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ABŪ NUWĀS [Abū ʽAlī Hal-asan ibn Hāni'al-Ḥakamī] ( c. 756–810), known as Abū Nuwās, Arabian poet, was born in al-Ahwāz, probably about 756. His mother was a Persian, his father a soldier, a native of Damascus. His studies were made in Baṣra under Abū Zaid and Abū ʽUbaida ( q.v. ), and in Kufa under Khalaf al-Aḥmar. He is also said to have spent a year with the Arabs in the desert to gain purity of language. Settling in Bagdad he enjoyed the favour of Harūn al-Rashīd and al-Amīn, and died there probably about 810. The greater part of his life was characterized by great licentiousness and disregard of religion, but in his later days he became ascetic. Abū Nuwās is recognized as the greatest poet of his time. His mastery of language has led to extensive quotation of his verses by Arabian scholars. Genial, cynical, immoral, he drew on all the varied life of his time for the material of his poems. In his wine-songs especially the manners of the upper classes of Bagdad are revealed. He was one of the first to ridicule the set form of the qasīda (elegy) as unnatural, and has satirized this form in several poems. See I. Goldziher, Abhandlungen zur Arabischen Philologie (Leyden, 1896), i. pp. 145 ff. His poems were collected by several Arabian editors. One such collection (the MS. of which is now in Vienna) contains nearly 5000 verses grouped under the ten headings: wine, hunting, praise, satire, love of youths, love of women, obscenities, blame, elegies, renunciation of the world. His collected poems ( Diwān ) have been published in Cairo (1860) and in Beirūt (1884). The wine-songs were edited by W. Ahlwardt under the title Diwān des Abu Nowas . 1. Die Weinlieder (Greifswald, 1861). ( G. W. T. ) |
ABU SIMBEL, or Ipsambul , the name of a group of temples of Rameses II. ( c . 1250 B.C. ) in Nubia, on the left bank of the Nile, 56 m. by river S. of Korosko. They are hewn in the cliffs at the riverside, at a point where the sandstone hills on the west reach the Nile and form the southern boundary of a wider portion of the generally barren valley. The temples are three in number. The principal temple, probably the greatest and most imposing of all rock-hewn monuments, was discovered by Burckhardt in 1812 and opened by Belzoni in 1817. (The front has been cleared several times, most recently in 1892, but the sand is always pressing forward from the north end.) The hillside was recessed to form the façade, backed against which four immense seated colossi of the king, in pairs on either side of the entrance, rise from a platform or forecourt reached from the river by a flight of steps. The colossi are no less than 65 ft. in height, of nobly placid design, and are accompanied by smaller figures of Rameses’ queen and their sons and daughters; behind and over them is the cornice, with the dedication below in a line of huge hieroglyphs, and a long row of apes, standing in adoration of the rising sun above. The temple is dedicated primarily to the solar gods Amenrē of Thebes and Raharakht of Heliopolis, the true sun god; it is oriented to the east so that the rays of the sun in the early morning penetrate the whole length of two great halls to the innermost sanctuary and fall upon the central figures of Amenrē and Rameses, which are there enthroned with Ptah of Memphis and Raharakht on either side. The interior of the temple is decorated with coloured sculpture of fine workmanship and in good preservation; the scenes are more than usually interesting; some are of religious import (amongst them Rameses as king making offerings to himself as god), others illustrate war in Syria, Libya and Ethiopia: another series depicts the events of the famous battle with the Hittites and their allies at Kadesh, in which Rameses saved the Egyptian camp and army by his personal valour. Historical stelae of the same reign are engraved inside and outside the temple; the most interesting is that recording the marriage with a Hittite princess in the 34th year. Not the least important feature of the temple belongs to a later age, when some Greek, Carian and Phoenician soldiers of one of the kings named Psammetichus (apparently Psammetichus II., 594–589 B.C. ) inscribed their names upon the two southern colossi, doubtless the only ones then clear of sand. These graffiti are of the highest value for the early history of the alphabet, and as proving the presence of Greek mercenaries in the Egyptian armies of the period. The upper part of the second colossus (from the south) has fallen; the third was repaired by Sethos II. not many years after the completion of the temple. This great temple was wholly rock-cut, and is now threatened by gradual ruin by sliding on the planes of stratification. A small temple, immediately to the south of the first, is believed to have had a built antechamber: it is the earliest known example of a “birth chapel,” such as was usually attached to Ptolemaic temples for the accommodation of the divine mother-consort and her son. The third and northernmost temple, separated from the others by a ravine, is on a large scale; the colossi of the façade are six in number and 53 ft. high, representing Rameses and his queen Nefrēre, who dedicated the temple to the goddess Hathōr. The whole group forms a singular monument of Rameses’ unbounded pride and self-glorification. See Egypt ; J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records , Egypt , vol. iii. pp. 124 et seq., esp. 212; “The Temples of Lower Nubia,” in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures , October 1906. ( F. Ll. G. ) |
ABŪ TAMMĀM [Ḥabīb ibn Aus] (807–846), Arabian poet, was, like Buḥturī, of the tribe of Ṭāi (though some say he was the son of a Christian apothecary named Thaddeus, and that his genealogy was forged). He was born in Jāsim (Josem), a place to the north-east of the Sea of Tiberias or near Manbij (Hierapolis). He seems to have spent his youth in Homs, though, according to one story, he was employed during his boyhood in selling water in a mosque in Cairo. His first appearance as a poet was in Egypt, but as he failed to make a living there he went to Damascus and thence to Mosul. From this place he made a visit to the governor of Armenia, who awarded him richly. After 833 he lived mostly in Bagdad, at the court of the caliph Moʽtasim. From Bagdad he visited Khorassan, where he enjoyed the favour of ʽAbdallah ibn Ṭāhir. About 845 he was in Maʽarrat un-Nuʽmān, where he met Buḥturī. He died in Mosul. Abu Tammām is best known in literature as the compiler of the collection of early poems known as the Hamāsa ( q.v. ). Two other collections of a similar nature are ascribed to him. His own poems have been somewhat neglected owing to the success of his compilations, but they enjoyed great repute in his lifetime, and were distinguished for the purity of their style, the merit of the verse and the excellent manner of treating subjects. His poems ( Diwān ) were published in Cairo ( A.D. 1875). See Life in Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary , trans. by M‘G. de Slane (Paris and London, 1842), vol. i. pp. 348 ff.; and in the Kitāb ul-Aghāni (Book of Songs) of Abulfaraj (Bulaq, 1869), vol. xv. pp. 100-108. ( G. W. T. ) |
ABŪ UBAIDA [Maʽmar ibn ul-Muthanna] (728–825), Arabian scholar, was born a slave of Jewish Persian parents in Baṣra, and in his youth was a pupil of AbūʽAmr ibn ul-ʽAlā. In 803 he was called to Bagdad by Harūn al-Rashīd. He died in Baṣra. He was one of the most learned and authoritative scholars of his time in all matters pertaining to the Arabic language, antiquities and stories, and is constantly cited by later authors and compilers. Jāhiz held him to be the most learned scholar in all branches of human knowledge, and Ibn Hishām accepted his interpretation even of passages in the Koran. The titles of 105 of his works are mentioned in the Fihrist , and his Book of Days is the basis of parts of the history of Ibn al-Athīr and of the Book of Songs (see Abulfaraj ), but nothing of his (except a song) seems to exist now in an independent form. He is often described as a Kharijite. This, however, is true only in so far as he denied the privileged position of the Arab people before God. He was, however, a strong supporter of the Shuʽūbite movement, i.e. the movement which protested against the idea of the superiority of the Arab race over all others. This is especially seen in his satires on Arabs (which made him so hated that no man followed his bier when he died). He delighted in showing that words, fables, customs, &c., which the Arabs believed to be peculiarly their own, were derived from the Persians. In these matters he was the great rival of Asmaʽī ( q.v. ). See Life in Ibn Khallikān’s Biographical Dictionary , trans. by M‘G. de Slane (Paris and London, 1842), vol. iii. pp. 388-398; also I. Goldziher’s Muhammedanische Studien (Halle, 1888), vol. i. pp. 194-206. ( G. W. T. ) |
ABŪ-L-‛ALĀ UL-MA‛ARRĪ [Abū-l-‛Alā Aḥmad ibn ‛Abdallāh ibn Sulaimān] (973–1057), Arabian poet and letter-writer, belonged to the South Arabian tribe Tanukh, a part of which had migrated to Syria before the time of Islam. He was born in 973 at Ma‛arrat un-Nu‛mān, a Syrian town nineteen hours’ journey south of Aleppo, to the governor of which it was subject at that time. He lost his father while he was still an infant, and at the age of four lost his eyesight owing to smallpox. This, however, did not prevent him from attending the lectures of the best teachers at Aleppo, Antioch and Tripoli. These teachers were men of the first rank, who had been attracted to the court of Saif-ud-Daula, and their teaching was well stored in the remarkable memory of the pupil. At the age of twenty-one Abū-l-‛Alā returned to Ma‛arra, where he received a pension of thirty dinars yearly. In 1007 he visited Bagdad, where he was admitted to the literary circles, recited in the salons, academies and mosques, and made the acquaintance of men to whom he addressed some of his letters later. In 1009 he returned to Ma‛arra, where he spent the rest of his life in teaching and writing. During this period of scholarly quiet he developed his characteristic advanced views on vegetarianism, cremation of the dead and the desire for extinction after death. Of his works the chief are two collections of his poetry and two of his letters. The earlier poems up to 1029 are of the kind usual at the time. Under the title of Saqt uz-Zand they have been published in Bulaq (1869), Beirūt (1884) and Cairo (1886). The poems of the second collection, known as the Luzūm ma lam yalzam , or the Luzūmiyyāt , are written with the difficult rhyme in two consonants instead of one, and contain the more original, mature and somewhat pessimistic thoughts of the author on mutability, virtue, death, &c. They have been published in Bombay (1886) and Cairo (1889). The letters on various literary and social subjects were published with commentary by Shain Effendi in Beirut (1894), and with English translation, &c., by Prof. D. S. Margoliouth in Oxford (1898). A second collection of letters, known as the Risālat ul-Ghufrān , was summarized and partially translated by R. A. Nicholson in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1900, pp. 637 ff.; 1902, pp. 75 ff., 337 ff., 813 ff.). Bibliography .—C. Rieu, De Abu-l- ‛ Alae Poetae Arabici vita et carminibus (Bonn, 1843); A. von Kremer, Über die philosophischen Gedichte des Abu-l- ‛ Ala (Vienna, 1888); cf. also the same writer’s articles in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft (vols. xxix., xxx., xxxi. and xxxviii.). For his life see the introduction to D. S. Margoliouth’s edition of the letters, supplemented by the same writer’s articles “Abu-l-‛Ala al-Ma‛arri’s Correspondence on Vegetarianism” in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1902, pp. 289 ff.). ( G. W. T. ) |
