative time of high water
in different parts of the globe, give us a graphic concep-
tion of the course and propagation of the tidal wave.
The tides of the Eastern Pacific are but little known;
but a vast wave advances northwards between Australia
and Africa, diverted or retarded by the obstacles it
meets with in the Indian Archipelago. Another (and
to us the most important) branch sets from south to
north up the vast canal of the Atlantic, where it is
gradually complicated by local tides, having their origin
in the wide expanse between Africa and the Gulf of
Mexico. The two sets of waves sometimes reinforce,
sometimes oppose one another; they are prolonged to
the western shores of England and Norway, where the
tidal impulse arrives twenty-four hours after it passed
the Cape of Good Hope. It is propagated most rap-
idly at a distance from coasts, and is retarded in nar-
rows and shallows. It sends offshoots into every bay
and strait, always greatly retarded in point of time (ap-
parently by friction), but often increased in elevation by
concentration of the effect in a gradually narrowing
channel, as we see in the exaggerated tides of the river
Amazon, the Severn, and the Bay of Fundy. The
same place may be the seat of several tides at once,
which may increase or destroy one another; thus, a
small tide is propagated through the Straits of Dover
as far as the Dutch coast, where it only arrives simul-
taneously with the principal wave, which has made the
entire tour of Great Britain.
As regards the progress of theory, Dr. Thomas
Young, one of the greatest philosophers of this century,
next after Laplace grappled with the difficulties of this
arduous subject. Employing mathematical methods of
inferior power but greater directness, and taking into
account causes of local action which Laplace had not
ventured to include in his analysis, he gradually matured
a theory adequate to represent many of the results of
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experience, of which Laplace gives no account. He
distinguishes the results of the forced and free oscilla-
tions of the sea; the former resulting from the direct
action of the sun and moon combined with the rotation
of the earth, and whose periods of rise and fall are de-
termined solely by those external causes; the free waves,
on the contrary, derived from the former, are trans-
mitted with velocities depending on the mechanism of the
fluid itself, on its depth, and on the resistances arising
from friction to which those motions are exposed.
These all-important modifications of the dynamical
theory of the tides were deduced by Young from the
general theory of oscillations and resistances, and from
the laws of fluids detected by Du Buat, and he applied
them with no ordinary skill to the solution of the prob-
lems of tides in oceans, estuaries, and rivers. It is sat-
isfactory to find that by an independent and very differ-
ent method Airy subsequently arrived at substantially
the same results as Young.
Closely connected with the problem of the tides is
that of the precession of the equinoxes, which also re-
ceived similar improvements in passing through the
hands of Laplace. He demonstrated, as has been men-
tioned, that the fluidity of the sea has no influence on
the phenomena of precession and mutation. He considered
Some of the effects of the oblate figure of the earth which
had not been attended to by D'Alembert, and showed
that the annual variation of the precession causes a cor-
responding variation in the length of the tropical year,
which at present is about 9 or io seconds shorter than
it was in the time of Hipparchus. He proved that the
Secular inequalities of the motions of the earth and moon
have no sensible effect in displacing the axis of the earth's
rotation; and he determined the nutation of the lunar
orbit corresponding to the nutation of the terrestrial
equator.
Physical astronomy is also indebted to Laplace for a
complete theory of the system of Jupiter’s satellites,
from which Delambre constructed a set of tables repre-
senting the motions of these bodies with all desirable
accuracy. And when to these numerous and most im-
portant researches we add the mathematical theories of
molecular attraction, and the propagation of sound,
together with many great improvements in analysis —
and reflect, besides, that he is the author of the Mécan-
27ue Céleste, the Système du Monde, and the 7%éories
des A*robabilitiés, we shall not hesitate to rank him
next to Newton among the greatest benefactors of the
mathematical and physical sciences.
By the brilliant discoveries of Laplace, the analytical
solution of the great problem of physical astronomy was
completed. The principle of gravitation, which had
been found by Newton to confine the moon and the
planets to their respective orbits, was shown to occasion
every apparent irregularity, however minute, in the
motions of the planets and satellites; and those very
irregularities which were at first brought forward as
objections to the hypothesis have been ultimately found
to afford the most triumphant proofs of its accuracy,
and have placed the truth of the Newtonian law be-
yond the reach of all future cavil. Such is the state to
which analysis has now attained, that the geometer
embraces in his formulae every circumstance which af.
fects the motions or positions of the different bodies of
the planetary system; and the conditions of that sys-
tem being made known to him at any given instant of
time he can determine its conditions at any other instant
in the past or future duration of the world. He ascends
to remote ages to compare the results of his theories
with the most ancient observations; he passes on to ages
yet to come, and predicts changes which the lapse of
centuries will hardly be sufficient to render sensible to
the observer. But notwithstanding the comparative
perfection to which the theory of astronomy has been
brought, it is still far from having reached the limit
beyond which further refinement becomes superfluous.
The masses of the planets, and some other elements,
remain to be determined with still greater precision, by
a diligent comparison of the analytical formulae with
good observations; and the labors of the geometer may
still be beneficially employed in giving greater simplicity
to the calculus, or in extending its power over subjects
which have hitherto eluded its grasp. The observation
of periodic comets that complete their revolutions in
comparatively short intervals of time, opens up an inter-
esting field for speculation and research, and will doubt-
less be the means of throwing light on some curious
and as yet very obscure points, respecting the appear-
ances, motions, and physical constitution of those strange
bodies.
In the other departments of astronomy, also, numer-
ous questions still remain to be discussed, the solution of
which will occupy and reward the future labors of
astronomers, and in which much progress has been
made during the present century, by means of the
powerful instruments now employed at the great observº
atories of every civilised country, and the improved
methods of analysis brought to bear upon the results of
observation. The curious phenomena of double and
multiple stars, some of which are found to form con-
nected systems of bodies revolving about one another, or
a common centre of motion,-- the variable stars, the
proper motions of the stars, the translation of the
solar system in space,— the progressive condensation of
nebulae, are subjects still in a great measure new ; for
it is only of late years that observers have begun to
direct the requisite attention towards them, or indeed
have been in possession of instruments of sufficient power
and delicacy to observe and measure the minute changes
which take place beyond the boundaries of our own
system. The discoveries in astronomy during the present
century have been so brilliant and numerous, and the
progress in every department is so rapid, and involves so
many details, that it would be impossible to give here a
detailed account of that progress. Moreover, there is a
reason for not attempting this, in the circumstance that
we have brought the history of our subject as far as is
possible without considering the work of men still living.
For although some to whom the astronomy of the
present day is indebted, and not a few who must always
be regarded as among the leading astronomers of the
century, have passed away, yet the consideration even
of their work would necessarily introduce the discussion
of the labors of those whose labors are still in progress.
ASTRUC, JEAN, a celebrated physician, was born in
1684 at Sauves, in Languedoc. His father, a Protestant
clergyman, bestowed great pains upon his early edu-
cation, after which he studied at the university of Mont-
pellier, where, having commenced the study of medicine,
he took his degree as doctor of physic in 1703. In
1706 he lectured at Montpellier as substitute for Pro-
fessor Chirac. He studied most diligently all medical
authors, both ancient and modern, and in 1710 published
a treatise on muscular motion, which greatly increased
his reputation. In that year he was appointed to the
chair of anatomy at Toulouse. In 1717 he was ap-
pointed to teach medicine at Montpellier. Subsequently
he was appointed successively superintendent of the
mineral waters of Languedoc, first physician of the king
of Poland, and, in 1731, regius professor of medicine at
Paris. Here his lectures on the practice of physic
attracted students from other universities, as well as
from foreign countries. He prosecuted his studies with
unwearied assiduity to an advanced age, and was thus
A S T — A T A
599
enabled to write many valuable works on medical sub-
jects. He died on the 5th of May 1766, in the 82d year
of his age. Of his numerous works, that on which his
fame principally rests is the treatise entitled De Moróis
Venereis libri ser, 1736, 4to. This was afterwards en-
larged to 2 vols. 4to ; it was translated into French by
Jault, 4 vols. I2mo., and has been frequently translated
into English. In addition to many other works, princi-
pally on midwifery and cognate subjects, he published some
treatises not connected with medicine, one with the title
of Conjectures sur /es Mºutoires originaux qui ozet servi
di Moïse four écrire /a Genée, Bruxelles (Paris), 1753,
12mo ; and two dissertations on the Immateriality, Im-
mortality, and Liberty of the Soul, Paris, 1755. A
long analysis of the Conjectures is given in the supple-
ment to Herzog's Real-Áncy.A. d. Prot. 7%eo/.
ASTURIAS, one of the ancient provinces of Spain,
formerly (from 1388 downwards) conferred as a prin-
cipality on the heir-apparent to the throne. By the
new division of Spain in 1833, the province took the
name of Oviedo, though not to the exclusion, in ordin-
ary usage, of the older designation. It is bounded on
the N. by the Bay of Biscay, on the S. by Leon, on the
W. by Galicia, and on the E. by Santander, which is
now incorporated with Old Castile. It consists of a
portion of the northern slope of what is properly a part
of the Pyrenean system, and is covered in all directions
with offshoots from the main chain, by which it is
almost completely shut in on all sides. Only a few of
the passes across the mountains are practicable for car-
riages, and most of them are difficult even for horses.
Along the coast there is a narrow strip of level ground,
which consists largely of bare and moor-like reaches,
covered with furze. . The province, as might be sup-
posed, is watered by numerous streams and rivers,
which have hollowed out beautiful and picturesque val-
leys; but owing to the narrowness of the level tract,
their courses are short, rapid, and subject to floods.
The most important is the Nalon or Pravia, which
receives the waters of the Caudal, the Trubia, and the
Narcea, and has a course of 62 miles; after it rank the
Navia and the Sella. Along the whole extent of the
coast, a distance of 130 miles, there is not one good
port. In that of Riba de Sella a large frigate may
anchor, and Gijon will admit a vessel drawing 16 or 17
feet of water; but the entrance is in both cases dif-
ficult and dangerous. The climate of the district is
generally mild, but overcharged with humidity, and in
the higher regions the winters are protracted and severe.
The broken character of the surface prevents anything
like extensive agricultural industry, but abundant pas.
turage is found in the valleys. The wheat crop fre-
quently fails. Rye succeeds better, and is often mixed
with the maize which forms the principal food of all but
the higher classes. Chestnuts—here, as elsewhere in
Spain, an important article of diet—are very abundant
on the hills, and the tree supplies valuable timber.
Other timber-trees, such as oak and beech, are found in
the mountains, along with various medicinal plants,
such as hellebore, angelica, and valerian. Apples are
abundant, and cider forms the common drink of the
people; but little attention is paid to vines. The
horses of Asturias are specially gentle and sure-footed,
ranking among the best in Spain, and excelling those of
Andalusia in strength, though surpassed by them in
beauty. Wild deer, boars, and bears are not uncom-
mon among the mountains; and the sea-coasts, as well
as the streams, abound with fish of various kinds, in-
cluding Salmon and lampreys, which are sent to the
markets of Madrid.
The capital of the province is Oviedo, and the other
towns of importance are Gijon, Aviles, Llanes and Luarca.
ASUNCION, or Assumption, the capital of the
Republic of Paraguay in South America. It is situated
in the midst of a fertile territory on the eastern bank of
the River Paraguay (here upwards of 600 yards in width),
about 18 miles above the most northerly mouth of the
Pilcomayo. It was one of the earlier Spanish settle-
ments in this part of America, being founded in 1535 by
Gonzalo de Mendoza and Juan de Salazar y Espinosa,
and receiving its name of AVuestra Señora de la Asuncion,
in honor of the festival of the Assumption, Originally
a small fort, it soon became, from the convenience of its
situation, a town of considerable importance, and in
1547 was erected into a bishopric. Formerly, while the
Jesuits were masters of the country, it consisted of a
rather irregular assemblage of one story houses, relieved
by ecclesiastical buildings of varying pretension, from the
cathedral downwards; but under the dictatorship of
Francia, the streets were more symmetrically arranged,
and a number of secular buildings erected. These were
greatly increased under the rule of his successors, and
Asuncion was brought into similarity with a European
city of corresponding rank, having its government house,
its president’s palace, its arsenal, custom-house, barracks,
military hospital, theater, and railway station. While
the war between Paraguay and the neighboring states
lasted, Asunçion suffered greatly, being taken and plun-
dered in 1869 by the Brazilian forces, who had already
bombarded it from the river. The population, Spanish
for the most part in language, but of various races, was
estimated, late in 1889, at 24,843, and carried on a
somewhat extensive trade in Paraguay tea, or Verða
Maté, hides, tobacco, fruits, molasses, and rum.
ASYLUM, in Greek Antiquities, a temple enclosure,
within which protection from bodily harm was afforded
to all who sought it and could prove their danger. In
a general sense, all Greek temples and altars were asyla,
that is, it was a religious crime to remove by force any
person or thing once under the protection of the deity.
But it was only in the case of a small number of temples
that this protecting right of a deity was recognised with
common consent, and, apparently, these were among the
oldest temples of Greece. Such, for example, was the
temple of Athena Alea at Tegea in Arcadia, where King
Pausanias II. spent the remainder of his days after the
battle of Haliartus; or the temple of Ganymeda (Hebe)
at Philus, where, it is said, persons who had escaped
from prison hung up their chains in the sacred grove.
Other instances are the sanctuaries of Poseidon at Ca.
lauria and Taenarum, of Athena at Chalcioecus at Sparta,
and of Amphiarus at Oropus, though it is possible, also,
with regard to the three last-named sanctuaries, to ex-
plain the facts as proving only the ordinary religious
asy/a (Schömann, Griec/. Alterthzime, ii. p. 202).
In Asia Minor these asylums were more numerous and,
in Roman times at least, more extensive, so that in the
reign of Tiberius the Roman senate considered the ques-
tion of reducing their limits.
ATACAMA, a district of South America. (I.) The
Chilian province has an area of about 38,000 square
miles, with a population of 82,300. It is bouliuea S.
by the province of Coquimbo, W. by the Pacific, and
E. by the Argentine Republic. It is one of the richest
copper and silver districts in the world, nearly IOOO
mines being worked for the former metal, and about
250 for the latter. The silver ore was first discovered
in 1832, by a shepherd, Juan Godoy, at a place which
has since been occupied by a village that bears his name.
The ores of lead, and zinc are frequently found, and
sulphur, alum, and salt are all of them abundant, the
depost of the last article alone covering about 50 Square
miles at the Laguna Salada. Gold likewise occurs in
sufficient quantity to be mentioned in the list of exports.
6OO
A T A
The capital of the province is Copiapo, with 13,38o
inhabitants, and the population is principally clustered
in the valleys of Copiapo and Huasco, and in the
neighborhood of the various mines. Caldera is the
principal port, and is connected with the capital and the
eastern districts by the first railway constructed in South
America. ... The value of the mineral exports through
this and the adjacent ports was in 1889 estimated at
6,218,275 dollars. (2.) The Bolivian department has an
area of about 70,000 square miles, with a population of
about 18,000, which is rapidly increasing. It also owes
its prosperity almost solely to its wealth in copper and
silver. The mines of Caracoles, recently discovered,
are said to be the most productive silver mines in the
world. In other products it coincides with the Chilian
province, with the addition, however, of meteoric iron,
which has been found in remarkable masses. A large
part of what is more especially designated the Desert of
Atacama is included in the department. It is not, as the
name might suggest, a sandy, but for the most part a
rocky and rugged, tract, with the merest patches and
Strips of vegetation. The capital of the department is
Cobija, or, as it is officially called, Puerto de la Mar;
but its prosperity is in some degree threatened by the
rise of Mejillones, a seaport which has recently been
connected by railway with the principal mining districts.
See Phillippi, A’eise durch die Wºre Aacaña, Halle,
I86o; Tchudi, Aleise durch die Andes, a supplement to
Petermann's Mitt/leil., 1860; journ. Aoy. Geog. Soc.
I851, 1855.
ATA HUALLPA (ata/iu, Latin virtus, and allpa,
Sweet), called the last of the Incas, was the son of
Huayna Capac, eleventh Inca of Peru, by the daughter
of the conquered sovereign of Quito. His brother
Huascar succeeded Huayna Capac; for, as Atahualpa
was not descended on both sides from the line of Incas,
Peruvian law considered him illegitimate. He obtained,
however, the kingdom of Quito, whether by stratagem
or not is uncertain. A jealous feeling soon sprang up
between him , and Huascar, who insisted that Quito
should be held as a dependent province of his empire.
A civil war broke out between the brothers, and, though
the details of it are not accurately known, it appears
that just about the time when Pizarro was beginning to
move inland from the town of San Miguel, Huascar had
been defeated and thrown into prison, and Atahuallpa
had become Inca. Pizarro set out in September, 1532,
and made for Cassamarca, where the Inca was. Mes-
sengers passed frequently between them, and the Span-
iards on their march were hospitably received by the
inhabitants. On the 15th November, Pizarro entered
Cassamarca, and sent his brother and Fernando de Soto
to request an interview with the Inca. On the evening
of the next day, Atahuallpa entered the great square of
Cassamarca, accompanied by some five or six thousand
men, who were either unarmed, or armed only with
short clubs and slings concealed under their dresses.
Pizarro's artillery and soldiers were planted in readiness
in the streets opening off the square. The interview
was carried on by the priest Vicente de Valverde, who
addressed the Inca through an interpreter. He stated
briefly, and dogmatically the principal points of the
Christian faith and the Roman Catholic policy, and
concluded by calling upon Atahuallpa to become a
Christian, obey the commands of the Pope, give up the
administration of his kingdom, and pay tribute to
Charles V., to whom had been granted the conquest of
these lands. . To this extraordinary harangue,
which from its own nature and the faults of
the interpreter must have been completely unintelli-
gible, the Inca, at first returned a very temperate
answer. He pointed out what seemed to him certain
:
difficulties in the Christian religion, and declined to
accept as monarch of his dominions this Charles, of
whom he knew nothing. He then took a Bible from
the priest’s hands, and, after looking at it, threw it
violently from him, and began a more impassioned
speech, in which he exposed the designs of the Span-
iards, and upbraided them with the cruelties they had
perpetrated. The priest retired, and Pizarro at once
gave the signal for attack. The Spaniards rushed out
suddenly, and the Peruvians, astonished and defenceless,
were cut down in hundreds. Pizarro himself seized the
Inca, and in endeavoring to preserve him alive, received,
accidentally, on his hand the only wound inflicted that
day on a Spaniard. Atahuallpa, thus treacherously
captured, offered an enormous sum of money as a ran-
som, and fulfilled his engagement; but Pizarro still de-
tained him, until the Spaniards should have arrived in
sufficient numbers to secure the country. While in
captivity, Atahuallpa gave secret orders for the assassin-
ation of his brother Huascar, and also endeavored to
raise an army to expel, the invaders. His plans were
betrayed, and Pizarro at once brought him to trial. He
was condemned to death, and, as being an idolater, to
death by fire. Atahuallpa, however, professed himself
a Christian, received baptism, and his sentence was then
altered into death by strangulation. His body was after-
wards burned, and the ashed conveyed to Quito. From
the reports of the Spanish historians, it is impossible
to gain an accurate idea of the character and abilities
of the Peruvian monarch, and we have no other notices
by which to test their account.
ATALANTA, in Greek Zegend, (I) was connected
with Arcadia, where, at her birth, she had been exposed
on a hill, her father Jaison having expected a son. At
first she was suckled by a she-bear, and then saved by
huntsmen, among whom she grew up to be skilled with
the bow, swift, and fond of the chase, like the virgin
goddess Artemis. At the hunt of the Calydonian boar
her arrows were the first to hit the monster, for which
its head and hide were given her by Meleager. At the
funeral games of Pelias, she wrestled with Peleus, and
won. Melanion, with intense love, followed, fought,
and toiled in her service, she despising love, and remain-
ing true to Artemis long, but yielding at last. She was
the mother of Parthenopaeus. But there was (2) another
Atalanta in Boeotian legends, who was to be obtained
in marriage only by him who could outstrip her in a
race, the consequence of failure being death. Hippo-
menes, before starting, had obtained from Aphrodite
three golden apples, which at intervals in the race he
dropped, and Atalanta, stopping to pick them up, fell
behind. Both were happy at the result; but forgetting
to thank the goddess for the apples, they were led by
her to a religious crime, and for this were trans-
formed into lions. Latterly the adventures of these
two separate heroines were united and told as of
One.
ATAXY, LOCOMOTOR (a priv., ra::15 order—
Synonyms, Progressive locomotor ataxy, Zabes dorsalis,
Posterior spizzal sclerosis), a disease of the nervous sys-
tem, manifesting itself principally by disordered move-
ments of the limbs in locomotion. This disorder is not, as
was once supposed, a form of paralysis (there being no
diminution of muscular strength), but is dependent on
the loss of power of co-ordinating the muscles into har-
monious action, which is essential to the proper perform-
ance of the voluntary movements of the body, and the
maintenance of its equilibrium. Although the disease
had been previously noticed both by Professor Romberg
and Dr. R. B. Todd, it was first fully described and
named by Dr. Duchenne in 1858. Its pathology has sub-
sequently been investigated by Mr. Lockhart Clarke.
º A T B — A T H
6OI
fºotor ataxy usually begins insidiously, and advances
:SIOW IV.
The pathelogical condition giving rise to locomotor
ataxy is disease of a certain portion of the spiral cord,
viz., the posterior columns and the posterior nerve roots.
These undergo various transformations, which result in
their ultimately becoming atrophied and indurated,
When affecting, as this lesion most commonly does, the
lower dorsal and lumbar regions of the cord, the ataxic
symptoms are chiefly confined to the legs; but when it
affects the cervical portion, the arms are involved. Oc-
casionally the whole posterior columns of the cord are
found diseased. The exciting causes of this malady are
but ill understood. Exposure to cold and privation, in-
temperance, over exertion, and mental anxiety have been
supposed to give rise to it.
ATBARA (Bahr-el-Aswad, or Black river), an im-
portant river of Eastern Africa. It rises in the mount-
ains of Abyssinia, and unites with the Nile at . El-
Damer. During the rains it has an average depth of
from thirty-five to forty feet.
ATCHAFALAYA (the Lost Water), a river of
Louisiana, or secondary channel of the Mississippi, by
which a portion of its water flows off from the main
trunk into the Mexican Gulf. Its mouth is I2O miles
west of the principal embouchure of the Mississippi.
ATCHISON, the county seat of Atchison county,
Kan., is situated on the right bank of the Missouri
river, equidistant from Leavenworth and St. Joseph.
The railway facilities available are exceptionally com-
plete and desirable, embracing the Atchison, Topeka
and Santa Fé; Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific; Bur-
lington and Missouri River; Kansas City, St. Joseph and
Council Bluffs; Missouri Pacific; and Leavenworth
Northern and Southèrn systems. The city also has
communication with points on the Missouri and Missis-
sippi rivers by steamers. Within the past ten years
Atchison has grown rapidly in wealth and population,
being to-day one of the most promising and enterpris-
ing cities of the West, and the railroad center of the
State. It has thirteen churches, nine banks, three
daily and three weekly papers, a court-house, high
school, and five public school buildings, three colleges,
a public library, and an abbey conducted by the Society
of St. Benedict, half-a-dozen large and well equipped
hotels, an elegantly finished opera-house, and a number
of public halls, besides very many handsome private
residences. A large iron railway and foot bridge spans
the river opposite the city. The manufactures are nu-
merous and varied, iucluding carriages, furniture, hard-
ware, oil, canned goods, lumber products, etc. The
city is also the location of the machine and repair shops
of the Burlington and Missouri River railroad. It
is lighted by gas and electricity, enjoys street rail-
way conveniences, and has a population estimated in
1890 at 22,OOO.
ATE, in Greek Mythology, a personification of crim-
inal folly. She had misled even Zeus to take a hasty
oath, when Heracles was born, for which, seeing his
folly, he cast her by the hair out of Olympus, whither
she did not again return. She ſell, it was in later times
said, on the hill where Troy was built.
ATELLA, an ancient city of Campania, about nine
miles from Naples. In the Second Punic war it sided
with Hannibal, and, in consequence, its inhabitants
were dispersed by the Romans, and their places supplied
by the people of Nuceria. It is now, after various fluc-
tuations of fortune, a mere mass of ruins.
ATH, or AETH, a city of Belgium, in the province
of Hainaut, situated on the river Dender, a navigable
confluent of the Schelde, rather more than thirty miles
hy rail from Brussels.
ATHABASCA, or ATHAPESCOW, a river in the
north-western territory of British North America,
which flows into a lake of the same name. It rises in
the Rocky Mountains, and has a long and tortuous
course in a north-eastern direction, during which it
receives the Lesser Slave River, the Red Deer, and
several others. The lake is about 230 miles in length,
with a breadth varying from 30 to 14 miles, lying in a
direction almost E. and W. It communicates with
Hudson’s Bay on the one hand, and with the Polar Sea
on the other.
ATHALIAH, the daughter of Ahab and wife of
Jehoram, king of Judah, who, after the death of King
Ahaziah, her son, caused all the male members of the
royal house of Judah to be massacred, in order that she
might usurp the throne. Among the victims were her
own grandchildren, except the youngest, Joash, who
was concealed in the temple by his aunt, Jehosheba,
wife of the high priest, Jehoiada.
ATHANASIUS, ST., Bishop of Alexandria, and one
of the most illustrious defenders of the Christian faith,
was born at Alexandria about the year 297. Of his
family, circumstances, or early education nothing can
be said to be known, although a legendary story has
been preserved py Rufinus of Aquileia as to the manner
in which he came, while yet a boy, under the notice of
his predecessor, Alexander. It seems certain that Alex-
ander became his patron, took him as a youth into his
house, and employed him as his secretary. This was
probably about 313, and from this time Athanasius may
be said to have been devoted to the Christian ministry.
He was, no doubt, a student in the “Didascaleion,” or
famous “catechetical school ’’ of Alexandria, which in-
cluded amongst its already illustrious teachers the names
of Clement and Origen. In the museum, the ancient
seat of the Alexandrian university, he may have learned
grammar, logic, and rhetoric. His mind was certainly
well disciplined, and accustomed to discuss from an early
period the chief questions both in philosopy and religion.
The persecution under which the Alexandrian Church
suffered at this time, and his intimacy with the great
hermit Antony, of which he himself has told us, had all
their effect upon his character, and served to nurture in
him that undaunted fortitude and high spirit of faith by
which he became distinguished. At the Council of
Nicaea, in the year 325, he appears prominently in con-
nection with the dispute. He attended the council, not
as one of its members (who were properly only bishops
or delegates of bishops), but merely as the attendant of
Alexander. In this capacity, however, he was appar-
ently allowed to take part in its discussions, for Theo-
doret (i. 26) states that “he contended earnestly for the
apostolic doctrines, and was applauded by their cham-
pions, while he earned the hostility of their opponents.
Within “five months’ after the return of Alexander to
the scene of his episcopal labors he expired, and his
friend and archdeacon was chosen to succeed him. He
was elected ‘in the sight and amidst the acclamations of
the people.” He was now about 30 years of age, and is
spoken of as remarkable both for his physical and
mental characteristics.”
The first few years of the episcopate of Athanasius
were tranquil; but the storms in which the remainder of
his life was passed soon began to gather around him.
The Council of Nicaea had settled the creed of Christen-
dom, but had by no means composed the divisions in the
church which the Arian controversy had provoked.
Arius himself still lived, and his friend Eusebius of Nico-
media rapidly regained influence over the emperor Con-
stantine. The result of this was a demand made by the
emperor that Arius should be re-admitted to communion.
Athanasius stood firm, and refused to have any com-
6O2
A T H
munion with the advocates of a “heresy that was fight-
ing against Christ.” Constantine was baffled for the
moment ; but many accusers soon rose up against one
who was known to be under the frown of "imperial dis-
pleasure. The archbishop of Alexandria was charged
with cruelty, even with sorcery and murder. It was re-
ported that a Meletian bishop in the Thebaid, of the
name of Arsenius, had been unlawfully put to death by
him. He was easily able to clear himselfoſ such charges,
but the hatred of his enemies was not relaxed, and in
the summer of 335 he was peremptorily ordered to
appear at Tyre, where a council had been summoned to
sit in judgment upon his conduct. He did not venture
to disobey the imperial order, and a commission was
appointed to inquire into an alleged instance of cruelty
urged against him, notwithstanding the explanations
which he had made. There appeared plainly a predeter-
mination, to condemn him, and he fled from Tyre to
Constantinople to appeal to the emperor himself. “He
resolved,” says Gibbon, “to make a bold and dangerous
experiment, whether the throne was inaccessible to the
voice of truth.” He presented himself suddenly with
five of his suffragans before the emperor, while riding
into his new capital. Refused at first a hearing, his per:
Severance was at length rewarded by the emperor's con-
sent to his reasonable request— that his accusers should
be brought face to face with him in the imperial pres-
ence. The leaders of the Tyrian council, amongst the
most conspicuous of whom were the two Eusebii, were
accordingly summoned to Constantinople, just after they
had celebrated, at a great dedication festival at Jerusa.
lem, the condemnation of Athanasius and the restor-
ation of Arius to church communion. In con-
fronting the former before Constantine they did not
attempt to repeat the charge of cruelty, but found a
more ready and effective weapon to their hands in a new
charge of a political kind—that Athanasius had threat-
ened to stop the Alexandrian corn-ships bound for Con-
stantinople. Here, as in other matters, it is very diffi-
cult to understand how far there was any truth in the
persistent accusations made against the prince-bishop of
Alexandria. Probably there was in the very greatness
of his character and the extent of his popular influence a
certain species of dominance which lent a color of truth
to some of the things said against him. On the present
occasion his accusers succeeded in at once arousing the
imperial jealousy; and the consequence was, that, not-
withstanding his earnest denial of the act attributed to
º was banished to Trier, or Treves, the capital of
allli.
This was the first banishment of Athanasius, which
lasted about two years and a half. It was only brought
to a close by the death of Constantine, and the acces-
Sion of Constantine II. as emperor of the West. It is
recorded by himself that, on his return to Alexandria,
“the people ran in crowds to see his face; the churches
were full of rejoicing; thanksgivings were offered up
everywhere; the ministers and clergy thought the day
the happiest in their lives.”. But this period of happi-
ness was destined to be short-lived. His position as
patriarch of Alexandria placed him, not under his friend
Constantine II., but under Constantius, another son of
the elder Constantine, who had succeeded to the throne
of the East. He in his turn fell, as his father had done,
more and more under the influence of Nicomedian
Eusebius, now transferred to the see of Constantinople.
A second expulsion of Athanasius was accordingly
resolved upon. The old charges against him were
revived, with the addition of his having set at naught
the decision of a council. It was further resolved on
this occasion to put another bishop in his place. Accord-
ingly, in the beginning of the year 340, a Cappadocian
named Gregory, said to be an Arian, was installed by
millitary force on the throne of the great defender of the
faith, who, to save his followers from outrage, withdrew
to a place of concealment. As soon as it was possible
he repaired to Rome, to “lay his case before, the
church.” He was declared innocent at a council held
there in 342, and in another held at Sardica some years
later. Julius, the bishop of Rome, warmly espoused
his cause, and, generally, it may be said that the West-
ern Church was Athanasian in its sympathies and its
creed, while the majority of the Eastern bishops sided
with the Eusebian party. This severance was clearly
shown at the Council at Sardica, where the Orientals
reſused to meet with the representation of the Western
Church, because the latter insisted on recognising the
right of Athanasius and his friends to attend the council
as regular bishops. The commonly received date of
this council is 347, but the rediscovered Festa! Zetters
of Athanasius have had the effect of throwing back this
date for some years. It has been placed by some as
early as the end of 343, by Mansi and others in the end
of 344. The decision of the Council of Sardica, however,
had no immediate effect in favor of Athanasius. Con-
stantius continued for some time implacable, and the
bold action of the Western bishops only incited the
Arian party in Alexandria to fresh severities. Gradu-
ally, however, the excesses of the Arian party brought
their own revenge, while the death of the intruded
bishop Gregory, in the beginning of 345, opened up the
way for a reconciliation betwixt the Eastern emperor
and the banished prelate. The result was the restoration
of Athanasius for the second time, amidst the enthu-
siastic demonstrations of the Alexandrian populace,
which is represented by his panegyrist, Gregory Nazian-
zen, as streaming forth “like another Nile ” to meet
him in the distance as he approached the city. His
restoration is supposed to have taken place, according
to the more accurate chronology based upon the Festa/
Zetters, in October 346.