ABŪ-L-‛ATĀHIYA [Abū Isḥāq Ismā‛īl ibn Qāsim al-‛Anazī] (748–828), Arabian poet, was born at ‛Ain ut-Tamar in the Hijāz near Medina. His ancestors were of the tribe of ‛Anaza. His youth was spent in Kufa, where he was engaged for some time in selling pottery. Removing to Bagdad, he continued his business there, but became famous for his verses, especially for those addressed to ‛Utba, a slave of the caliph al-Mahdī. His affection was unrequited, although al-Mahdī, and after him Harūn al-Rashīd, interceded for him. Having offended the caliph, he was in prison for a short time. The latter part of his life was more ascetic. He died in 828 in the reign of al-Ma’mūn. The poetry of Abū-l-‛Atāhiya is notable for its avoidance of the artificiality almost universal in his days. The older poetry of the desert had been constantly imitated up to this time, although it was not natural to town life. Abū-l-‛Atāhiya was one of the first to drop the old qasīda (elegy) form. He was very fluent and used many metres. He is also regarded as one of the earliest philosophic poets of the Arabs. Much of his poetry is concerned with the observation of common life and morality, and at times is pessimistic. Naturally, under the circumstances, he was strongly suspected of heresy. His poems ( Diwān ) with life from Arabian sources have been published at the Jesuit Press in Beirūt (1887, 2nd ed. 1888). On his position in Arabic literature see W. Ahlwardt, Diwān des Abu Nowas (Greifswald, 1861), pp. 21 ff.; A. von Kremer, Culturgeschichte des Orients (Wien, 1877), vol. ii. pp. 372 ff. ( G. W. T. ) |
ABŪ-L-QĀSIM [Khalaf ibn ʽAbbās uz-Zahrāwi], Arabian physician and surgeon, generally known in Europe as Abulcasis , flourished in the tenth century at Cordova as physician to the caliph ʽAbdur-Rahmān III. (912–961). No details of his life are known. A part of his compendium of medicine was published in Latin in the 16th century as Liber theoricae nec non practicae Alsaharavii (Augsburg, 1519). His manual of surgery was published at Venice in 1497, at Basel in 1541, and at Oxford Abulcasis de Chirurgia arabice et latine cura Johannis Channing (2 vols. 1778). For his other works see Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (Weimar, 1898), vol. i. pp. 239-240. ( G. W. T. ) |
ABUL FAZL, wazir and historiographer of the great Mogul emperor, Akbar, was born in the year A.D. 1551. 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 Akbar Nameh , or Book of Akbar , as Abul Fazl’s chief literary work, written in Persian, is called, consists of two parts—the first being a complete history of Akbar’s reign and the second, entitled Ain-i-Akbari , or Institutes of Akbar , being an account of the religious and political constitution and administration of the empire. The style is singularly elegant, and the contents of the second part possess a unique and lasting interest. An excellent translation of the Ain by Francis Gladwin was published in Calcutta, 1783–1786. It was reprinted in London very inaccurately, and copies of the original edition are now exceedingly rare and correspondingly valuable. It was also translated by Professor Blockmann in 1848. Abul Fazl died by the hand of an assassin, while returning from a mission to the Deccan in 1602. The murderer was instigated by Prince Selim, afterwards Jahangir, who had become jealous of the minister’s influence. |
ABULFARAJ [Abū-l-Faraj ‛Alī ibn ul-Ḥuṣain ul-Isbahānī] (897–967), Arabian scholar, was a member of the tribe of the Quraish (Koreish) and a direct descendant of Marwān, the last of the Omayyad caliphs. He was thus connected with the Omayyad rulers in Spain, and seems to have kept up a correspondence with them and to have sent them some of his works. He was born in Ispahān, but spent his youth and made his early studies in Bagdad. He became famous for his knowledge of early Arabian antiquities. His later life was spent in various parts of the Moslem world, in Aleppo with Saif-ud-Daula (to whom he dedicated the Book of Songs ), in Rai with the Buyid vizier Ibn ‛Abbād and elsewhere. In his last years he lost his reason. In religion he was a Shiite. Although he wrote poetry, also an anthology of verses on the monasteries of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and a genealogical work, his fame rests upon his Book of Songs ( Kitāb ul-Aghāni ), which gives an account of the chief Arabian songs, ancient and modern, with the stories of the composers and singers. It contains a mass of information as to the life and customs of the early Arabs, and is the most valuable authority we have for their pre-Islamic and early Moslem days. A part of it was published by J. G. L. Kosegarten with Latin translation (Greifswald, 1840). The text was published in 20 vols. at Bulaq in 1868. Vol. xxi. was edited by R. E. Brünnow (Leyden, 1888). A volume of elaborate indices was edited by I. Guidi (Leyden, 1900), and a missing fragment of the text was published by J. Wellhausen in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft , vol. 50, pp. 146 ff. For his life see M‘G. de Slane’s translation of Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary , vol. ii. pp. 249 ff. ( G. W. T. ) |
ABULFEDA [Abū-l-Fidā’ Ismā‛īl ibn ʽAlī ʽImād-ud-Dnī] (1273–1331), Arabian historian and geographer, was born at Damascus, whither his father Malik ul-Afdal, brother of the prince of Hamah, had fled from the Mongols. He was a descendant of Ayyūb, the father of Saladin. In his boyhood he devoted himself to the study of the Koran and the sciences, but from his twelfth year was almost constantly engaged in military 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 Qalʽat ar-Rūm. In 1298 he entered the service of the Mameluke Sultan Malik al-Nāṣir and after twelve years was invested by him with the governorship of Hamah. In 1312 he became prince with the title Malik us-Sālih, and in 1320 received the hereditary rank of sultan with the title Malik ul-Muʽayyad. For more than twenty years altogether he reigned in tranquillity and splendour, devoting himself to the duties of government 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 came in large numbers to his court. He died in 1331. His chief historical work is An Abridgment of the History of the Human Race , in the form of annals extending from the creation of the world to the year 1329 (Constantinople, 2 vols. 1869). Various translations of parts of it exist, the earliest being a Latin rendering of the section relating to the Arabian conquests in Sicily, by Dobelius, Arabic professor at Palermo, in 1610 (preserved in Muratori’s Rerum Italicarum Scriptores , vol. i.). The section dealing with the pre-Islamitic period was edited with Latin translation by H. O. Fleischer under the title Abulfedae Historia Ante-Islamica (Leipzig, 1831). The part dealing with the Mahommedan period was edited, also with Latin translation, by J. J. Reiske as Annales Muslemici (5 vols., Copenhagen, 1789–1794). His Geography is, like much of the history, founded on the works of his predecessors, and so ultimately on the work of Ptolemy. A long introduction on various geographical matters is followed by twenty-eight sections dealing in tabular form with the chief towns of the world. After each name are given the longitude, latitude, “climate,” spelling, and then observations generally taken from earlier authors. Parts of the work were published and translated as early as 1650 (cf. Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur , Berlin, 1902, vol. ii. pp. 44-46). The text of the whole was published by M‘G. de Slane and M. Reinaud (Paris, 1840), and a French translation with introduction by M. Reinaud and Stanislas Guyard (Paris, 1848–1883). ( G. W. T. ) |
ABUNDANTIA (“Abundance”), a Roman goddess, the personification of prosperity and good fortune. Modelled after the Greek Demeter, she is practically identical with Copia, Annona and similar goddesses. On the coins of the later Roman emperors she is frequently represented holding a cornucopia, from which she shakes her gifts, thereby at the same time indicating the liberality of the emperor or empress. She may be compared with Domina Abundia (Old Fr. Dame Habonde , Notre Dame d’Abondance ), whose name often occurs in poems of the Middle Ages, a beneficent fairy, who brought plenty to those whom she visited (Grimm, Teutonic Mythology , tr. 1880, i. 286-287). |
ABUTILON (from the Arabic aubūtīlūn , a name given by Avicenna to this or an allied genus), in botany, a genus of plants, natural order Malvaceae (Mallows), containing about eighty species, and widely distributed in the tropics. They are free-growing shrubs with showy bell-shaped flowers, and are favourite greenhouse plants. They may be grown outside in England during the summer months, but a few degrees of frost is fatal to them. They are readily propagated from cuttings taken in the spring or at the end of the summer. A large number of horticultural varieties have been developed by hybridization, some of which have a variegated foliage. |
ABUTMENT, a construction in stone or brickwork designed to receive and resist the lateral pressure of an arch, vault or strut. When built outside a wall it is termed a buttress. |
ABYDOS, one of the most ancient cities of Upper Egypt, about 7 m. W. of the Nile in lat. 26° 10′ N. The Egyptian name was Abdu , “the hill of the symbol or reliquary,” in which the sacred head of Osiris was preserved. Thence the Greeks named it Abydos, like the city on the Hellespont; the modern Arabic name is Arabet el Madfuneh . The history of the city begins in the late prehistoric age, it having been founded by the pre-Menite kings (Petrie, Abydos , ii. 64), whose town, temple and tombs have been found there. The kings of the Ist dynasty, and some of the IInd dynasty, were also buried here, and the temple was renewed and enlarged by them. Great forts were built on the desert behind the town by three kings of the IInd dynasty. The temple and town continued to be rebuilt at intervals down to the times of the XXXth dynasty, and the cemetery was used continuously. In the XIIth dynasty a gigantic tomb was cut in the rock by Senwosri (or Senusert) III. Seti I. in the XIXth dynasty founded a great new temple to the south of the town in honour of the ancestral kings of the early dynasties; this was finished by Rameses (or Ramessu) II., who also built a lesser temple of his own. Mineptah (Merenptah) added a great Hypogeum of Osiris to the temple of Seti. The latest building was a new temple of Nekhtnebf in the XXXth dynasty. From the Ptolemaic times the place continued to decay and no later works are known (Petrie, Abydos , i. and ii.). The worship here was of the jackal god Upuaut (Ophoïs, Wepwoi), who “opened the way” to the realm of the dead, increasing from the Ist dynasty to the time of the XIIth dynasty and then disappearing after the XVIIIth. Anher appears in the XIth dynasty; and Khentamenti, the god of the western Hades, rises to importance in the middle kingdom and then vanishes in the XVIIIth. The worship here of Osiris in his various forms begins in the XIIth dynasty and becomes more important in later times, so that at last the whole place was considered as sacred to him ( Abydos , ii. 47). The temples successively built here on one site were nine or ten in number, from the Ist dynasty, 5500 B.C. to the XXVIth dynasty, 500 B.C. The first was an enclosure, about 30 ✕ 50 ft., surrounded by a thin wall of unbaked bricks. Covering one wall of this came the second temple of about 40 ft. square in a wall about 10 ft. thick. An outer temenos (enclosure) wall surrounded the ground. This outer wall was thickened about the IInd or IIIrd dynasty. The old temple entirely vanished in the IVth dynasty, and a smaller building was erected behind it, enclosing a wide hearth of black ashes. Pottery models of offerings are found in the ashes, and these were probably the substitutes for sacrifices decreed by Cheops (Khufu) in his temple reforms. A great clearance of temple offerings was made now, or earlier, and a chamber full of them has yielded the fine ivory carvings and the glazed figures and tiles which show the splendid work of the Ist dynasty. A vase of Menes with purple inlaid hieroglyphs in green glaze and the tiles with relief figures are the most important pieces. The noble statuette of Cheops in ivory, found in the stone chamber of the temple, gives the only portrait of this greatest ruler. The temple was rebuilt entirely on a larger scale by Pepi I. in the VIth dynasty. He placed a great stone gateway to the temenos, an outer temenos wall and gateway, with a colonnade between the gates. His temple was about 40 ✕ 50 ft. inside, with stone gateways front and back, showing that it was of the processional type. In the XIth dynasty Menthotp (Mentuhotep) III. added a colonnade and altars. Soon after, Sankhkerē entirely rebuilt the temple, laying a stone pavement over the area, about 45 ft. square, besides subsidiary chambers. Soon after Senwosri (Senusert) I. in the XIIth dynasty laid massive foundations of stone over the pavement of his predecessor. A great temenos was laid out enclosing a much larger area, and the temple itself was about three times the earlier size. The XVIIIth dynasty began with a large chapel of Amasis (Ahmosi, Aahmes) I., and then Tethmosis (Thothmes, Tahutmes) III. built a far larger temple, about 130 ✕ 200 ft. He made also a processional way past the side of the temple to the cemetery beyond, with a great gateway of granite. Rameses III. added a large building; and Amasis II. in the XXVIth dynasty rebuilt the temple again, and placed in it a large monolith shrine of red granite, finely wrought. The foundations of the successive temples were comprised within about 18 ft. depth of ruins; these needed the closest examination to discriminate the various buildings, and were recorded by over 4000 measurements and 1000 levellings (Petrie, Abydos , ii.). The temple of Seti I. was built on entirely new ground half a mile to the south of the long series of temples just described. This is the building best known as the Great Temple of Abydos, being nearly complete and an impressive sight. A principal object of it was the adoration of the early kings, whose cemetery, to which it forms a great funerary chapel, lies behind it. The long list of the kings of the principal dynasties carved on a wall is known as the “Table of Abydos.” There were also seven chapels for the worship of the king and principal gods. At the back were large chambers connected with the Osiris worship (Caulfield, Temple of the Kings ); and probably from these led out the great Hypogeum for the celebration of the Osiris mysteries, built by Mineptah (Murray, Osireion ). The temple was originally 550 ft. long, but the forecourts are scarcely recognizable, and the part in good state is about 250 ft. long and 350 ft. wide, including the wing at the side. Excepting the list of kings and a panegyric on Rameses II., the subjects are not historical but mythological. The work is celebrated for its delicacy and refinement, but lacks the life and character of that in earlier ages. The sculptures have been mostly published in hand copy, not facsimile, by Mariette in his Abydos , i. The adjacent temple of Rameses II. was much smaller and simpler in plan; but it had a fine historical series of scenes around the outside, of which the lower parts remain. A list of kings, similar to that of Seti, formerly stood here; but the fragments were removed by the French consul and sold to the British Museum. The Royal Tombs of the earliest dynasties were placed about a mile back on the great desert plain. The earliest is about 10 ✕ 20 ft. inside, a pit lined with brick walls, and originally roofed with timber and matting. Others also before Menes are 15 ✕ 25 ft. The tomb probably of Menes is of the latter size. After this the tombs increase in size and complexity. The tomb-pit is surrounded by chambers to hold the offerings, the actual sepulchre being a great wooden chamber in the midst of the brick-lined pit. Rows of small tomb-pits for the servants of the king surround the royal chamber, many dozens of such burials being usual. By the end of the IInd dynasty the type changed to a long passage bordered with chambers on either hand, the royal burial being in the middle of the length. The greatest of these tombs with its dependencies covered a space of over 3000 square yards. The contents of the tombs have been nearly destroyed by successive plunderers; enough remained to show that rich jewellery was placed on the mummies, a profusion of vases of hard and valuable stones from the royal table service stood about the body, the store-rooms were filled with great jars of wine, perfumed ointment and other supplies, and tablets of ivory and of ebony were engraved with a record of the yearly annals of the reigns. The sealings of the various officials, of which over 200 varieties have been found, give an insight into the public arrangements (Petrie, Royal Tombs , i. and ii.). The cemetery of private persons begins in the Ist dynasty with some pit tombs in the town. It was extensive in the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties and contained many rich tombs. In the XVIIIth-XXth dynasties a large number of fine tombs were made, and later ages continued to bury here till Roman times. Many hundred funeral steles were removed by Mariette’s workmen, without any record of the burials (Mariette, Abydos , ii. and iii.). Later excavations have been recorded by Ayrton, Abydos , iii.; MacIver, El Amrah and Abydos ; and Garstang, El Arabah . The forts lay behind the town. That known as Shunet ez Zebib is about 450 ✕ 250 ft. over all, and still stands 30 ft. high. It was built by Khasekhemui, the last king of the IInd dynasty. Another fort nearly as large adjoined it, and is probably rather older. A third fort of a squarer form is now occupied by the Coptic convent; its age cannot be ascertained (Ayrton, Abydos , iii.). ( W. M. F. P. ) |
ABYDOS, an ancient city of Mysia, in Asia Minor, situated at Nagara Point on the Hellespont, which is here scarcely a mile broad. It probably was originally a Thracian town, but was afterwards colonized by Milesians. Here Xerxes crossed the strait on his bridge of boats when he invaded Greece. Abydos is celebrated for the vigorous resistance it made against Philip V. of Macedon (200 B.C. ), and is famed in story for the loves of Hero and Leander. The town remained till late Byzantine times the toll station of the Hellespont, its importance being transferred to the Dardanelles ( q.v. ), after the building of the “Old Castles” by Sultan Mahommed II. ( c. 1456). See Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage dans l’empire ottoman (Paris, 1842). |
ABYSS (Gr. ἀ -, privative, βυσσός , bottom), a bottomless depth; hence any deep place. From the late popular abyssimus (superlative of Low Latin abyssus ) through the French abisme (i.e. abîme ) is derived the poetic form abysm , pronounced as late as 1616 to rhyme with time . The adjective “abyssal” or “abysmal” has been used by zoologists to describe deep regions of the sea; hence abysmal zone, abysmal flora and fauna, abysmal accumulations, the deposit on the abysmal bed of the ocean. In heraldry, the abyss is the middle of an escutcheon. In the Greek version of the Old Testament the word represents (1) the original chaos (Gen. i. 2), (2) the Hebrew tehom (“a surging water-deep”), which is used also in apocalyptic and kabbalistic literature and in the New Testament for hell, the place of punishment (cf. Eurip. Phoen . for the “yawning chasm of Tartarus”); in the Revised (not the Authorized) version abyss is generally used for this idea. Primarily in the Septuagint cosmography the word is applied ( a ) to the waters under the earth which originally covered it, and from which the springs and rivers are supplied, ( b ) to the waters of the firmament which were regarded as closely connected with those below. Derivatively, from the general idea of depth, it acquired the meaning of the place of the dead, though apparently never quite the same as Sheol. In Revelation it is the prison of evil spirits whence they may occasionally be let loose, and where Satan is doomed to spend 1000 years. Beneath the altar in the temple of Jerusalem there was believed to be a passage which led down to the abyss of the world, where the foundation-stone of the earth was laid. In rabbinical cosmography the abyss is a region of Gehenna situated below the ocean bed and divided into three or seven parts imposed one above the other. In the Kabbalah the abyss as the opening into the lower world is the abode of evil spirits, and corresponds to the opening of the abyss to the world above. In general the abyss is regarded vaguely as a place of indefinite extent, the abode of mystery and sorrow. See G. Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament (Eng. trans., Oxford, 1905). |
ABYSSINIA (officially Ethiopia ), an inland country and empire of N.E. Africa lying, chiefly, between 5° and 15° N. and 35° and 42° E. It is bounded N. by Eritrea (Italian), W. by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, S. by British East Africa, S.E. and E. by the British, Italian and French possessions in Somaliland and on the Red Sea. The coast lands held by European powers, which cut off Abyssinia from access to the sea, vary in width from 40 to 250 miles. The country approaches nearest to the ocean on its N.E. border, where the frontier is drawn about 40 m. from the coast of the Red Sea. Abyssinia is narrowest in the north, being here 230 m. across from east to west. It broadens out southward to a width of 900 m. along the line of 9° N., and resembles in shape a triangle with its apex to the north. It is divided into Abyssinia proper ( i.e. Tigré, Amhara, Gojam, &c.), Shoa, Kaffa and Galla land—all these form a geographical unit—and central Somaliland with Harrar. To the S.W. Abyssinia also includes part of the low country of the Sobat tributary of the Nile. The area of the whole state is about 350,000 sq. m., of which Abyssinian Somaliland covers fully a third. (1) Physical Features .