For years at this time. Athanasius held his ground
in Alexandria. But the intrigues of the Arian or court
party were soon renewed against him, and the feeble
emperor, who had protested that he would never again
listen to their accusations, was gradually stimulated to
new hostilities. A large council was held at Milan in
the spring of the year 355, and here, notwithstanding
the vigorous opposition of a few faithful men amongst
the Western bishops, a renewed condemnation of
Athanasius was procured. This was followed up by the
banishment of the faithful prelates, even of Hosius of
Cordova, whose conciliatory character and intimate con-
nection with the imperial family had not prevented him
from addressing to Constantius a pathetic remonstrance
against the tyranny of the Arian party. When his
friends were thus scattered in exile, their great leader
could not long escape; and on the night of the 8th of
February 356, while he was engaged in service in the
church of St. Thomas, a band of armed men burst into
the sacred building. He has himself described the
scene (Apol. de fuga, 24). Here for a time he main-
tained his composure, and desired the deacon to read
the psalm, and the people to respond —” Afor His
mercy endureſ/, for ezer;” and how, as the soldiers
rushed forward with fierce shouts towards the altar, he
at length made his escape in the crowd, and sought once
more a place of safe retirement. The solitudes of
Upper Egypt, where numerous monasteries and hermit.
ages had been planted, appear to have been his chief
shelter at this time. Here, protected from pursuit, he
spent his time in literary labors in behalf of his cause ;
and to this period, accordingly, belong some of his
most important writings, above all the great Orations,
A T H
603
or Discourses against the Arians, which furnish the
best exposition of his theological position and principles.
For six years at this time Athanasius continued in ex-
ile, till the death of Constantius in November 361 opened
once more the way for his return to his episcopate. Ju-
lian, the successor to the imperial throne, professed in-
difference to the contentions of the church, and granted
permission to the bishops exiled in the late reign to re-
turn home. Amongst others, Athanasius took advan-
tage of this permission, and seated himself once more
upon his throne, amidst the jubilations of the people.
He had begun his episcopal labors with renewed ardor,
and summoned a council to Alexandria to decide various
important questions, when an imperial mandate yet
again drove him from his place of power. The faithful
gathered around him weeping. “Be of good heart,” he
said, “it is but a cloud: it will soon pass.” His fore-
cast proved true; for within a few months Julian had
closed his brief career of Pagan revival, and Anathasius
“returned by night” to Alexandria. He received a let-
ter from the new emperor, Jovian, praising his Christian
fidelity, and encouraging him to resume his work. With
the emperor he continued to maintain friendly relations,
and even drew out for him a synodal letter embodying
the Nicene Creed, which was graciously received. Dur-
ing the brief reign of this bluff soldier-prince, compara-
tive quiet prevailed in the church. But the repose was
of short duration. In the spring of 365, after the acces-
sion of Valens, troubles reappeared. An order was is-
sued for the expulsion of all bishops who had been ex-
pelled by Constantius, and Athanasius was once more
forced to take refuge in concealment from his persecu-
tors. His concealment, however, only lasted for four
months, when an order came for his return ; and from
this time (Feb. 366) he was left undisturbed to pursue
his episcopal labors. Those labors were unceasing in
refuting heretics, in building churches, in rebuking ra-
pacious governors, in comforting faithful bishops, and
in strengthening the orthodox everywhere, till at length,
in the spring of 373, “in a good old age,” he ceased from
all his work. Having consecrated one of his presbyters
his successor, he died quietly in his own house. His
“many struggles,” according to his panegyrists, won him
“many a crown.” He was gathered to his fathers, pa-
triarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, who had con-
tended for the truth. Even those who fail to sympa-
thise with the cause which Athanasius steadfastly main-
tained, cannot refuse their tribute of admiration to his
magnanimous and heroic character. The cynic eloquence
of Gibbon grows warm in recounting his adventurous
career, and the language of Hooker breaks into stately
fervor in celebrating his faith and fortitude. “The whole
world against Athanasius, and Athanasius against it;
half a hundred of years spentin doubtful trial which of the
two in the end should prevail— the side which had all,
or else the part which had no friends but God and death
— the one a defender of his innocency, the other a fin-
isher of all his troubles.” If imperious in temper and in-
flexible in dogmatic determination, Athanasius had yet
a great heart and intellect, enthusiastic in their devotion
to Christ, and in work for the good of the church and
of mankind.
His chief distinction as a theologian was his zealous
advocacy of the essential divinity of Christ as co-equal in
substance with the Father. This was the doctrine of the
Homoousain, proclaimed by the Nicene Creed, and
elaborately defended by his life and writings. Whether
or not Athanasius first suggested the use of this ex-
pression, he was its greatest defender; and the catholic
doctrine of the Trinity has ever since been more identi-
fied with his “immortal "name than with any other in the
history of the church and of Christian theology. (For
an exposition of the Athanasian Creed, see the article
CREEDS.)
ATHELSTAN, or AETHELSTAN, son of King Ed-
ward the elder, and grandson of Alfred the Great, was
born in 895. There has been much doubt with regard to
his legitimacy, as his mother, Ecgwyn, is said to have been
of humble origin ; but these suspicions appear to rest on
slight foundations. On the death of Edward in 925,
Athelstan, who had been named by him as his successor,
was elected king by the Mercians and West Saxons, and
crowned at Kingston in Surrey. Anlaf, a Danish chief,
or, according to some accounts, a son of Sihtric, with the
king of Scotland, the Welsh, and the Danes of the north,
invaded England. Athelstan, with his half brother Ed-
mund, met and signally defeated the invaders in the battle
of Brunanburh, celebrated in the “ Brunanburh War-
Song.” In 940 or 941 Athelstan died at Gloucester,
and was buried at Malmesbury, England had prospered
under his reign; for he devoted much attention to com-
merce, and exercised a fostering care over the civil and
religious interests of his people. His power made him
respected and esteemed on the Continent, and several
foreign princes and nobles were sent to be educated at
his court.
ATHENA, in Greek Mythology, a goddess who,
from being originally a personification of the clear,
bright upper region of the sky, had, as early as the time
of the epic poets, changed, or advanced, so as to embody
under a divine form a conception of the clear insight of
the human mind in its various functions. This upper
air or ether seemed to be a distinct element in the uni-
verse. From it came the light of morning before Sun-
rise and of evening after sunset, reminding us of the light
which, in the Mosiac account of the Creation, existed
before the sun and moon were placed in the sky. In the
first stage of her character, in which, like the other
deities of Olympus, she was directly identified with an
element of nature and supposed to act as it acted,
Athena bore the name of Pallas, and was thought of
more in connection with the storms than with the Seremity
or light of the heavens. The obvious counterpart of a
storm was a raging battle, and, accordingly, she became
a goddess of war, armed with spear and helmet, and
with the aegis, or storm-shield, of her father, resistless
among men, hurling to the ground the giant Enceladus,
and even superior in might to Ares himself, the god of
war. The storm sweeps sorest round high citadels,
where also the storms of war rage fiercest; and on such
places was her favorite abode. But a storm is followed
by serenity brighter than before, more enjoyable, and
more exciting to activity of every kind; and then the
goddess lays aside her armor to encourage and foster
skill and industry. Her title is then Ergame. To her
was ascribed the invention of spinning and weaving; of
taming horses, bridling and yoking them to the war-
chariot; of the flute, and in some way of the healing
art. This is the second stage of her character, which
the myth, agreeably to its principle, explains in a differ-
ent fashion, when it says that she sprang into existence
from the brain of the all-wise ruler of the world, Zeus,
and that he had before swallowed his wife, Metis (intel.
ligence). She must therefore have been in a measure
a complement of him, created for the purpose of
carrying out among men what was in his mind,
but what yet he could not himself, as the supreme and
impartial ruler, execute. As his substitute, she lent her
aid to Heracles in all his hardships and adventures; to
Theseus under similar circumstances; to the Greeks in
their war against Troy; to Perseus in slaying the Gor-
gon Medusa, whose head she afterwards bore upon her
agis, from which she obtained the name of Gorgophone;
and to the Argonauts on their expedition to Colchis.
6O4
A T H
She maintained always her character as a virgin, and, to
express this, bore, at Athens in particular, the name of
Parthenos. Her birth took place in Olympus, in pres-
ence of the other deities, Hephæstus aiding it, as it is
coarsely said, by splitting open with his hatchet the
skull of Zeus, a subject often represented on the ancient
painted vases. This was also the subject of the sculpt-
ures in the front pediment of her greatest temple, the
Parthenon at Athens. From the fact that in the other
pediment the sculptures represented her contest with
Poseidon for divine supremacy over Attica, it might
perhaps seem that the first act of her existence was to
claim this sovereignty. Foremost in her character
always is her protection of high citadels, like that of
Athens. Yet it was not for this, but for her causing an
olive to grow on the bare rock of the Acropolis, that she
was chosen rather than Poseidon, whose claim was that
he had raised on the same rock a spring of brackish
water. The olives of Attica were a source of great
wealth, and the light supplied by their oil may have
seemed not unlike the light of the ether. As the defender
of citadels her title was Polias.
ATHENAEUM, a name originally applied to build-
ings dedicated to Athena (Minerva), was specially used
as the designation of a temple in Athens, where poets
and men of learning were accustomed to meet and read
their productions. The academy for the promotion of
learning which the Emperor Hadrian built at Rome,
near the Forum, was also called the Athenaeum. Poets
and orators still met and discussed there, but regular
courses of instruction were given by a staff of professors
in rhetoric, jurisprudence, grammar, and philosophy.
This species of university continued in high repute till
the 5th century. The same name was afterwards ap-
plied to similar institutions in Lyons and Marseilles;
and it has become a very general designation for literary
clubs or academies. It has also been used as the title
of literary periodicals, particularly of the journal of
art criticism edited by the brothers Schlegel, and the
two well-known modern papers published in London and
Paris.
ATHENAEUS, a Greek rhetorician and grammarian,
or man of letters, was a native of Naucratis, a town in
Egypt, near the mouth of the Nile. Exceedingly little
is known of his life, but from one or two references to
known events which occur in his works it may be gathered
that he flourished about the end of the 2d and the be-
ginning of the 3d century A.D. *
ATHENAGORAS, a Christian apologist, was a
native of Athens, and lived during the 2d century A.D.
ATHENO DOR US, surnamed CANANITES or SAN-
DoNUs, a Stoic philosopher, was born at Tarsus. He
probably gave instruction to Augustus when he was at
Apollonia; and on proceeding to the Roman courts, he
was made tutor to Tiberius. The emperor esteemed
him greatly for his proved virtue and probity. He was
in the habit of giving his opinion very freely, and
warned Augustus, whenever he found himself giving
way to anger, to rehearse the twenty-four letters of the
alphabet, before saying or doing anything. Retiring
late in life to his native town, he died there at the age
of 82. -
ATHENRY, a decayed town in Ireland, county of
Galway, and province of Connaught, I4 miles E. of
Galway.
ATHENS (A0%vat, ATHENAE) was the name of as
many as nine towns in various parts of the Grecian
world, among which Athenae Diades, in the N.W. of
Euboea, a town belonging to the Athenian confederation,
is worthy of mention. But it was the capital of Attica
which invested the name of Athens with an undying
charm for the poet, the artist, the philosopher, the his-
torian, for all time. Towards the south of the centraſ
plain of Attica, about 4% miles from the harbor of
Piraeeus, and nearly 4 from the Bay of Phalerum. . The
survey of Pausanias, when compared with existing
remains, and supplemented by the numerous incidental
notices of ancient authors, enables us to form a more
perfect conception of the topography of ancient Athens
than of any other Greek city. Recent excavations have
added greatly to our knowledge of it, and the literature
of the subject is very extensive.
There seems little reason to doubt that the earliest
settlement on Athenian soil was upon the cliff after-
wards famous as the Acropolis. The earliest inhabitants
appear to have been Pelasgians; and though it was the
boast of the Athenians that they alone of all Greek
states were indigenous, yet their town would from the
first have received acessions from various parts of the
continent, the peaceful poverty of Attica affording a
welcome refuge in those early and unsettled times.
The most accessible portion of the Acropolis is the
western side, where it is joined by a neck of hill to the
Areopagus. On this side there existed down to later
times the remains of fortifications built by the earliest
inhabitants, with nine doorways, one within the other.
This ſort protected the only entrance to the citadel,
which was surrounded by a wall, and artificially levelled
for the reception of buildings. Within this fortified
enclosure stood the shrine of Athena Polias afterwards
known as the Erechtheium,-and an altar of Zeus
Polieus, where the strange sacrifices of the Dipolia were
celebrated. A Prytaneium, containing the hearth-fire
of the state, and serving as the residence of the king,
would be another indispensable feature in the primitive
town.
To the west of the Acropolis there extends from N.
to S. a range of hills, the three most prominent heights
of which are commonly known respectively as the Hill
of the Nymphs, the Phyx, and the Museium,_ the
Nymphs' Hill being separated from the Acropolis by
the Areopagus, which intervenes between. Everywhere
upon the slopes of the hills just mentioned traces have
lately been discovered of ancient dwellings hewn out of
the solid rock. But while all these rock-dwellings are
exceedingly ancient, yet some appear less primitive than
others; it is remarked that those which exist on the
Areopagus and on the hill-sides nearest to the Acropolis
are of a smaller and ruder type, those more distant
from the citadel being somewhat more convenient in
plan and extent. Legend declares the Athenians to
have originally dwelt in rock-hewn caves, and it would
seem that primitive Athens gradually extended itself
from the Acropolis in this W. and S.W. direction.
This quarter was afterwards known as the intramural
deme of Melite, a name derived, perhaps from the
balm which then grew there. As the population of the
early town continued to increase, two more districts
seem to have been incorporated— Collytus, extending
from the east of Melite, between the Acropolis and
Areopagus, and Carameicus, or the “ Potters' quarter”
(“Tuileries”), which extended from the same two hills
towards the north and north-west. The regions we
have now described appear to have made up the Athens
of Solonian times. The earliest historical event which
illustrates Athenian topography is the rising of Cylon.
The narratives of that event imply that the Acropolis
was already fortified by the Enneapylum, that the
Areopagus was already the seat of the court which bore
its name (see AREOPAGUS), and that near the entrance
of the citadel stood an altar of the Semmae, or Furies,
at which Cylon and his partisans were slain. This altar
has been immortalised by AEschylus in the splendid con-
clusion of the Eumenides.
A T H
605
The reign of the Pisistratidae was recognised by the an-
cients as marking an important era in Athenian topogra-
phy. It was Pisistratus who laid the foundation for the
great temple of Zeus Olympius upon the ancient site above
mentioned. His magnificent design had an eventful his-
tory: left unfinished by its author, the Athenians, per-
haps from dislike to the “tyrant,” made no effort to
complete it. At length, after receiving additions from
various foreign princes, it was completed by Hadrian
(c. 130 A.D.), and formed the grandest edifice in the re-
gion of the city which, in acknowledgment of the impe-
rial munificence, was called Hadrianopolis. The Olym-
pium was one of the largest temples in the v, orld ; but
of its 124 Corinthian columns only 15 are now standing.
The Pythium, or sanctuary of the Pythian Apollo,
near the Olympium, was also ascribed to Pisistratus,
whose grandson and mamesake dedicated an altar within
it (Thucyd., vi. 54). To Pisistratus was ascribed the
founding of the Zyteium, or temple of Apollo Lyceius,
which stood on the right bank of the Ilissus, a short
distance from the city. The names both of Pericles
and Lycurgus the orator are also associated with this
building; yet it is not known who added the gymnasium
close by, which afterwards became famous as the favor-
ite haunt of Aristotle, and the birthplace of the Peripa-
tetic philosophy. The yet more famous seat of the
rival philosophy seems also to have owed something to
the Pisistratidae, for Hipparchus was said to have en-
closed the Academy with a wall.
The revolution which expelled the Pisistratidae (519
B.C.), and gave Athens a free government, left its mark
upon the topography of the city. The old Pelasgic fort-
ress, in which “the tyrants” had for a time held out,
was now broken down, and the site occupied by its
ruins was devoted by the Delphic oracle to eternal deso-
lation. Only in the Peloponnesian war, when the
country population was crowded within the city walls,
do we read of this spot being occupied by dwellings.
Another work which may probably be assigned to the
age of Clisthenes is the first arrangement of the Pnyx,
or place of public assembly.
A building of greater architectural importance and of
equal interest belongs to this same period. Dramatic
performances at Athens originally took place in wooden
theatres extemporised for the occasion; but the fall of
one of these led, in the year 500 B.C., to the erection of
the marble theatre on a site already consecrated to Dio-
nysus as the Lenaeum, upon the S.E. slope of the Acrop-
olis. We may be sure that the first stone theatre was
comparatively simple in construction, consisting of an
auditorium, with tiers of rock-hewn seats, and an opxmo-
zpd', or space for the chorus, while the stage itself and
its furniture were of wood. The excavation of the Dio-
nysiac theatre in 1862 has made every one familiar with
the row of marble thrones for the various priests and
officers of state, the elaborate masonry of the stage, the
orchestra floor, and other features. But these and other
interesting decorations of the theatre belong to a fåter
age. It was under the administration of Lycurgus the
orator (337 B.C.) that the building was first really com-
pleted; and many of the sculptures which have been
lately brought to light belong to a restoration of the
theatre in the 2d, or perhaps even the 3d, century A.D.
Enough has now been said of the condition of Athens
before the Persian War. It was surrounded by a ring-
wall of narrow circuit, some doubtful traces of which
are supposed to remain. At its centre stood the Acrop-
olis, already crowded with temples and sanctuaries, some
upon the summit, some built at its foot, and others—
like the famous grotto of Pan, on the N.W. slope—
mere caves in its rocky sides.
The Persian invasion, which forced the Athenians to
take refuge in their “wooden walls,” and to leave their
city at the mercy of the barbarians, marked an impor-
tant epoch in the annals of Athenian building. Upon
the retreat of Mardonius, the Athenians returned to
Attica to find their city virtually in ruins. Its fortifica-
tions and public buildings had been destroyed or burnt,
and the private dwellings had been wantonly defaced
or ruined by neglect. Amid the enthusiasm of hope
which followed upon the great deliverance of Greece, a
natural impulse led the Athenians to rear their city
more glorious from its ruins. . Themistocles fanned
their patriotism with the foresight of a statesman, and
Athens rose again with marvellous rapidity. This
haste, however, though creditable to their patriotism,
and, indeed, necessary in order to forestall the jealous
opposition of Sparta, was not without its evils. The
houses were rebuilt on their old sites, and the lines of
the old streets, narrow and irregular as they had been,
were too readily followed. A similar haste marked the
rebuilding of the city walls, a work in which men and
women, old and young, took zealous part, not scrup-
ling to dismantle any building or monument, private or
public, which could supply materials for the building.
But in rebuilding the walls Themistocles gave them a
wider circuit, especially towards the N. and N. E.
(Thucyd., i. 9o, 93). At the same time he determined
to construct new harbors, and to fortify the Piraeeus,
regarding the navy of Athens as her principal source of
strength. It is doubtful whether the “Long, Walls”
formed a distinct portion of his designs; but he may
certainly be regarded as the founder of the greatness
of Athens, the works and embellishments carried out
by Pericles being only a fulfilment of the far-sighted
aims of Themistocles. Thucydides makes the circuit of
the city wall to be 43 stades (about 5% miles), exclu-
sive of the unguarded space between walls; this is
found to correspond accurately enough with the exist-
ing remains. º completed the defences of the
city proper, among which must be included the build-
ing of the north wall of the Acropolis, Themistocles
proceeded to fortify the Piraeeus.
Athens, like most of the old Greek towns, was built,
for greater security, at a distance from the coast, and
only when more settled times brought her greater pros-
perity was a harbor formed at the nearest bay of
Phalerum, near the modern church of St. George. It is
said that Themistocles would gladly have transported
the Athenian population bodily from the upper city to
the coast, there to form a great maritime state. Though
this was impossible, yet he could strengthen Athens on
the seaward side. The isthmus of Piraeeus, though
somewhat more distant than Phalerum, presented ob-
vious advantages as a Seaport.
If not a part of the original designs of Themistocles, it
was at least a natural development of them, to carry the
“Long Walls” from the newly-fortified Piraeeus to the
upper city, and thus combine them both into one grand
system of fortification. . The experiment of connecting a
town by long walls with its port had been already tried
between Megara and Nisaea, and it was now repeated
on a grander scale under Cimon. It was Cimon who first
set the example of providing the citizens with agreeable
places for promenade (Plutarch, Cimon, xiii.), by planting
the Agora with plane trees, and laying out the Academy
with trees and walks. It is probable that some of the
porticoes in the Agora were built by Cimon; at all
events, the most beautiful one amongst them was reared
by Pisianax, his brother-in-law, and the paintings with
which Polygnotus, his sister's lover, adorned it (repre-
senting scenes from the military history of Athens,
legendary and historical) made it ever famous. One
more building, the most perfect existing relic of ancient
6O6
A T H
Athens, was also built by Cimon. The Theseium is a
hexastyle Doric temple standing on an eminence due N.
of the Areopagus, and is the first object which meets the
eye of the tourist who approaches the city from the
Piraeeus. , Having served in Byzantine times for a
Christian church, it is now a museum of antiquities, and
contains some of the choicest treasures discovered by
reCent eXCalvationS.
We have now brought this sketch of Athenian topog-
raphy down to the most distinguished period of Athen-
ian history and Athenian architecture — the era of
Pericles. As the champion of Hellenic freedom against
the Persians, as the head of the Ionic confederation,
Athens had suddenly grown to be the foremost city in
Greece. But when one by one the confederate states
sank into the position of subject-allies; when the suprem-
acy of Athens passed insensibly into a tyranny; when
the contribution of ships and men was commuted in
most cases for a money payment, and the funds of the
confederation were transferred from the Apollonium at
Delos to the Athenian Acropolis, an enormous reve-
nue became at the disposal of the Athenian Government.
It is to their credit that so little of it found its way into
private pockets. It was natural for the thoughts of a
Greek, especially of an Athenian, to turn to the decora-
tion of his city; it was politic that the central city of
the Ionian confederacy should be adorned with a beauty
equal to her prestige. The buildings connected with the
name of Cimon had been chiefly for utility or defence;
those of Pericles were mainly ornamental. The first
edifice completed by him seems to have been the Odeium,
on the E. of the Dionysiac theatre, to serve as a place
for recitations by rhapsodists, and for musical perform.
anºes. It was burnt by Aristion during Sulla's siege of
Athens, but afterwards rebuilt. Mention has already
been made of the building of the Long Walls and the
laying out of the Piraeeus by Pericles; but it was the
Acropolis itself which witnessed the greatest splendors
of his administration. Within its limited area arose
buildings and statues, on which the genius of Phidias
the sculptor, of Ictinus and Mnesicles the architects,
were employed for years; while multitudes of artists
and craftsmen of all kinds were busied in carrying out
their grand designs. The spoils of the Persian War
had already been consecrated under Cimon to the honor
of the national goddess, in the erection of a colossal
statue of Athena by Phidias between the entrance of
the Acropolis and the Erechtheium ; her warlike attitude
gained her the title of ITpouayos, and the gleam of her
helmet's plume and uplifted spear was hailed by the
homeward seaman as hedoubled Cape Sunium (Pausan.,
i. 28). But the national deity was to receive yet greater
honors at the hand of Pericles. He proceeded to rear
what has since been known as the Parthenon. It was
completed in the year 438 B.C. It stood upon the high-
est platform of the Acropolis, so that the pavement of
the peristyle of the Parthenon was on a level with the
capitals of the columns of the east portico of the Pro-
pylaea. . The temple was built entirely of white marble
from the quarries of Mount Pentelicus. Ascending a
flight of three steps, you passed through the great east
entrance into the Pronaos, wherein was stored a large
collection of sacred objects, chiefly of silver. From the
Pronaos a massive door led into the ce//a, called Heca-
tompedos, because it measured in length Ioo Attic
feet. The treasure here bestowed consisted chiefly of
chaplets and other objects of gold. The west por-
tion of the cella was railed off, and formed the
Zºarthémore proper, i.e., the adytum occupied by the
chryselephantine statue by Phidias of Athena Parthenos,
—a work which yielded the pre-eminence only to one
other statue by the same artist, viz., the Zeus at Olym-
pia. In this adytum were stored a number of silver
bowls and other articles employed at the Panathenaic festi-
vals. The westernmost compartment at the rear of the
cella was the Opisthodomus, which served as the national
treasury; hither poured in the tribute of the Athenian
allies. It is important to remember that the Parthenon
was never intended as a temple of worship; for this pur-
pose there already existed another temple, presently to
be described as the Erechtheium, -standing upon the
primeval site of that contest between Athena and
Poseidon which established the claim of the goddess to
the Attic citadel and soil. The Parthenon was simply
designed to be the central point of the Panathenaic
festival, and the storehouse for the sacred treasure. The
entire temple should be regarded as one vast a va:0m/ua:
to the national deity, not as a place for her worship.
Thus directly in front of her statue in the cella there
stood an erection, which has been mistaken for an altar,
but which is more probably to be regarded as the plat-
form which the victorious competitors in the Panathenaic
contests ascended to receive, as it were from the hand
of the goddess, the golden chaplets and vases of olive
oil that formed the prizes. This consideration lends
significance to the decorations of the building, which
were the work of Phidias. Within the outer portico,
along the outside of the top of the wall of the building,
ran a freize 3 feet 4 inches in height, and 520 feet in
total length, on which were sculptured figures in low
relief, representing the Panathenaic procession. Nearly
all of these sculptures are in the British Museum, and
the entire series has been recently made complete by
casts from the other fragments, and arranged in the order
of the original design. The marvellous beauty of these
reliefs, which was heightened originally by color, has
been long familiar to all the world from numerous
illustrated descriptions. The processions of youths and
maidens, of priests and magistrates, of oxen for sacrifice,
of flute-players and singers, followed by the youthful
chivalry of Athens on prancing steeds—is represented
as wending its way from the west towards the eastern
entrance. Outside of the building, on the N. and S.
sides, the metopes between the Doric triglyphs were
filled with sculptures representing scenes from the
mythical history of Athens. But the glory of the
Parthenon were the sculptures of the E. and W.
pediments. Unhappily but a few figures remain, and
none are wholly perfect, of the statues which formed
these groups; and Pausanias appears to have thought it
superfluous to give a minute description of objects so
familiar to every connoisseur and traveller.
Opposite to the Parthenon, on the northern edge of
the Acropolis, stands another remarkable temple, far
smaller in size, and built in the most graceful forms of
the Ionic order. The Erechtheium appears to be de-
signed expressly to contrast with the severe sublimity of
the Parthenon ; and on the side which confronts those
mighty Dºbric shafts, the columns of the smaller building
are allowed to transform themselves into Canephori.
The temple of Athena Polias, which contained the
ancient wooden image of the Goddess, and formed the
centre of her worship, suffered from fire in the Persian
War (479 B.C.) A building so sacred would hardly have
been allowed to remain for long in ruins; but it was re-
served for Pericles to set about a complete restoration
of it.
Among the many glories of the Acropolis, the Pro-
pylaea are described by Pausanias as being exceptionally
magnificent (i. 22). Théy rivalled even the Parthenon,
and were the most splendid of all the buildings of
Pericles.
From the disastrous termination of the Peloponnesian
war to the yet more fatal defeat at Chaeroneia, the
A T H
607
architectural history of Athens is a blank, only inter-
rupted by the restoration of the Long Walls and the
rebuilding of the fortifications of Piraeeus by Conon,
both of which had been destroyed by Lysander. The
financial genius of the orator Lycurgus, whose adminis-
tration lasted from 338 to 325 B.C., replenished to some
extent the exhausted resources of his country.
The Macedonian period again marks a new epoch in
the history of Athenian topography. Hencefoward
almost every embellishment Athens received was at the
hands of the various foreign princes, whose tastes
inclined them to patronise a city so rich in historical
associations, and so ready to reward each new admirer
with an equal tribute of servile adulation. But what-
ever decoration the city might owe to royal vanity or
munificence, her connection with these foreign potentates
brought her far more of injury than advantage. She
became entangled in the wars, and usually found herself
upon the losing side.
Upon the death of Alexander the Athenians claimed
their liberty, but they at once had to submit to Anti-
pater (322 B.C.), who placed a garrison in Munychia. It
perhaps was he who defaced the ‘ancient Pnyx; at all
events, from this time forward the political oratory of
Athens became silent for ever.
Under the rule of the Romans Athens enjoyed the
privileges of a Zibera civitas, i.e., no garrison was intro-
duced into the town, no tribute was levied upon it, and
the constitution was left unaltered. The Areopagus,
indeed, under Roman influence, recovered some of its
ancient power, and was made to take precedence of the
more democratic assemblies of the Boule and Ecclesia.
The revision also of the laws by Hadrian would, of
course, introduce some changes. Yet it may surely be
maintained that Athens under the Roman dominion was
in a far better position than in the days before the taking
of Corinth by Mummius, when she had been at the
mercy of each successive Macedonian pretender. The
Romans appear to have shown a remarkable respect for
the feelings of the Athenian people. It would be super-
fluous here to recall the warm expressions of admiration
which fall from Cicero and Horace when speaking of
Athens. A visit to Athens was regarded by the edu-
cated Roman as a kind of pilgrimage. One great dis-
aster Athens did indeed undergo at the hands of Rome;
this was the siege and plunder of the city by Sulla in
the Mithridatic War.
It is uncertain at what exact date the Horologium of
Andronicus of Cyrrhus was erected, which is generally
known as the Tower of the Winds. It is first men-
tioned by Varro, and is therefore older than 35 B.C.,
though certainly not earlier than the Roman conquest.
This monument, so familiar to every scholar, is described
by Virruvius (i. 6, 4) as an octagonal tower of marble.
It stands at what anciently formed the eastern extremity
of the Roman Agora, presently to be described. On
each face, beneath the cornice, is sculptured the figure
of the wind which blew from the corresponding quarter;
on the top of the roof was a pedestal supporting a bronze
triton (now destroyed), which was constructed to turn
with the wind, and to point out the wind’s quarter with
a wand which he held in his hand. The sculptured
figures of the winds are in good preservation, though of
a declining period of art. They represent the four cardi-
nal points and the intermediate quarters between these.
Each has his emblems: Boreas, the north wind, blows
his noisy conch ; Notus, the rainy south wind, bears his
water-jar; Zephyrus, the west wind, has his lap full of
flowers, and so on. Under each figure are the remains
of a sun-dial ; and besides all these external features,
the interior was constructed to form a water-clock, sup-
plied with water from the spring at the Acropolis called
Clepsydra. Thus in cloudy weather a substitute was
provided for the dial and the sun.
The reign of Hadrian made literally a new era in the
history of Athens. For Greece, and especially for
Athens, this emperor entertained a passionate admira-
tion. He condescended to hold the office of archon
eponymus ; in his honor a thirteenth tribe, Hadrianis,
was instituted; and the emperor shared with Zeus the
title of Olympius, and the honors of the newly-finished
temple. While, however, many portions of the city
bore witness to his munificence, it was in the south-
eastern quarter that most of his new buildings arose, in
the neighborhood of the Olympium. This suburb was
accordingly styled Hadrianopolis, or New Athens, to
distinguish it from the old city of Theseus and of
Themistocles. The arch of Hadrian still stands in a
fairly perfect state, and marks the boundary between the
ancient town and the new suburb embellished by
Hadrian. At the same time many of the older buildings
underwent restoration at his command. Nor was his
bounty shown in works of building alone. He ceded to
the Athenians the island of Cephallenia, and bestowed
upon them large presents of money, and an annual
largess of corn.
The immediate successors of Hadrian were guided by
his example. Antonius Pius completed an aqueduct
which Hadrian had commenced for bringing water into
the town from Cephisus. Marcus Aurelius visited
Athens for the purpose of initiation at the Eleusinian
mysteries.
A few words may suffice to describe the ultimate fate
of Athens. In the reign of Valerian the northern bar-
barians first appeared in the north of Greece, where
they laid seige to Thessalonica. This extraordinary
apparition having alarmed all Greece, the Athenians
restored their city wall, which Sulla had dismantled,
and otherwise placed the town in a state of defence
sufficient to secure it against a coup-de-main. . But un-
der Gallienus, the next emperor, Athens was beseiged,
and the archonship abolished, upon which the strategos
or general, who had previously acted as inspector of the
Agora, became the chief magistrate. Under Claudius
the city was taken, but recovered soon afterwards.