—Between the valley of the Upper Nile and the low lands which skirt the south-western shores of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is a region of elevated plateaus from which rise various mountain ranges. These tablelands and mountains constitute Abyssinia, Shoa, Kaffa and Galla land. On nearly every side the walls of the plateaus rise with considerable abruptness from the plains, constituting outer mountain chains. The Abyssinian highlands are thus a clearly marked orographic division. From Ras Kasar (18° N.) to Annesley Bay (15° N.) the eastern wall of the plateau runs parallel to the Red Sea. It then turns due S. and follows closely the line of 40° E. for some 400 m. About 9° N. there is a break in the wall, through which the river Hawash flows eastward. The main range at this point trends S.W., while south of the Hawash valley, which is some 3000 ft. below the level of the mountains, another massif rises in a direct line south. This second range sends a chain (the Harrar hills) eastward to the Gulf of Aden. The two chief eastern ranges maintain a parallel course S. by W., with a broad upland valley between—in which valley are a series of lakes—to about 3° N., the outer (eastern) spurs of the plateau still keeping along the line of 40° E. The southern escarpment of the plateau is highly irregular, but has a general direction N.W. and S.E. from 6° N. to 3° N. It overlooks the depression in which is Lake Rudolf and—east of that lake—southern Somaliland. The western wall of the plateau from 6° N. to 11° N. is well marked and precipitous. North of 11° N. the hills turn more to the east and fall more gradually to the plains at their base. On its northern face also the plateau falls in terraces to the level of the eastern Sudan. The eastern escarpment is the best defined of these outer ranges. It has a mean height of from 7000 to 8000 ft., and in many places rises almost perpendicularly from the plain. Narrow and deep clefts, through which descend mountain torrents to lose themselves in the sandy soil of the coast land, afford means of reaching the plateau, or the easier route through the Hawash valley may be chosen. On surmounting this rocky barrier the traveller finds that the encircling rampart rises little above the normal level of the plateau. (2) The aspect of the highlands is most impressive. The northern portion, lying mainly between 10° and 15° N., consists of a huge mass of Archaean rocks with a mean height of from 7000 to 7500 ft. above the sea, and is flooded in a deep central depression by the waters of Lake Tsana. Above the plateau rise several irregular and generally ill-defined mountain ranges which attain altitudes of from 12,000 to over 15,000 ft. Many of the mountains are of weird and fantastic shape. Characteristic of the country are the enormous fissures which divide it, formed in the course of ages by the erosive action of water. They are in fact the valleys of the rivers which, rising on the uplands or mountain sides, have cut their way to the surrounding lowlands. Some of the valleys are of considerable width; in other cases the opposite walls of the gorges are but two or three hundred yards apart, and fall almost vertically thousands of feet, representing an erosion of hard rock of many millions of cubic feet. One result of the action of the water has been the formation of numerous isolated flat-topped hills or small plateaus, known as ambas , with nearly perpendicular sides. The highest peaks are found in the Simen (or Semien) and Gojam ranges. The Simen Mountains lie N.E. of Lake Tsana and culminate in the snow-covered peak of Daschan (Dajan), which has an altitude of 15,160 ft. A few miles east and north respectively of Dajan are Mounts Biuat and Abba Jared, whose summits are a few feet only below that of Dajan. In the Chok Mountains in Gojam Agsias Fatra attains a height of 13,600 ft. Parallel with the eastern escarpment are the heights of Baila (12,500 ft.), Abuna Josef (13,780 ft.), and Kollo (14,100 ft.), the last-named being S.W. of Magdala. The valley between these hills and the eastern escarpment is one of the longest and most profound chasms in Abyssinia. Between Lake Tsana and the eastern hills are Mounts Guna (13,800 ft.) and Uara Sahia (13,000 ft.). The figures given are, however, approximate only. The southern portion of the highlands—the 10° N. roughly marks the division between north and south—has more open tableland than the northern portion and fewer lofty peaks. Though there are a few heights between 10,000 and 12,000 ft., the majority do not exceed 8000 ft. But the general character of the southern regions is the same as in the north—a much-broken hilly plateau. Most of the Abyssinian uplands have a decided slope to the north-west, so that nearly all the large rivers find their way in that direction to the Nile. Such are the Takazzé in the north, the Abai in the centre, and the Sobat in the south, and through these three arteries is discharged about four-fifths of the entire drainage. The rest is carried off, almost due north by the Khor Baraka, which occasionally reaches the Red Sea south of Suakin; by the Hawash, which runs out in the saline lacustrine district near the head of Tajura Bay; by the Webi Shebeli (Wabi-Shebeyli) and Juba, which flow S.E. through Somaliland, though the Shebeli fails to reach the Indian Ocean; and by the Omo, the main feeder of the closed basin of Lake Rudolf. The Takazzé, which is the true upper course of the Atbara, has its head-waters in the central tableland; and falls from about 7000 to 2500 ft. in the tremendous crevasse through which it sweeps round west, north and west again down to the western terraces, where it passes from Abyssinian to Sudan territory. During the rains the Takazzé ( i.e. the “Terrible”) rises some 18 ft. above its normal level, and at this time forms an impassable barrier between the northern and central provinces. In its lower course the river is known by the Arab name Setit. The Setit is joined (14° 10′ N., 36° E.) by the Atbara, a river formed by several streams which rise in the mountains W. and N.W. of Lake Tsana. The Gash or Mareb is the most northerly of the Abyssinian rivers which flow towards the Nile valley. Its head-waters rise on the landward side of the eastern escarpment within 50 miles of Annesley Bay on the Red Sea. It reaches the Sudan plains near Kassala, beyond which place its waters are dissipated in the sandy soil. The Mareb is dry for a great part of the year, but like the Takazzé is subject to sudden freshets during the rains. Only the left bank of the upper course of the river is in Abyssinian territory, the Mareb here forming the boundary between Eritrea and Abyssinia. (3) The Abai—that is, the upper course of the Blue Nile—has its source near Mount Denguiza in the Gojam highlands (about 11° N. and 37° E.), and first flows for 70 m. nearly due north to the south side of Lake Tsana. Tsana ( q.v. ), which stands from 2500 to 3000 ft. below the normal level of the plateau, has somewhat the aspect of a flooded crater. It has an area of about 1100 sq. m., and a depth in some parts of 250 ft. At the south-east corner the rim of the crater is, as it were, breached by a deep crevasse through which the Abai escapes, and here develops a great semicircular bend like that of the Takazzé, but in the reverse direction—east, south and north-west—down to the plains of Sennar, where it takes the name of Bahr-el-Azrak or Blue Nile. The Abai has many tributaries. Of these the Bashilo rises near Magdala and drains eastern Amhara; the Jamma rises near Ankober and drains northern Shoa; the Muger rises near Adis Ababa and drains south-western Shoa; the Didessa, the largest of the Abai’s affluents, rises in the Kaffa hills and has a generally S. to N. course; the Yabus runs near the western edge of the plateau escarpment. All these are perennial rivers. The right-hand tributaries, rising mostly on the western sides of the plateau, have steep slopes and are generally torrential in character. The Bolassa, however, is perennial, and the Rahad and Dinder are important rivers in flood-time. In the mountains and plateaus of Kaffa and Galla in the south-west of Abyssinia rise the Baro, Gelo, Akobo and other of the chief affluents of the Sobat tributary of the Nile. The Akobo, in about 7° 50′ N. and 33° E., joins the Pibor, which in about 8 1 / 2 ° N. and 33° 20′ E. unites with the Baro, the river below the confluence taking the name of Sobat. These rivers descend from the mountains in great falls, and like the other Abyssinian streams are unnavigable in their upper courses. The Baro on reaching the plain becomes, however, a navigable stream affording an open waterway to the Nile. The Baro, Pibor and Akobo form for 250 m. the W. and S.W. frontiers of Abyssinia (see Nile , Sobat and Sudan .) The chief river of Abyssinia flowing east is the Hawash (Awash, Awasi), which rises in the Shoan uplands and makes a semicircular bend first S.E. and then N.E. It reaches the Afar (Danakil) lowlands through a broad breach in the eastern escarpment of the plateau, beyond which it is joined on its left bank by its chief affluent, the Germama (Kasam), and then trends round in the direction of Tajura Bay. Here the Hawash is a copious stream nearly 200 ft. wide and 4 ft. deep, even in the dry season, and during the floods rising 50 or 60 ft. above low-water mark, thus inundating the plains for many miles along both its banks. Yet it fails to reach the coast, and after a winding course of about 500 m. passes (in its lower reaches) through a series of badds (lagoons) to Lake Aussa, some 60 or 70 m. from the head of Tajura Bay. In this lake the river is lost. This remarkable phenomenon is explained by the position of Aussa in the centre of a saline lacustrine depression several hundred feet below sea-level. While most of the other lagoons are highly saline, with thick incrustations of salt round their margins, Aussa remains fresh throughout the year, owing to the great body of water discharged into it by the Hawash. Another lacustrine region extends from the Shoa heights south-west to the Samburu (Lake Rudolf) depression. In this chain of lovely upland lakes, some fresh, some brackish, some completely closed, others connected by short channels, the chief links in their order from north to south are:—Zwai, communicating southwards with Hara and Lamina, all in the Arusi Galla territory; then Abai with an outlet to a smaller tarn in the romantic Baroda and Gamo districts, skirted on the west sides by grassy slopes and wooded ranges from 6000 to nearly 9000 ft. high; lastly, in the Asille country, Lake Stefanie, the Chuwaha of the natives, completely closed and falling to a level of about 1800 ft. above the sea. To the same system obviously belongs the neighbouring Lake Rudolf ( q.v. ), which is larger than all the rest put together. This lake receives at its northern end the waters of the Omo, which rises in the Shoa highlands and is a perennial river with many affluents. In its course of some 370 m. it has a total fall of about 6000 ft. (from 7600 at its source to 1600 at lake-level), and is consequently a very rapid stream, being broken by the Kokobi and other falls, and navigable only for a short distance above its mouth. The chief rivers of Somaliland ( q.v. ), the Webi Shebeli and the Juba ( q.v. ), have their rise on the south-eastern slopes of the Abyssinian escarpment, and the greater part of their course is through territory belonging to Abyssinia. There are numerous hot springs in Abyssinia, and earthquakes, though of no great severity, are not uncommon. (4) Geology .—The East African tableland is continued into Abyssinia. Since the visit of W. T. Blanford in 1870 the geology has received little attention from travellers. The following formations are represented:— Sedimentary and Metamorphic . Recent. Coral, alluvium, sand. Tertiary. (?) Limestones Harrar. Jurassic. Antalo Limestones. Triassic (?). Adigrat Sandstones. Archaean. Gneisses, schists, slaty rocks. Igneous. Recent. Aden Volcanic Series. Tertiary, Cretaceous (?). Magdala group. Jurassic. Ashangi group. Archaean .—The metamorphic rocks compose the main mass of the tableland, and are exposed in every deep valley in Tigré and along the valley of the Blue Nile. Mica schists form the prevalent rocks. Hornblende schists also occur and a compact felspathic rock in the Suris defile. The foliae of the schists strike north and south. Triassic (?).—In the region of Adigrat the metamorphic rocks are invariably overlain by white and brown sandstones, unfossiliferous, and attaining a maximum thickness of 1000 feet. They are overlain by the fossiliferous limestones of the Antalo group. Around Chelga and Adigrat coal-bearing beds occur, which Blanford suggests may be of the same age as the coal-bearing strata of India. The Adigrat Sandstone possibly represents some portion of the Karroo formation of South Africa. Jurassic .—The fossiliferous limestones of Antalo are generally horizontal, but are in places much disturbed when interstratified with trap rocks. The fossils are all characteristic Oolite forms and include species of Hemicidaris , Pholadomya , Ceromya , Trigonia and Alaria . Igneous Rocks .—Above a height of 8000 ft. the country consists of bedded traps belonging to two distinct and unconformable groups. The lower (Ashangi group) consists of basalts and dolerites often amygdaloidal. Their relation to the Antalo limestones is uncertain, but Blanford considers them to be not later in age than the Oolite. The upper (Magdala group) contains much trachytic rock of considerable thickness, lying perfectly horizontally, and giving rise to a series of terraced ridges characteristic of central Abyssinia. They are interbedded with unfossiliferous sandstones and shales. Of more recent date (probably Tertiary) are some igneous rocks, rich in alkalis, occurring in certain localities in southern Abyssinia. Of still more recent date are the basalts and ashes west of Massawa and around Annesley Bay and known as the Aden Volcanic Series. With regard to the older igneous rocks, the enormous amount they have suffered from denudation is a prominent feature. They have been worn into deep and narrow ravines, sometimes to a depth of 3000 to 4000 ft. (5) Climate .—The climate of Abyssinia and its dependent territories varies greatly. Somaliland and the Danakil lowlands have a hot, dry climate producing semi-desert conditions; the country in the lower basin of the Sobat is hot, swampy and malarious. But over the greater part of Abyssinia as well as the Galla highlands the climate is very healthy and temperate. The country lies wholly within the tropics, but its nearness to the equator is counterbalanced by the elevation of the land. In the deep valleys of the Takazzé and Abai, and generally in places below 4000 ft., the conditions are tropical and fevers are prevalent. On the uplands, however, the air is cool and bracing in summer, and in winter very bleak. The mean range of temperature is between 60° and 80° F. On the higher mountains the climate is Alpine in character. The atmosphere on the plateaus is exceedingly clear, so that objects are easily recognizable at great distances. In addition to the variation in climate dependent on elevation, the year may be divided into three seasons. Winter, or the cold season, lasts from October to February, and is followed by a dry hot period, which about the middle of June gives place to the rainy season. The rain is heaviest in the Takazzé basin in July and August. In the more southern districts of Gojam and Wallega heavy rains continue till the middle of September, and occasionally October is a wet month. There are also spring and winter rains; indeed rain often falls in every month of the year. But the rainy season proper, caused by the south-west monsoon, lasts from June to mid-September, and commencing in the north moves southward. In the region of the Sobat sources the rains begin earlier and last longer. The rainfall varies from about 30 in. a year in Tigré and Amhara to over 40 in. in parts of Galla land. The rainy season is of great importance not only to Abyssinia but to the countries of the Nile valley, as the prosperity of the eastern Sudan and Egypt is largely dependent upon the rainfall. A season of light rain may be sufficient for the needs of Abyssinia, but there is little surplus water to find its way to the Nile; and a shortness of rain means a low Nile, as practically all the flood water of that river is derived from the Abyssinian tributaries (see Nile ). (6) Flora and Fauna .—As in a day’s journey the traveller may pass from tropical to almost Alpine conditions of climate, so great also is the range of the flora and fauna. In the valleys and lowlands the vegetation is dense, but the general appearance of the plateaus is of a comparatively bare country with trees and bushes thinly scattered over it. The glens and ravines on the hillside are often thickly wooded, and offer a delightful contrast to the open downs. These conditions are particularly characteristic of the northern regions; in the south the vegetation on the uplands is more luxuriant. Among the many varieties of trees and plants found are the date palm, mimosa, wild olive, giant sycamores, junipers and laurels, the myrrh and other gum trees (gnarled and stunted, these flourish most on the eastern foothills), a magnificent pine (the Natal yellow pine, which resists the attacks of the white ant), the fig, orange, lime, pomegranate, peach, apricot, banana and other fruit trees; the grape vine (rare), blackberry and raspberry; the cotton and indigo plants, and occasionally the sugar cane. There are in the south large forests of valuable timber trees; and the coffee plant is indigenous in the Kaffa country, whence it takes its name. Many kinds of grasses and flowers abound. Large areas are covered by the kussa, a hardy member of the rose family, which grows from 8 to 10 ft. high and has abundant pendent red blossoms. The flowers and the leaves of this plant are highly prized for medicinal purposes. The fruit of the kurarina, a tree found almost exclusively in Shoa, yields a black grain highly esteemed as a spice. On the tableland a great variety of grains and vegetables are cultivated. A fibrous plant, known as the sanseviera, grows in a wild state in the semi-desert regions of the north and south-east. In addition to the domestic animals enumerated below (§ 8) the fauna is very varied. Elephant and rhinoceros are numerous in certain low-lying districts, especially in the Sobat valley. The Abyssinian rhinoceros has two horns and its skin has no folds. The hippopotamus and crocodile inhabit the larger rivers flowing west, but are not found in the Hawash, in which, however, otters of large size are plentiful. Lions abound in the low countries and in Somaliland. In central Abyssinia the lion is no longer found except occasionally in the river valleys. Leopards, both spotted and black, are numerous and often of great size; hyaenas are found everywhere and are hardy and fierce; the lynx, wolf, wild dog and jackal are also common. Boars and badgers are more rarely seen. The giraffe is found in the western districts, the zebra and wild ass frequent the lower plateaus and the rocky hills of the north. There are large herds of buffalo and antelope, and gazelles of many varieties and in great numbers are met with in most parts of the country. Among the varieties are the greater and lesser kudu (both rather rare); the duiker, gemsbuck, hartebeest, gerenuk (the most common—it has long thin legs and a camel-like neck); klipspringer, found on the high plateaus as well as in the lower districts; and the dik-dik, the smallest of the antelopes, its weight rarely exceeding 10 ℔., common in the low countries and the foothills. The civet is found in many parts of Abyssinia, but chiefly in the Galla regions. Squirrels and hares are numerous, as are several kinds of monkeys, notably the guereza, gelada, guenon and dog-faced baboon. They range from the tropical lowlands to heights of 10,000 ft. Birds are very numerous, and many of them remarkable for the beauty of their plumage. Great numbers of eagles, vultures, hawks, bustards and other birds of prey are met with; and partridges, duck, teal, guinea-fowl, sand-grouse, curlews, woodcock, snipe, pigeons, thrushes and swallows are very plentiful. A fine variety of ostrich is commonly found. Among the birds prized for their plumage are the marabout, crane, heron, blackbird, parrot, jay and humming-birds of extraordinary brilliance. Among insects the most numerous and useful is the bee, honey everywhere constituting an important part of the food of the inhabitants. Of an opposite class is the locust. Serpents are not numerous, but several species are poisonous. There are thousands of varieties of butterflies and other insects. (7) Provinces and Towns .—Politically, Abyssinia is divided into provinces or kingdoms and dependent territories. The chief provinces are Tigré, which occupies the N.E. of the country; Amhara or Gondar, in the centre; Gojam, the district enclosed by the great semicircular sweep of the Abai; and Shoa ( q.v. ), which lies east of the Abai and south of Amhara. Besides these ancient provinces and several others of smaller size, the empire includes the Wallega region, lying S.W. of Gojam; the Harrar province in the east; Kaffa ( q.v. ) and Galla land, S.W. and S. of Shoa; and the central part of Somaliland. With the exception of Harrar ( q.v. ), a city of Arab foundation, there are no large towns in Abyssinia. Harrar is some 30 m. S.E. of Dire Dawa, whence there is a railway (188 m. long) to Jibuti on the Gulf of Aden. The absence of large towns in Abyssinia proper is due to the provinces into which the country is divided having been for centuries in a state of almost continual warfare, and to the frequent change of the royal residences on the exhaustion of fuel supplies. The earliest capital appears to have been Axum ( q.v. ) in Tigré, where there are extensive ruins. In the middle ages Gondar in Amhara became the capital of the country and was so regarded up to the middle of the 19th century. Since 1892 the capital has been Adis Ababa in the kingdom of Shoa. The other towns of Abyssinia worthy of mention may be grouped according to their geographical position. None of them has a permanent population exceeding 6000, but at several large markets are held periodically. In Tigré there are Adowa or Adua (17 m. E. by N. of Axum), Adigrat, Macalle and Antalo. The three last-named places are on the high plateau near its eastern escarpment and on the direct road south from Massawa to Shoa. West of Adigrat is the monastery of Debra-Domo, one of the most celebrated sanctuaries in Abyssinia. In Amhara there are:— Magdala ( q.v. ), formerly the residence of King Theodore, and the place of imprisonment of the British captives in 1866. Debra-Tabor (“Mount Tabor”), the chief royal residence during the reign of King John, occupies a strong strategic position overlooking the fertile plains east of Lake Tsana, at a height of about 8,620 ft. above the sea; it has a population of 3000, including the neighbouring station of Samara, headquarters of the Protestant missionaries in the time of King Theodore. Ambra-Mariam, a fortified station midway between Gondar and Debra-Tabor near the north-east side of Lake Tsana, with a population of 3000; here is the famous shrine and church dedicated to St Mary, whence the name of the place, “Fort St Mary.” Mahdera-Mariam (“Mary’s Rest”), for some time a royal residence, and an important market and great place of pilgrimage, a few miles south-west of Debra-Tabor; its two churches of the “Mother” and the “Son” are held in great veneration by all Abyssinians; it has a permanent population estimated at over 4000, Gallas and Amharas, the former mostly Mahommedan. Sokota, one of the great central markets, and capital of the province of Waag in Amhara, at the converging point of several main trade routes; the market is numerously attended, especially by dealers in the salt blocks which come from Lake Alalbed. The following towns are in Shoa:—Ankober, formerly the capital of the kingdom; Aliu-Amba, east of Ankober on the trade route to the Gulf of Aden; Debra-Berhan (Debra-Bernam) (“Mountain of Light”), once a royal residence; Liché (Litché), one of the largest market towns in southern Abyssinia. Liekà, the largest market in Galla land, has direct communications with Gojam, Shoa and other parts of the empire. Bonga, the commercial centre of Kaffa, and Jiren, capital of the neighbouring province of Jimma, are frequented by traders from all the surrounding provinces, and also by foreign merchants from the seaports on the Gulf of Aden. Apart from these market-places there are no settlements of any size in southern Abyssinia. Communications .—The Jibuti-Dire Dawa railway has been mentioned above. The continuation of this railway to the capital was begun in 1906 from the Adis Ababa end. There are few roads in Abyssinia suitable for wheeled traffic. Transport is usually carried on by mules, donkeys, pack-horses and (in the lower regions) camels. From Dire Dawa to Harrar there is a well-made carriage road, and from Harrar to Adis Ababa the caravan track is kept in good order, the river Hawash being spanned by an iron bridge. There is also a direct trade route from Dire Dawa to the capital. Telegraph lines connect Adis Ababa and several important towns in northern Abyssinia with Massawa, Harrar and Jibuti. There is also a telephonic service, the longest line being from Harrar to the capital. (8) Agriculture .