Constantine the Great gloried in the title of General of
Athens, which had been conferred upon him, and ex-
pressed high satisfaction on obtaining from the people
the honor of a statue with an inscription, — a distinc-
tion which he acknowledged by sending to the city a
yearly gratuity of grain. He also conferred on the gov-
ernor of Attica and Athens the title of Méya's 24 otjé,
or Grand Duke, which soon became hereditary; and
his son Constans bestowed several islands on the city, in
order to supply it with corn. In the time of Theodo-
sius I., that is, towards the end of the 4th century, the
Goths laid waste Thessaly and Epirus; but Theodorus,
general of the Greeks, acted with so much prudence,
that he saved the Greek cities from pillage and the in-
habitants from captivity, a service which was most
gratefully acknowledged. But this deliverance proved
only temporary. The fatal period was now fast ap-
proaching, and, in a real barbarian, Athens was doomed
to experience a conqueror yet more remorseless than
Sulla. This was Alaric, king of the Goths, who, under
the Emperors Arcadius and Honorius, overran both
Italy and Greece, sacking, pillaging, and destroying.
Never, indeed, did the fury even of barbarian conquest
discharge itself in a fiercer or more desolating tempest.
The Peloponnesian cities were overturned; Arcadia and
Lacedaemon were both laid waste; the gulfs of Lepanto
and AEgina were illuminated with the flames of Corinth;
and the Athenian matrons were dragged in chains to
satisfy the brutal desires of the barbarians. The invalu-
6O8
A T H
able treasures of antiquity were removed; stately and
magnificent structures were reduced to heaps of ruin;
and Athens, stripped of the monuments of her ancient.
splendor, was compared by Synesius, a writer of that
age, to a victim of which the body had been consumed,
and the skin only remained.
From the period of the Ottoman conquest, 1455, to
the commencement of the insurrection in 1821, Athens
was only known in history by two attempts, on the
part of the Venetians, to expel the Turks and make
themselves masters of the city. The first of these took
place in 1464, only nine years after its capture by the
Osmanlis, and proved an entire failure. But the second,
which was undertaken in 1687, more than two cen-
turies later, was crowned with a temporary and fatal
success. In the month of September of that year, Count
Königsmark, a Swede in the service of Venice, having
disembarked at the Piraeeus a force of 8ooo foot and 876
horse, forming part of the armament under Francesco
Morosini, afterwards doge, marched to Athens, and
having summoned the citadel without effect, he erected a
battery of heavy ordnance on the hill of the Pnyx, and
placing two mortars near the Latin convent at the western
foot of the Acropolis, bombarded it for several days.
The fire of the cannon was chiefly directed against the
Propylaea, and the modern defences below that edifice,
whilst the mortars continued, without intermission, to
throw shells into the citadel. The consequence was,
that the beautiful little temple of Nike Apteros, the
frieze of which is now at the British Museum, was
completely destroyed by the breaching battery; and
the Parthenon, besides being greatly injured by the
loursting of the shells, was, towards the close of the
attack, almost rent in pieces by the explosion of a
powder magazine, which reduced the middle of the
temple to a heap of ruins, threw down the whole of the
wall at the eastern extremity, and precipitated to the
ground every statue on the eastern pediment. The
western extremity was fortunately less injured, and a
part of the Opisthodomos was still left standing, bgether
with some of the lateral columns of the peristyle adjoin-
ing to the cell. But the shock was nevertheless abun-
dantly disastrous; and when the Turks afterwards
regained possession of the citadel (from which, on this
occasion, they were expelled), they did all in their
i. to complete the destruction which the Venetians
ad so vigorously begun, by defacing, mutilating, or burn-
ing for lime every fragment of the edifice within their
reach.
In the course of the revolutionary war Athens sus-
tained three sieges. The first was that by the Greeks
in 1822. Having carried the town by storm, and driven
the Turks into the citadel, they established a strict
blockade of the fortress, which was continued until the
3.
advance of the Pasha with 4ooo men induced them to
abandon their enterprise, and fly, with the Athenians,
to Salimis and AEgina. Two months afterwards, the
Pasha having left Athens to the defence of 1500 men,
the Greeks again ventured to attack the town, and suc-
ceeded in obliging the Turks to seek refuge in the citadel,
which they forthwith determined to besiege; but, from
ignorance and want of means, no progress whatever was
made in the operation until they obtained possession of
the well which supplied the garrison with water, when
the Turks agreed to capitulate upon condition of being
immediately embarked with their families and sent to
Asia Minor. On various pretences, however, embarka-
tion was delayed from time to time; and when intelli-
gence at length arrived that a large Turkish force was
advancing upon Athens, the Palicari, instead of man-
ning the walls and preparing for a wigorous defence,
rushed in a body to the houses where the prisoners were;
confined, and commenced an indiscriminate massacre.
For this atrocity it is no palliation to remember that the
Greek character had morally suffered from centuries of
servitude, and that they had terrible arrears of vengeance
to exact. The third siege was that by the Turks in 1826.
The Greeks had left a strong garrison in the Acropolis,
with provisions for several months; and a spring of
water having been discovered in the cave of Pan, and
enclosed by Odysseus within the defences of the citadel,
there was no danger of its being starved into a surren.
der. But the Turks having established batteries near
the Pnyx and on the hill of the Museium, and having
drawn a line of trenches around the citadel, with the
view of intercepting all communication between the be-
sieged and the Greek army, the garrison was hard
pressed; and although Colonel Fabyier succeeded in
forcing his way through the Turkish lines with 500 men
and a supply of ammunition, and thus afforded imme-
diate relief, yet the total defeat of the Greek army under
General Church at the battle of Athens, fought in the
hope of raising the siege, led soon after to the surrender
of the Acropolis, which remained in the hands of the
Turks until the termination of the revolutionary war.
In 1812 Athens could boast of a population of 12,OOO
souls, but during the war the greater part of the city
was laid in ruins, and most of the inhabitants were dis-
persed. In 1834 it was declared the capital of the new
kingdom of Greece. Great exertions have been made
since then to restore the city ; streets have been opened,
levelled, widened ; the ancient sewers have been cleared
and repaired, and the marshes of Cephisus drained. Ex-
cavations of ancient sites and buildings have been carried
out, chiefly through the efforts of the Archaeological
Society of Athens, but the antiquaries, and scholars of
all Europe have anxiously watched their endeavors, and
France and Prussia have vied with Great Britain in the
prosecution of Athenian discovery. Altogether, Athens,
like the rest of Greece, is in a condition of increasing
prosperity, and reaps the blessings of freedom. It is
true that an our own country the ardent philhellenism
of forty years ago has cooled down, and Greece is no
longer an object of popular and sentimental admiration.
Yet never did the scholars of Europe turn with keener
zest to the study of her ancient monuments ; and if
Attica were cleared for ever of brigands, and furnished
with satisfactory roads, then in numbers tenfold greater
than now would reverent travellers from the west of
Europe delight to make their pilgrimage to the birth-
place of philosophy, Niterature, and art.
ATHENS, the name of several towns in the United
States of America, the chief of which are the following:
—(1.) The capital of a county of the same name in the
S.E. of the state of Ohio, finely situated on the Hock-
ing river. It is the seat of the Ohio University, and
contains 3,000 people. (2.) The capital of Clark county,
Georgia, on the W. bank of the Oconee River. It is
the seat of the Georgia tuniversity, which was ſounded
in 1801, and the central town of a large cotton-growing
district. Population (1890), 8,500. w
ATHERTON or CHowBENT, a township in the par-
ish of Leigh and hundred of West Derby, in Lancashire
200 miles from London. It is one of those places which
have grown to wealth and populousness through the ex-
tension of the cotton trade. Besides its factories, it has
cokieries and ironworks. Population (1890), 9,000.
ATHIAS, Joseph, a celebrated rabbi and printer at
Amsterdam, whose editions of the Hebrew Bible are
noted for the general correctness of the text.
ATHLETAE, among the Greeks and Romans, was the
designation of persons who contended for prizes in the
public games, exclusive of musical and other contests,
where bodily strength was not cafled into play, though
A T H t;
609
figure of Pallas Athena, with an inscription telling
where they were gained, and in some cases adding the
here also the word was sometimes applied, and it was
even extended to horses which had won a race, and
again metaphorically, e.g., to persons who had exerted
themselves in good deeds. On the other hand, the term
was restricted so as to exclude those, who, for mere ex-
ercise, without the incentive of a prize, practised in the
daily gymnastic competitions. Yet it was not the value
of the prizes themselves which led men to devote their
lives to athletic exercises. That was at most very insig-
nificant. But from the heroic legends of competitions
for prizes, such as those at the obsequies of Patroclus,
from the great antiquity of the four national games of
Greece (the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian,
with the local Panathenaea at Athens), and from the high
social position of the competitors in early times, there
gradually became attached to victory in one of these
games so much glory that the townsmen of a victor were
ready to, and frequently did, erect a statue to him, re-
ceive him in triumph, and care for him for the rest of
his life. Against specially trained athletes the better
class of citizens refused to compete, and the lists of the
public games being thus left practically open only to
professionals, training became more a matter of system
and study, particularly in regard to diet, which was rig-
orously prescribed for the athletes by a public function-
ary, styled the Aleiptes, who also had to salve their
bodies when practising. At one time their principal
food consisted of fresh cheese, dried figs, and
wheaton bread. Afterwards meat was introduced, gen-
erally beef or pork; but the bread and meat were taken
Separately, the former at breakfast, the latter at dinner.
Except in wine, the quantity was unlimited, and the
capacity of some of the heavy weights must have been,
if such stories as those about Milo are true, enormous.
Cases of death from apoplexy are not unknown among
them. The Tarentine Iccus was an example of the
Strictest abstinence. Their instruction consisted, be-
sides the ordinary gymnastic exercises of the palaestra,
in carrying heavy loads, liſting weights, bending iron
rods, striking at a suspended leather sack filed with sand
or flour, taming bulls, &c. Boxers had to practice
delving the ground, to strengthen their upper limbs.
The competitions open to the athletes were in running,
leaping, throwing the discus, wrestling, boxing, and the
Pancratium, or combination of boxing and wrestling.
Victory in this last was the highest achievement of an
athelete, and was reserved only for men of extraordi-
nary strength. . The competitors were naked, having
their bodies Salved with oil. Boxers wore the cartres,
i.e., Štraps of leather, round the wrists and forearms,
with a piece of metal in the fist, which was sometimes
employed with great barbarity. An athlete could begin his
career as a boy in the contests set apart for boys. He
could appear again as a youth against his equals, and
though always unsuccessful, could go on competing till
the age of 35, when he was debarred, it being assumed
that after this period of life he could not improve. It
sometimes happened that an athlete would agree to
allow his rival to win; but for that and other cases of
dishonesty a fine was imposed, and the money expended
in erecting statues, with warning inscriptions. The
most celebrated of the Greek athletes whose names have
been handed down are Milo, Hipposthenes, Polydamas,
Promachus, and Glaucus. Cyrene, famous in the time
of Pindar for its athletes, appears to have still main-
tained its reputation to at least the time of Alexander
the great; for in the British Museum are to be seen six
prize vases carried off from the games at Athens by
natives of that district. These vases found in the
tombs, probably, of the winners, are made of clay, and
painted on one side with a representation of the contest
in which they were won. and on the other side with a
name of the eponymous magistrate of Athens, from
which the exact year can be determined. Among the
Romans, fond as they were of exhibitions of physical,
skill and strength, the profession of athletes was entirely
an exotic, and was even under the empire with difficulty
transplanted from Greece. The system and the ath-
letes themselves were always purely Greek.
ATHLETIC SPORTS. Although this term is
undoubtedly derived from the ancient, the derivation does
not exactly indicate its present meaning, inasmuch as
our modern athletes are distinctly defined to be ama-
teurs, in contradistinction to professionals. In fact, the
former pursue the agonistic art, and should be styled
“agonistics,” if we may be allowed to invent such a
word, rather than athletes. How the pastime came to
be thus named in Britain some thirty years ago it is hard
to say. Till about 1860, all exercises wherein the feet
played the principal part were rightly styled “pedestrian-
ism.” Up to that period all prizes, whether contended
for by amateurs or professionals, were invariably in.
money. As the practice of the pastime, however, rap-
idly spread amongst the former, it was naturally found
they were loth to compete on the same terms with, and
for similar trophies as, the latter.
modern definition of an amateur athlete, viz., “Any per-
son who has never competed in an open competition,
or for public money, or for admission money, or with
professionals for a prize, public money, or admission
money; nor has ever at any period of his life, taught, or
assisted in the pursuit of athletic exercises as a means of
livelihood; nor is a mechanic, artisan, or laborer.”
The moment this definition was brought into ſorce a
wide barrier arose between the two classes, and ama-
teurs ceased to compete for money prizes amongst them-
selves, or against professionals, on any terms, unless.
they were willing to forfeit their status.
ATHLONE, a market-town and parliamentary bor-
ough of Ireland, lying partly in West Meath and partly
in Roscommon, 76 miles W. of Dublin. The River
Shannon divides the town into two portions, which are
connected by a handsome new bridge, opened in 1844.
The rapids of the Shannon at this point are obviated
by means of a canal about a mile long, which renders
the navigation of the river practicable for 71 miles above
the town.
ATHOL, a thriving town, situated in Worcester Co.,
Mass., and the centre of considerable commercial enter-
prise. Population, 1889, about 5,000.
ATHOR, ATHYR, HATHOR, the name of the Egypt-
ian divinity corresponding to Aphrodite or Venus.
Her name meant “the abode of Hor” or Horus, and
she was the mother of that deity in some of his types,
and as such a form of Isis, of whom she was a higher or
celestial manifestation. Her name occurs as early as
the 4th dynasty, when she is styled the mistress of the
tree, or sycamore, zze/a, or the tree of the south. The
solar deities Shu and Tefnut were her children. In cer-
tain legends she is mentioned as the seven cows of Athor,
which appear in the Ritual or Book of the Dead.
These cows, like the Moirae, or fates of Greek mythol-
ogy, appeared at the birth of legendary persons, and
predicted the course and events of their lives. It is in
this capacity that Athor is connected with Ptah, or the
Egyptian Hephæstus, and is allied to Sekhet or Bast,
called the wife or mistress of Ptah, the seven cows being
the mystical companions of the Apis, the second life or
incarnation of the god of Memphis. She was also rep-
resented under the attributes and with the titles of the
goddess Nut, or the Egyptian Rhea. The cow of
Athor wore on its head the solar disk. and hawk feather
Hence arose the
&
39 A
6 IO
A T H — A T L
plumes; like Amen Ra; and in this character as the
great cow she has on some monuments her human head
replaced by that of a cow wearing a disk, or the disk
and plumes. This emblem also appears in her type at a
later period, when her head is represented with long
tresses curled into a spiral at the end, and the has the
ears of a cow instead of human ears. Her head is then
surmounted by a doorway or its cornice, emblem of the
abode of the sun, which she represented. This is some-
times surmounted by the disk and horns. The third
month of the Egyptian year was named Athor after her,
and the fish aten or latus, a kind of carp, was sacred to
her.
ATHOS is, strictly speaking, the terminal peak of
the most eastern of the three peninsular promontories
which stretch south from the coast of Turkey (Macedo-
nia), like the prongs of a trident, into the Archipelago.
The name is, however, frequently extended to the whole
peninsula which was formerly known as Acte. The
peak rises like a pyramid, with a steep summit of white
marble, to a height of 6780 feet, and can be seen at
sunset from the plain of Troy on the one hand, and on
the other from the slopes of Olympus. The whole
peninsula is remarkable for the beauty of its scenery,
with rocky heights and richly-wooded flanks, ravines
“embowered from the light,” and glimpses of free out-
look over the surrounding sea. The climate is for the
most part healthy and pleasant, though the western side
is perhaps too much exposed to the heats of summer;
and Lucian assures us that in ancient times the inhabi-
tants were famous for longevity. Several towns, such
as Sane, Dium, Olophyxus, Cleonae, are mentioned by
Greek and Latin writers as existing in the Peninsula; but
mone of them seem to have attained any great impor-
tance, and the most remarkable event in the ancient
'history of Athos is the construction by Xerxes of a ship-
canal across the isthmus between the outer sea and the
Singitic gulf. Traces of this canal, which was regarded
by Juvenal as a Greek myth, have been found almost
right across the neck of land, and leave no doubt of the
truth of the story. In more modern times the district
of Athos has been famous for the number of hermits
and monks that have found shelter in its retreats. No
fewer than 935 churches, chapels, and oratories are said
to exist, and many of the communities possess con-
siderable wealth. It is believed that, with the excep-
tion of the dwellings of Pompeii, some buildings in
Athos are the oldest specimens of domestic architecture
in Europe; the shrines are in many cases richly decorated
with goldsmith's work of great antiquity; the wealth of
the monastic libraries in illuminated manuscripts has
been long celebrated; and 'nowhere can the Byzantine
school of painting be studied with equal advantage.
The date of the oldest religious foundation in the penin-
sula is not clearly ascertained, and the traditional chro-
nology of the monks themselves can hardly be trusted.
ATHY, a market-town of Ireland, county of Kildare,
*4 miles S.W. of Dublin. It is a station on the Great
Southern and Western Railway, and is intersected by
the river Barrow, which is here crossed by a bridge of
five arches. Population (1890) 48,000.
ATINA, a town of Naples, province of Terra di
Lavoro, near the Melfa, and 12 miles S.E. of Sora. It
* has a cathedral, convent, and hospital, and about 5000
inhabitants; but it is chiefly remarkable for its ancient
remains, consisting of portions of its walls, the ruins of
an extensive aqueduct, and numerous other structures,
besides monuments and inscriptions. The city is of
great antiquity, and was a place of importance down to
the days of the Roman empire. It is remarkable now,
*s of old, for the exceptional coolness of its situation.
ATITLAN, a lake in the department of Solola, in
Guatemala, 20 miles long, with an average breadth of
9 miles. It seems to occupy the crater of an extinct
volcano, and its depth is reported to be very great.
ATLANTA, the capital of Georgia, is situated about
Seven miles southeast of the Chattahoochee river, at an
elevation of I, IOO feet above the sea. It was laid out
in 1845, and became a city in 1847. It is the seat of
extensive manufacturing interests, there being 590 fac-
tories, with an invested capital of $14,500,000 and an
annual product of $29,000,000. Eight large trunk lines
of railroad center here. Atlanta contains the State cap-
itol (cost $1,000,000), court-house, United States build-
ing, chamber of commerce, Confederate Home, many
hospitals and asylums; sixteen Schools, costing $320,000,
and seventy-three churches, valued at $1,500,000. The
city is lighted by gas and electricity, has twenty-five
miles of main sewers, and new water-works taking an
unlimited supply from the Chattahoochee river. There
are fifty-five miles of electric, steam, dummy, and other
street railroads; a fire department of fifty-five men, and
a police force of 106 men. The city receipts in 1889
were $1,168,518; the expenditures $944,952. The as-
sessed valuation is $75,000,000, and the tax levy is lim-
ited to one-half per cent. During the war Atlanta was
the scene of extensive military operations. (See UNITED
STATES, JOHNSTON, JOS. E., and SHERMAN, WM. T.)
The census of 1890 shows a population of 67,515.
ATLANTIC, capital of Cass county, Iowa, eighty-
two miles west by south of Des Moines. It has two
banks, printing offices, graded Schools, and six churches,
and a population (1890) of 4,300.
ATLANTIC CITY, a watering place on the eastern
coast of New Jersey, in Atlantic county. Population,
13,000, largely increased in the summer season.
ATLANTIC OCEAN. This designation, originally
given to the sea that lies beyond the range of Atlas in
North-western Africa, has come to be applied, with the
extension of geographical knowledge, to the whole of
that vast ocean which occupies the wide and deep trough
that separates the New from the Old World. Its limits
are variously defined; some geographers regarding it as
extending from pole to pole, whilst others consider it as
bounded at its northern and southern extremities by the
Arctic and Antarctic circles respectively. As the pecul-
iarity of the physical conditions of the Polar Seas
renders it on every account more appropriate to describe
them under a separate head (POLAR REGIONS), the At-
lantic will be here treated as bounded at the north by
the Arctic circle, which nearly corresponds with the nat-
ural closing-in of its basin by the approach of the
coasts of Norway and Greenland with Iceland lying be-
tween them ; while at the south, where the basin is at its
widest, its only boundary is the Antarctic circle. The
line which separates its southern extension from the
Indian Ocean may be considered to be the meridian of
Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of the African
continent; whilst the boundary between the South At-
lantic and South Pacific would be formed in like manner
by the meridian of Cape Horn. Although the Baltic
and Mediterranean are commonly regarded as append-
ages to the Atlantic, yet their physical conditions are so
peculiar as to require separate treatment.
Every physical geographer who has written upon the
Atlantic has noticed the curious parallelism between its
eastern and its western borders, their salient and retir-
ing angles corresponding very closely to each other.
Thus, beginning at the north we see that the projection
formed by the British Islands (which extends much fur-
ther westwards at Ioo fathoms below the surface than it
does above the sea-level), answers to the wide entrance
to Baffin's Bay; whilst, on the other hand, the projec-
tion of the American coast at Newfoundland answers to
A T L
6I I
the Bay of Biscay. Further south, the great rounded
prominence of Northern Africa corresponds with the
vast bay that stretches from Nova Scotia to St. Thomas;
whilst the angular projection of South America towards
the east corresponds with that receding portion of the
mid-African coast-line which is known as the Gulf of
Guinea.
This correspondence suggested to Humboldt the idea
that the Atlantic basin was originally excavated by a
very violent rush of water from the south, which, being
repulsed by the mountain ranges of Brazil, was directed
by them towards the coast of Africa, and formed the
Gulf of Guinea; being there checked and turned to the
west by the mountains of Upper Guinea, the stream ex-
cavated the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico; and
issuing thence, it ran between the mountains of North
America and Western Europe, until it gradually dimin-
ished in velocity and force, and at length subsided.
Another writer speaks of the basin of the Atlantic as an
immense rift, made by some terrible force, which rent
the surface-land asunder, but left the edges of the ravine
to show by their form that they had once been connected.
For neither of these speculations, however, is there the
Smallest foundation in fact. What has to be accounted
for, indeed, in regard to either of the great areas at pres-
ent covered by water, is not so much the excavation of
its sea-bed, as its segregation from an ocean originally
universal by the boundaries that now enclose it; in other
words, not so much the depression of the bottom of its
basin as the elevation of its sides. Not only is the pro-
portion of the land-surface of the globe to its water sur-
face scarcely more than one-third (being as I to 2.78),
but the entire mass of the land which thus covers little
more than one-fourth of the surface of the globe is quite
insignificant in comparison with that of the water which
covers the remaining three-fourths. For whilst the aver-
age elevation of the whole land is certainly less than one-
fifth of a mile, giving from 9 to IO millions of cubic miles
as the total mass of land that rises above the sea-level, the
average depth of the sea (so far as at present known) may
be taken at about 2 miles, giving a total of nearly 290 mil-
lions of cubic miles of water, which is therefore about
thirty times the mass of the land. From the computa-
tion of Keith Johnston, it appears that, “if we conceive
an equalising line, which, passing around the globe,
would leave a mass of the earth’s crust above it, just
sufficient to fill up the hollow which would be left below
it, this line would then fall nearly a mile below the pres-
ent level of the sea.” This is tantamount to saying that,
if the solid crust of the earth could be conceived to be
smoothed down to one uniform level, its entire surface
would be covered with water to the depth of about a
mile. Hence it is obvious that as the elevation of that
crust into land over certain areas must be accompanied
by a corresponding depression of the sea-bed over other
areas, such depression, augmenting in those areas the
previous depth of the aqueous covering of the globe,
would be quite sufficient to account for the existence of
the great oceanic basins, without any excavating action.
And a confirmation of this view is found in the fact, as-
certained by recent surroundings, that the deepest local
depressions of the sea-bed are met with in the neighbor-
hood of islands that have been raised by volcanic agency.
Further, as the quantity of solid matter that musthave been
removed (on Humboldt's hypothesis) in the excavation
of the Atlantic valley must have been nearly four times
as great as that which forms the whole known land of the
globe, and as it is impossible to conceive of any mode in
which such a mass can have been disposed of, we may
‘dismiss that hypothesis as not only untenable in regard
to the Atlantic basin, but as equally inapplicable to any
other valley of similar width and depth.
The general direction of geological opinion, indeed,
has of late been, on physical grounds, towards the high
antiquity of the great oceanic basins, not exactly as at
present bounded, but as areas of depression having the
same relation as they have now to the areas of elevation
which form the great continents. Thus Sir Charles
Lyell was strongly impressed by the fact that the mean
depth of the sea is not improbably fifteen times as great
as the mean height of the land; and that the depres-
sions of the sea-bottom to a depth of three miles or
more extend over wide areas, whilst elevations of the
land to similar height are confined to a few peaks and
narrow ridges. Hence, he remarked, “while the effect
of vertical movements equalling IOOO feet in both direc-
tions, upward and downward, is to cause a vast transpo-
sition of land and sea in those areas which are now con-
tinental, and adjoining to which there is much sea not
exceeding IOOO feet in depth, movements of equal amount
would have no tendency to produce a sensible alteration
in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans or to cause the oceanic
and continental areas to change places. Depressions of
IOOO feet would submerge large areas of the existing
land; but fifteen times as much movement would be re-
quired to convert such land into an ocean of average
depth, or to cause an ocean three miles deep to replace
any one of the existing continents.” And Professor
Dana, who, more than any other geologist, has studied
the structure of the existing continents and the succes-
sion of changes concerned in their elevation, has been
led, by the consideration of the probable direction of the
forces by which that elevation was effected, to conclude
that the defining of the present continental and oceanic
areas began with the commencement of the solidification
of the earth’s crust. “The continental areas are the
areas of the least contraction, and the oceanic basins
those of the greatest, the former having earliest had a
solid crust. After the continental part was thus stiff.
ened, and rendered comparatively unyielding, the
oceanic part went on cooling, solidifying, and contract-
ing throughout; consequently, it became depressed,
with the sides of the depression somewhat abrupt. The
formation of the oceanic basins and continental areas
was thus due to “unequal radial contraction.’” In
the opinion of Professor Dana, there has never
been any essential change in the relations of
these great features. “It is hardly possible,” he
says, “to conceive of any conditions of the contracting
forces that should have allowed of the continents and
Oceans in after time changing places, or of oceans, as
deep nearly as existing oceans, being made where are
now the continental areas; although it is a necessary
incident to the system of things that the continental
plateaus should have varied greatly in their outline and
outer limits, and perhaps thousands of feet in the depths
of some portions of the overlying seas, and also that
the oceans should have varied in the extent of their
lands.” . . . “The early defining, even in Archaean
times, of the final features of North America, and the
conformity to one system visibly marked out in every
event through the whole history — in the positions of
its outlines and the formations of its rocks, in the
character of its oscillations, and the course of the
mountains from time to time raised — sustain the state-
ment that the American continent is a regular growth.
The same facts also make it evident that the oceanic
areas between which the continent lies have been chief
among the regions of the earth’s crust that have used
the pent-up force in the contracting sphere to carry
forward the continental developments. If this was true
of the North American continent, the same in principal
was law for all continents.”
Dimensions of the At/antic.—The length of the At-
6I 2
A T L
lantic basin, considered as extending from the Arctic to
the Antarctic circle, is nearly 8000 geographical miles.
The nearest approach of its boundaries is between
Greenland and Norway, whose coasts are only about 8oo
miles apart. They thence recede from each other
towards the south, as far as the parallel of 30° N. lat.,
where, between the peninsula of Florida and the west-
ern coast of Marocco, there is an interval of 70° of
longitude, or about 36OO geographical miles. The
channel then rapidly narrows as it passes southward, so
that between Cape St. Roque in Brazil (5° S. lat.) and
the coast of Sierra Leone (between 5° and 8° N. lat.)
the African and American continents approach within
I500 miles of each other. The sudden eastward reces-
sion of the African coast as it approaches the equator,
and the westward trend of the South American coast-
line between Cape St. Roque and Cape Horn, widen out
the South Atlantic basin to the same breadth as that of
the North Atlantic in the parallel of 30° N., - the
interval between the Cape of Good Hope and the estuary
of La Plata, in the parallel of 35° S., being no less than
73%% of longitude, or about 3600 geographical miles.
The depth of the North Atlantic has been more care-
fully and systematically examined than that of any
other oceanic basin; and the general contours of its un-
dulating sea-bed may now be regarded as pretty well de-
termined. The greatest depth determined by the recent
“Challenger” soundings, which was that of a limited
depression about a hundred miles to the north of St.
Thomas, is 3875 fathoms, or about 4.4 miles. Except
in the neighborhood of its coast-lines, and in certain
shallower areas to be presently specified, the floor of the
basin at its widest part seems to lie at a depth of from
2009 to 3000 fathoms, its slopes being extremely
gradual. The central portion of the principal basin of
the North Atlantic, however, is occupied by a plateau
of irregular shape, of which a considerable part lies at a
less depth than 2000 fathoms. Of this plateau the
Azores may be regarded as the culmination; and that
group being taken as its centre, it may be said to extend
to the north as far as lat. 50°, and to the south-west as
far as the tropic of Cancer. The northern extension of
this plateau narrows out into a sort of isthmus, which
connects it with the plateau that occupies a great part
of the Atlantic basin to the north of 50° N. lat.; and it
is across this isthmus, and along the bottom of the deep
narrow valley on either side of it, that the telegraph
cables are laid between Ireland and Newfoundland.
Generally speaking, the depths of these valleys in-
crease pretty rapidly with the distance from the shore-
line, so that the contour-lines of one and two miles follow
the shore-lines pretty closely. But there are two local-
ities in which shallow water extends to a much greater
distance from land than it appears to do elsewhere. One
of these lies in the neighborhood of the British Isles.
For a distance of about 230 miles to the westward of
Ireland there is a slope of only about 6 feet in a mile;
but in the next 20 miles there is a fall of 9000 feet, after
which there is little change of level for 1200 miles.
Hence as the depth of the sea immediately surrounding
the British Isles is nowhere Ioo fathoms (so that an ele.
vation of their whole area to that amount would unite
these islands not only to each other but also to the con-
tinent of Europe), it is obvious that the platform on
which they rest is really, although now submerged, a
part of the land-mass of Europe. Another of these ex-
tensive shallows is that of which the Banks of Newfound-
land form the highest part; and of the existence of this
a probable explanation may be found in the accumula-
tion of the rock-masses that are brought down by ice-
bergs every summer from the coasts of Greenland and
Labrador. For it is now generally admitted that these
icebergs are really parts of glaciers, that were originally
formed on the mountain-slopes of Greenland and Lab-
rador, and then descended valleys which open out on
their coasts, so as, on arriving at the mouths of these
valleys, to detach themselves and float away, being borne
southwards by the Polar Current to be presently de-
scribed. Most Arctic icebergs of which a near view can
be obtained are observed to have upon them a considera-
ble number of pieces of rock, sometimes of a very con-
siderable size; and these are of course deposited on the
sea-bed when the icebergs melt (which they usually do.
on the borders of the Gulf Stream), thus forming a vast
conglomerate bed, to which parallels are not improbably
to be found in various geological epochs.
Geological Age of the Atlantic Basin. — Guided by
the principle..that great oceanic basins are to be consid-
ered rather as original marine areas that have been
limited by the elevation of their boundaries, than as hav-
ing been formed by the excavation of terrestrial areas,
we have to inquire what evidence there is that the basin.
of the Atlantic has undergone any considerable change
within a comparatively recent period.
As has been pointed out by Prof. Wyville Thomson,
it is difficult to show that any oscillations have occurred
in the north of Europe since the termination of the
Secondary period, to a greater extent than from 4000 to
5OOO feet, — this being the extreme vertical depth.
between the base of the Tertiaries and the highest point.
at which Tertiary or post-Tertiary shells are found on
the slopes and ridges of mountains. Such oscillations,
while considerably modifying the boundaries of the
Atlantic, would not seriously affect the condition of the
deeper parts of its sea-bed ; and hence it may be con-
cluded that the two deep valleys, one on the European.
side of the modern volcanic platform of the Azores, and
the other on the American, each having a width of 600
or 700 miles, and an average depth of 15,000 feet, could.
neither have been formed by such oscillations, nor could,
when once formed, have been converted into dry land.