—The soil is exceedingly fertile, as is evident from the fact that Egypt owes practically all its fertility to the sediment carried into the Nile by its Abyssinian tributaries. Agriculture is extensively followed, chiefly by the Gallas, the indolence of the Abyssinians preventing them from being good farmers. In the lower regions a wide variety of crops are grown—among them maize, durra, wheat, barley, rye, teff , pease, cotton and sugar-cane—and many kinds of fruit trees are cultivated. Teff is a kind of millet with grains about the size of an ordinary pin-head, of which is made the bread commonly eaten. The low grounds also produce a grain, tocussa , from which black bread is made. Besides these, certain oleaginous plants, the suf , nuc and selite (there are no European equivalents for the native names), and the ground-nut are largely grown. The castor bean grows wild, the green castor in the low, damp regions, the red castor at medium altitudes. The kat plant, a medicinal herb which has a tonic quality, is largely grown in the Harrar province. On the higher plateaus the hardier cereals only are cultivated. Here the chief crops are wheat, barley, teff, peppers, vegetables of all kinds and coffee. Above 10,000 ft. the crops are confined practically to barley, oats, beans and occasionally wheat. Coffee is one of the most important products of the country, and its original home is believed to be the Kaffa highlands. It is cultivated in the S., S.E. and S.W. provinces, and to a less extent in the central districts. Two qualities of coffee are cultivated, one known as Abyssinian, the other as Harrar-Mocha. The “Abyssinian” coffee is grown very extensively throughout the southern highlands. Little attention is paid to the crop, the berries being frequently gathered from the ground, and consequently the coffee is of comparatively low grade. “Harrar-Mocha” is of first-class quality. It is grown in the highlands of Harrar, and cultivated with extreme care. The raising of cotton received a considerable impetus in the early years of the 20th century. The soil of the Hawash valley proved particularly suitable for raising this crop. In the high plateaus the planting of seeds begins in May, in the lower plateaus and the plains in June, but in certain parts where the summer is long and rain abundant sowing and reaping are going on at the same time. Most regions yield two, many three crops a year. The methods of culture are primitive, the plough commonly used being a long pole with two vertical iron teeth and a smaller pole at right angles to which oxen are attached. This implement costs about four shillings. The ploughing is done by the men, but women and girls do the reaping. The grain is usually trodden out by cattle and is often stored in clay-lined pits. Land comparatively poor yields crops eight to tenfold the quantity sown; the major part of the land yields twenty to thirtyfold. In the northern parts of the empire very little land is left uncultivated. The hillsides are laid out in terraces and carefully irrigated in the dry season, the channels being often two miles or more long. Of all the cereals barley is the most widely grown. The average rate of pay to an agricultural labourer is about threepence a day in addition to food, which may cost another penny a day. The Abyssinians keep a large number of domestic animals. Among cattle the Sanga or Galla ox is the most common. The bulls are usually kept for ploughing, the cow being preferred for meat. Most of the cattle are of the zebu or hump-backed variety, but there are also two breeds—one large, the other resembling the Jersey cattle—which are straight-backed. The horns of the zebu variety are sometimes four feet long. Sheep, of which there are very large flocks, belong to the short and fat-tailed variety. The majority are not wool-bearing, but in one district a very small black sheep is raised for wool. The small mountain breed of sheep weigh no more than 20 to 30 ℔. apiece. Goats are of both the long and short-haired varieties. The horns of the large goats are often thirty inches in length and stand up straight from the head. The goats from the Arusi Galla country have fine silky hair which is sometimes sixteen inches long. The meat of both sheep and goats is excellent; that of the latter is preferred by the natives. In 1904 the estimated number of sheep and goats in the country was 20,000,000. Large quantities of butter, generally rancid, are made from the milk of cows, goats and sheep. In the Leka province small black pigs are bred in considerable numbers. The horses (very numerous) are small but strong; they are generally about 14 hands in height. The best breeds come from the Shoa uplands. The ass is also small and strong; and the mule, bred in large numbers, is of excellent quality, and both as a transport animal and as a mount is preferred to the horse. The mule thrives in every condition of climate, is fever-proof, travels over the most difficult mountain passes with absolute security, and can carry with ease a load of 200 ℔. The average height of a mule is 12 1 / 2 hands. The country is admirably adapted for stock-raising. (9) Minerals .—In the south and south-west provinces placer gold mines by the banks of watercourses are worked by Gallas as an industry subsidiary to tending their flocks and fields. In the Wallega district are veins of gold-bearing quartz, mined to a certain extent. There are also gold mines in southern Shoa. The annual output of gold is worth not less than £500,000. Only a small proportion is exported. Besides gold, silver, iron, coal and other minerals are found. Rock-salt is obtained from the province of Tigré. Trade and Currency .—Abyssinia being without seaports, the external trade is through Massawa (Italian) in the north, Jibuti (French), Zaila and Berbera (British) in the south, and for all these ports Aden is a distributing centre. For Tigré and Amhara products Massawa is the best port, for the rest of the empire, Jibuti. For southern Abyssinia, Kaffa and Galla lands, Harrar is the great entrepot, goods being forwarded thence to Jibuti and the other Somaliland ports. There is also a considerable trade with the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan through the frontier towns of Rosaires and Gallabat. At the French and British ports there is freedom of trade, but on goods for Abyssinia entering Massawa a discriminating tax is levied if they are not imported from Italy. The chief articles of export are coffee, skins, ivory, civet, ostrich feathers, gum, pepper, kat plant (used by Moslems for its stimulating properties), gold (in small quantities) and live stock. The trade in skins is mainly with the United States through Aden; America also takes a large proportion of the coffee exported. For live stock there is a good trade with Madagascar. The chief imports are cotton goods, the yearly value of this trade being fully £250,000; the sheetings are largely American; the remainder English and Indian. No other article of import approaches cotton in importance, but a considerable trade is done in arms and ammunition, rice, sugar, flour and other foods, and a still larger trade in candles and matches (from Sweden), oil, carpets (oriental and European), hats and umbrellas. Commerce long remained in a backward condition; but under the Emperor Menelek II. efforts were made to develop the resources of the country, and in 1905 the total volume of trade exceeded £1,000,000. Until the end of the 19th century the usual currency was the Maria Theresa dollar, bars of rock-salt and cartridges. In 1894 a new coinage was introduced, with the Menelek dollar or talari , worth about two shillings, as the standard. This new coinage gradually superseded the older currency. In 1905 the Bank of Abyssinia, the first banking house in the country, was founded, with its headquarters at Adis Ababa. The bank, which was granted a monopoly of banking business in the empire for fifty years, has a capital of £500,000, has the power to issue notes, to mint the Abyssinian coinage, and to engage in commercial operations. It was founded under Egyptian law by the National Bank of Egypt, which institution had previously obtained a concession from the emperor Menelek. (10) Government .—The political institutions are of a feudal character. Within their provinces the rases (princes) exercise large powers. The emperor, styled negūs negusti (king of kings), is occasionally assisted by a council of rases. In October 1907 an imperial decree announced the constitution of a cabinet on European lines, ministers being appointed to the portfolios of foreign affairs, war, commerce, justice and finance. The legal system is said to be based on the Justinian code. From the decisions of the judges there is a right of appeal to the emperor. The chief judicial official is known as the affa-negūs (breath of the king). The Abyssinian church ( q.v. ) is presided over by an abuna , or archbishop. The land is not held in fee simple, but is subject to the control of the emperor or the church. Revenue is derived from an ad valorem tax on all imports; the purchase and sale of animals; from royalties on trading concessions, and in other ways, including fees for the administration of justice. Education, of a rudimentary character, is given by the clergy. In 1907 a system of compulsory education “of all male children over the age of 12” was decreed. The education was to be state provided, Coptic teachers were brought from Egypt and school buildings were erected. The Abyssinian calendar is as follows:—The Abyssinian year of 365 days (366 in leap-year) begins on the 1st of Maskarram, which corresponds to about the 10th of September. The months have thirty days each, and are thus named: Maskarram, Tekemt, Hadar, Tahsas, Tarr, Yekatit, Magawit, Miaziah, Genbot, Sanni, Hamle, Nas’hi. The remaining five days in the year, termed Pagmen or Quaggimi (six in leap-year, the extra day being named Kadis Yohannis), are put in at the end and treated as holidays. Abyssinian reckoning is about seven years eight months behind the Gregorian. Festivals, such as Easter, fall a week later than in western Europe. Army .—A small standing army is maintained in each province of Abyssinia proper. Every able-bodied Abyssinian is expected to join the army in case of need, and a force, well armed with modern weapons, approaching 250,000 can be placed in the field. The cavalry is chiefly composed of Galla horsemen. ( F. R. C. ) Ethnology (11) The population of the empire is estimated at from 3,500,000 to 5,000,000. The inhabitants consist mainly of the Abyssinians, the Galla and the Somali (the two last-named peoples are separately noticed). Of non-African races the most numerous are Armenians, Indians, Jews and Greeks. There is a small colony of British, French, Italians and Russians. The following remarks apply solely to Abyssinia proper and its inhabitants. It should be remembered that the term “Abyssinian” is purely geographical, and has little or no ethnical significance; it is derived from the Arabic Habesh , “mixed,” and was a derisive name applied by the Arabs to the heterogeneous inhabitants of the Abyssinian plateau. Abyssinia appears to have been originally peopled by the eastern branch of the Hamitic family, which has occupied this region from the remotest times, and still constitutes the great bulk of its inhabitants, though the higher classes are now strongly Semitized. The prevailing colour in the central provinces (Amhara, Gojam) is a deep brown, northwards (Tigré, Lasta) it is a pale olive, and here even fair complexions are seen. Southwards (Shoa, Kobbo, Amuru) a decided chocolate and almost sooty black is the rule. Many of the people are distinctly negroid, with big lips, small nose, broad at the base, and frizzly or curly black hair. The negroid element in the population is due chiefly to the number of negro women who have been imported into the harems of the Abyssinians. The majority, however, may be described as a mixed Hamito-Semitic people, who are in general well formed and handsome, with straight and regular features, lively eyes, hair long and straight or somewhat curled and in colour dark olive, approaching to black. The Galla, who came originally from the south, are not found in many parts of the country, but predominate in the Wollo district, between Shoa and Amhara. It is from the Galla that the Abyssinian army is largely recruited, and, indeed, there are few of the chiefs who have not an admixture of Galla blood in their veins. As regards language, several of the indigenous groups, such as the Khamtas of Lasta, the Agau or Agaos of Agaumeder (“Agao land”) and the Falashas ( q.v. ), the so-called “Jews” of Abyssinia, still speak rude dialects of the old Hamitic tongue. But the official language and that of all the upper classes is of Semitic origin, derived from the ancient Himyaritic, which is the most archaic member of the Semitic linguistic family. Geez, as it is called, was introduced with the first immigrants from Yemen, and although no longer spoken is still studied as the liturgical language of the Abyssinian Christians. Its literature consists of numerous translations of Jewish, Greek and Arabic works, besides a valuable version of the Bible. (See Ethiopia .) The best modern representative of Geez is the Tigrina of Tigré and Lasta, which is much purer but less cultivated than the Amharic dialect, which is used in state documents, is current in the central and southern provinces and is much affected by Hamitic elements. All are written in a peculiar syllabic script which, unlike all other Semitic forms, runs from left to right, and is derived from that of the Sabaeans and Minaeans, still extant in the very old rock-inscriptions of south Arabia. The hybridism of the Abyssinians is reflected in their political and social institutions, and especially in their religious beliefs and practices. On a seething mass of African heathendom, already in early times affected by primitive Semitic ideas, was suddenly imposed a form of Christianity which became the state religion. While the various ethnical elements have been merged in the composite Abyssinian nation, the primitive and more advanced religious ideas have nowhere been fused in a uniform Christian system. Foreigners are often surprised at the strange mixture of savagery and lofty notions in a Christian community which, for instance, accounts accidental manslaughter as wilful murder. Recourse is still had to dreams as a means of detecting crime. A priest is summoned, and, if his prayers and curses fail, a small boy is drugged, and “whatever person he dreams of is fixed on as the criminal . . . . If the boy does not dream of the person whom the priest has determined on as the criminal, he is kept under drugs until he does what is required of him” (Count Gleichen, With the Mission to Menelik , chap. xvi., 1898). The Abyssinian character reflects the country’s history. Murders and executions are frequent, yet cruelty is not a marked feature of their character; and in war they seldom kill their prisoners. When a man 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 natural indolence of the people has been fostered by the constant wars, which have discouraged peaceful occupations. The soldiers live by plunder, the monks by alms. The haughtiest Abyssinian is not above begging, excusing himself with the remark, “God has given us speech for the purpose of begging.” The Abyssinians are vain and selfish, irritable but easily appeased; and are an intelligent bright people, fond of gaiety. On every festive occasion, as a saint’s day, birth, marriage, &c., it is customary for a rich man to collect his friends and neighbours, and kill a cow and one or two sheep. The principal parts of the cow are eaten raw while yet warm and quivering, the remainder being cut into small pieces and cooked with the favourite sauce of butter and red pepper paste. The raw meat eaten in this way is considered to be very superior in taste and much more tender than when cold. The statement by James Bruce respecting the cutting of steaks from a live cow has frequently been called in question, but there can be no doubt that Bruce actually saw what he narrates. Mutton and goat’s flesh are the meats most eaten: pork is avoided on religious grounds, and the hare is never touched, possibly, as in other countries, from superstition. Many forms of game are forbidden; for example, all water-fowl. The principal drinks are mēse , a kind of mead, and bousa , a sort of beer made from fermented cakes. The Abyssinians are heavy eaters and drinkers, and any occasion is seized as an excuse for a carouse. Old and young, of both sexes, pass days and nights in these symposia , at which special customs and rules prevail. Little bread is eaten, the Abyssinian preferring a thin cake of durra meal or teff , kneaded with water and exposed to the sun till the dough begins to rise, when it is baked. Salt is a luxury; “he eats salt” being said of a spendthrift. Bars of rock-salt, after serving as coins, are, when broken up, used as food. There is a general looseness of morals: marriage is a very slight tie, which can be dissolved at any time by either husband or wife. Polygamy is by no means uncommon. Hence there is little family affection, and what exists is only between children of the same father and mother. Children of the same father, but of different mothers, are said to be “always enemies to each other.” (Samuel Gobat’s Journal of a Three Years’ Residence in Abyssinia , 1834.) The dress of the Abyssinians is much like that of the Arabs. It consists of close-fitting drawers reaching below the knees, with a sash to hold them, and a large white robe. The Abyssinian, however, is beginning to adopt European clothes on the upper part of the body, and European hats are becoming common. The Christian Abyssinians usually go barehead and barefoot, in contrast to the Mahommedans, who wear turbans and leather sandals. The women’s dress is a smock with sleeves loose to the wrist, where they fit tightly. The priests wear a white jacket with loose sleeves, a head-cloth like a turban and a special type of shoe with turned-up toes and soles projecting at the heel. In the Woldeba district hermits dress in ochre-yellow cloths, while the priests of some sects wear hides dyed red. Clothes are made of cotton, though the nobles and great people wear silk robes presented by the emperor as a mark of honour. The possessor of one of these is allowed to appear in the royal presence wearing it instead of having one shoulder bared, as is the usual Abyssinian method of showing respect. A high-born man covers himself to the mouth in the presence of inferiors. The men either cut their hair short or plait it; married women plait their hair and wind round the head a black or parti-coloured silk handkerchief; girls wear their hair short. In the hot season no Abyssinian goes without a flag-shaped fan of plaited rushes. The Christian Abyssinians, men and women, wear a blue silk cord round the neck, to which is often attached a crucifix. For ornament women wear silver ankle-rings with bells, silver necklaces and silver or gold rosettes in the ears. Silver rings on fingers and also on toes are common. The women are very fond of strong scents, which are generally oils imported from India and Ceylon. The men scarcely ever appear without a long curved knife, generally they carry shield and spear as well. Although the army has been equipped with modern rifles, the common weapon of the people is the matchlock, and slings are still in use. The original arms were a sickle-shaped sword, spear and shield. The Abyssinians are great hunters and are also clever at taming wild beasts. The nobles hunt antelopes with leopards, and giraffes and ostriches with horse and greyhound. In elephant-hunting iron bullets weighing a quarter of a pound are used; throwing-clubs are employed for small game, and lions are hunted with the spear. Lion skins belong to the emperor, but the slayer keeps a strip to decorate his shield. Stone and mortar are used in building, but the Abyssinian houses are of the roughest kind, being usually circular huts, ill made and thatched with grass. These huts are sometimes made simply of straw and are surrounded by high thorn hedges, but, in the north, square houses, built in stories, flat-roofed, the roof sometimes laid at the same slope as the hillside, and some with pitched thatched roofs, are common. The inside walls are plastered with cow-dung, clay and finely chopped straw. None of the houses have chimneys, and smoke soon colours the interior a dark brown. Generally the houses are filthy and ill ventilated and swarm with vermin. Drainage and sanitary arrangements do not exist. The caves of the highlands are often used as dwellings. The most remarkable buildings in Abyssinia are certain churches hewn out of the solid rock. The chief native industries are leather-work, embroidery and filigree metal-work; and the weaving of straw mats and baskets is extensively practised. The baskets are particularly well made, and are frequently used to contain milk. Abyssinian art is crude and is mainly reserved for rough frescoes in the churches. These frescoes, however, often exhibit considerable skill, and are indicative of the lively imagination of their painters. They are in the Byzantine style and the colouring is gaudy. Saints and good people are always depicted full face, the devil and all bad folk are shown in profile. Among the finest frescoes are those in the church of the Holy Trinity at Adowa and those in the church at Kwarata, on the shores of Lake Tsana. The churches are usually circular in form, the walls of stone, the roof thatched. The chief musical instruments are rough types of trumpets and flutes, drums, tambourines and cymbals, and quadrangular harps. History (12) Abyssinia, or at least the northern portion of it, was included in the tract of country known to the ancients as Ethiopia, the northern limits of which reached at one time to about Syene. The connexion 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 civilization 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 Abyssinian tradition the queen of Sheba who visited Solomon was a monarch of their country, and from their son Menelek the kings of Abyssinia claim descent. During the Captivity many of the Jews settled here and brought with them a knowledge of the Jewish religion. Under the Ptolemies, the arts as well as the enterprise of the Greeks entered Ethiopia, and led to the establishment of Greek colonies. A Greek inscription at Adulis, no longer extant, but copied by Cosmas of Alexandria, and preserved in his Topographia Christiana , records that Ptolemy Euergetes, the third of the Greek dynasty in Egypt, invaded the countries on both sides of the Red Sea, and having reduced most of the provinces of Tigré to subjection, returned to the port of Adulis, and there offered sacrifices to Jupiter, Mars and Neptune. Another inscription, not so ancient, found at Axum, states that Aizanas, king of the Axumites, the Homerites, &c., conquered the nation of the Bogos, and returned thanks to his father, the god Mars, for his victory. Out of these Greek colonies appears to have arisen the kingdom of Auxume which flourished from the 1st to the 7th century A.D. and was at one time nearly coextensive with Abyssinia proper. The capital Auxume and the seaport Adulis were then the chief centres of the trade with the interior of Africa in gold dust, ivory, leather, aromatics, &c. At Axum, the site of the ancient capital, many vestiges of its former greatness still exist; and the ruins of Adulis, which was once a seaport on the bay of Annesley, are now about 4 m. from the shore (see Ethiopia , The Axumite Kingdom .) (13) Christianity was introduced into the country by Frumentius ( q.v. ), who was consecrated first bishop of Ethiopia by St Athanasius of Alexandria about A.D. 330. From the scanty evidence available it would appear that the new religion at first made little progress, and the Introduction of Christianity. Axumite kings seem to have been among the latest converts. Towards the close of the 5th century a great company of monks are believed to have 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 the early part of the 6th century the king of the Homerites, on the opposite coast of the Red Sea, having persecuted the Christians, the emperor Justinian I. requested the king of Auxume, Caleb or El-Esbaha, to avenge their cause. He accordingly collected an army, crossed over into Arabia, and conquered Yemen ( c . 