It will be presently shown that this idea of the existence.
of an Atlantic basin corresponding generally to that now
existing, as far back as the later Secondary period, is
strongly supported by the evidence recently obtained of
the continuity of animal life on the Atlantic sea-bed from
the Cretaceous epoch to the present time.
Important information as to the changes which the
sea-bed of the Atlantic has undergone within the later
geological periods, may be gathered from the structure.
of the islands which lift themselves above its surface.
Along its eastern border, at no considerable distance
from the coast of North Africa, there are three principal
groups, the Madeiras, Canaries, and Cape Verd, all
of which have an evidently volcanic origin, and rise up
from the eastern slope of the basin, where it is progress-
ively shallowing towards its continental shore-line. Fur-
ther out, in mid-ocean, lies the group of the Azores,
which also is volcanic, and rises from the plateau already
spoken of; but between this area and the slope from
which the Maderias and Canaries are based is a very deep
channel, ranging downwards to at least 15,000 feet; and
a like depth is also found between the Azores and the
coast of Portugal. The structure of all these groups of
islands gives obvious indications of their formation by
separate ignenous eruptions in a sea of great depth ; and
the earliest of these eruptions seems to have taken
place in the later Miocene period. As soon as the first
solid lavas raised their heads above water, and were thus
exposed to the action of the waves, fragments were
detached and rounded on the shore; and these being.
swept off, with the debris resulting from their attrition,
formed deposits of various kinds upon the slope of the
cone, in which corals, shells, &c., were imbedded. These:
A T L
613
fossiliferous deposits have been subsequently elevated to
heights from I Koo to 2000 feet above the level of the sea,
showing a ris of the base of the craters; progressive
additions have been made to their upper part by the
piling up of basaltic and trachytic lavas. That this state
of activity still continues is proved by the fact that in
1811 a new island was temporarily formed in the Azores
group, off St. Michael, by the throwing-up of ashes, and
the formation of a come about 300 feet high, with a
crater in the center. This island, to which the name
Sabrina was given, was soon washed away by the waves.
And only a few years since, another submarine eruption
in this neighborhood was indicated by earthquakes, jets
of Steam and columns of smoke, and floating masses of
Scoriae. All these considerations concur (as Sir Charles
Lyell, /oc. cit., justly urges) to negative on geological
grounds the hypothesis which has been advocated by
Some eminent naturalists, that the Azores, Madeiras, and
Canaries are the last remaining fragments of a continuous
area of land which once connected them with the west
of Europe and North Africa.
Proceeding to the south of the equator, we meet with
similar evidence of volcanic activity in the structure of
the only two islands, Ascension and St. Helena, which
lie near the line stretching from the Cape Verd group to
the Cape of Good Hope; and these also arise from a
plateau of considerably less depth than the circumjacent
area whose eastern slope gradually shallows to the coast
of South Africa. This plateau stretches in a north-
westerly direction towards the equator, so as to meet it
from 20° to 22° W. long.; and here indications of vol.
canic activity—earthquakes, troubled water, floating
scoriae, and columns of smoke — have been several times
observed since the middle of the last century, betokening
the probable formation of an island or an archipelago in
that locality.
Nearly midway between the southern prolongations of
the African, and American continents, the solitary peak
of Tristan da Cunha liſts itself above the ocean; this
also is volcanic, and seems to rise from a broad base
9f general elevation, resembling the plateau of the
North Atlantic.
The entire chain of the Greater and Lesser Antilles,
which stretches from the delta of the Orinoco to the pen-
insula of Florida, and forms the eastern boundary of
the Carribbean Sea, seems to have been in like manner
'elevated by volcanic action. That this elevation, like
that of the groups of islands on the eastern side of the
Atlantic, took place for the most part during the later
Tertiary period, is shown by the occurrence of shells,
corals, &c., of upper Miocene age, in the upraised sedi-
mentary beds of several of the islands; while the pres-
‘ence of “fringing reefs" of coral around the shores of
many of the West India islands is an indication that
they lie in a area in which elevation is still proceeding.
The channels by which they are separated are so deep
as to render it very unlikely that there was ever a con-
tinuity of land between them; and the occasional recur-
rence of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at different
points of this “line of fire,” shows that the plutonic
action by which the islands were raised is still going on
heneath.
The case is very different, however, in regard to the
Termuda group, which constitutes a singular exception
to the general fact of the absence in the Atlantic of
those coral islands that are so numerous in the Pacific.
This group consists of about 300 islands, of which,
however, only five are of any considerable size; and
these rise from a shoal or platform of about 23 miles
long by I 3 miles broad, the channels between the
islands being very shallow, while at a small distance
from the edge of the shoal, the bottom rapidly deepens
to 15,000 feet. The islands are entirely composed of
upraised beds of coral, shells, &c. (the highest elevation
being only about 180 feet above the sea-level); and the
shoal itself appears to have the like structure through-
out, no traces of any other rock than a limestone formed
by the metamorphoses of coral being anywhere met
with. Hence, as this insular platform proves to be the
summit of a submarine column of 15,000 feet high,
rising from a very small base, and as nothing we know
of the structure of mountains—volcanic or other—would
justify us in supposing that a column of such a height
could be formed in any other way than by coral growth,
the structure of the Bermuda group would seem to in-
dicate a progressive subsidence of the bed of this part
of the Atlantic during its formation, corresponding to
that which (according to the well-known views of Mr.
Darwin) is at present in progress over a large area of
the Pacific. It is probable that this coral growth was
determined in the first instance by the existence of a
submarine mountain, of which the summit lay near the
surface, or lifted itself above it; that as soon as this
came to be submerged, the coral formation commenced;
and that by its continued growth at the summit, at a
rate equal to that of the subsidence of its base, the plat-
form has been kept up to the sea-level. The slight
elevation which has raised its highest portion above
that level may not improbably have taken place in con-
nection with the much larger recent elevations already
referred to.
Thus, then, we have evidence of considerable recent
local modifications in the level of the Atlantic sea-bed,
without any such change as would affect its general
character as an ocean basin; while all geological proba-
bility seems in favor of the remoteness of the principal
depression of the Atlantic area, even if we do not regard
it as dating back to the period when the surface of the
globe was first undergoing solidification.
Currents of the Atlantic.—By the term “current”
will be here meant that sensible movement of ocean
water in particular directions which can be generally
traced, directly or indirectly, to the action of wind upon
its surface. A current thus directly impelled by wind is
termed a “drift-current,” whilst a current whose onward
movement is sustained by the zis a tergo of a drift-
current is called a “stream-current.” But there is
another source of current-movement, which has been
overlooked by most writers on this subject, namely,
the indraught which necessarily takes place to keep up
the level of any area from which the surface-water is
constantly being drifted away. Such currents, which
may be designated as “indraught” or “supply currents,”
complete the “horizontal circulation ”... that must neces-
sarily take place in any oceanic area of which one part
is subjected to the action of a wind almost constantly
blowing in the same direction. Of such a circulation
we have a very characteristic example in the South
Atlantic, the principal currents of which we shall see to
be very easily accounted for.
The initial movement of the current-system, alike of
the North and of the South Atlantic, is given by the
trade-winds, which are continually driving the water of
the inter-tropical region from the African towards the
American side of the basin, so as to produce what is
known as the AEquatorial Current. The position of
the northern and southern boundaries of this current
shifts, like the area of the trade-winds, in accordance
with the northward and southward declination of the
sun; – a steady westward drift being generally met with
to the north of the tropic of Cancer in the summer of
the northern hemisphere, and to the south of the tropic
of Capricorn in the summer of the southern, whilst in
the winter of each hemisphere the border of the drift
614
A T L
lies within the tropic of that hemisphere. But as the
thermal equator lies from two to three degrees to the
north of the geographical equator, the entire zone of
the trade-winds, and of the Equatorial Current propelled
by them, is wider on the northern than on the southern
side of the latter; and while the northerly trade often
reaches 30° N. in July, and rarely extends south in Jan-
uary within 2° or 3° of the geographical equator, the
southerly trade does not extend farther than 25° S. in
January, and generally crosses the equator in July, even
extending occasionally as far as 5° N. As between the
northerly and southerly trades there is a region of
“equatorial calms,” so there is a corresponding interval
between the northern and southern divisions of the
Equatorial Current; and in this interval there is a
counter-current (resembling the “back-water” often to
be noticed in a stream that is flowing rapidly past some
obstacle, such as a vessel at anchor, or a projecting
river-bank), that runs eastwards, sometimes with con-
siderable velocity, towards the Bight of Biafra, which
may be considered the “head-water” of the Equatorial
Current. From the recent observations of Capt. Nares
in the “Challenger,” it appears that the Equatorial Cur-
rent, like other drift-currents, is very shallow, its depth
being not much greater than 50 fathoms. He estimates
its rate at the surface to be about o.75 miles per hour,
or 18 miles, per day, whilst at 50 fathoms it only moves
at about half that rate. Its surface temperature gen-
erally ranges between 75° and 809; but the thermom-
eter falls to 60° at a depth of little more than Ioo
fathoms, – the temperature of this belt of water, as will
be hereafter shown, being kept down by the continual
rising of polar water from below.
The Equatorial Current passes directly across the
Atlantic towards the chain of the Antilles and the coast
of South America; and as not only the whole of the
northern division, but a considerable part of the south-
ern, strikes the American coast-line to the north of the
salient angle of Cape St. Roque (about 5° S. lat.), the
portion of the current which is deflected into the north-
ern hemisphere is much greater than that which is
turned to the southward. It is a general fact, that
where a current encounters any partial obstruction,--
such as a coast-line meeting obliquely, a narrowing of
its channel, the lateral pressure of another current, or
even that of a mass of stationary water,- its velocity
increases; and so the portion of the Equatorial Cur-
rent that is pressed to the northward by the coast-line
between Cape St. Roque and the mouth of the Orinoco
(known in the first part of its course as the Cape St.
A’ogue Current, and afterwards as the Guiazza Current)
acquires a greatly augmented rate, running ordinarily
at the rate of from 30 to 50 miles, and occasionally at
a rate of 80 miles, in the 24 hours. Entering the Carib-
bean Sea, it is reinforced by the portion of the Equator-
ial Current which flows in between the Lesser Antilles;
and it then passes westwards along the northern coast
of South America, until it is deflected northwards by
the coast-line of Central America, and driven between
the peninsula of Yucatan and the western extremity of
Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico, at the rate of from 30 to
60 miles per day. A portion of it passes direct to the
N.E. along the northern shore of Cuba; but by far the
larger part sweeps round the gulf, following the course
of its coast-line, and approaches the coast of Cuba from
the N.W. as a broad deep stream of no great velocity,
seldom running at more than 30 miles per day. The
reunited current, being met by the Equatorial Current
from the outside, which is pressing to the west along
the north coast of Cuba and between the Bahama isles,
is deflected northwards through the passage termed the
Florida Channel, which is bounded on the one side by
the southern extremity of the peninsula of Florida, and
on the other by the coast of Cuba and the Bahamas.
The rate of movement of the powerful current that
flows through this channel, henceforth known as the
Gradf Stream, is considerably augmented in its narrow-
est part, which is also its shallowest; but although its
velocity sometimes reaches 4 (nautical) miles per hour,
or even more, its average rate through the whole year
may be confidently stated at not more than 2 miles per
hour, or 48 miles per day.
The Gulf Stream current, however, does not by any
means occupy the whole of the sectional area of the
Florida Channel; for it is separated from the American
coast by a band of cold water, which occupies about
three-eighths of its total breadth of 40 miles, and which
also dips under the outflowing current. The movement
of the cold superficial band is perceptibly inwards, and
that of the cold under-stratum is presumably so; and it
is the opinion of the American surveyors that the depth
of the warm outward current is not more than one-third
of that of the channel through which it flows. It is
probable that the rate of movement decreases from the
surface downwards; but upon this point we have as yet
no certain information. The meaning of the cold inflow
will hereafter become apparent.
The course taken by the Gulf Stream in the first in-
stance is nearly parallel to the line of the United States
coast, from which it is everywhere separated by a band
of cold water, the boundary line between the two
being so distinct as to be known as the “cold wall.” It
does not show for some time any great disposition to
spread itself out laterally, though a division into alter-
nate bands of warmer and colder water, the cause of
which seems to lie in the contour of the bottom of the
Florida Channel, becomes perceptible before it reaches
Charleston, and is very marked off Cape Hatteras. The
Stream there presents the form of a fan, its three warm
bands spreading out over the Atlantic surface to an
aggregate breadth of 167 miles, whilst two cold bands of
an aggregate breadth of 52 miles are interposed between
them. The innermost warm band is the one which ex-
hibits the highest temperature and greatest rate of flow,
its velocity being greatest where it is pressed on laterally
by the Arctic Current, so that a rate of 4 miles per
hour is occasionally observed. Capt. Nares estimates
the depth of the Stream in this part of its course at
about IOO fathoms, and its rate of flow in the line of
most rapid movement at 3 miles per hour. The outer-
most band, on the other hand, graduates insensibly, both
as to temperature and rate of movement, into the gen-
eral surface-water of the Atlantic. It is when passing
Sandy Hook that the Gulf Stream takes its decided
turn eastwards,-- this change in its direction being partly
due to the eastward bend of the United States coast-
line, and partly to the excess of easter/y momentzºme
which it brings from the lower latitude in which it issued
from the Florida Channel. Its general rate of flow
past Nantucket seems not to exceed I mile per hour,
and to be frequently less; but several degrees to the
eastward of this, the current has been found occasion-
ally running at the rate of 4 miles an hour, this
acceleration being probably due to the lateral pressure
of the Arctic Current, which, during the early months
of the year, is driven southwards at the rate of Io or 12
miles per day by the N. and N.W. winds then prevail-
ing along the coast of Labrador, and which, turning
westwards round the south of Newfoundland, keeps
close to the coast of the United States (being left behind
in the rotation of the earth, in consequence of its
deficiency of easterly momentum), and follows it south-
wards, everywhere separating it from the Gulf Stream.
By the gradual thinning-out and expansion of the
A T L
615
Gulf Stream after passing the Banks of Newfoundland,
by the progressive reduction of its rate of movement,
and by the loss of that excess of temperature which
previously distinguished it, as well as of its peculiar blue
color (which ſº depends on its holding in sus-
pension the finest particles of the river-silt brought
down by the Mississippi), this remarkable current so far
loses all its special attributes, as to be no longer recog-
nisable to the east of the meridian of 30° W. long.,-
there degenerating into the general easterly drift of that
region of the Atlantic which is kept up by the preva-
lence of westerly winds, sometimes called “anti-
trades.” When the Florida Current or true Gulf
Stream can last be distinctly recognised, it forms a
stratum not more than 50 fathoms in thickness; and it
is there flowing almost due east, at a rate which would
require about 100 days to bring it to the Land's End.
The only valid evidence of the extension of any part of
it to the western shores of Europe (the amelioration of
their temperature being otherwise accounted for, while
the transport of trunks of trees, driſt-timber, fruits,
shells, &c., to the Western Hebrides, the Orkney, Shet-
land, and Faroe islands, and the coast of Norway, may
be fairly set down to the surface-drift sustained by the
prevalence of S.W. winds) is afforded by the variable
current known as Ā’enzie//'s, which, flowing eastwards
into the southern part of the Bay of Biscay, is deflected in
a N.W. direction by the trend of its coast-line, so as to
cross the British Channel towards the Sicilly Islands,
whence it passes to the S.W. coast of Ireland, its
strength mainly depending on the continued prevalence
of the westerly anti-trades.
Of the whole mass of water, on the other hand, that
is brought into the mid-Atlantic by the Gulf Stream, it
may be stated with confidence that the larger proportion
turns southward to the east of the Azores, and helps to
form the AVorth African Current, the other tributary
of which may be considered as originating as far north
as Cape Finisterre, under the influence of the northerly,
winds which prevail along the coast of Portugal. As
this current flows past the entrance to the Strait of
Gibraltar, a part of it, forming what is known as the
Gibraltar Current, is drawn in to keep up the level of
the Mediterranean, which would otherwise be reduced
by the excess of evaporation from its surface; but the
greater part keeps its course southwards along the
Marocco coast, reinforcing the south-flowing extension
of the Gulf Stream. On arriving at the border of the
northerly trade, the North African Current divides into
two parts, - the western division being at once carried
into the course of the equatorial driſt, whilst the east-
ern, which may be considered as essentially an indraught
or supply current follows the African coast-line, and
turns eastward into the Gulf of Guinea, forming the
Guinea Current, which, coalescing with the east-
ward “back-water” already mentioned, flows pretty
constantly, sometimes with considerable rapidity,
towards the Bight of Biafra. There it meets the South
African, Current, which forms the other great feeder of
the Equatorial Current ; and the circulation thus com-
pleted may be considered as recommencing from the
“head-water.” The large area of comparatively still
water which lies in the interior of this North Atlantic
circulation is called the Sargasso Sea, a corruption of
the name (Mar de Sargaço) which it received from
Columbus and the early Spanish navigators, on account
of the quantity of sea-weed that floats on its surface.
The boundaries of this area, which is of an irregularly
elliptical shape, and nearly equals that of Continental
Europe, are somewhat variable; but it may be consid-
ered to lie between the parallels of 20° and 35° N., and
between the meridians of 30° and 60° W. Into it is
collected a large proportion of the drift or wreck which
floats about the North Atlantic.
Proceeding now to the South Atlantic, we meet with
a circulation of the same kind, uncomplicated by any
embaying of the Equatorial Current. The smaller divis-
ion of this current which strikes the coast of South
America to the south of Cape St. Roque flows along
the coast of Brazil at the rate of from 12 to 20 miles a
day, forming the Brazil. Current, which, however, is
separated from the land by an intervening band of lower
temperature, that has, during the winter months, a dis-
tinct flow towards the equator. The Brazil Current can
be traced southwards, by its temperature rather than by
its movement, as far as the estuary of the La Plata,
before reaching which, however, a great part of it takes
an easterly direction, and crosses the Atlantic towards
the Cape of Good Hope, forming what is known as the
Southern Connecting Current. The easterly move-
ment of this current seems to be partly due to the
westerly anti-trades, and partly to the excess of easterly
momentum which is retained by the Brazil Current in
its southward course from Cape St. Roque; whilst it
partly depends also on the junction of an Antarctic cur-
rent that flows N. E. from Cape Horn, meeting the
Brazil Current off the estuary of La Plata, just as the
Arctic Current meets the Gulf Stream off Newfound-
land,-dense fogs being produced, in the one case as in
the other, through the precipitation of the vapor over-
lying the Equatorial Current, by the colder air that
overlies the Polar. On meeting the coast of South
Africa, the Southern Connecting Current turns north-
wards, and runs towards the Bight of Biafra, forming the
South African Current, the movement of which is
partly sustained by the southerly winds which prevail
along that coast, but is partly attributable to the in-
draught set up to supply the efflux of the Equatorial
Current. In its passage thither, however, the part of
it most distant from the land is draughted westwards by
the southern trade, forming the most southerly portion
of the equatorial drift. Between this and the Southern
Connecting Current is a central space, lying between
the parallels of 20° and 30° S., and the meridians of oo
and 25° W., over which there are no regular currents;
and to this the name Sargasso Sea is sometimes applied
by analogy, although its surface has no covering of sea-
weed.
Temperature of the Atlantic.—The distribution of
surface temperature over the area of the Atlantic has
now been made out with considerable accuracy; and it
corresponds closely with what has been already stated as
the course of the surface currents. There is, of course,
a seasonal change, alike in its morthern and in its
southern division, this change being more and more
marked as we recede from the equator. Following the
course of the mean annual isotherms, however, we find
that they cross the South Atlantic at nearly regular
intervals, in an east and west direction, the principal
departure from that direction being shown at their
western end in the bend they take towards the south
under the influence of the warm Brazil Current, and at
their eastern in the still stronger bend they take towards
the north under the influence of the cold South African
Current, which reduces to about 75° the temperature of
the southern equatorial that flows alongside the Guinea
Current, whose temperature is 829. In the North
Atlantic, however, the influence of the movement of
oceanic water on the surface-temperature is very much
more marked. The annual isotherms, which cross the
Sargasso Sea with nearly regular parallelism, and on the
African side tend somewhat to the south, where they
meet the colder water of the North African Current,
show a strong northward bend on the American side,
6 I6
A T L
along the early course of the Gulf Stream ; but as its
excess of temperature above that of the Atlantic gener-
ally diminishes as we trace it towards the Banks of
Newfoundland, this northward deflection progressively
becomes less. The marked contrast in temperature
which is often there exhibited between two contiguous
bands of water, a thermometer hanging from a ship's
bow showing a temperature of 70°, whilst another
hanging from the stern shows only 40°,- is due not so
much to the elevation produced by the Gulf Stream as
to the depression produced by the Arctic Current. This
depression manifests itself in the southward bend given,
on the American side; alike to the summer and the
winter isotherms, beyond the summer isotherm of 70°
and the winter isotherm of 60°, which may be considered
as having nearly their normal position; whilst the north-
ward tendency of these same isotherms on the European
side not less conspicuously indicates a flow of warm water
towards the western coasts of the British Isles, Norway,
and even Iceland and Spitzbergen. It has been custom-
ary to regard this flow as an extension of the Gulf
Stream ; but if that term be limited (as it ought) to the
current that issues from the Gulf of Mexico through
the Florida Channel, the hypothesis is found to be un-
tenable so soon as the thermal phenomena of that current
are carefully examined. For, in the first place, the
popular idea that the Gulf Stream retains it high tempera-
ture with little diminution during its passage first north-
wards and then eastwards is clearly disproved by
observation.
From this it appears that, while the high surface-
temperature with which the Gulf Stream leaves the
Florida Channel is retained in summer with only 50
reduction as far as Nova Scotia, there is a reduction of
5° in winter during its morthward passage to Cape
Hatteras, and a further reduction of no less than Io9
during its eastward passage from Cape Hatteras to Nova
Scotia, making it a total reduction of 15°. In spring,
again, there is a total reduction of II*, and in autumn
of 13°; and in both cases the reduction during the
eastward flow under the parallel of 35° N. is greater
than the reduction in the northward flow from 25° N.
to 35° N. The explanation of this is plainly to be
found in the fact that in the early part of the course of
the Gulf Stream its superheated stratum is a thick one,
so that when its superficial film is cooled down by a
superincumbent atmosphere of lower temperature, it is
replaced by the uprising of a deeper stratum having
nearly its original temperature. But as the stream
spreads out superficially, its superheated stratum be-
comes proportionally thinner, and will consequently be
more and more rapidly cooled down by the superincum-
bent atmosphere. Even supposing, therefore, that it
were not subjected to any special cooling influence, it
appears certain that, as the rate of the current slackens
and its depth diminishes, the cooling process must con-
tinue at an increased rate, so as to bring down the
surface-temperature of the stream to the normal isotherm
of the locality, Jong before it could reach the shores of
Europe. But it has been shown that when it passes
Newfoundland the Gulf Stream is subjected to a special
cooling influence — that of the Labrador Current with
its fleet of icebergs, which melt away when borne into
it; and this produces such an immediate reduction of its
surface-temperature, that it thenceforth shows very
little excess, although its sub-surface stratum still appears
to be warmer than that of the ocean through which it
flows.
But, further, the Gulf Stream, where it is last recog-
misable as a current, is flowing due east, and its south-
ern portion turns first south-east and then south, whilst
on the other hand, the course of the isothermal lines
clearly shows that the flow of warm water which
carries them northward spreads across the whole breadth
of the Atlantic, from the British Isles to Labrador,
even extending up to the west of north into Baffin's
Bay. When we contrast this immense body of north-
moving water with the thinned-out film of what is by
comparison a mere rivulet, it becomes obvious (I) that
its northward flow cannot be attributable to the zis a
tergo of the Florida Current, whilst (2) its convection
of heat to the Arctic Sea cannot be accounted for by
any amount of excess of temperature that is limited to
a small depth, since the temperature of such a stratum,
moving north-east at a rate of (at most) 4 or 5 miles
per day, must soon be brought down to that of the at-
mosphere above it.
Influenced by these considerations, several eminent
hydrographers, both British and American, have been
disposed to deny, not only that the temperature of the
North Atlantic is modified in any considerable degree
by the true Gulf Stream, but that any other agency
than that of warm S.W. winds is concerned in produc-
ing the climatic amelioration popularly attributed to it.
They maintained, in fact, that the surface-temperature
of the North Atlantic and Arctic Seas follows that of
the superincumbent air, the atmospheric temperature
not being in any degree raised by that of warmer water
beneath. This doctrine, however, is found to be in-
consistent with the results of careful comparisons re-
cently instituted between marine and atmospheric
temperatures along the western coasts of Scotland, the
Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe Islands, and especially
with those obtained along the western coast of Norway.
For it is found that during the winter months there is a
constant excess of sea-temperature above that of the
air, averaging 69.2 Fahr. along the western coast of
Scotland and its islands, and rising to 149.5 at Fruholm
near the North Cape. And it is also a very significant
fact (ascertained by the careful inquiries of Mr.
Buchan), that while the summer isotherms cross the
British Islands nearly east and west (the temperature
diminishing pretty regularly from south to north), the
winter isotherms traverse them nearly north and South
(the temperature diminishing from west to east); whilst
in Ireland the isotherms seem to envelope the islands in
their folds, which increase in warmth from the centre
of the island to its sea-board. So in Norway the
isothermal lines run parallel with the coast-line, and
this alike in summer and winter, the temperature fall-
ing in winter, and rising in summer, with the increase
of distance from the sea. Nothing could prove more
conclusively than such facts as these (taken in connec-
tion with the absence of ice in the harbors of Norway,
even as far north as Hammerfest, through the whole
winter) the dependence of the mild winter climate of
the north-western coasts of Europe upon the proximity
of a sea which is warmer than the superincumbent at .
mosphere; and we have now to inquire how this great
N.E. movement of a stratum of warm water sufficiently
thick to retain a surface-temperature considerably
higher than that of the air above it is to be accounted
for.
The solution of the problem seems to be afforded by
the doctrine of a General Oceanic Circulation, Sustained
by opposition of temperature only, which was first dis-
tinctly propounded in 1845 by Professor Lenz of St.
Petersburg, on the basis of observations made by him
during the second voyage of Kotzebue (1825–1828).
Others had been previously led to surmise that
“Polar Currents” flow along the floors of the great
oceans, even as far as the equator, balancing the super-
ficial counter-currents which are observable in the oppo-
site direction. But Lenz was led to conclude that the
A T L
617
whole of the deeper portion of the great ocean-basins
in communication with the polar areas is occupied by
polar water, which is constantly, though slowly, flowing
towards the equator; whilst conversely the whole upper
stratum of equatorial water is as constantly, though
slowly, flowing towards one or both of the poles. And
he particularly dwelt on the existence of a belt of water
under the equator, colder than that which lies either
north or south of it, as an evidence that polar water is
there continually rising from beneath towards the sur-
ſace, — a phenomenon which, he considered, admits
of no other explanation. He further adduced the low
salinity of equatorial water (previously noticed by Hum-
boldt, and confirmed by his own observations), com-
pared with that of tropical water, as evidence that the
equatorial water of the surface is derived from the polar
underflow. And he attributed the maintenance of this
circulation to the continually renewed disturbance of
equilibrium between the polar and equatorial columns,—
the greater lateral (because downward) pressure of the
former causing a bottom outflow of polar water in the
direction of the latter, whilst the reduction of level
thus occasioned will produce a surface indraught from
the warmer towards the colder areas.
The doctrine of Lenz, so far from meeting with the
general acceptance to which it had a fair claim, alike
on theoretical grounds and from its accordance with the
facts ascertained by careful observation,-seems to have
been put aside and forgotten, a preference being given
to the doctrine of the prevalence of a uniform deep-sea
temperature of 39°, which was supposed to be estab-
lished by the thermometric observations made in the
voyages of D'Urville and Sir James Ross. No such
precaution, was taken in these observations as to
that which Lenz had recourse, to obviate the effects
of the tremendous pressure (I ton per square inch for
every 8oo fathoms of depth) to which deep-sea thermom-
eters are exposed; and it is now certain that the temper-
atures at great depths recorded by D'Urville and Ross
were several degrees too high.
It was in entire ignorance of the doctrine of Lenz, and
under the influence of that of D'Urville and Ross, which
had been stamped with the great weight of Sir John
Herschel’s weight of authority, that Dr. Carpentercom-
menced in 1868 (in concert with Professor Wyville
Thomson) a course of inquiry into the thermal condition
of the deep Sea, which at once convinced him of the fal-
lacy of the uniform 39° doctrine, and led him to con-
clusions essentially accordant with those of Lenz. For
in the channel of from 500 to 600 fathoms' depth be-
tween the north of Scotland and the Faroe Islands, they
found the deeper half to be occupied by a stratum of gla-
'cial water, whose temperature ranged downward from
32° to 29°. 5; whilst the upper half was occupied by a
stratum warmer than the normal temperature of the lat-
itudes. This phenomenon was interpreted by Carpen-
ter as indicating a deep glacial flow from N.E. to S.W.,
and a warm upper flow from S. W. to N. E.; and find-
ing that to the west of this channel, on the border of
the deep Atlantic basin, the excess of warmth extended
to a depth of more than 500 fathoms, he came to
the conclusion that the north-moving stratum
which brought it could not be an extension
of the true Gulf Stream, but must be urged on
by some much more general force. A series of temper-
ature-soundings taken along the west of Ireland, the Bay
of Biscay, and the coast of Portugal, confirmed him in
this view, by showing that the division between an upper
warm stratum and a cold under-stratum exists in the
North Atlantic at a depth of from 700 to 90o fathoms,
the whole mass of water below this having either flowed
into the basin of the polar area, or having had its tem-
perature brought down from 398 to 36°.5 by mixture
with the polar inflow. And this conclusion was con-
firmed by the result of temperature-soundings taken at
corresponding depths and under the same parallels of
latitude in the Mediterranean ; for as they showed a uni-
form temperature of from 54% to 56°, from beneath the
stratum of 100 fathoms that was superheated by direct
insolation, to the very bottom, it became clear that
depth per se could have no effect in reducing the bottom-
temperature; and that the cause of the excess of tem-
perature in the mass of water occupying the Mediter-
ranean basin above that of Atlantic water at the same
depths, lies in the seclusion of the former from the
polar underflow which brings down the deep tempera-
ture of the latter. This conclusion having received
marked confirmation from temperature soundings taken
in the Eastern seas, was put forward by Carpenter as
justifying the doctrine of a vertical oceanic circulation
sustained by opposition of temperature only, quite inde-
pendent of and distinct from the horizontal circulation
produced by wind,- which doctrine he expressed in
terms closely corresponding with those that had been
used by Lenz. And the collection of data for the estab-
lishment or confutation of this doctrine was one of the
objects of the “Challenger” expedition, which has
already made, in the determination of the thermal strati-
fication of the Atlantic between 38° N. lat. and 38° S.
lat., what may fairly be characterised as the grandest
single contribution ever yet made to terrestrial physics.
Pustribution of Organic Life.—All that will be
attempted under this head will be to indicate the general
conditions that seem, from recent researches, to have
the greatest influence on the distribution of plants and
animals through this great oceanic basin.
The distribution of marine plants seems mainly deter-
mined by light, temperature, and depth, a further
influence being exerted by the character of the shores.
The diminution of light in its passage through sea-water
is so rapid, that the quantity which penetrates to a
depth of 250 or 3oo fathoms may be regarded as almost
infinitesimal ; and in conformity with this we find a very
rapid diminution of Algal life below the depth of Ioo
fathoms. The upper stratum is occupied for the most
part by the larger and coarser forms of the Fucaceae, or
olive-green sea-weeds, whilst the more delicate Cerami-
acea', or red sea-weeds, frequent deeper waters; and, as
it appears from experiments made in aquaria that the
latter do not flourish in full light, but grow well in
shadow, it may be concluded that their preference for a
moderate depth is rather for reduced light and stillness
than for depth per se. At a depth of 150 fathoms very
few ordinary sea-weeds maintain their ground ; and
below this we seldom find any Algae, save the Corallines
and Nullipores consolidated by calcareous deposit. The
distribution of particular types over different parts of the
Atlantic area appears to be mainly regulated by tem-
perature; and this would seem to be remarkably the
case with the floating ZXiatomaceæ, which, though they
form green bands in the surface-water of polar seas,
have not been encountered in like abundance in the
Atlantic, and do not contribute largely, by the subsid-
ence of their siliceous Zorica, to the composition of its
bottom-deposit. Although it is the habit of the larger
Algae to grow from a base of attachment (their roots
serving no other purpose however, than that of anchor-
age), the enormous mass of Gulf-weed found in the Sar-
gasso Sea seems quite independent of any such attach-
ment. It was at one time supposed that this originally
grew on the Bahama and Florida shores, and was torn
thence by the powerful current of the Gulf Stream ; but
it seems certain that if such was its original source, the
“Gulſ-weed ” now lives and propagates whilst freely
6I 8
A T L
floating on the ocean-surface, having become adapted
by various modifications to its present mode of exist-
€11Ce.
The distribution of the animals that habitually live in
that upper stratum of the ocean whose degree of warmth
varies with the latitude, seems mainly determined by
temperature. Thus the “right whale’” of Arctic seas,
and its representative in the Antarctic, seems never to
enter the inter-tropical area, generally keeping away from
even the temperate seas, whilst, on the other hand, the
sperm whale ranges through the parts of the ocean where
the “right-whales" are never seen.
The distribution of fishes seems generally to follow
the same rule; as does also that of floating mollusks.
Thus, the little Clio (a Pteropod mollusk), which is a
principal article of food of the “right whales” in polar
Seas, is rarely met with in the Atlantic, where, however,
other pteropods, as Ayalaºa, present themselves in
abundance. On the other hand, the warmer parts of its
area swarm with Salpa-chains, which are not frequent
in higher latitudes; and the few representatives of the
Nautiloid Cephalopods, that were so abundant in Creta-
ceous seas, are now restricted to tropical or sub-tropical
areas. And the distribution of the mollusks, echino-
derms, and corals, which habitually live on the bottom,
seems to be determined, within certain limits at least, by
temperature rather than by depth.
The bathymetrical range to which animal life of any
higher type than the Rhizopodal might extend, was until
recently quite unknown ; but the researches initiated by
Prof. Wyville Thompson and Dr. Carpenter, in 1868,
and since prosecuted by the “Challenger" expedition,
have fully established the existence of a varied and abun.
dant fauna in Ocean-depths ranging downwards to 2000
fathoms. And these researches have further established
that the distribution of this fauna is mainly determined
by the temperature of the sea-bed ; so that whilst in the
channel between the north of Scotland and the Faroes
there were found at the same depths, and within a few
miles of each other, two faunae almost entirely distinct
— one a boreal and the other a warmer-temperate—on
sea-beds having respectively the temperatures of 30° and
43°, various types to which a low temperature is con-
genial are traceable continuously along the whole abyssal
Sea-bed that intervenes between those northern and
Southern polar areas within which they present them-
selves at or near the surface. And hence it becomes
clear that, since glacial types are even now being em-
bedded in the strata which are in process of formation
beneath the equator, no inferences as to terrestrial cli-
mate can be drawn from the character of marine deposits.
One very remarkable feature which presents itself
over a large proportion of the Atlantic basin is the
abundance of the minute Globigerina and other Fora-
minifera, the accumulation of whose shells, and of their
disintegrated remains, is giving rise to a calcareous de-
posit of unknown thickness, that corresponds in all
essential particulars to Chalk. This deposit, in some
parts of the North Atlantic, is replaced by an Arctic
drift of fine sand, whilst in other parts there is a mixt-
ure of arenaceous and of calcareous components, such
as is found in certain beds of the Cretaceous formation.
Now, on the surface of this deposit there have been
found so many living types, especially belonging to the
groups of Echinoderms, Corals, Siliceous Sponges, and
Foraminifera, which closely correspond with types
hitherto regarded as characteristic of the Cretaceous
epoch, that the question naturally suggests itself
whether the existing are not the lineal descendants of
the fossil types,—the differences they present being not
greater than may be fairly attributed to the prolonged
action of differences of temperature, food, pressure, &c.
And when these facts are taken in connection with those.
previously stated as to the probable remoteness of the
period when (if ever) the present sea-bed of the Atlantic
was dry land, the doctrine first put forth by Prof.
Wyville Thomson, that there has been a continuous
formation of Globigerina-mud on the bottom of the
Atlantic from the Cretaceous epoch to the present time
— or, in other words, that the formation of chalk on the
Sea-bed of the Atlantic did not cease with the elevation
of the European area, but has been going on through
the whole Tertiary period,—must be admitted as (to
say the least) a not improbable hypothesis. That
Some considerable change took place at the conclusion
of the Cretaceous epoch, by which the temperature of
the upper stratum was lowered, so as to be no longer
compatible with the existence of the fishes and
chambered cephalopods characteristic of the Cretaceous
fauna, may be fairly assumed from their disappearance;
but this would not so much affect the deeper part of
the basin, in which those lower types that seem more
capable of adapting themselves to changes in external
conditions would continue to hold their ground. That
the like conditions had prevailed also through long
previous geological periods, may be surmised from the
persistence, over various parts of the Atlantic sea-bed,
of the Apiocrinite type, which carries us back to the
Oolitic formation, and of the Pentacrinus type, which
has come down with very little alteration from the
Liassic; whilst many existing 7erebratulidae do not
differ more from Oolitic types that the latter differ
among each other. Going back still further, we find in
the persistence of certain Foraminiferal types from the
Carboniferous limestone to the present time, and in the
character of its deep-sea beds, a strong indication that
they originated in a Foraminiferal deposit, representing
in all essential particulars that which is now going on ;
while the persistence of the Lingula from the early
Silurian strata to the present time suggests the question
whether certain oceanic areas may not have remained
in the condition of deep sea throughout the whole sub-
sequent succession of geological changes.
ATLANTIS, ATALANTIS, or ATLANTICA, an island.
mentioned by Plato and other classical writers, concern-
ing the real existence of which many disputes have been
raised. In the Timaeus, Critais relates how his grand-
father Critais had been told by Solon some remarkable
events in early Athenian history which he had learned
from the Egyptian priests at Sais, whose records went
much further back than the native accounts. “The
most famous of all the Athenian exploits,” Solon had
been told, “was the overthrow of the island Atlantis. This
was a continent lying over against the pillars of Hercu-
les, in extent greater than Libya and Asia put together,
and was the passage to other islands and to another
continent, of which the Mediterranean Sea was only
the harbor; and within the pillars the empire of Atlan-
tis reached to Egypt and Tyrrhenia. This mighty
power was arrayed against Egypt and Hellas and all the
countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Then did
your city bravely, and won renown over the whole earth,
for at the peril of her own existence, and when the
other Hellenes had deserted her, she repelled the invader,
and of her own accord gave liberty to all the nations.
within the pillars. A little while afterwards there was a
great earthquake, and your warrior race all sank into
the earth; and the great island of Atlantis all disap-
peared into the sea. This is the explanation of the
shallows which are found in that part of the Atlantic
ocean.” Such is the main stabstance of the principal
account of the island furnished by the ancients, an
account which, if not entirely fictitious, belongs to the
most nebulous region of history. The story may
A T L – A T M.
619.
embody some popular legend; and the legend may have
rested on certain historical circumstances; but what
these were it is (as the numerous theories advanced on
the subjected may be held as proving) impossible now to
determine.
ATLAS, in Greek Mythology, called sometimes a son
of Japetus and the nymph Asia, or of Uranus and
Gaia, and at other times traced to a different parentage,
but always known as the being who supported on his
shoulders the pillars on which the sky rested.
ATLAS, a mountain-chain of Northern Africa,
between the great desert of the Sahara and the Med-
iterranean. The range has been but partially explored,
and geographers differ as to its extent, some considering
it to reach from Cape Ghir on the Atlantic to Cape
Bon, the north-east point of Tunis, while others include
under the name the whole mountain system between
Cape Nun und the great Syrtis. In this latter sense it
forms the mountain-land of the countries of Marocco,
Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli. It is composed of ranges
and groups of mountains, enclosing well-watered and
fertile valleys and plains, and having a general direction
from W. to E. The highest peaks are supposed to
attain an elevation of nearly 15,000 feet; and although
none of them reach the height of perpetual snow, some
of their loftiest summits are covered with snow during
the greater part of the year. Mount Miltsin, 27 miles
S.E. of the city of Marocco, was ascertained by Cap-
tain Washington to be II,400 feet high. The greatest
heights are in Marocco, from which point they appear to
diminish in elevation as they extend towards the east.
ATMOSPHERE is the name applied to the invisible
elastic envelope which surrounds the earth, the gaseous
matter of which it is composed being usually distin-
guished by the name of air. Storms and weather gen-
erally, solar and terrestrial radiation, the disintegration
of rocks, animal and vegetable life, twilight, and the
propagation of sound, are some of the more striking
phenomena which are either to a large extent or alto-
gether dependent on the atmosphere. That air pos-
sesses weight may be shown by the simple experiment
of taking a hollow globe filled with air and weighing it;
then removing the contained air by means of an air-
pump, and again weighing the globe, when it will be
found to weigh less than at first. The difference of the
two results is the weight of the air which has been re-
moved. . From Regnault’s experiments, Ioo cubicinches
of dry air, or air containing no aqueous vapor, under
a pressure of .39 English inches of mercury, and at a
temperature of 60°Fahr., weigh 31.03529 grains; and
since IOO cubic inches of distilled water at the same
pressure and temperature weigh 25,252% grains, it fol-
lows that air is 813.67 times lighter than water.
Air as an elastic fluid exerts pressure upon the earth or
any substance on which it rests, the action of a boy's
sucker and of a water-pump being familiar instances
showing the pressure of the atmosphere. When air is
removed from a water-pump, the water rises in the
pump only to a certain height; for as soon as the water
has risen to such a height that the weight of the col-
umn of water in the pump above the level of the surface
of the water in the well just balances the pressure exerted
by the atmosphere on the surface of the well, it ceases
to rise. If the pressure of the atmosphere be increased,
the water will rise higher in the pump; but if dimin-
ished, the level of the water will sink. The height to
which the water rises within the pump thus varies with
the pressure of the atmosphere, the height being gener-
ally about 34 feet. Since a given volume of mercury
weighed in vacuo at a temperature of 62° Fahr. is
3.569 times heavier than the same volume of
water it follows that a column of mercury will
rise in zacuo to a height 13.569 times less than a
column of water, or about 30 inches. If we suppose.
then, the height of the mercurial column to be 30 inches,
which is probably near the average height of the barom-
eter at sea-leveſ, and its base equal to a square inch, it-
will contain 30 cubic inches of mercury; and since one
cubic inch of mercury contains 3426.7 grains, the-
weight of 30 cubicinches will be nearly 14.7304 ft). avoir-
dupois. Thus the pressure of the atmosphere is gener-
ally at sea-level equal to 14.73O4 ſp. on each square inch
of the earth’s surface. Sir John Herschel has calculated
that the total weight of an atmosphere averaging 30.
inches of pressure is about 11% trillions of pounds;
and that, making allowance for the space occupied by
the land above the sea, the mass of such an atmosphere
is about Taºpat, part of the earth itself. This enor-
mous pressure is exerted on the human frame in com-
mon with all objects on the earth's surface, and it is cal-
culated that a man of the ordinary size sustains a pres-
sure of about 14 tons; but as the pressure is exerted
equally in all directions, and permeates the whole body,
no inconvenience arises in consequence of it.
A pressure agreeing approximately with the average.
atmospheric pressure at sea-level is often used as a unit
of pressure. This unit is called an atmosphere, and is
employed in measuring pressures in steam engines and,
boilers. The value of this unit which has been adopted,
in the metrical system, is the pressure of 760 millimetres.
(29.922 Eng, inches) of the mercurial column at O9 C.
(32° Fahr.) at Paris, which amounts in that latitude to
I.O.33 kilogrammes on the square centimètre. In the
English system, an atmosphere is the pressure due to.
29.905 inches of the mercurial column at 32° Fahr. at
London, amounting there to nearly 1334 ft). weight on
the square inch. The latter atmosphere is thus o.99968.
of that of the metrical system.
As regards the distribution of atmospheric pressure
over the globe, there was little beyond conjecture, drawn
from theoretical considerations, and for the most part
erroneous, till the publication in 1868 of Buchan’s memoir-
“On the Mean Pressure of the Atmosphere and the
Prevailing Winds over the Globe.” By the monthly
isobaric charts and copious tables which accompanied the
memoir, this important physical problem was first .
approximately solved. Since then the British Admiralty
has published charts showing the mean pressure of the
atmosphere over the ocean. The more important
general conclusions regarding the geographical distribu-
tion of atmospheric pressure are the following: —
There are two regions of high pressure, the one north.
and the other south of the equator, passing completely
round the globe as broad belts of high pressure.
They enclose between them the low pressure of
tropical regions, through the centre of which runs a nar-
rower belt of still lower pressure, towards which the
north and south trades blow. The southern belt of high
pressure lies nearly parallel to the equator, and is of
nearly uniform breadth throughout; but the belt north
of the equator has a very irregular outline, and great
differences in its breadth and in its inclination to the
equator, – these irregularities being due to the unequal
distribution of land and water in the northern hemisphere.
Taking a broad view of the subject, there are only three
regions of low pressure, — one round each pole, bounded
by or contained within the belts of high pressure just
referred to, and the equatorial belt of low pressure.
The most remarkable of these, in so far as is yet known,
is the region of low pressure surrounding the South pole,
which appears to remain pretty constant during the whole.
year. The depression round the north pole is divided
into two distinct centres, at each of which there is a
diminution of pressure greatly lower than the average.
62O
A T M.
north polar depression. These two centres lie in the
north of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, respectively.
The distribution of pressure in the different months of
the year differs widely from the annual average, particu-
larly in January and July, the two extreme months. In
January the highest pressures are over the continents of
the northern hemisphere, —and the larger the continental
mass the greater the pressure, — and the lowest pressures
are over the northern portions of the Atlantic and Pacific,
South America and South Africa, and the Antarctic
Ocean. In the centre of Asia the mean pressure of the
atmosphere in this month is fully 30.400 inches, whereas
in the North Atlantic, round Iceland, it is only 29.340
inches, or upwards of an inch lower than in Central Asia.
In July, on the other hand, the mean pressure of
Central Asia is only 29.468 inches, or nearly an inch
lower than during January; or, putting this striking
result in other words, about a thirteenth of the pressure
of the atmosphere is removed from the region during
the hottest months of the year as compared with the
winter season. The lowest pressures of the northern
hemisphere are now distributed over the continents, and
the larger the continental mass the greater is the depres-
sion.
Over the ocean, if we accept the higher latitudes,
atmospheric pressure is more regular throughout the
year than over the land. In the ocean to westwards of
each of the continents there occurs at all seasons an
area of high pressure, from O. Io inch to O.30 inch
higher than what prevails on the coast westward of
which it lies. The distance of these spaces of high
pressure is generally about 30° of longitude; and their
longitudinal axes lie, roughly speaking, about the zones
of the tropics. The maximum is reached during the
winter months, and these areas of high pressure are
most prominently marked west of those continents
which have the greatest breadth in 30° lat.; and the
steepest barometric gradients are on their eastern side.
It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the importance
of these regions of high and low mean pressures, from
their intimate bearing on atmospheric physics, but more
particularly from their vital connection with prevailing
winds and the general circulation of the atmosphere.
This relation will be apprehended when it is considered
that winds are simply the flowing away of the air from
regions where there is a surplus (regions of high pres-
sure) to where there is a deficiency of air (regions of
low pressure). Everywhere over the globe this trans-
ference takes place in strict accordance with Buys-Bal-
lot’s “Law of the Winds,” which may be thus ex-
pressed:— The wind neither blows round the space of
lowest pressure in circles returning on themselves, nor
does it blow directly toward that space; but it takes a
direction intermediate, approaching, however, more
nearly to the direction and course of circular curves
than of radii to a centre. More exactly, the angle is
not right angle, but from 45° to 80°. Keeping this
relation between wind and the distribution of pressure in
ind, the isobaric lines give the proximate causes of the
prevailing winds over the globe, and through these the
prominent features of climates. As regards the ocean,
the prevailing winds indicate the direction of the drift-
currents and other surface-currents, and thereby the
anomalous distribution of the temperature of the sea as
seem in the Chili, Guinea, and other ocean currents, and
the peculiarly marked climates of the coasts past which
these currents flow, are explained ; for observations
have now proved that the prevailing winds and surface-
currents of all oceans are all but absolutely coincident.
As regards the annual march of pressure through the
months of the year, curves representing it for the differ-
ent regions of the earth differ from each other in every
conceivable way. It is only when the results are set
down in their proper places on charts of the globe that
the subject can be well understood. When thus dealt
with, many of the results are characterised by great
beauty and simplicity. Thus, of all influences which
determine the barometric fluctuation through the
months, the most important are the temperature, and
through the temperature the humidity. Comparing,
then, the average pressure in January with that in July,
which two months give the greatest possible contrasts
of temperature, the following is the broad result:—
Atmospheric pressure is more uniformly distributed
over the globe in April and October than in any of the
other months. In May and November, being the
months immediately following, occur the great annual
rise and fall of temperature; and since these rapid
changes take place at very different rates, according to
the relative distribution of land and water in each
region, a comparison of the geographical distribution of
May with that for the year brings out in strong relief
the more prominent causes which influence climate, and
some of the more striking results of these causes. This
comparison shows a diminution of pressure in May over
tropical and sub-tropical regions, including nearly the
whole of Asia, the southern half of Europe, and the
United States. An excess prevails over North America
to the north of the Lakes, over Arctic America, Green-
land, the British Isles, and to the north of a line passing
through the English Channel in a north-easterly di-
rection to the Arctic Sea. The excess in the southern
hemisphere includes the southern half of South America
and of Africa, the whole of Australia, and adjacent
parts of the ocean. The influence of the land of the
southern hemisphere, which in this month is colder than
the surrounding seas, brings about an excess of press-
ure; on the other hand, the influence of land over
those regions which are more immediately under the Sun
brings about a lower pressure, interesting examples of
which occur in India, the Malayan Archipelago, and the
Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas. In many
cases the lines of pressure follow more or less closely
the contours of the coasts. Thus the diminution is
greater over Italy and Turkey than over, the Adriatic
and Black Seas. The greatest diminution occurs in
Central Asia, where it exceeds o.2OO inch, and the great-
est excess round Iceland, where it exceeds O.2OO inch.
It is to the position of Great Britian, with reference to
the deficiency of pressure on the one hand and the ex-
cess on the other, that the general prevalence of east
winds at this season is due. These easterly winds pre-
vail over the whole of Northern Europe, as far south as
a line drawn from Madrid and passing in a north-east-
erly direction through Geneva, Munich, &c. To the
south of this line the diminution of pressure is less, and
over this region the winds which are in excess are not
easterly, but southerly. Crossing the Mediterranean,
and advancing on Africa, we approach another region
of lower pressure, towards which easterly and north-
easterly winds again acquire the ascendency, as at Malta,
Algeria, &c.
This, in many cases great, variation of the pressure in
the different months of the year must be kept carefully
in view in deducting heights of places from observations
made by travellers of the pressure of atmosphere, by
the barometer or the temperature of boiling water. In
reducing the observations, it is necessary to assume a
sea-level pressure if the place is at a considerable dis-
tance from any meteorological observatory. Previous
to the publication of Buchan's Mean Pressure of the
Atmosphere, it appears that a mean sea-level pressure
of 29.92 or 30.00 inches was in such cases universally
assumed. The mean pressure at Barnaul, Siberia, being
A T M.
62 II
29.536 inches in July, 30.293 inches in January, and
29.954 inches for the year, it follows that, by the former
method of calculating the heights, observations
made in January to ascertain the height of Lake
Balkash would make the lake 350 feet too high, and
observations made in July would make it 330 feet too
low,- the difference of the two observations, each set
being supposed to be made under the most favorable
circumstances, and with the greatest accuracy, being
68o feet. This illustration will serve to account for
many of the discrepances met with in books regarding
the heights of mountains and plateaus.
Of the periodical variations of atmospheric pressure,
the most marked is the daily variation, which in tropi-
cal and sub-tropical regions is one of the most regular
of recurring phenomena. In higher latitudes the diurnal
Oscillation is marked by the frequent fluctuations to
which the pressure is subjected. If, however, hourly
observations be regularly made for some time, the hourly
oscillation will become apparent. The results show
two maxima occurring from 9 to II A.M. and 9 to II
P. M., and two minima occuring from 3 to 6 A.M. and 3
to 6 P.M.
Though the diurnal calometric oscillations are among
the best-marked of meteorological phenomena, at least
in tropical and sub-tropical regions, yet mone of these
phenomena, except perhaps the electrical, could be
named respecting whose geographical distribution so
little is really known, whether as regards the amount of
variation, the hour of occurrence of the critical phases,
or, particularly, the physical causes on which the
observed differences depend. This arises chiefly from
the want of a sufficient number of ascertained facts;
and to remedy this deficiency observations have, in the
preparation of this present article, been collected and
calculated from upwards of 250 places in different parts
of the globe, and the data set down on charts. The
chief results of this inquiry are the following, attention
being entirely confined to the chief of oscillation, viz.,
that occurring from the A. M. maximum to the P.M.
IIll Illinn Ull ſl.
Since the two maxima of daily pressure occur when
the temperature is about the mean of the day, and the
two minima when it is at its highest and lowest respect-
ively, there is thus suggested a connection between the
daily barometric oscillations and the daily march of tem-
perature; and similarly a connection with the daily
march of the amount of vapor and humidity of the air.
The view entertained by many of the causes of the daily
oscillations may be thus stated : — The forenoon maxi-
mum is conceived to be due to the rapidly increasing
temperature, and the rapid evaporation owing to the
great dryness of the air at this time of the day, and to
the increased elasticity of the lowermost stratum of air
which results therefrom, until a steady ascending current
has set in. As the day advances, the vapor becomes
more equally diffused upwards through the air, an ascend-
ing current, more or less strong and steady, is set in
motion, a diminution of elasticity follows, and the pres-
sure falls to the aſternoon minimum. From this point
the temperature declines, a system of descending currents
set in, and the air of the lowermost stratum approaches
more nearly the point of saturation, and from the in-
creased elasticity, the pressure rises to the evening maxi-
mum. As the deposition of dew proceeds, and the fall of
temperature and consequent downward movement of the
air are arrested, the elasticity is again diminished, and
pressure falls to the morning minimum. Since the
view propounded some years ago, that if the elastic force
of vapor be subtracted from the whole pressure, what
remains will show only one daily maximum and mini-
mum, has not been confirmed by observation, it follows
that the above explanation is quite insufficient to account
for the phenomena; indeed, the view can be regarded in
no other light than simply as a tentative hypothesis.
Singularly enough, Lamont and Broun, a few years.
ago, were led, independently of each other, to form an
opinion that the daily barometric oscillations were due to
the magneto-electric influence of the sum. It admits of
no doubt, looking at the facts of the case so far as they
have been disclosed, that the daily barometric oscillations.
originated with the sun, and that more than the sun's
influence as exerted on the diurnal march of the tem-
perature and humidity of the atmosphere is concerned
in bringing them about. But from the facts adduced, it
is equally certain that, be the originating cause what it
may, its effects are enormously modified by the distribu-
tion of land and water over the globe, by the wind, and
by the absolute and relative humidity of the atmosphere.
The smallness of the amount of the summer oscillation
from the forenoon maximum to the afternoon minimum
over the North Atlantic as far south as lat. 30°, and its
diminished amount, as far south at least as the equator,
will no doubt play an important part in the unravelling
of this difficulty.
One of the most important steps that could be taken
would be an extensive series of observations from such
countries as India, which offers such splendid contrasts.
of climate at all seasons, has a surface covered at one
place with the richest vegetation, and at others with
vast stretches of sandy deserts, and presents extensive
plateaus and sharp ascending peaks—all which con-
ditions are indispensable in collecting the data required
for the solution of this vital problem of atmospheric
physics.
The ancients thought that air was one of the four
elements from which all things originated; this doctrine
continued to prevail till 1774, when Priestley discovered
oxygen gas, and showed it to be a constituent part of
air. Nitrogen, the other constituent of air, first called
azote, was discovered soon after, and the marked
differences between these two gases could not fail to
strike the most careless observer. It is remarkable that
Scheele independently discovered both oxygen and
nitrogen, and was the first to enunciate the opinion that
air consists essentially of a mixture of these two gases.
From experiments made by him to ascertain their
relative volumes he concluded that the proportions are
27 volumes of oxygen and 73 volumes of nitrogen. It
was left to Cavendish to show from 500 analyses that
the relative proportions were practically constant, and
that the proportion is 20.833 per cent, of oxygen. The
results obtained by Cavendish, though not attended to
for many years after they were published, have been
shown by recent and more refined analyses to be
wonderfully exact. The most recent analyses of speci-
mens of air collected under circumstances which ensure
that it is of average purity, give as a mean result the
following:—
Wºolume.
Oxygen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.96 per cent.
Nitrogen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79.00 , ,
Carbonic acid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . o. O4 2 3
IOO.OO
The circumstances under which these proportions
vary, and the other gases and substances which are
found in the air, will be afterwards adverted to.
Besides these three constituents of air, there is a fourth,
viz., the vapor of water, from which no air, even at the
lowest temperature yet observed, is wholly free, so that
absolutely dry air does not exist in the free atmosphere.
The dry air of the atmosphere — oxygen (inclusive of
ozone), nitrogen, and carbonic acid—is always a gas,
*622
A T M.
and its quantity is constant from year to year; but the
vapor of water does not always remain in the gaseous
state, and the quantity present in the atmosphere is, by
the processes of evaporation and condensation, varying
every instant. Water evaporates at all temperatures,
even the lowest, and rises into the air in the form of an
invisible elastic gas called aqueous vapor. The elasticity
of vapor varies with the temperature.
The relative humidity of the air may be regarded as
the degree of approach to saturation. It is greatest
near the surface of the earth during night, when the
temperature, being at or near the daily minimum, ap-
proaches the dew-point; it is also great in the morning,
when the sun's rays have evaporated the dew, and the
vapor is as yet only diffused a little way upwards; and it
is least during the greatest heat of the day.
Between the humidity, both absolute and relative, of
the air and the temperature there is a vital and all-im-
portant connection. Observation shows that when the
juantity of vapor in the air is great, and also when the
relative humidity is high, temperature falls little during
the night, even though the sky be perfectly clear; but
when the quantity of vapor is small, or the relative hu-
inidity is low, temperature rapidly falls. On the other
hand, during the day the temperature rises slowly, when
the quantity of vapor is great, or relative humidity
high, even though the sky be clear, but when the quan-
tity of vapor is small, and humidity low, temperature
rapidly rises. These facts are explained by the circum-
stance that perfectly dry air is diathermanous, that is, it
allows radiant heat to pass through it without being
sensibly warmed thereby. Add vapor to this air, and its
diathermancy is diminished. The diathermancy is also
reduced if the temperature approach nearer to the dew-
point; in other words, if the relative humidity be in-
creased. Hence, with an increase of vapor or with
increased humidity, the effects of both solar and terres-
trial radiation are much less felt on the surface of the
earth -— the vapor screen performing, in truth, one of
£he most important conservative functions of the atmos-
phere.
Since ascending currents fall in temperature as they
ascend, through diminished pressure and consequent dila.
tation, they increase their relative humidity; and since
descending currents increase in temperature, and conse-
quently reduce their relative humidity, it follows that,
over a region from which ascending currents rise, Solar
and terrestrial radiation is very considerably obstructed,
but over a region upon which currents descend, radiation
is much less obstructed. Most of our exceptionally hot
summer and cold winter weather is to be explained in
this way, on which occasions there is generally observed
a high barometric pressure overspreading a compara-
tively limited region, on which a slow downward move-
ment of the air proceeds.
Of the solar heat which reaches the surface of the
globe, that part which falls on the land may be regarded
as wholly absorbed by the thin superficial layer exposed
to the heating rays; and since there is no mobility in the
particles of the land, the heat can be communicated
downwards only by conduction. On the other hand,
the solar heat which fall on water is not, as in the case
of land, arrested at the surface, but penetrates to a con-
siderable depth, the heating effect being in the case of clear
water appreciably felt at a depth of from 500 to 6oo
feet. Since the heat daily received by the ocean from
the sun is diffused downwards through a very considera-
ble depth, the surface of the ocean on which the atmos-
phere rests is much less heated during the day than is
the surface of the land. Similarly it is also less cooled
during the night by terrestrial radiation.
This points to a chief acting force on which the great
movements of the atmosphere depend, viz., simultaneous
local irregularities in the distribution of temperature in
the atmosphere. . The local expansion of the atmos-
phere by heat during the day is greatest over land,
where the air is clear, dry, and comparatively calm, and
least over the ocean, where the sky is clouded, and the
air loaded with moisture. On the other hand, the
local contraction by cold during night is greatest over
land, where the air is clear, dry, and calm, or nearly so,
and least over the ocean, where the air is clouded, and
loaded with moisture. As familiar illustrations of atmos-
pheric movements resulting from local expansions by
heat and contractions by cold, we may refer to the land
and sea breezes, and what depend upon exactly the same
principle, the dry and rainy monsoons in different parts
of the globe. But the illustration of the principle on
the broadest scale is the system of atmospheric circula-
tion known as the equatorial and polar currents of the
atmosphere, which originate in the unequal heating by
the Sun of the equatorial, temperate, and polar regions.
The other principal motive force in atmospheric cir-
culation depends on the aqueous vapor. The many
ways in which this element acts as a motive force will
be seen when it is considered that a large quantity of
sensible heat disappears in the process of evaporation,
and reappears in the process of condensation of the
vapor into rain or cloud; that saturated air is speci-
fically lighter than dry air; and that the absolute and
relative amount of the vapor powerfully influences both
solar and terrestrial radiation. . The question to be
carefully considered here is how in these ways the vapor
produces local irregularities in the distribution of
atmospheric pressure, thus giving rise to aerial move-
ments which set in to restore the equilibrium which has
thus been disturbed.
It is from these local irregularities—using the word
local in a very wide sense—in the distribution of atmos-
pheric pressure, whether the irregularities originate in
the temperature or aqueous vapor, that all winds, from
the lightest breeze to the most destructive hurricane,
take their rise; for, as already stated, wind is merely
the flowing away of the air from where there is a sur-
plus of it to where there is a deficiency.
In examining weather charts embracing a consider-
able portion of the earth’s surface, there are seen two
different systems of pressure, changing their forms and
positions on the globe from day to day— one set being
systems of low pressure marked off by concentric iso-
barics enclosing pressures successively lower as the
central space is approached, and the other set being
systems of high pressure marked off by roughly con-
centric isobarics bounding pressures successively higher
towards their centres. These two systems are essentially
distinct from each other, and without some knowledge
of them the circulation of the atmosphere cannot be
understood.
Observations of the winds cannot be conducted, and
the results discussed, on the supposition that the gen-
eral movement of the winds felt on the earth’s surface
is horizontal, it being evident that the circulation of the
atmosphere is effected largely through systems of ascend-
ing and descending currents. The only satisfactory
way of discussing the winds, viewed especially in their
climatic relations, is that recently proposed by Köppen
of St. Petersburg, , and applied by him with very
fruitful results in investigating the weather of that
place during 1872 and 1873. In attempting an explana-
tion of these phenomena, we are met with several as yet
insuperable obstacles:–(I.) An imperfect knowledge
of the mode of formation and propagation of low-
pressure systems; (2) Imperfect knowledge of the re-
lations of the formation of cloud and aqueous precipita-
A T M.
623
tion to barometric fluctuations; (3.) A want of in-
(formation with reference to the merely mechanical effects
of ascending, descending, and horizontal currents of air
on the barometric pressure; in other words we do not
know how far the barometric pressure is an indication
of the mass of air in the column vertically over it, when
that column is traversed by air-currents; (4.) An almost
total absence of really good wind observations; and (5.)
Deficient information in nearly everything that respects
aqueous vapor—its relation to radiant heat, both solar
and terrestrial; its mode of diffusion vertically and hor-
izontally, in the free atmosphere, especially from an
evaporating surface; the influence which its condensa-
tion into cloud and rain exerts on aerial currents, – in
regard to all which more satisfactory methods of observ-
ing this vital element, and discussing the results of ob-
servation, are greatly to be desired. There are here
large important fields of inquiry awaiting experimental
and observational physicists.
The law of the dilatation of gases, known as the “Law
of Boyle’’ or “Law of Mariotte,” is this: The volume
occupied by a gas is in reverse ratio to the pressure
under which it exists, if the temperature remains the
same ; or the density of a gas is proportioned to its
pressure. Consequently, air under a pressure equal to
that of two atmospheres will occupy only half the
volume it occupied under the pressure of one atmos-
phere; under the pressure of three atmospheres, one-
third of that volume, &c. By doubling the pressure we
double the elasticity. If, however, the temperature be
increased, and the air occupy the same space, the pressure
will be increased; but if the pressure is to remain the
Same, the air must occupy a larger space. From Reg-
nault’s experiments, it is concluded that the co-efficient
which denotes increase of elasticity for 19 Fahr. of air
whose volume is constant equals .oO2O36; and that the
co-efficient which denotes increase of volume for 19 Fahr.
of air whose elasticity is constant equals .oO2O39.
These portions of the atmosphere in contact with the
earth are pressed upon by all the air above them. The
air at the top of a mountain is pressed upon by all the
air above it, while all the portion below it, or lying be-
...ween the top of the mountain and the surface of the
sea, exerts no pressure whatever upon it. Thus the
pressure of the atmosphere constantly diminishes with
the height.
two heights be observed, and if at the same time the
mean temperature and humidity of the whole stratum of
air lying between the two levels were known, the dif-
ſerence in height between the two places could be calcu-
lated. For the development of this principle, see BAR-
OMETRIC MEASUREMENTS OF HEIGHTS.
The air thus diminishing in density as we ascend, if it
consists of ultimate atoms, as is no doubt the case, it
follows that the limit of the atmosphere will be reached
at the height where the force of gravity downwards
upon a single particle is equal to the resisting force aris-
ing from the repulsive force of the particles. It was
long supposed, from the results of observations on the
refraction of light, that the height of the atmosphere
did not exceed 45 miles; but from the observations of
luminous meteors, whose true character as cosmical
bodies was established a few hundred years ago, it is in-
ferred that the height of the atmosphere is at least 120
miles, and that, in an extremely attenuated form, it may
even reach 200 miles.
Great differences have been observed by Dr. A. Smith
between country rain and town rain: country rain is
neutral; town rain, on the other hand, is acid, and cor-
rodes metals, and even stones and bricks, destroying
mortar rapidly, and readily spoiling many colors.
Much information has been obtained regarding impuri-
If, then, the pressure of the atmosphere at .
ties in the air of towns and other places by examining
the rain collected in different places. The air freest
from impurities is that collected at the sea-coast and at
considerable heights. Again, ammonia is found to dim-
inish, while nitric acid increases, in ascending to, at
least, habitable heights. As regards organic matter in
the air, it corresponds to a considerable extent with the
density of the population. As might have been sup-
posed from the higher temperature, more nitric acid is
contained in rain collected on the Continent than in the
British Islands. This inquiry, which is only yet in its
infancy, will doubtless continue to be vigorously prose-.
cuted, particularly since we may hope thereby to arrive
at the means of authoritatively defining the safe limits of
the density of population, and the extent to which man-
ufacture, may be carried on within a given area. The
influence of atmospheric impurities on the public health
has received a good deal of attention.
The relation of weather to mortality is a very impor-
tant inquiry, and though a good deal has been known
regarding the question for some time, yet it has only
recently been systematically inquired into. Considering
the weather of the year as made up of several distinct
climates differing from each other according to temper-
ature and moisture and their relations to each other, it
may be divided into six distinct climates, characterised
respectively by cold, cold with dryness, dryness with
heat, heat, heat with moisture, and cold with moisture.
Each of these six periods has a peculiar influence in
increasing or diminishing the mortality, and each has its
own group of diseases which rise to the maximum, or
fall to the minimum mortality, or are subject to a rapid
increase or a rapid decrease. The mortality from all
causes and at all ages shows a large excess above the
average from the middle of November to the middle
of April, from which it falls to the minimum in
the end of May; it then slowly rises, and on the third
week of July suddenly shoots up almost as high as the
winter maximum of the year, at which it remains
till the second week of August, falling thence as rapidly
as it rose to a secondary minimum in October. Re-
garding the summer excess, which is so abrupt in its
rise and fall, it is almost altogether due to the enormous
increase of the mortality among mere infants under one
year of age; and this increase is due not only to deaths
at one age, but to deaths from one class of diseases,
viz., bowel complaints. If the deaths from bowel com-
plaints be deducted from the deaths from all causes,
there remains an excess of deaths in the cold months,
and a deficiency in the warm months. In other words,
the curve of mortality is regulated by the large number
of deaths from diseases of the respiratory organs.
ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY, a railway in which
the pressure of air is used directly or indirectly to propel
carriages, as a substitute for steam. . It was devised at a
time when the principles of propulsion were not so well
understood as they are now, and when the dangers and
inconveniences attendant on the use of locomotives
were very much exaggerated. It had been long known
that small objects could be propelled for great distances
through tubes by air pressure, but a Mr. Vallance, of
Brighton, seems to have been the first to propose the
application of this system to passenger traffic. He pro-
jected (about 1825) an atmospheric railway, consisting
of a wooden tube about 6 feet 6 inches in diameter,
with a carriage running inside it. A diaphragm fitting
the tube, approximately air-tight, was attached to the
carriage, and the air exhausted from the front of it by a
stationary engine, so that the atmospheric pressure
behind drove the carriage forward. Later inventors,
commencing with Henry Pinkus (1835), for the most
part kept the carriages altogether outside the tube. and
624
A T O
connected them by a bar with a piston working inside it,
this piston being moved by atmospheric pressure in the
way just mentioned. The tube was generally provided
with a slot upon its upper side, closed by a continuous
valve or its equivalent, and arrangements were made by
which this valve should be opened to allow the passage
of the driving bar without permitting great leakage of
air. About 1840, Messrs. Clegg & Samuda made vari-
ous experiments with an atmospheric tube constructed
on this principle upon a portion of the West London
Railway, near Wormwood Scrubs. The apparent suc-
cess of these induced the Dublin and Kingstown Rail-
way to adopt Clegg & Samuda's scheme upon an exten-
sion of their line from Kingstown to Dalkey, where it
was in operation in 1844. . Later on, the same system
was adopted on a part of the South Devon line and in
several other places, and during the years 1844–1846 the
English and French patent records show a very large
number of more or less practicable and ingenious schemes
for the tubes, valves, and driving gear of atmospheric
railways. The atmospheric system was nowhere per-
manently successful, but in all cases was eventually
superseded by locomotives, the last atmospheric line
being probably that at St. Germains, which was worked
until 1862.
ATOM is a body which cannot be cut in two. The
atomic theory is a theory of the constitution of bodies
which asserts that they are made up of atoms. The op-
posite theory is that of the homogeneity and continuity
of bodies, and asserts, at least in the case of bodies having
no apparent organisation, such, for instance, as water,
that as we can divide a drop of water into two parts
which are each of them drops of water, so we have reason
to believe that these smaller drops can be divided again,
and the theory goes on to assert that there is nothing in
the nature of things to hinder this process of division
from being repeated over and over again, times without
end. This is the doctrine of the infinite divisibility of
bodies, and it is in direct contradiction with the theory
of atoms.
The atomists assert that after a certain number of
such divisions the parts would be no longer divisible, be-
cause each of them would be an atom. The advocates
of the continuity of matter assert that the smallest con-
ceivable body has parts, and that whatever has parts
may be divided. e
In ancient times Democritus was the founder of the
atomic theory, while Anaxagoras propounded that of
continuity, under the name of the doctrine of homoeo-
meria, or of the similarity of the parts of a body to the
whole. The arguments of the atomists, and their re-
plies to the objections of Anaxagoras, are to be found in
Lucretius.
In modern times the study of nature has brought to
light many properties which appear to depend on the
magnitude and motions of their ultimate constituents,
and the question of the existence of atoms has once
more become conspicuous among scientific inquiries.
We shall begin by stating the opposing doctrines of
atoms and of continuity before giving an outline of the
state of molecular science as it now exists. In the
earliest times the most ancient philosophers whose spec-
ulations are known to us seem to have discussed the
ideas of number and of continuous magnitude, of space
and time, of matter and motion, with a native power of
thought which has probably never been surpassed.
Their actual knowledge, however, and their scientific
experience were necessarily limited, because in their
days the ecords of human thought were only beginning
to accumulate. It is probable that the first exact no-
tions of quantity were founded on the consideration of
number. It is by the help of numbers that concrete
quantities are practically measured and calculated.
Now, number is discontinuous. We pass from one
number to the next per saltum. The magnitudes, or:
the other hand, which we meet with in geometry, are:
essentially continuous. The attempt to apply numerical
methods to the comparison of geometrical quantities led
to the doctrine of incommensurables, and to that of the
infinite divisibility of space. Meanwhile, the same
considerations had not been applied to time, so that in
the days of Zeno of Elea time was still regarded as
made up of a finite number of “moments,” while
space was confessed to be divisible without limit. This
was the state of opinion when the celebrated arguments.
against the possibility of motion, of which that of
Achilles and the tortoise is a specimen, were pro-
pounded by Zeno, and such, apparently, continued to
be the state of opinion till Aristotle pointed out that
time is divisible without limit, in precisely the same
sense that space is. And the slowness of the develop-
ment of scientific ideas may be estimated from the fact
that Bayle does not see any force in this statement of
Aristotle, but continues to admire the paradox of Zeno.
Thus the direction of true scientific progress was for
many ages towards the recognition of the infinite divisi-
bility of space and time.
It was easy to attempt to apply similar arguments to
matter. If matter is extended and fills space, the same
mental operation by which we recognise the divisibility
of space may be applied, in imagination at least, to the
matter which occupies space. From this point of view
the atomic doctrine might be regarded as a relic of the
old numerical way of conceiving magnitude, and the
opposite doctrine of the infinite divisibility of matter
might appear for a time the most scientific. The atom-
ists, on the other hand, asserted very strongly, the dis-
tinction between matter and space. The atoms, they
said, do not fill up the universe; there are void spaces
between them. If it were not so, Lucretius tells us,
there could be no motion, for the atom which gives way
first must have some empty place to move into.
The opposite school maintained then, as they have
always done, that there is no vacuum—that every part
of space is full of matter, that there is a universal
plenum, and that all motion is like that of a fish in
water, which yields in front of the fish because the fish
leaves room for it behind.
Of the different forms of the atomic theory, that of
Boscovich may be taken as an example of the purest
monadism. According to Boscovich matter is made up
of atoms. Each atom is an indivisible point, having
position in space, capable of motion in a continuous
path, and possessing a certain mass, whereby a certain
amount of force is required to produce a given change of
motion. Besides this the atom is endowed with poten-
tial force, that is to say, that any two atoms attract or
repel each other with a force depending on their distance
apart. The law of this force, for all distances greater
than say the thousandth of an inch, is an attraction vary-
ing as the inverse square of the distance. For smaller
distances the force is an attraction for one distance and
a repulsion for another, according to some law not yet
discovered. Boscovich himself, in order to obviate the
possibility of two atoms ever being in the same place,
asserts that the ultimate force is a repulsion which in-
creases without limit as the distance diminishes without
limit, so that two atoms can never coincide. But this
seems an unwarrantable concession to the vulgar opinion
that two bodies cannot co-exist in the same place. This
opinion is deduced from our experience of the behavior
of bodies of sensible size, but we have no experimental
evidence that two atoms may not sometimes coincide.
For instance, if oxygen and hydrogen combine to form.
A T O
625
water, we have no experimental evidence that the mole-
cule of oxygen is not in the very same place with the two
molecules of hydrogen. Many persons cannot get rid of
the opinion that , all matter is extended in length,
breadth, and depth. This is a prejudice of the same
kind with the last, arising from our experience of bodies
consisting of immense multitudes of atoms. The system
of atoms, according to Boscovich, occupies a certain
region of space in virtue of the forces acting between
the component atoms of the system and any other atoms
when brought near them. No other system of atoms
can occupy the same region of space at the same time,
because, before it could do so, the mutual action of the
atoms would have caused a repulsion between the two
systems insuperable by any force which we can com-
mand. Thus, a number of soldiers with firearms may
occupy an extensive region to the exclusion of the
enemy's armies, though the space filled by their bodies is
but small. . In this way Boscovich explained the appar-
ent extension of bodies consisting of atoms, each of
which is devoid of extension. According to Boscovich's
theory, all action between bodies is action at a distance.
There is no such thing in nature as actual contact
between two bodies. When two bodies are said in ordi-
nary language to be in contact, all that is meant is that
they are so near together that the repulsion between the
nearest pairs of atoms belonging to the two bodies is
very great.
Thus, in Boscovich's theory, the atom has continuity
of existence in time and space. At any instant of time
it is at some point of space, and it is never in more than
one place at a time. It passes from one place to another
along a continuous path. It has a definite mass which
cannot be increased or diminished. Atoms are endowed
with the power of acting on one another by attraction or
repulsion, the amount of the force depending on the dis-
tance between them. On the other hand, the atom
itself has no parts or dimensions. In its geometrical
aspect it is a mere geometrical point. It has no exten-
sion in space. . It has not the so-called property of Im-
penetrability, for two atoms may exist in the same place.
This we may regard as one extreme of the various opin-
ions about the constitution of bodies.
The opposite extreme, that of Anaxagoras— the theory
that bodies apparently homogeneous and continuous are
so in reality – is, in its extreme form, a theory incapable
of development. To explain the properties of any sub-
stance by this theory is impossible. We can only admit
the observed properties of such substance as ultimate
facts. There is a certain stage, however, of scientific
progress in which a method corresponding to this theory
is of service. In hydrostatics, for instance, we define a
fluid by means of one of its known properties, and from
this definition we make the system of deductions which
constitute the science of hydrostatics. In this way the
science of hydrostatics may be built upon on experi-
mental basis without any consideration of the constitu-
tion of a fluid as to whether it is molecular or continu-
ous. In like manner, after the French mathematicians
had attempted, with more or less ingenuity, to construct
a theory of elastic solids, from the hypothesis that they
sonsist of atoms in equilibrium under the action of their
mutual forces, Stokes and others showed that all the re-
sults of this hypothesis, so far at least as they agreed
with facts, might be deduced from the postulate that
elastic bodies exist, and from the hypothesis that the
Smallest portions into which we can divide them are
sensibly homogeneous. . In this way the principle of
continuity, which is the basis of the method of Fluxions
and the whole of modern mathematics, may be applied
to the analysis of problems connected with material bodies
by assuming them, for the purpose of this analysis, to be
homogeneous. All that is required to make the result
applicable to the real case is that the smallest portions
of the substance of which we take any notice shall be
sensibly of the same kind. Thus, if a railway contractor
has to make a tunnel through a hill of gravel, and if one
cubic yard of the gravel is so like another cubic yard
that for the purposes of the contract they may be taken
as equivalent, then, in estimating the work required to
remove the gravel from the tunnel, he may, without fear
of error, make his calculations as if the gravel were a
continuous substance. But if a worm has to make his
way through the gravel, it makes the greatest possible
difference to him whether he tries to push right against
a piece of gravel, or directs his course through one of the
intervals between the pieces; to him, therefore, the
gravel is by no means a homogeneous and continuous
Substance.
In the same way, a theory that some particular sub-
stance, say water, is homogeneous and continuous may
be a good working theory up to a certain point, but
may fail when we come to deal with quantities so minute
or so attenuated that their heterogeneity of structure
comes into prominence. Whether this heterogeneity of
structure is or is not consistent with homogeneity and
continuity of substance is another question.
The extreme form of the doctrine of continuity is
that stated by Descartes, who maintains that the whole
universe is equally full of matter, and that this matter is
all of one kind, having no essential property besides
that of extension. All the properties which we per-
ceive in matter he reduces to its parts being movable
among one another, and so capable of all the varieties
which we can perceive to follow from the motion of its
parts. Descartes's own attempts to deduce the different
qualities and actions of bodies in this way are not of
much value. More than a century was required to
invent methods of investigating the conditions of the
motion of systems of bodies such as Descartes imagined.
But the hydrodynamical discovery of Helmholtz that a
vortex in a perfect liquid possessess certain permanent
characteristics, has been applied by Sir W. Thomson to
form a theory of vortex atoms in a homogeneous,
incompressible, and frictionless liquid, to which we
shall return at the proper time.
OUTLINE OF MODERN MOLECULAR SCIENCE, AND IN
PARTICULAR OF THE MOLECULAR THEORY - OF
GASES.
We begin by assuming that bodies are made up of
parts, each of which is capable of motion, and that
these parts act on each other in a manner consistent
with the principle of the conservation of energy. In
making these assumptions, we are justified by the ſacts
that bodies may be divided into smaller parts, and that
all bodies with which we are acquainted are conservative
systems, which would not be the case unless their parts
were also conservative systems.
We may also assume that these small parts are in
motion. This is the most general assumption we can
make, for it includes, as a particular case, the theory
that the small parts are at rest. The phenomena of the
diffusion of gases and liquids through each other show
that there may be a motion of the small parts of a
body which is not perceptible to us.
We make no assumption with respect to the mature
of the small parts—whether they are all of one magni-
tude. We do not even assume them to have extension
and figure. Each of them must be measured by its
mass, and any two of them must, like visible bodies,
have the power of acting on one another when they
come near enough to do so. The properties of the
4O A
326
A T O
body, or medium, are determined by the configuration
and motion of its small parts.
The effect of the direct action of the molecules on
each other depends on the number of pairs of molecules
which at a given instant are near enough to act on one
another. The number of such pairs is proportional to
the square of the number of molecules in unit of vol-
ume, that is, to the square of the density of the gas.
Hence, as long as the medium is so rare that the
encounter between two molecules is not affected by the
presence of others, the deviation ſrom Boyle's law will
be proportional to the square of the density. If the
action between the molecules is on the whole repulsive,
the pressure will be greater than that given by Boyle's
law. If it is, on the whole attractive, the pressure will
be less than that given by Boyle's law. It appears, by
the experiments of Regnault and others, that the pres-
sure does deviate from Boyle's law when the density of
the gas is increased. In the case of carbonic acid and
other gases which are easily liquefied, this deviation is
very great. In all cases, however, except that of hydro-
gen, the pressure is less than that given by Boyle's law,
showing that the virial is on the whole due to attractize
forces between the molecules.
Another kind of evidence as to the nature of the action
between the molecules is furnished by an experiment
made by Dr. Joule. Of two vessels, one was exhausted
and the other filled with a gas at a pressure of 20 atmos-
pheres; and both were placed side by side in a vessel
of water, which was constantly stirred. The tempera-
ture of the whole was observed. Then a communication
was opened between the vessels, the compressed gas
expanded to twice its volume, and the work of expansion,
which at first produced a strong current in the gas, was
soon converted into heat by the internal friction of the
gas. When all was again at rest, and the temperature
uniform, the temperature was again observed. In Dr.
Joule's original experiments the observed temperature
was the same as before. In a series of experiments,
conducted by Dr. Joule and Sir W. Thomson on a dif-
ferent plan, by which the thermal effect of free expansion
can be more accurately measured, a slight cooling effect
was observed in all the gases examined except hydrogen.
Since the temperature depends on the velocity of agita-
tion of the molecules, it appears that when a gas expands
without doing external work the velocity of agitation is
not much affected, but that in most cases it is slightly
diminished. Now, if the molecules during their mutual
separation act on each other, their velocity will increase
or diminish according as the force is repulsive or attract-
ive. It appears, therefore, from the experiments on the
free expansion of gasses, that the force between the
molecules is small but, on the whole, attractive.
Having thus justified the hypothesis that a gas consists
of molecules in motion, which act on each other only
when they come very close together during an encounter,
but which, during the intervals between their encounters
which constitute the greater part of their existence, are
describing free paths, and are not acted on by any mole-
cular force, we proceed to investigate the motion of such
a system.
The mathematical investigation of the properties of
such a system of molecules in motion is the foundation
of molecular science. Clausius was the first to express
the relation between the density of the gas, the length of
the free paths of its molecules, and the distance at which
they encounter each other. He assumed, however, at
least in his earlier investigations, that the velocities of
all the molecules are equal. The mode in which the
velocities are distributed was first investigated by the
present writer, who showed that in the moving system
the velocities of the molecules range from zero to infin-
ity, but that the number of molecules whose velocities
lie within given limits can be expressed by a formula
identical with that which expresses in the theory of er-
rors the number of errors of observation ſyng within
corresponding limits. -
The mean kinetic energy of a molecule, however, has
a definite value, which is easily expressed in terms of the
quantities which enter into the expression for the distri-
bution of velocities. The most important result of this
investigation is that when several kinds of molecules are
in motion and acting on one another, the mean kinetic
energy of a molecule is the same whatever be its mass,
the molecules of greater mass having smaller mean ve-
locities. Now, when gases are mixed their temperatures
become equal. Hence we conclude that the physical
condition which determines that the temperature of two
gases shall be the same is that the mean kinetic energies
of agitation of the individual molecules of the two gases
are equal. This result is of great importance in the the-
ory of heat, though we are not yet able to establish any
similar result for bodies in the liquid or solid state.
Our definition of a molecule is purely dynamical. A
molecule is that minute portion of , a substance which
moves about as a whole, so that its parts, if it has any,
do not part company during the motion of agitation of
the gas. The result of the kinetic theory, therefore, is
to give us information about the relative masses of mole-
cules considered as moving bodies. The consistency
of this information with the deductions of chemists
from the phenomena of combination, greatly strength.
ens the evidence in favor of the actual existence and
motion of gaseous molecules.
Another confirmation of the theory of molecules is
derived from the experiments of Dulong and Petit on
the specific heat of gases, from which they deduced the
law which bears their name, and which asserts that the
specific heats of equal weights of gases are inversely
as their combining weights, or, in other words, that the
capacities for heat of the chemical equivalents of differ-
ent gases are equal.
The determination of the molecular volume of a gas
is subject as yet to considerable uncertainty. The most
obvious method is that of compressing the gas till it
assumes the liquid form. It seems probable, from the
great resistance of liquids to compression, that their
molecules are at about the same distance from each
other as that at which two molecules of the same sub.
stance in the gaseous form act on each other during an
encounter. If this is the case, the molecular volume of
a gas is somewhat less than the volume of the liquid
into which it would be condensed by pressure. or, in
other words, the density of the molecules is somewhat
greater than that of the liquid.
The first numerical estimate of the diameter of a
molecule was that made by Loschmidt in 1865 from the
mean path and the molecular volume. Independently
of him and of each other, Mr. Stoney, in 1868, and
Sir W. Thomson, in 1870, published results of a sim-
ilar kind—those of Thomson being deduced not only
in this way, but from considerations derived from the
thickness of soap bubbles, and from the electric action
between zinc and copper.
The diameter and the mass of a molecule, as estimated
by these methods, are, of course, very small, but by no
means infinitely so. About two millions of molecules
of hydrogen in a row would occupy a millimetre, and
about two hundred million million million of them
would weigh a milligramme. These numbers must be
considered as exceedingly rough guesses; they must be
corrected by more extensive and accurate experiments
as science advances; but the main result, which appears
to be well established, is that the determination of the
A T O
627
mass of a molecule is a legitimate object of scientific
research, and that this mass is by no means immeasur-
ably small.
Loschmidt illustrates these molecular measurements
by a comparison with the smallest magnitudes visible by
means of a microscope. Nobert, he tells us, can draw
4Ooo lines in the breadth of a millimetre. The intervals
between these lines can be observed with a good micro-
scope. A cube, whose side is the 4000th of a millimetre,
may be taken as the minimum zwisible for observers of
the present day. Such a cube would contain from 60
to IOO million molecules of oxygen or of nitrogen; but
since the molecules of organised substances contain on
an average about 50 of the most elementary atoms, we
may assume that the smallest organised particle visible
under the microscope contains about two million mole-
cules of organic matter. At least half of every living
organism consists of water, so that the smallest living
being visible under the microscope does not contain
more than about a million organic molecules. Some
exceedingly simple organism may be supposed built up of
not more than a million similar molecules. It is impos-
sible, however, to conceive so small a number sufficient
to form a being furnished with a whole system of special-
ised organs.
Thus molecular science sets us face to face with physi-
ological theories. It forbids the physiologist from
imagining that structural details of infinitely small dimen-
sions can furnish an explanation of the infinite variety
which exists in the properties and functions of the most
minute organisms.
A microscopic germ is, we know, capable of develop-
ment into a highly organised animal. Another germ,
equally microscopic, becomes, when developed, an
animal of a totally different kind. Do all the differ-
ences, infinite in number, which distinguish the one
animal from the other, arise each from some difference
in the structure of the respective germs ? Even if we
admit this as possible, we shall be called upon by the
advocates of Pangenesis to admit still greater marvels.
For the microscopic germ, according to this theory, is
no mere individual, but a representative body, containing
members collected from every rank of the longdrawn
ramification of the ancestral tree, the number of these
members being amply sufficient not only to furnish the
hereditary characteristics of every organ of the body and
every habit of the animal from birth to death, but also to
afford a stock of latent gemmules to be passed on in an
inactive state from germ to germ, till at last the ances-
tral peculiarity which it represents is revived in some
remote descendant.
Some of the exponents of this theory of heredity
have attempted to elude the difficulty of placing a whole
world of wonders within a body so small and so devoid
of visible structure as a germ, by using the phrase
structureless germs. Now, one material system can
differ from another only in the configuration and motion
which it has at a given instant. To explain differ-
ences of function and development of a germ without
assuming differences of structure is, therefore, to admit
that the properties of a germ are not those of a purely
material system.
The evidence as to the nature and motion of molecules,
with which we have hitherto been occupied, has been
derived from experiments upon gaseous media, the
smallest sensible portion of which contains millions of
millions of molecules. The constancy and uniformity
of the properties of the gaseous medium is the direct
result of the inconceivable irregularity of the motion of
agitation of its molecules. Any cause which could in-
troduce regularity into the motion of agitation, and
marshal the molecules into order and method in their
evolutions, might check or even reverse that tendency
to diffusion of matter, motion, and energy, which is one
of the most invariable phenomena of nature, and to
which Thomson has given the name of the dissipation
of energy.
Thus, when a sound-wave is passing through a mass
of air, this motion is of a certain definite type, and if
left to itself the whole motion is passed on to other
masses of air, and the sound-wave passes on, leaving
the air behind it at rest. Heat, on the other hand,
never passes out of a hot body, except to enter a colder
body, so that the energy of sound-waves, or any other
form of energy which is propagated so as to pass wholly
out of one portion of the medium and into another, can-
not be called heat.
We have now to turn our attention to a class of
molecular motions, which are as remarkable for their
regularity as the motion of agitation is for its irregu-
larity. y
It has been found, by means of the spectroscope,
that the light emitted by incandescent substances is
different according to their state of condensation.
When they are in an extremely rarefied condition the
spectrum of their light consists of a set of sharply-
defined bright lines. As the substance approaches a
denser condition the spectrum tends to become con-
tinuous, either by the lines becoming broader and less
defined, or by new lines and bands appearing between
them, till the spectrum at length loses all its character-
istics and becomes identical with that of solid bodies
when raised to the same temperature.
Hence the vibrating systems, which are the source of
the emitted light, must be vibrating in a different manner
in these two cases. When the spectrum consists of a
number of bright lines, the motion of the system must
be compounded of a corresponding number of types of
harmonic vibration.
In order that a bright line may be sharply defined, the
vibratory motion which produces it must be kept up in
a perfectly regular manner for some hundreds or thou-
sands of vibrations. If the motion of each of the
vibrating bodies is kept up only during a small number
of vibrations, then, however regular may be the vibra-
tions of each body while it lasts, the resultant disturb-
ance of the luminiferous medium, when analysed by the
prism, will be found to contain, besides the part due to
the regular vibrations, other motions, depending on the
starting and stopping of each particular vibrating body,
which will become manifest as a diffused luminosity scat-
tered over the whole length of the spectrum. A spectrum
of bright lines, therefore, indicates that the vibrating
bodies when set in motion are allowed to vibrate in ac-
cordance with the conditions of their internal structure
for some time before they are again interfered with by
external forces.
It appears, therefore, from spectroscopic evidence that
each molecule of a rarefied gas is, during the greater
part of its existence, at such a distance from all other
molecules that it executes its vibrations in an undisturbed
and regular manner. This is the same conclusion to
which we were led by considerations of another kind at
p §. may therefore regard the bright lines in the spec-
trum of a gas as the result of the vibrations executed by
the molecules while describing their free paths. When
two molecules separate from one another after an
encounter, each of them is in a state of vibration, aris-
ing from the unequal action on different parts of the
same molecule during the encounter. Hence, though
the centre of mass of the molecule describing its free
path moves with uniform velocity, the parts of the
molecule have a vibratory motion with respect to the
628
A T O
centre of mass of the whole molecule, and it is the dis-
turbance of the luminiferous medium communicated to
it by the vibrating molecules which constitutes the
emitted light.
We may compare the vibrating molecule to a bell.
When struck, the bell is set in motion. This motion is
compounded of harmonic vibrations of many different
periods, each of which acts on the air, producing notes
of as many different pitches. As the bell communicates
its motion to the air, these vibrations necessarily decay,
some of them faster than others, so that the sound con-
tains fewer and fewer notes, till at last it is reduced to
the fundamental note of the bell. If we suppose that
there are a great many bells precisely similar to each
other, and that they are struck, first one and then
another, in a perfectly irregular manner, yet so that, on
an average, as many bells are struck in one second of
time as in another, and also in such a way that, on an
average, any one bell is not again struck till it has
ceased to vibrate, then the audible result will appear a
continuous sound, composed of the Sound emitted by
bells in all states of vibration, from the clang of the
actual stroke to to the final hum of the dying fundamen-
tal tone.
But now let the number of bells be reduced while the
same number of strokes are given in a second. Each
bell will now be struck before it has ceased to vibrate,
so that in the resulting sound there will be less of the
fundamental tone and more of the original clang, till at
last, when the peal is reduced to one bell, on which
innumerable hammers are continually plying their
strokes all out of time, the sound will become a mere
noise, in which no musical note can be distinguished.
In the case of a gas we have an immense number of
molecules, each of which is set in vibration when it
encounters another molecule, and continues to vibrate
as it describes its free path. The molecule is a material
system, the parts of which are connected in some definite
way, and from the fact that the bright lines of the
emitted light have always the same wave-lengths, we
learn that the vibrations corresponding to these lines
are always executed in the same periodic time, and
therefore the force tending to restore any part of the
molecule to its position of equilibrium in the molecule
must be proportional to its displacement relative to that
position. -
From the mathematical theory of the motion of such
a system, it appears that the whole motion may be ana-
lysed into the following parts, which may be considered
each independently of the others : — In the first place,
the centre of mass of the system moves with uniform
velocity in a straight line. This velocity may have any
value. In the second place, there may be a motion of
rotation, the angular momentum of the system about its
centre of mass remaining during the free path constant
in magnitude and direction. This angular momentum
may have any value whatever, and its axis may have any
direction. In the third place, the remainder of the mo-
tion is made up of a number of component motions,
each of which is an harmonic vibration of a given type.
In each type of vibration the periodic time of vibration
is determined by the nature of the system, and is invari-
able for the same system. The relative amount of mo-
tion in different parts of the system is also determinate
for each type, but the absolute amount of motion and
the phase of the vibration of each type are determined
by the particular circumstances of the last encounter,
and may vary in any manner from one encounter to an-
other.
The values of the periodic times of the different types
of vibration are given by the roots of a certain equation,
the form of which depends on the nature of the connec-
tions of the system. In certain exceptionally simple
cases, as, for instance, in that of a uniform string
stretched between two fixed points, the roots of the
equation are connected by simple arithmetical relations,
and if the internal structure of a molecule had an anal-
ogous kind of simplicity, we might expect to find in the
spectrum of the molecule a series of bright lines, whose
wave-lengths are in simple arithmetical ratios.
But if we suppose the molecule to be constituted ac-
cording to some different type, as, for instance, if it is
an elastic sphere, or if it consists of a finite number of
atoms kept in their places by attractive and repulsive
forces, the roots of the equation will not be connected
with each other by any simple relations, but each may
be made to vary independently of the others by a suit-
able change of the connections of the system. Hence,
we have no right to expect any definite numerical rela-
tions among the wave-lengths of the bright lines of a gas.
The bright lines of the spectrum of an incandescent
gas are therefore due to the harmonic vibrations of the
molecules of the gas during their free paths. The only
effect of the motion of the centre of mass of the mole-
cule is to alter the time of vibration of the light as re-
ceived by a stationary observer. When the molecule is
coming towards the observer, each successive impulse
will have a shorter distance to travel before it reaches
his eye, and therefore the impulses will appear to suc-
ceed each other more rapidly than if the molecule were
at rest, and the contrary will be the case if the molecule
is receding from the observer. The bright line corres-
ponding to the vibration will therefore be shifted in the
spectrum towards the blue end when the molecule is
approaching, and towards the red end when it is reced-
ing from the observer. ... By observations of the
displacement of certain Hines in the spectrum, Dr.
Huggins and others have measured the rate of approach
or of recession of certain stars with respect to the
earth, and Mr. Lockyer has determined the rate of
motion of tornadoes in the sun. But Lord Rayleigh
has pointed out that according to the dynamical theory
of gases the molecules are moving hither and thither
with so great velocity that, however narrow and sharp-
ly-defined any bright line due to a single moleclue may be,
the displacement of the line towards the blue by the ap-
proaching molecules, and towards the red by the receding
molecules, will produce a certain amount of widening and
blurring of the line in the spectrum, so that there is a
limit to the sharpness of definition of the lines of a gas.
The widening of the lines due to this cause will be in
proportion to the velocity of agitation of the mole-
cules. It will be greatest ſor the molecules of smallest
mass, as those of hydrogen, and it will increase with the
temperature. Hence the measurement of the breadth
of the hydrogen lines, such as C or F in the spectrum of
the solar prominences, may furnish evidence that the
temperature of the sun cannot exceed a certain value.
We must now leave these speculations about the
nature of molecules and contemplate the material uni-
verse as made up of molecules. Every molecule, so
far as we know, belongs to one of a definite number of
species. The list of chemical elements may be taken
as representing the known species which have been
examined in the laboratories. Several of these have
been discovered by means of the spectroscope, and
more may yet remain to be discovered in the same
way. The spectroscope has also been applied to analyse
the light of the sun, the brighter stars and some of the
nebulae and comets, and has shown that the character
of the light emitted by these bodies is similar in some
cases to that emitted by terrestrial molecules, and in
others to light from which the molecules have obsorbed
certain rays. In this way a considerable number of
A T O
629
coincidences have been traced between the systems of
lines belonging to particular terrestrial substances and
corresponding lines in the spectra of the heavenly
bodies.
The value of the evidence furnished by such coinci-
dences may be estimated by considering the degree of ac-
curacy with which one such coincidence may be observed.
The interval between the two lines which form Fraun-
hofer's line D is about the five hundredth part of the
interval between B and G on Kirchoff’s scale. A dis-
cordance between the positions of two lines amounting
to the tenth part of this interval, that is to say, the five
thousanth part of the length of the bright part of the
spectrum, would be very perceptible in a spectroscope
of moderate power.
If we adopt the theory of Boscovich, and assert that
the primitive atom is a mere centre of force, having a
certain definite mass, we may get over the difficulty
about the equality of the mass of all atoms by laying it
down as a doctrine which cannot be disproved by ex-
periment, that mass is not a quantity capable of con-
tinuous increase or diminution, but that it is in its own
nature discontinuous, like number, the atom being the
unit, and all masses being multiples of that unit. We
have no evidence that it is possible for the ratio of two
masses to be an incommensurable quantity, for the in-
commensurable quantities in geometry are supposed to
be traced out in a continuous medium. If matter is
atomic, and therefore discontinuous, it is unfitted for
the construction of perfect geometrical models, but in
Other respects it may fulfil its functions.
But even if we adopt a theory which makes the
equality of the mass of different atoms a result depend-
ing on the nature of mass rather than on any quanti-
tative adjustment, the correspondence of the periods
of vibration of actual molecules is a fact of a different
order.
We know that radiations exist having periods of
vibration of every value between those corresponding to
the limits of the visible spectrum, and probably far
beyond these limits on both sides. The most powerful
spectroscope can detect no gap or discontinuity in the
spectrum of the light emitted by incandescent lime.
The period of vibration of a luminous particle is there-
fore a quantity which in itself is capable of assuming
any one of a series of values, which, if not mathematic.
ally continuous, is such that consecutive observed values
differ from each other by less than the ten thousandth
part of either. There is, therefore, nothing in the
nature of time itself to prevent the period of vibration
of a molecule from assuming any one of many thousand
different observable values. That which determines the
period of any particular kind of vibration is the relation
which subsists between the corresponding type of dis
placement and the force of restitution thereby called
into play, a relation involving constants of space and
time as well as of mass.
It is the equality of these space- and time-constants
for all molecules of the same kind which we have next
to consider. . We have seen that the very different cir-
cumstances in which different molecules of the same
kind have been placed have not, even in the course of
many ages, produced any appreciable difference in the
values of these constants. If, then, the various pro-
cesses of nature to which these molecules have been
subjected since the world began have not been able in
all that time to produce any appreciable difference be-
tween the constants of one molecule and those of
another, we are forced to conclude that it is not to the
operation of any of these processes that the uniformity
of the constants is due.
The formation of the molecule is therefore an event
not belonging to that order or nature under which we
live. It is an operation of a kind which is not, so ſar
as we are aware, going on on earth or in the Sun or the
stars, either now or since these bodies began to be
formed. It must be referred to the epoch, not of the
formation of the earth or of the solar system, but of
the establishment of the existing order of nature, and
till not only these worlds and systems, but the very
order of nature itself is dissolved, we have no reason to
expect the occurrence of any operation of a similar
kind.
In the present state of science, therefore, we have
strong reasons for believing that in a molecule, or if not
in a molecule, in one of its component atoms, we have
something which has existed either from eternity or at
least from times anterior to the existing order of nature.
But besides this atom, there are immense numbers of
other atoms of the same kind, and the constants of each
of these atoms are incapable of adjustment by any pro-
cess now in action. Each is physically independent of
all the others.
Whether or not the conception of a multitude of
beings existing from all etermity is in itself self-con-
tradictory, the conception becomes palpably absurd
when we attribute a relation of quantitative equality to
all these beings. We are then forced to look beyond
them to some common cause or common Origin to ex-
plain why this singular relation of equality exists,
rather than any one of the infinite number of possible
relations of inequality. g
Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of
matter itself out of nothing. We have reached the
utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have
admitted that, because matter cannot be eternal and
self-existent, it must have been created. It is only
when we contemplate not matter in itself, but the form
in which it actually exists, that our minds find some-
thing on which it can lay hold.
The matter, as such, should have certain fundamental
properties, that it should have a continuous existence in
space and time, that all action should be between two
portions of matter, and so on, are truths which may,
for aught we know, be of the kind which metaphysicians
call necessary. We may use our knowledge of such
truths for purposes of deduction, but we have no data
for speculating on their origin. *
But the equality of the consants of the molecules is a
fact of a very different order. It arises from a particu-
lar distribution of matter, a collocation, to use, the
expression of Dr. Chalmers, of things which we have
no difficulty in imagining to have been arranged other-
wise. But many of the ordinary instances of colloca-
tion are adjustments of constants, which are not only
arbitrary in their own nature, but in which variations
actually occur; and when it is pointed out that .
these adjustments are beneficial to living beings, and
are therefore instances of benevolent design, it is replied
that those variations which are not conducive to the
growth and multiplication of living beings tend to their
destruction, and to the removal thereby of the evidence
of any adjustment not beneficial. -
The constitution of an atom, however, is such as to
render it, so far as we can judge, independent of all the
dangers arising from the struggle for existence. Plausi-
ble reasons may, no doubt, be assigned for believing
that if the constants had varied from atom to atom
through any sensible range, the bodies formed by aggre.
gates of such atoms would not have been so well fitted
for the construction of the world as the bodies which
actually exist. But as we have no experience of bodies
formed of such variable atoms this must remain a bare
conjecture.
630
A T O — A T R
Atoms have been compared by Sir J. Herschel to
manufactured articles, on account of their uniformity.
The uniformity of manufactured articles may be traced
to very different motives on the part of the manufac-
turer. In certain cases it is found to be less expensive as
regards trouble, as well as cost, to make a great many
objects exactly alike than to adapt each to its special
requirements. Thus, shoes for soldiers are made in
large numbers without any designed adaptation to the
feet of particular men. In another class of cases the
uniformity is intentional, and is designed to make the
manufactured article more valuable. Thus, Whit-
worth's bolts are made in a certain number of sizes, so
that if one bolt is lost, another may be got at once,
and accurately fitted to its place. The identity of the
arrangement of the words in the different copies of a
document or book is a matter of great practical im-
portance, and it is more perſectly secured by the pro-
cess of printing than by that of manuscript copying.
In a third class not a part only but the whole of the
value of the object arises from its exact conformity to
a given standard. Weights and measures belong to this
class, and the existence of many well-adjusted material
standards of weight and measure in any country fur-
misines evidence of the existence of a system of law
regulating the transactions of the inhabitants, and en-
joining in all professed measures a conformity to the
national standard.
There are thus three kinds of usefulness in manufac-
tured articles—cheapness, serviceableness, and quantita-
tive accuracy. Which of these was present to the mind
of Sir J. Herschel we cannot now positively affirm,
but it was at least as likely to have been the last as the
first, though it seems more probable that he meant to
assert that a number of exactly similar things cannot
be each of them eternal and self-existent, and must
therefore have been made, and that he used the phrase
“manufactured article” to suggest the idea of their
being made in great numbers.
ATOOI, one of the larger Sandwich Islands, in the
South Pacific Ocean. Towards the N.E. and N.W.
the country is rugged and broken, but to the southward
it is more level. The hills rise from the sea with a
gentle acclivity, and, at a little distance back, are covered
with wood; the central peaks attain an elevation of 7000
feet. The chief ports are Waimea and Hanalei. The
island was one of the stations chosen for the observation
of the transit of Venus in 1874. It is nearly 40 miles in
length, and contains about 10,000 inhabitants.
ATRATO, a river of Colombia, South America,
which, after a course of 250 miles, almost due N., for
the most part through a low and swampy region, falls
into the Gulf of Uraba or Darien. The gold and
platinum mines of Choco were on some of its affluents,
and its sands are still auriferous. The river has attracted
'considerable attention in connection with schemes for
the construction of a ship-canal across the isthmus. It
is navigable for small vessels for about 140 miles.
ATREK or ATTRUCK, a river which rises in the
mountains of Khorasan, and flows W. along the borders
of Persia and the Russian possessions, till it falls in the
south-eastern corner of the Caspian, a short distance to
the N. of Ashurada.
ATREUS, in Greek Zegend, a son of Pelops, had,
with his brother Thyestes, settled in Mycenae, where he
succeeded Eurystheus in the sovereignty, in which he was
secured by the possession of a lamb or ram with a golden
fleece. His wife Aérope, a daughter of Minos, bribed
by Thyestes, assisted the latter to carry off the ram.
But Zeus, in the interest of Atreus, wrought a miracle,
causing the sun which before had risen in the west to
wife in the east. Thyestes was driven from Mycenae, but
returned to his brother begging to be forgiven. Atreus,
appearing to welcome him, invited him to a banquet to
eat of his own son, whom he had slain. From this
crime followed the ills which befel Agamemnon, the son
of Atreus. w.
ATRI or ATRIA, the ancient Hadria, a town of
Naples, in the province of Abruzzo Ulteriore I., situated
on a steep mountain 5 miles from the Adriatic, and 18
miles S.E. of Teramo. Remains of the ancient city
have been discovered to the S. of the present site, con-
sisting of the ruins of a theatre and baths, with pave-
ments, and vases of Greek manufacture.
ATRIUM, the principal apartment in a Roman
house, was entered through the ostium or fanza, which
opened off the zestibulum, a clear space between the
middle of the house and the street, formed by the pro-
jection of the two sides. . It was generally quadrangular
in shape, and was roofed all over, with the exception of
a square opening, called compluzium, towards which
the roofs sloped, and by which the rain-water was con-
ducted down to a basin (implievium) fixed in the floor.
In the early periods of Roman civilisation, the atrium
was the common public apartment, and was used for
the reception of visitors and clients, and for ordinary
domestic purposes, as cooking and dining. In it were
placed the ancestral pictures, the marriage-couch, the
hearth, and generally a small altar. Here, too, were
kept the looms at which the mistress of the house sat
and span with her maid-servants. At a somewhat
later period, and among the wealthy, separate apart-
ments were built for kitchens and dining-rooms, and the
atrium was kept as a general reception room for clients
and visitors. t
ATRIUM, in Ecclesiastical Antiquities, denotes ar
open place or court before a church. It consisted of a
large area or square plat of ground, surrounded with a
portico or cloister, situated between the porch or vesti-
hule and the body of the church. In the centre was
placed a fountain, wherein the worshippers washed their
hands before entering church. In the atrium those who
were not suffered to advance farther, and more particu-
larly the first class of penitents, stood to solicit the
prayers of the faithful as they went into the church. It
was also used as a burying-ground, at first only for dis-
tinguished persons, but afterwards for all believers.
ÅTROPHY, a term in medicine used to describe a
a state of wasting due to some interference with the
function of healthy nutrition. In the living organism
there are ever at work changes involving the waste of
its component tissues, which render necessary, in order
to the preservation of life, the proper assimilation of
nutritive material. It is also essential for the mainten-
ance of health that a due relation exist between these
processes of waste and repair, so that the one may not
be in excess of the other. When the appropriation of .
nutriment exceeds the waste, hypertrophy or increase in
bulk of the tissues takes place. (See HYPERTROPHY.)
When, on the other hand, the supply of nutritive mat-
ter is suspended or diminished, or when the power of
assimilation is impaired, atrophy or wasting is the re-
sult. Thus the whole body becomes atrophied in many
diseases; and in old age every part of the frame, with
the single exception of the heart, undergoes atrophic
change. Atrophy may, however, affect single organs or
parts of the body, irrespective of the general state of
nutrition, and this may be brought about in a variety of
ways. One of the most frequently observed of such
instances is atrophy from disuse, or cessation of func-
tion. Thus, when a limb is deprived of the natural
power of motion, either by paralysis or by painful joint
disease, the condition of exercise essential to its nutri-
tion being no longer fulfilled, atrophy of all its textures
A T R — A T T
631
sconer or later takes place. The brain in imbeciles is
ſrequently observed to be shriveled, and in many cases
of blindness there is atrophy of the optic nerve and
optic tract. This form of atrophy is likewise well
exemplified in the case of those organs and structures of
the body which subserve important ends during foetal
life, but which, ceasing to be necessary after birth,
undergo a sort of natural atrophy, such as the thymus
gland, and certain vessels specially concerned in the
foetal circulation. The uterus after parturition under-
goes a certain amount of atrophy, and the ovaries, after
the child-bearing period, become shrunken. Atrophy
of a part may also be caused by interruption to its nor-
mal blood supply, as in the case of the ligature or ob-
struction of an artery. Again, long standing disease,
by affecting the nutrition of an organ and by inducing
the deposit of morbid products, may result in atrophy,
as frequently happens in affections of the liver and kid-
neys. Parts that are subjected to continuous pressure
are liable to become atrophied, as is sometimes seen in
internal organs which have been pressed upon by tumors
or other morbid growths, and is well illustrated in the
case of the feet of Chinese ladies, which are prevented
from growing by persistent compression exercised from
birth.
ATROPOS, the eldest of the three Moirai, Parcae,
or Fates. Her name, the Unalterable, indicates the
part generally played by her, viz., that of rendering the
decisions of her sisters irreversible or immutable.
ATTACHMENT, in Anglish Zaw, is a process from
a court of record, awarded by the justices at their discre-
tion, on a bare suggestion, or on their own knowledge,
and is properly grantable in cases of contempt. It dif.
fers from arrest, in that he who arrests a man carries
him to a person of higher power to be forthwith dis-
posed of; but he that attaches keeps the party attached,
and presents him in court at the day assigned, as ap-
pears by the words of the writ. Another difference is,
that arrest is only upon the body of a man, whereas an
attachment is often upon his goods. It is distinguished
from distress in not extending to lands, as the latter
does ; nor does a distress touch the body as an attachment
does. Every court of record has power to fine and im-
prison for contempt of its authority. Attachment being
merely a process to bring the defendant before the court,
is not necessary in cases of contempt in the presence of
the court itself.
ATTACHMENT OUT OF CHANCERY enforced answers
and obedience to decrees and orders of that court, now
merged in the High Court of Justice under the Judica-
ture Act, 1873, and was made out without order upon
an affidavit of the due service of the process, &c., with
whose requirements compliance was sought. A corpo-
ration, however, is proceeded against by distringas and
not by attachment.
ATTACHMENT, FOREIGN, is an important custom
prevailing in the city of London, whereby a creditor may
attach money owing to his debtor, or property belong-
ing to him in the possession of third parties. The per-
son holding the property or owing the money must be
within the city at the time of being served with the pro-
cess, but all persons are entitled to the benefit of the
custom. The plaintiff having commenced his action,
and made a satisfactory affidavit of his debt, is entitled
to issue attachment, which thereupon affects all the
money or property of the defendant in the hands of the
third party, who in these proceedings is called the garmi-
shee. The garnishee, of course, has as against the
attachment all the defences which would be available to
him against the defendant, his alleged creditor. The
garnishee may plead payment under the attachment, if
there has been no fraud or collusion, in bar to an action
by the defendant for his debt or property. The court
to which this process belongs is the Mayor's Court of
London.
ATTACHMENT OF DEBTS.— It was suggested by the
common law commissioners in 1853 that a remedy anal-
ogous to that of Foreign Attachment might be made
available to creditors, after judgment, against debts due
to their debtors. Accordingly, the Common Law Pro-
cedure Act, 1854, enacted that any creditor, having
obtained judgment in the superior courts, should have
an order that the judgment debtor might be examined
as to any debts due and owing to him before a master of
the court. On affidavit that the judgment was still
unsatisfied, and that any other person within the
jurisdiction was indebted to the judgment debtor, the
judge was empowered to attach all debts due from such
third person to the judgment debtor, to answer the judg-
ment debt. In the United States, the law as to attach-
ments is about the same as that here cited, modified in
each individual State, in some minor respects, by statutory
enactments of State legislatures—the underlying prin-
ciple being the same, without important modification.
ATTAINDER, in the Zaw of England, was the
immediate and inseparable consequence from the com-
mon law upon the sentence of death. When it was
clear beyond all dispute that the criminal was no longer
fit to live, he was called attaint, attinctus, stained or
blackened, and could not be a witness in any court.
This attainder took place after judgment of death, or
upon such circumstances as were equivalent to judgment
of death, such as judgment of outlawry on a capital
crime, pronounced for absconding from justice. Con-
viction without judgment was not followed by attainder.
The consequences of attainder were Forfeitures. On
attainder for treason, the criminal forfeited to the Crown
his lands, rights of entry on lands, and any interest he
might have in lands for his own life or a term of years.
For murder, the offender forfeited to the Crown the
profit of his freeholds during life, and in the case of
lands, held in fee-simple, the lands themselves for a yea
and a day; subject to this, the lands escheated to the
lord of the fee. These forfeitures related back to tha
time of the offence committed. Forfeitures of goods
and chattels ensued not only on attainder, but on con-
viction for a felony of any kind, or on flight from jus.
tice, and had no relation backwards to the time of the
offence committed. Provision is made for the due
administration of convicts’ estates, in the interests of
themselves and their families. Forfeiture consequent on
outlawry is exempted from the provisions of the Act.
ATTAR, or Otto, of Roses, a well-known perfume
of great strength, is an essential oil of roses, prepared
chiefly in Hindustan and Persia. See OILS and PER-
FUMERY.
ATTENTION, in Psychology may be defined as the
concentration of consciousness, or the direction of
mental energy upon a definite object or objects.
ATTERBOM, PER DANIEL AMADEUs, a Swedish
poet, was born in Ostergöthland in 1790, studied in the
University of Upsala from 1805 to 1815, became Pro-
fessor of Philosophy there in 1828, and died in 1855,
He was the leader in the great romantic movement
which revolutionised Swedish literature.
ATTER BURY, FRANCIS, a man who holds a con,
spicuous place in the political, ecclesiastical, and literary
history of England, was born in the year 1662, at Mid.
dleton in Buckinghamshire, a parish of which his father
was rector. Francis was educated at Westminster
School, and carried thence to Christ Church a stock of
learning, which, though really scanty, he through life
exhibited with such judicious ostentation that superficial
observers believed his attainments to be immense. In
632
A T T
1687 he distinguished himself among many able men
who wrote in defence of the Church of England, then
persecuted by James II., and calumniated by apostates
who had for lucre quitted her communion. Among
these apostates none was more active or malignant than
Obadiah Walker, who was master of University College,
and who had set up there, under the royal patronage, a
press for printing tracts against the established religion.
In one of these tracts, written apparently by Walker
himself, many aspersions were thrown on Martin
Luther. Atterbury undertook to defend the great Saxon
Reformer, and performed the task in a manner singu-
larly characteristic. Whoever examines his reply to
Walker will be struck by the contrast between the
feebleness of those parts which are argumentative and
defensive, and the vigor of those parts which are rhetor-
ical and aggressive.
ATTICA, the most famous district of ancient Greece,
is a triangular piece of ground projecting in a south-
easterly direction into the AEgean Sea, the base line
being formed by the continuous chain of Mounts
Cithaeron and Parnes, the apex by the promontory of
Sunium. It is washed on two sides by the sea, and this
feature seems to have given rise to the name. The coast
is broken up into numerous small bights and harbors,
which, however, are with few exceptions exposed to the
south wind; the irregularity of the outline accounts for
its great length in comparison of the superficial area of
the country. The surface of Attica, as of the rest of
Greece, is very mountainous, and between the mountain
chains lie several plaims of no great size, open on one
side to the sea. On the west its natural boundary is
the Corinthian Gulf, so that it would include the dis-
trict of Megaris; and, as a matter of fact, before the
Dorian invasion, which resulted in the foundation of
Megara, the whole of this country was politically one,
being in the hands of the Ionian race.
The central position of Attica in Greece was one main
cause of its historical importance.
The mountains of Attica, which form its most char-
acteristic feature, are to be regarded as a continuation
of that chain which, starting from Mount Tymphrestus
at the southern extremity of Pindus, passes through
Phocis and Roeotia under the well-known names of
Parnassus and Helicon; from this proceeds the range
which, as Cithaeron in its western and Parnes in its
eastern portion, separates Attica from Boeotia, throwing
off spurs southward towards the Saronic Gulf in
AEgaleos and Hymettus, which bound the plain of
Athens.
The soil is light and thin, and requires very careful
agriculture to develop its produce. This feature belongs
not only to the rocky mountain sides, but to some extent
also to the maratime plains, and had considerable in-
fluence on the development of the inhabitants, both by
enforcing industrious habits, and in leading them at an
early period to take to the sea. Still, the level ground
was sufficiently fertile to form a marked contrast to the
rest of the district, and this fact is represented in the
mythical genealogy of the early kings, which embodies
several geographical features.
But whatever drawbacks the people of Attica experi-
enced in respect of the soil were more than compensated
by the fineness of the climate. In this point they
enjoyed a great advantage over their neighbors the
Boeotians; and while at the present day travellers speak
of the excessive heat in summer and cold in winter which
they have experienced in Boeotia, Attica has always
been famous for its mildness.
When we turn to the vegetation of Attica, the olive
first calls for our attention. This tree, we learn from
Herodotus, was thought at one time to have been found
in that country only; and the enthusiastic praises of
Sophocles teach us that it was the land in which it
flourished best. So great was the esteem in which it
was held, that in the early legend of the struggle be-
tween the gods of sea and land, Poseidon and Athena,
for the patronage of the country, the sea-god is repre-
sented as having to retire vanquished before the giver of
the olive; and at a later period the evidences of this
contention were found in an ancient olive tree in the
Acropolis, together with three holes in the rock, said to
have been made by the trident of Poseidon, and to be
connected with a salt well hard by. The fig also found
its favorite home in this country, for Demeter was said
to have bestowed it as a gift on the Eleusinian Phytalus,
i.e., “the gardener.”
Having thus noticed the general features of the coun-
try, let us proceed to examine it somewhat more in detail.
It has been already mentioned that the base line is
formed by the chain of Cithaeron and Parnes, running
from west to east; and that from this transverse chains
run Southward, dividing Attica into a succession of
plains. The westernmost of these, which is separated
from the innermost bay of the Corinthian Gulf, called
the Mare Alcyonium, by an offshoot of Cithaeron, and
is bounded on the east by a ridge which ends towards
the Saronic Gulf in a striking two-horned peak called
Kerata, is the plain of Megara. It is only for geographi-
cal purposes that we include this district under Attica,
for both the Dorian race of the inhabitants, and its
dangerous proximity to Athens, caused it to be at per-
petual feud with that city; but its position as an outpost
for the Peloponnesians, together with the fact of its hav-
ing once been Ionian soil, sufficiently explains the bitter
hostility of the Athenians towards the Megarians. The
great importance of Megara arose from its commanding
all the passes into the Peloponnese. These were three
in number: one along the shores of the Corinthian
Gulf, which, owing to the nature of the ground, makes
a long detour ; the other two starting from Megara, and
passing, the one by a lofty though gradual route over
the ridge of Gerameia, the other along the Saronic
Gulf, under the dangerous precipices of the Scironian
rocks. The town of Megara, which was built on and
between two low hills rising out of the plain rather more
than a mile from the sea, had the command of both gulſs
by means of its two ports— that of Pegae on the Cor-
inthian, and that of Nicaea on the Saronic.
To the east of the plain of Megara lies that of Eleusis,
bounded on the one side by the chain of Kerata, and
on the other by that of AEgaleos, through a depression
in which was the line of the sacred way, where the
torchlight processions from Athens used to descend to the
coast, the “brightly-gleaming shores.” Here a deep
bay runs into the land, opposite to which, and separated
from it by a strait, which forms a succession of graceſul
curves, was the rocky island of Salamis, at all times an
important possession to the Athenians on account of its
proximity to their city. The scene of the battle of
Salamis was the narrowest part of this channel, where
the island approaches the extremity of Ægaleos. The
eastern portion of this plain was called the Thriasian
plain, and the city of Eleusis was situated in the recesses
of the bay. The coast-line of this part, between the
sanctuary of Poseidon at the isthmus, which was origin-
ally Ionian, and Athens, is the principal scene of the
achievements of Theseus, a hero who holds the same
relation to the Ionians of Greece proper as Hercules
does to the Greeks at large, viz., that of being the great
author of improvements in the country.
Next in order to the plain of Eleusis came that of
Athens, which is the most extensive of all, reaching
from the foot of Parnes to the sea, and bounded on the
A T T
633
west by. AEgaleos, and on the east by Hymettus. Its
most conspicuous feature is the broad line of dark green
along its western side, formed by the olive-groves of
Colonus and the gardens of the Academus, which owe
their fertility to the waters of the Cephisus, by which
they are irrigated. This river is fed by copious sources
on the side of Mount Parnes, and thus, unlike the other
rivers of Attica, has a constant supply of water; but it
does not reach the sea, nor did it apparently in classical
times, having been diverted, then as now, into the
neighboring plantations; for this is what Sophocles
means when he speaks of “the sleepless ſountains of
Cephisus, which stray forth from their channels.” The
position of Colonus itself is marked by two bare knolls
of light-colored earth, which caused the poet in the
same chorus to apply the epithet “white” to that place.
On the opposite side of the plain runs the other river,
the Ilissus, which rises from a beautiful fountain in
Mount Hymettus, and skirts the eastern extremity of
the city of Athens; but this, notwithstanding its cele-
brity, is a mere brook which stands in pools a great
part of the year, and in summer is completely dry. The
situation of Athens relatively to the surrounding objects
is singularly harmonious; for, while it forms a central
point, so as to be the eye of the plain, and while the
altar-rock of the Acropolis and the hills by which it is
surrounded are conspicuous from every point of view,
there is no such exactness in its position as to give for-
mality, since it is nearer to the sea than to Parnes, and
nearer to Hymettus than to AEgaleos. The most strik-
ing summit in the neighborhood of the city is that of
Lycabettus, now Mount St. George, on the north-east-
ern side; and the variety is still further increased by
the continuation of the ridge which it forms for some
distance northwards through the plain. Three roads
lead to Athens from the Boeotian frontier over the in-
tervening mountain barrier — the easternmost over
Parnes, from Delium and Oropus by Deceleia, which
was the usual route of the invading Lacedaemonians
during the Peloponnesian War; the westernmost over
Cithaeron, by the pass of Dryoscephalae, or the “Oak-
heads;” leading from Thebes by Plataea to Eleusis, and
so to Athens, which we hear of in connection with the
battle of Plataea, and with the escape of the Plataeans
at the time of the siege of that city in the Pelopon-
nesian War; the third, midway between the two, by
the pass of Phyle, near the summit of which, on a
rugged height overlooking the Athenian plain, is the fort
occupied by Thrasybulus in the days of the Thirty tyrants.
It still remains to mention the most famous spot
of ground in Attica, the little plain of Marathon,
which lays in the north-east corner, encircled on three
sides by Parnes and Pentilicus, while the fourth faces
the sea and the opposite coast of Euboea. It was on
the mountain slopes that the Greeks were stationed,
while the Persians with their ships occupied the coast;
and on the two sides the marshes may still be traced by
which the movements of the invader's host were impeded
The mound, which at once attracts the eye in the centre
of the level plain, is probably the burial-place of the
Athenians who fell in the battle. The bay in front is
sheltered by Euboea, and is still more protected from the
north by a projecting tongue of land, called Cynosura.
The mountains in the neighborhood were the seat of
one of the political parties in Attica, the Diacrii or
Hyperacrii, who, being poor mountaineers, and having
nothing to lose, were the principal advocates of change;
while, on the other hand, the Pedieis, or inhabitants of
the plains, being wealthy landholders, formed the
strong conservative element and the Parali, or occupants
of the sea-coast, representing the mercantile interest,
held an intermediate position between the two.
Of the condition of Attica in mediaeval and modern
times little need be said, for it has followed for the most
part the fortunes of Athens. The population, however,
has undergone a great change, independently of the
large admixture of Slavonic blood that has effected the
Greeks of the mainland generally, by the immigration of
Albanian colonists, who now occupy a great part of the
country. The most important of the classical ruins that
remain outside Athens are those of the temple of Athena
at Sunium, which form a conspicuous object as they
surmount the headland, and gave rise to the name which
it bore, until lately, of Cape Colonnae; it is in the Doric
style, of white marble, and 13 columns of the temple
and a pilaster are now standing.
ATTICUS, TITUs POMPONIUS, the friend of Cicero,
was one of the most distinguished men during the
period of the decline and fall of the Roman republic.
His life gives an admirable picture of the classical man
of culture, who, withdrawing from the stir of political
affairs, devoted himself to literary and artistic pursuits.
He was born at Rome Io9 B.C., and was thus three
years older than Cicero, along with whom he and the
younger Marius were educated. He did not marry till
he was 53 years of age, and his only child became the
wife of Vipsanius Agrippa, the distinguished minister
of Augustas. His large fortune was increased on the
death of his uncle, L. Caecilius, who bequeathed to him
the greater part of his property. He formed a large
library at Athens, and kept a staff of slaves engaged in
making copies of valuable works. He probably derived
considerable profits from the sale of these books. In
32 B.C., he was seized with an illness believed to be
incurable. He resolved not to protract a painful and
hopeless struggle, and died after five days of voluntary
starvation.
ATTICUS HERODES, TIBERIUS CLAUDIUs, a
very wealthy citizen of Athens, was born about 104
A.D. His grandfather’s estates had been confiscated
for treachery, but the fortunes of the family had been
restored by the discovery in his father's house of an
enormous sum of money, which the Emperor Nerva
permitted them to retain. This great wealth Herodes
aſterwards increased by his marriage. He received a
careful education under the most distinguished masters
of the time, and specially devoted himself to the study
of oratory, to excel in which seems to have been the
ruling motive of his life. While very young he
delivered a speech before one of the emperors; but it
was so ill received that he was with difficulty restrained
from throwing himself into the Danube. He ultimately
attained to great celebrity as a speaker and as a teacher
of rhetoric. Among his pupils were Marcus Aurelius
and Lucius Verus. He was highly esteemed by the
Antonines, particularly by Aurelius, and received many
marks of favor, among others the archonship at Athens
and the consulate at Rome. Atticus is principally cele-
brated, however, for the vast sums he expended on
public purposes. He withdrew from Athens, and
resided at his villa near Marathon, where he died about
180 A.D. None of his writings are extant.
ATTILA, or ETZEL, the famous leader of the Huns,
surnamed the “Fear of the World,” or the “Scourge
of God,” was born probably about 406 A.D. His
father Mundzuk, king of the Huns, was succeeded by
his brothers Octar and Rhuas; and on the death of
Rhuas, in 434, Attila and his brother Bleda together
ascended the throne. They ruled not only over the
Huns, but over nearly all the tribes north of the Danube
and the Black Sea; under their banners fought Ostro-
goths, Gepidae, Alani, Heruli, and many other Teutonic
peoples. Their dominions are said to have extended
from the Rhine to the frontiers of China. Attila was
634
A T T
superstitiously reverenced by his countrymen; he was
said to possess the iron sword of the war-god, Mars, and
he proclaimed himself to be the man-child born at
Engaddi, who was destined to rule over the whole
world. In 441 and 442 the brothers ravaged Thrace
and Illyria, defeated the troops of the Eastern Empire
in three great battles, and penetrated as far as Ther-
mopylae. Peace was made on the Romans agreeing to
pay a heavy tribute. About this time Attila contrived
to make away with his brother Bleda, and thus secured
undivided supremacy. In 445 and the following years,
he again directed his attacks against the Eastern Em-
pire, and laid waste the whole country round Constanti-
nople. Nowhere did he meet with resistance save from
the brave little town of Azimus. The empire seemed
about to succumb, when Theodosius entered into negoti-
ations and made terms with his conqueror. While mat-
ters were being arranged, a plot was laid to assassinate
Attilla, in which the emperor was implicated. The
conspiracy was discovered, and the barbarian upbraided
the Christian monarch with his want of honor and manly
courage. Theodosius died soon after, and his successor,
Marcian, returned a firm refusal to Attila's demands for
tribute. War seemed inevitable; but at this time the
attention of the Hun was drawn to the Western Em-
pire. It is said that the Princess Honoria, sister of
Valentinian, tired of her life of enforced celibacy, sent
her ring and an offer of her hand to Attila, who upon
this grounded his claim to a part of the empire. It is
probable, however, that he merely used this as a pre-
text, and that his real designs were more comprehensive.
He evidently thought it a favorable opportunity for
taking advantage of the enmity between the Romans
and the Visigoths; and to this plan he was also
induced by the proposals of Genseric, king of the Van-
dals, who offered to unite with him against his rival,
Theodoric, king of the Visigoths. In 451 Attila as-
sembled his forces, it is said 700,000 strong, led them
through the centre of Germany, probably by Franconia,
and crossed the Rhine, at what place cannot be
determined. He defeated the Burgundians, and
pushed on through the heart of Gaul, until his
centre was checked by the valiant resistance offered
by Orleans. Meanwhile, Theodoric and Aëtius, the
Roman general, had collected and united their forces,
and marching with all speed, arrived in time to raise the
siege of Orleans. Attila retreated to a position in the
plain of Chalons, and there concentrated his forces for
a great engagement. A tremendous battle ensued—
one of the most gigantic as well as most important con-
tests recorded in history. The Romans, who formed
one wing, were driven back, and although they kept
together, and at nightfall retired to the camp of the
'isigoths, Aëtius had given up the day as lost. The
Visigoths, who were on the other wing, had also been
repulsed, and were discouraged by the fall of their leader
Theodoric. But the ſortune of the day was changed by
the impetuous bravery of Thorismund, Theodoric's son,
who, burning to avenge his father's fall, led on the in-
furiated Visigoths, and drove Attila back to his camp.
He even penetrated into the fortifications, but was
wounded and thrown from his horse, and his followers
with difficulty carried him off. . Next day, Attila re-
mained in camp in expectation of an attack, and having
thrown all his baggage into a gigantic pile in the centre
of the camp to be burned in case of defeat, resolved to
sell his life dearly. But no attack was made; for
Thorismund was persuaded by Aëtius to march to
Toulouse in order to obtain his father's kingdom.
Attila was thus enabled to retire in perfect security.
Next year he poured his forces through the defiles of
the Alps, and laid waste the whole north of Italy.
Rome itself seemed likely to fall before the invader,
when his course was arrested by an embassy headed by
Pope Leo. Attila at once withdrew from Italy, but the
motive which led him to act thus is not known. At
the time his retreat was ascribed to the miraculous inter-
position of Providence, Peter and Paul having ap-
peared in the camp of the Huns along with the
embassy; the whole matter is, on the whole, rather
obscure. Attila died in the year 453, from the bursting
of a blood vessel, and his empire broke up immediately
after his death.
ATTLEBOROUGH, a town of Bristol county,
Mass., thirty-one miles southwest of Boston. It has
good railroad connections, and contains national banks,
newspaper offices, several churches, and a system of
graded schools. The town is the seat of several impor-
tant industries, the chief of which is the manufacture of
jewelry and electro-plate. There are also manufactories
of cotton, woolen and knit goods, and of boots and
shoes. The township contains a large village known
as North Attleborough, where similar industries are
carried on. Attleborough has a population (1890) of
8,000.
ATTOCK, a town and fort of British India, in the
Panjāb, situated on the eastern bank of the Indus.
The place is both of political and commercial importance.
ATTORNEY, in English Zaw, signifies, in its widest
sense, any substitute or agent appointed to act in “the
turn, stead, or place of another.” The term is now
commonly confined to a class of qualified agents who
undertake the conduct of legal proceedings for their
clients. By the common law the actual presence of the
parties to a suit was considered indispensable, but the
privilege of appearing by attorney was conceded in
certain cases by special dispensation, until the statute of
Merton and subsequent enactments made it competent
for both parties in all judicial proceedings to appear by
attorney. Solicitors appear to have been at first distin-
guished from attorneys, as not having the attorney's
Fº to bind their principals, but latterly the distinction
as been between attorneys as the agents formally
appointed in actions at law, and solicitors who take care
of proceedings in Parliament, Chancery, Privy Council,
&c. In practice, however, and in ordinary language,
the terms are synonymous.
In the United States, legal counsel, of whatever nature,
whether in criminal or civil procedure, is styled an at-
torney — comprehending at once the functions of the
English solicitor, attorney, counsel and barrister—no dis-
tinction being made, the practising lawyer combining
in his person all legal attributes of these professions.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL, the chief law officer ap-
pointed to manage all the legal affairs and suits in which
the government is interested.
ATTRACTION. That the different parts of a ma-
terial system influence each other’s motions is a matter
of daily observation. In some cases we cannot discover
any material connection extending from the one body to
the other. We call these cases of action at a distance,
to distinguish them from those in which we can trace a
continuous material bond of union between the bodies.
The mutual action between two bodies is called stress.
When the mutual action tends to bring the bodies nearer,
or to prevent them from separating, it is called tension
or attraction. When it tends to separate the bodies, or
to prevent them from approaching, it is called pressure
or repulsion. The names tension and pressure are used
when the action is seen to take place through a medium.
Attraction and repulsion are reserved for cases of action
at a distance. The configuration of a material system
can always be defined in terms of the mutual distances
of the parts of the system. Any change of configuration
A T T — A U B
635
must alter one or more of these distances. Hence the
force which produces or resists such a change may be
resolved into attractions or repulsions between those
parts of the system whose distance is altered.
There has been a great deal of speculation as to the
cause of such forces, one of them, namely, the pressure
between bodies in contact, being supposed to be more
easily conceived than any other kind of stress. Many
attempts have therefore been made to resolve cases of
apparent attraction and repulsion at a distance into cases
of pressure. At one time the possibility of attraction at
a distance was supposed to be refuted by asserting that
a body cannot act where it is not, and that therefore all
action between different portions of matter must be by
direct contact. To this it was replied that we have
no evidence that real contact ever takes place be-
tween two bodies, and that, in fact, when bodies are
pressed against each other and in apparent contact, we
may sometimes actually measure the distance between
them, as when one piece of glass is laid on another, in
which case a considerable pressure must be applied to
bring the surfaces near enough to show the black spot of
Newton’s rings, which indicates a distance of about a
ten thousandth of a millimetre. Iſ, in order to get rid
of the idea of action at a distance, we imagine a material
medium through which the action is transmitted, all that
we have done is to substitute for a single action at a
great distance a series of actions at smaller distances
between the parts of the medium, so that we cannot even
thus get rid of action at a distance.
The study of the mutual action between the parts of
a material system has, in modern times, been greatly
simplified by the introduction of the idea of the energy
of the system. The energy of the system is measured
by the amount of work which it can do in overcoming
external resistances. It depends on the present con-
figuration and motion of the system, and not on the
manner in which the system has acquired that configura-
tion and motion. A complete knowledge of the man-
ner in which the energy of the system depends on its
configuration and motion, is sufficient to determine all
the forces acting between the parts of the system. For
instance, if the system consists of two bodies, and if the
energy depends on the distance between them, then if
the energy increases when the distance increases, there
must be attraction between the bodies, and if the energy
diminishes when the distance increases, there must be
repulsion between them.
Newton, in his Arincipia, deduces from the observed
motions of the heavenly bodies the fact that they attract
one another according to a definite law. This he gives
as a result of strict dynamical reasoning, and by it he
shows how not only the more conspicuous phenomena,
but all the apparent irregularities of the celestial mo-
tions are the calculable results of a single principle. In
his Principia he confines himself to the demonstration
and development of this great step in the science of the
mutual action of bodies. He says nothing there about
the means by which bodies gravitate towards each
other. But his mind did not rest at this point. We
know that he did not believe in the direct action of
bodies at a distance. And we also know that he sought
for the mechanism of gravitation in the properties of
an aetherial medium diffused over the universe.
In his Optical Queries, indeed, he shows that if the
pressure of this medium is less in the neighborhood of
dense bodies than at great distances from them, dense
bodies will be drawn towards each other, and that if the
diminution of pressure is inversely as the distance from
the dense body the law will be that of gravitation. The
next step, as he points out, is to account for this in-
equality of pressure in the medium; and as he was not
able to do this, he left the explanation of the cause of
gravity as a problem to succeeding ages. As regards
gravitation the progress made towards the solution of
the problem since the time of Newton has been almost
imperceptible. Faraday showed that the transmission
of electric and magnetic forces is accompanied by phe-
nomena occurring in every part of the intervening me.
dium. He traced the lines of force through the medium;
and he ascribed to them a tendency to shorten them-
selves and to separate from their neighbors, thus intro-
ducing the idea of stress in the medium in a different
form from that suggested by Newton; for, whereas
Newton's stress was a hydrostatic pressure in every
direction, Faraday's is a tension along the lines of force,
combined with a pressure in all normal directions. By
showing that the plane of polarisation of a ray of light
passing through a transparent medium in the direction
of the magnetic force is made to rotate, Faraday not
only demonstrated the action of magnetism on light, but
by using light to reveal the state of magnetisation of the
medium, he “illuminated,” to use his own phrase, “the
lines of magnetic force.”
From this phenomenon Thomson afterwards proved,
by strict dynamical reasoning, that the transmission of
magnetic force is associated with a rotatory motion of
the small parts of the medium. He showed, at the same
time, how the centrifugal force due to this motion would
account for magnetic attraction.
It is remarkable that of the three hypotheses, which
go some way towards a physical explanation of gravita-
tion, every one involves a constant expenditure of work.
That of the generation or absorption of fluid requires,
not only constant expenditure of work in emitting fluid
under pressure, but actual creation and destruction of
matter. That of waves requires some agent in a remote
part of the universe capable of generating the waves.
According to such hypotheses we must regard the pro-
cesses of nature not as illustrations of the great principle
of the conservation of energy, but as instances in which,
by a nice adjustment of powerful agencies not subject
to this principle, an apparent conservation of energy is
maintained. Hence, we are forced to conclude that the
explanation of the cause of gravitation is not to be found
in any of these hypotheses.
ATTWOOD, THOMAS, musical composer, was born
in London in 1767.
ATWOOD, GEORGE, an author celebrated for the
accuracy of his mathematical and mechanical investiga-
tions, and considered particularly happy in the clearness
of his explanations, and the elegance of his experimental
illustrations, was born in the early part of the year
1746.
'ºrys, Attis, or ATTEs, in the Phrygian and
Zydian Mythology, a youth beloved for his beauty by
the goddess Rhea, there called Agdistis. Like Adonis,
he was the personification of the changes in nature,
from the beauty of spring and summer to the severity
and darkness of winter. The story, as told at Pessinus,
the centre of the worship of the goddess, was that she
had borne to Zeus a being both male and female; that
the gods displeased, had transformed this being into a
tree, from the fruit of which the daughter of the river-
god Sangarius bore a boy, who grew up among herds-
men marvellous in his beauty so as to win the love of
Agdistis. This was Atys, and he was about to be mar-
ried to the king's daughter of Pessinus, when the god-
dess appeared among the guests, terrified them, and
caused Atys to run to the woods, where he maimed him-
self and was transformed into a pine tree; from his
blood sprang violets.
AUBAGNE, a town of France, in the department of
Bouches-du-Rhône, with a population of 7408, who
636
A U B — A U C
carry on the manufacture of wine, pottery, leather,
coarse cloth, &c.
AUBE, a department of France bounded on the N.
by the department of Marne, N. W. by Seine-et-Marne,
W. by Yonne, S. by Cote-d'Or, and E. by Haute-
Marne. It consists of a portion of Champagne and
Vallage, with a small part of Burgundy, and has an area
of 2317 square miles. Its general inclination from
S. E. to N. W. presents little variety of surface, the
only elevations being a double line of hills along the
course of the Seine, never exceeding 1 150 feet in height.
The department belongs to the Seine basin, and is wa-
tered by that river and its tributaries, the Ource, the
Sarce, the Melda, and the Aube, &c. The climate is
comparatively mild, but damp. Among the celebrated
men connected with Aube are Villehardouin, Pope Ur-
ban IV., Mignard, Danton, Beugnot, and Ulbach.
The capital is Troyes, and the arrondissements are
Troyes, Arcis-sur-Aube, Nogent-sur-Seine, Bar-sur-
Aube, and Bar-sur-Seine. Population in 1890, 260,000.
AUBENAS, a town of France, department of Ardè-
che, near the river of that name, 14 miles S. W. of
Privas. It is beautifully situated on the slope of a hill,
but its streets generally are crooked and narrow. Popu-
lation 7694.
AUBER, DANIEL FRANÇOIS ESPRIT, musical com-
poser, the chief representative of the French school,
was the son of a Paris printseller. He was born at
Caen, in Normandy, on the 29th January 1782, while
his mother was on a visit to that town. Destined by
his father to the pursuits of trade, he was allowed,
nevertheless, to indulge his fondness for music, and
learnt to play at an early age on several instruments, his
first teacher being the Tyrolean composer, Ladurner.
Sent at the age of twenty to London to complete his
business training, he returned after the rupture of the
peace of Amiens. He had already attempted musical
composition, and at this period produced several con-
certos four basse; in the manner of the violoncellist,
Lamare, in whose name they were published. The
praise given to his concerto for the violin, which was
played at the Conservatoire by Mazas, encouraged him
to undertake the resetting of the old comic opera, Julie.
Conscious by this time of the need of regular study of
his chosen art, he placed himself under the severe train-
ing of Cherubini, by which the special qualities of the
young composer were admirably developed. In 1813
he made his début in an opera in one act, the Séjour
Militaire, the unfavorable reception of which put an
end for some years to his attempts as composer. But
the failure in business and death of his father, in 1819,
compelled him once more to turn to music, and to make
that which had been his pastime the serious employment
of his life. He produced another opera, the 7 estament
et Zes /3://efs-d'onºr, which was no better received than
the former. But he persevered, and the next year was
rewarded by the complete success of his Bergère Châte-
Zaine, an opera in three acts. This was the first in a
long series of brilliant successes, terminating only in the
eighty-sixth year of his age. In 1822 began his long
association with M. Scribe, who shared with him as
librettist the success and growing popularity of his
compositions. The opera Zeicester, in which they first
worked together (1823), is remarkable also as show-
ing the first evidences of the influence of Rossini on
Auber's style. This style was, however, distinctly orig-
inal, and was easily recognisable. A phrase of Auber,
said his friend Théodore Gautier, is not the phrase of
any one else. His characteristics are lightness and facil-
ity, sparkling vivacity, grace and legance, clear and
piquant melodiousness, these marking him out as a
true son of France, and making him her darling singer.
Depth of thought, elevation of sentiment, intensity of
passion, inspiration which grasps the sublime and the
infinite, these are not in Auber.
Devoted by preference to the comic opera, as the
most fitting field for his talents, he ventured on more
than one occasion to pass into the field of grand opera,
and in his La Muette de Portici, familiary known as
Masamiello, he achieved his greatest musical triumph.
Produced at Paris in 1828, it rapidly became a Eu-
ropean favorite, and its overture, Songs, and choruses
were everywhere heard. The duet, Amour sacré de la
patrie was welcomed like a new Marseillaise; sung by
Nourrit at Brussels in 1830, it became the signal for the
revolution which broke out there. Among his other
works, about fifty in all, the more important are — Fra
ZXiazo/o (1830), Zestocq (1834), Z’Ambassadrice (1836),
Ze Domino Moir (1837), Le Zac des Fées (1839), Les
Diamants de la Couronne (1841), Haydée (1847),
Marco Spada (1853), and Za Fiancée du roi de Garðe
(1864). Official and other dignitaries testified the public
appreciation of Auber’s works. In 1829 he was elected
member of the Institute, in 1830 he was named director
of the court concerts, and in 1842 he succeeded Cheru-
bini as director of the Conservatoire. He was also a
member of the Legion of Honor from 1825, and at-
tained the rank of commander in 1847. One of Au-
ber's latest compositions was a march, written for the
opening of the International Exhibition in London in
1862. His fascinating manners, his witty sayings, and his
ever ready kindness and beneficence won for him a
secure place in the respect and love of his fellow-citizens.
He remained in his old home during the German siege
of Paris, 1870-71, but the miseries of the Communist
war which followed sickened his heart, and he at last .
refused to touch his beloved instrument, or to take food.
He died May 13, 1871.
AUBIN, a town of France, in the department of
Aveyron and arrondissement of Villefranche, princi-
pally remarkable for its extensive mines of coal, sulphur,
and alum. It also carries on an active trade in sheep,
iron goods, &c.
The name Aubin, or St. Aubin, is one of the most
frequent in France, being borne by upwards of fifty
villages from the Pyrenees to Jersey.
AUBURN, the capital of Cayuga county, in the state
of New York, on the railway between Albany and
Buffalo, 174 miles W. of the former. The irregularity
of the surface on which the city is built has prevented
the complete carrying out of the rectangular arrange-
ment of streets, which is so much in favor in the United
States, but the thoroughfares are wide and lined with
trees, and the houses for the most part well built. The
principal public buildings are in Genesee Street. The
most remarkable of the institutions is the state prison,
founded in 1816, which is conducted on the “silent
system,” and usually contains upwards of IOOO prisoners,
who are employed each in the work to which he has been
trained. Population, 30,000.
AUBURN, the county seat of Androscoggin County,
Me. It is a place of some importance as a commercial
centre. Pop. Io, OOO.
AUBUSSON, a town of France, situated in a pictur-
esque valley on the banks of the Creuse, in the department
to which that river gives its name. Population 3,000.
AUCH, the ancient Climberrum or Augusta Aus-
corum, one of the most ancient cities of France, capital
of the department of Gers. In Caesar's time this was
the chief town of the Ausci. In the 8th century it
became the capital of Gascony; and when that district
was divided into countships, was the capital of Armagnac.
AUCHTERARDER, a town and parish of Scotland,
county of Perth, 15 miles W.S.W. of Perth.
A U C — A U D
637
AUCHTERMUCHTY., a royal burgh and parish of
Scotland, county of Fife, 8 miles W.S.W. of Cupar.
AUCKLAND, a province of New Zealand, consist-
ing of the northern portion of North Island, and
bounded for the most part on the S. by the 39th parallel
of latitude. In the N.W. it runs out into a peninsula
between 200 and 300 miles in length, with a very irreg-
ular coast-line, especially on the eastern side. The
total area of the province is about 17,000,000 acres, of
which nearly I I,275,000 are still in possession of the
Maoris, who are, however, continually disposing of their
claims to the government. The surface of the province
is of a very varied character, presenting wide and fertile
plains, stretches of fern-heath and swamp, mountain
ranges and isolated peaks, tracts of richly-wooded
jungle, rocky plateaus, and districts of strange volcanic
activity. All round the coast there are a large number of
natural harbors, and the most of the interior is tra-
versed by navigable streams. The course of settlement
has hitherto advanced for the most part along the valleys
of the Waikato and the Thames,—Cambridge, about
Ioa miles S. of the city of Auckland, being the frontier
station in the former, and Tapapa, a little further to the
S. in the latter. Nearly the whole of the N.W. penin-
sula is occupied by a scattered population, and various
flourishing townships are situated along the coast on all
sides. The chief seats of the gold-diggings are the Cor-
omandel peninsula and the Thames valley. The quan-
tity exported in 1871 was valued at 4, 1,888,708. The
most important timber tree is the kauri-pine, which is
peculiar to Auckland, and does not grow further south
than 37° 30'. It is of magnificent dimensions, and val-
uable, not only as the most extensively used building
material, but on account of the fossil gum,
which is found wherever the kauri forest has
been. This gum forms one of the chief arti-
cles of export, about 14,277 tons being the
amount in the three years 1870, 1871, and 1872.
There are various other trees of considerable value,
such as the rimu, the kahikatca, and the totara. The
timber trade, both domestic and foreign, is increasing in
importance, and shipbuilding is extensively carried on.
There are large districts overgrown with the Z/ormium
or New Zealand" flax, and the right to cut it on the
waste lands is granted by the Government at a low
price. Those great necessities of commerce, roads and
railways, are being constructed in various directions.
A line is in course of formation from Auckland up the
valley of the Waikato, as far as Newcastle, at the con-
fluence of the Waipa, and a survey has been made for
about 20 miles further. A road runs from Bowen, on
the Bay of Plenty, across the country, through the won-
derful lake district, with its boiling fountains, steam
geysers, and mud-baths, round by the east coast of
Taupo Lake, and over the highlands to Napier, in
Hawke's Bay province. The history of Auckland was
for long the history of New Zealand, and will be fully
treated under that heading.
For a descriptive account of a large part of the prov-
ince, the reader is referred to Dr. Hochstetter's valua-
ble works, especially to his AWew Zealand, 1863. A
very graphic sketch of some of the natural curiosities is
furnished by Anthony Trollope in his Australia azed
AVew Zealand, vol. ii.
AUek LAND, the capital of the above province, is
finely situated on an isthmus in the N.W. peninsula, on
the S. shore of the Waitemata harbor, which is formed
by an inlet of the Hauraki Gulf. Lat. 36° 51' S.,
long. 174° 50'. On the other side of the isthmus lies
the harbor and town of Manukau, which serves as a
supplementary port to the city. Auckland was founded
in 1840 by Governor Hobson, and became a burgh in
1851. It was till 1865 the seat of government, which
is now situated at Wellington. The city has a fine ap-
pearance, especially from the harbor, and is surrounded
by a number of flourishing suburban villages, with sev-
eral of which it is connected by railway.
AUCKLAND ISLANDS, a group discovered in
1806 by Captain Briscoe, of the English whaler
“Ocean,” about 180 miles S. of New Zealand. The
islands, of volcanic origin, are very fertile, and are cov-
ered with forest.
AUCKLAND, WILLIAM EDEN, BARON, an eminent
diplomatist and politician, third son of Sir Robert
Eden, Bart., of West Auckland, was born in 1744. He
was educated at Eton and Oxford, and adopted the
profession of the law. At the age of twenty-seven he
resigned his practice at the bar, and engaged in politi-
cal life as under-secretary to Lord Suffolk. By the
favor of the duke of Marlborough, he obtained a seat
for Woodstock, and soon gave proof of his ability in
the House. He attached himself to Lord North’s
party, and after serving under Lord Carlisle on the un-
successful commission to the colonists in America,
acted as secretary to that nobleman, when he held the
post of viceroy in Ireland. During this time he had
obtained the offices of director and auditor of Green-
wich Hospital, which probably yielded him an income
sufficient for carrying on his political career. In 1783
he took a leading part in negotiating the remarkable
coalition between North and Fox, and was rewarded by
being made vice-treasurer of Ireland. In 1784 he op-
posed Pitt's proposal for commercial reciprocity with
Ireland, but in so doing contrived to separate himself
to some extent from his own party, and shortly after
accepted from Pitt the office of plenipotentiary at
Paris. Here he successfully negotiated the impor-
tant commercial treaty with France; and after his ap-
pointment as embassador to Spain, he rendered valua-
ble service in settling the dispute between the British
and French Governments with regard to the affairs of
Holland. In 1789 he was made an Irish peer, with the
title of Baron Auckland, and in 1793 he was raised to
the British peerage as Baron Auckland, of West Auck-
land, Durham.
AUCKLAND, GEORGE EDEN, EARL OF, Governor-
General of India, born 20th August 1784, was the Sec-
ond son of the subject of the preceding notice.
AUCTION, a mode of selling property by offering it
to the highest bidder in a public competition. . It is the
duty of an auctioneer to sell for the best price he can
obtain, and his authority cannot be delegated to another
unless by special permission of his employer. The
auctioneer’s name must be exhibited on Some con-
spicuous place during the sale. Sales by auction usually
take place under certain conditions, which it is the duty
of the auctioneer to read to the bidders before the Sale
begins. To complete a sale by auction there must be a
bidding by, or on behalf of, a person capable of mak-
ing a contract, and an acceptance thereof , by the
auctioneer, and until the bidding is accepted both vendor
and bidder are free, and may retract if they choose.
AUDAEUS, or AUDIUs, a reformer of the 4th century,
by birth a Mesopotamian. He suffered much persecu-
tion from the Syrian clergy for his ſearless censure of
their irregular lives, and was expelled from the church.
He was afterwards banished into Scythia, where he
gained many followers and established the monastic
system. He died there at an advanced age, about
37O A. D.
AUDE, a southern department of France, forming
part of the old province of Languedoc, bounded on the
E. by the Mediterranean, N. by the departments of
Hérault and Tarn, N.W. by Upper Garonne, W. by
638
A U D
Ariége, and S. by that of the Eastern Pyrenees. Area,
2,341 square miles.
AUDEBERT, JEAN BAPTISTE, a distinguished
French naturalist and artist, was born at Rochefort in
I g
'Xuditor, a person appointed to examine the ac-
counts kept by the financial qfficers of the government,
public corporations, or private persons, and to certify
as to their accuracy.
AUDOUIN, JEAN VICTOR, a distinguished French
entomologist, was born at Paris, April 27, 1797. He
began the study of law, but was diverted from it by his
strong predilection for natural history, which subse-
quently led him to enter the medical profession.
AUD RAN, the name of a family of French artists
and engravers, who for several generations were distin-
guished in the same line. The first who devoted him-
self to the art of engraving was Claude Audran, born
1592, and the last was Benoit, Claude's great-grandson,
who died in 1712. The two most distinguished mem-
bers of the family were Gerard, or Girard Audran, born
1640, and Jean Audran, born 1657, and died in 1767.
AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES, a well-known naturalist,
was born in 1781, in Louisiana, where his parents, who
were French Protestants, had taken up their residence
while it was still a Spanish colony. They afterwards
settled in Pennsylvania. From his early years he had a
passion for observing the habits and appearances of birds,
and attempting delineations of them from nature. . At
the age of fifteen he was sent to Paris, and remained
there about two years, when, among other studies, he
took some lessons in the drawing-school of David. On
returning to America, his father established him in a
plantation in Pennsylvania, and he soon after married.
But nothing could damp his ardor for natural history.
For fifteen years he annually explored the depths of the
primeval forests of America in long and hazardous expe-
ditions, far from his family and his home. In these
excursions he acquired the facility of making those
sprited drawings of birds that give such value to his
magnificent work, The Birds of America. . At that
period he had not dreamed of any publication of his
labors; as he informs us, “it was not the desire of fame
that prompted to those long exiles ; it was simply the
enjoyment of nature.” He afterwards removed with
his family to the village of Henderson on the banks of
the Ohio, where he continued his researches in natural
history for several years, and at length set out for Phila-
delphia with a portfolio containing 200 sheets filled with
colored delineations of about 1,000 birds. Business
obliged him to quit Philadelphia unexpectedly for some
weeks, and he deposited his portfolio in the warehouse
of a friend; but, to his intense dismay and mortification,
he found, on his return, that these precious fruits of his
wanderings and his labors had been totally destroyed by
rats. The shock threw him into a fever of several
weeks' duration, that well-nigh proved fatal. But his
native energy returned with returning health; and he
resumed his gun and his game-bag, his pencils and his
drawing-book, and plunged again into the recesses of
the backwoods. In about three years he had again
filled his portfolio, and then rejoined his family, who
had in the meantime gone to Louisiana. After a short
sojourn there, he set out for the Qld World, to exhibit
to the ornithologists of Europe the riches of America
in that department of natural history.
In 1826 Audubon arrived at Liverpool, where the
merits of his spirited delineations of American birds
were immediately recognized. . An exhibition of them
to the public in the galleries of the Royal Institution of
that town was so successful that it was repeated at
Manchester and at Edinburgh, where they were no less
admired. When he proposed to publish a work on the
birds of America, Several naturalists advised him to
issue the work in large quarto, as the most useful size
for the lovers of natural history, and the most likely to
afford him a sufficient number of subscribers to remun.
erate his labors. At first he yielded to this advice,
and acknowledged its soundness; but finally he accided
that his work should eclipse every other ornithological
publication. Every bird was to be delineated of the
size of life, and to each species a whole page was
to be devoted; consequently the largest elephant
folio paper was to receive the impressions. This neces-
sarily increased the expense of the work so much as to
put it beyond the reach of most scientific naturalists —
which accounts for the small number of persons who
for a considerable time, could be reckoned among his
supporters in the gigantic undertaking. The exception-
ally high character of the work, however, gradually
became known ; and a sufficient number of subscribers
was at length obtained in Great Britain and America, dur-
ing the ten or twelve years that the work was going
through the press, to indemnify him for the great cost
of the publication — leaving him, however, a very inade-
quate compensation for his extraordinary industry and
skill. The first volume was published at New York in
the end of the year 1830, the second in 1834, the third
in 1837, and the fourth and last in 1839. The whole
consists of 435 colored plates, containing 1,055 figures
of birds the size of life. . It is certainly the most mag.
nificent work of the kind ever given to the world, and
is well characterized by Cuvier, “C'est le plus magni.
fique monument que l’Art ait encore élevé à la Nature.”
During the preparation and publication of his great
work Audubon made several excursions from Great
Britain. In the summer of 1828 he visited Paris, where
he made the acquaintance of Cuvier, Humboldt, and
other celebrated naturalists, and received from them
every mark of honor and esteem. The following winter
he passed in London. In April of 1830 he revisited the
United States of America, and again explored the forests
of the central and southern federal territories. In the
following year he returned to London and Edinburgh,
but the August of 1831 found him again in New York.
The succeeding winter and spring he spent in Florida
and South Carolina; and in the summer of 1832 he set
out for the Northern States, with an intention of study-
ing the annual migrations of birds, particularly of the
passenger pigeon, of which he has given a striking de-
scription ; but his career was arrested at Boston by a
severe attack of cholera, which detained him there till
the middle of August. After that he explored the
coasts, lakes, rivers and mountains of North America,
from Labrador and Canada to Florida, during a series
of laborious journeys, that occupied him for three
years. From Charleston, accompanied by his wife and
family, he took his third departure for Britain. During
his earlier residence in Edinburgh he had begun to pub.
lish his American Ornithological Biography, which at
length filled five large octavo volumes. The first was
issued by Adam Black in 1831 ; the last appeared in
1839. This book is admirable for the vivid pictures it
presents of the habits of the birds, and the adventures
of the naturalist. The descriptions are characteristically
accurate and interesting. In 1839 Audubon returned
to America, and shortly afterward commenced the pup-
lication of his two last works, The Quadrupeds of
America, and a Biography of American Quadrazººd's.
The latter was issued in 1850. On January 27, IS51,
Audubon died at New York.
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