525), which remained subject to Ethiopia for about fifty 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. Their expulsion from Arabia, followed by the conquest of Egypt by the Mahommedans in the middle of the 7th century, changed this state of affairs, and the continued advances of the followers of the Prophet at length cut them off from almost every means of communication with the civilized world; so that, as Gibbon says, “encompassed by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept for near a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten.” About A.D. 1000, a Jewish princess, Judith, conceived the design of murdering all the members of the royal family, and of establishing herself in their stead. During the execution of this project, the infant king was carried off by some faithful adherents, and conveyed to Shoa, where his authority was acknowledged, while Judith reigned for forty years over the rest of the kingdom, and transmitted the crown to her descendants. In 1268 the kingdom was restored to the royal house in the person of Yekūnō Amlāk. (14) Towards the close of the 15th century the Portuguese missions into Abyssinia began. A belief had long prevailed in Europe of the existence of a Christian kingdom in the far east, whose monarch was known as Prester John, and various expeditions had been sent in quest of it. Among others who had engaged in this search was Pedro de Covilham, who Portuguese Influence. arrived in Abyssinia in 1490, and, believing that he had at length reached the far-famed kingdom, presented to the negūs, or emperor of the country, a letter from his master the king of Portugal, addressed to Prester John. Covilham remained in the country, but in 1507 an Armenian named Matthew was sent by the negūs to the king of Portugal to request his aid against the Mahommedans. 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 negūs, Lebna Dengel Dawit (David) II., and remained in Abyssinia for about six years. One of this embassy was Father Francisco Alvarez, from whom we have the earliest and not the least interesting account of the country. Between 1528 and 1540 armies of Mahommedans, under the renowned general Mahommed Gran (or Granyé, probably a Somali or a Galla), entered Abyssinia from the low country to the south-east, and overran the kingdom, obliging the emperor to take refuge in the mountain fastnesses. In this extremity recourse was again had to the Portuguese. John Bermudez, a subordinate member of the mission of 1520, who had remained in the country after the departure of the embassy, was, according to his own statement (which is untrustworthy), ordained successor to the abuna (archbishop), and sent to Lisbon. Bermudez certainly came to Europe, but with what credentials is not known. Be that as it may, a Portuguese fleet, under the command of Stephen da Gama, was sent from India and arrived at Massawa in February 1541. Here he received an ambassador from the negūs beseeching him to send help against the Moslems, and in the July following a force of 450 musqueteers, under the command of Christopher da Gama, younger brother of the admiral, marched into the interior, and being joined by native troops were at first successful against the enemy; but they were subsequently defeated, and their commander taken prisoner and put to death (August 1542). On the 21st of February 1543, however, Mahommed Granyé was shot in an engagement and his forces totally routed. After this, quarrels arose between the negūs and Bermudez, who had returned to Abyssinia with Christopher da Gama and who now wished the emperor publicly to profess himself a convert to Rome. This the negūs refused to do, and at length Bermudez was obliged to make his way out of the country. The Jesuits who had accompanied or followed the da Gama expedition into Abyssinia, and fixed their headquarters at Fremona (near Adowa), were oppressed and neglected, but not actually expelled. In the beginning of the 17th century Father Pedro Paez arrived at Fremona, a man of great tact and judgment, who soon rose into high favour at court, and gained over the emperor to his faith. He directed the erection of churches, palaces and bridges in different parts of the country, and carried out many useful works. His successor Mendez was a man of much less conciliatory manners, and the feelings of the people became strongly excited against the intruders, till at length, on the death of the negūs Sysenius, Socinius or Seged I., and the accession of his son Fasilidas in 1633, they were all sent out of the country, Visits of Poncet and Bruce. after having had a footing there for nearly a century and a half. The French physician C. J. Poncet, who went there in 1698, via Sennar and the Blue Nile, was the only European that afterwards visited the country before Bruce in 1769. James Bruce’s main object was to discover the sources of the Nile, which he was convinced lay in Abyssinia. Accordingly, leaving Massawa in September 1769, he travelled via Axum to Gondar, where he was well received by King Tekla Haimanot II. He accompanied the king on a warlike expedition round Lake Tsana, moving S. round the eastern shore, crossing the genuine Blue Nile (Abai) close to its point of issue from the lake and returning via the western shore. On a second expedition of his own he proved to his own satisfaction that the river originated some 40 miles S.W. of the lake at a place called Geesh (4th of November 1770). He showed that this river flowed into the lake, and left it by its now well-known outlet. Bruce subsequently returned to Egypt (end of 1772) via Gondar, the upper Atbara, Sennar, the Nile and the Korosko desert (see Bruce, James ). (15) In order to attain a clear view of native Abyssinian history, as distinct from the visits and influence of Europeans, it must be borne in mind that during the last three hundred years, and indeed for a longer period, for the old chroniclers may be trusted to have given a somewhat distorted view of the importance of the particular chieftains with whom they came in contact, the country has been merely a conglomeration of provinces and districts, ill defined, loosely connected and generally at war with each other. Position of the negūs negusti. Of these the chief provinces have been Tigré (northern), Amhara (central) and Shoa (southern). The seat of government, or rather of overlordship, has usually been in Amhara, the ruler of which, calling himself negūs negusti (king of kings, or emperor), has exacted tribute, when he could, from the other provinces. The title of negūs negusti has been to a considerable extent based on the blood in the veins of the claimant. All the emperors have based their claims on their direct descent from Solomon and the queen of Sheba; but it is needless to say that in many, if not in most, cases their success has been due more to the force of their arms than to the purity of their lineage. Some of the rulers of the larger provinces have at times been given, or have given themselves, the title of negūs or king, so that on occasion as many as three, or even more, negūses have been reigning at the same time; and this must be borne in mind by the student of Abyssinian history in order to avoid confusion of rulers. The whole history of the country is in fact one gloomy record of internecine wars, barbaric deeds and unstable governments, of adventurers usurping thrones, only to be themselves unseated, and of raids, rapine and pillage. Into this chaos enter from time to time broad rays of sunshine, the efforts of a few enlightened monarchs to evolve order from disorder, and to supply to their people the blessings of peace and civilization. Bearing these matters in mind, we find that during the 18th century the most prominent and beneficent rulers were the emperor Yesu of Gondar, who died about 1720, Sebastié, negūs of Shoa (1703–1718), Amada Yesus of Shoa, who extended his kingdom and founded Ankober (1743–1774), Tekla Giorgis of Amhara (1770–1798?) and Asfa Nassen of Shoa (1774–1807), the latter being especially renowned as a wise and benevolent monarch. The first years of the 19th century were disturbed by fierce campaigns between Guxa, ras of Gondar, and Wolda Selassié, ras of Tigré, who were both striving for the crown of Guxa’s master, the emperor Eguala Izeion. Wolda Selassié was eventually the victor, and practically ruled the whole country till his death in 1816 at the age of eighty. (16) Mention must here be made of the first British mission, under Lord Valentia and Mr Henry Salt, which was sent in 1805 to conclude an alliance with Abyssinia, and obtain a port on the Red Sea in case France secured Egypt by dividing up the Turkish empire with Russia. British mission and missionary enterprise. This mission was succeeded by many travellers, missionaries and merchants of all countries, and the stream of Europeans continued until well into Theodore’s reign. For convenience' sake we insert at this point a partial list of missionaries and others who visited the country during the second third of the 19th century—merely calling attention to the fact that their visits were distributed over widely different parts of the country, ruled by distinct lines of monarchs or governors. In 1830 Protestant missionary enterprise was begun by Samuel Gobat and Christian Kugler, who were sent out by the Church 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 C. W. Isenberg, who was followed by Dr Ludwig Krapf, the discoverer of Mount Kenya, and others. Mr (afterwards Bishop) Gobat proceeded to Gondar, where he also met with a favourable reception. In 1833 he returned to Europe, and published a journal of his residence in Abyssinia. In 1834 Gobat went back to Tigré, but in 1836 ill health compelled him to leave. In 1838 other missionaries were obliged to leave the country, owing to the opposition of the native priests. Messrs Isenberg and Krapf went south, and established themselves at Shoa. The former soon after returned to England, but Mr Krapf remained in Shoa till March 1842, when he removed to Mombasa. Dr E. Ruppell, the German naturalist, visited the country in 1831, and remained nearly two years. M. E. Combes and M. Tamisier arrived at Massawa in 1835, and visited districts which had not been traversed by Europeans since the time of the Portuguese. One who did much at the time to extend our geographical knowledge of the country was Dr C. T. Beke ( q.v. ), who was there from 1840 to 1843. Mr Mansfield Parkyns was there from 1843 to 1846, and wrote the most interesting book on the country since the time of Bruce. Bishop Gobat having conceived the idea of sending lay missionaries into the country, who would engage in secular occupations as well as carry on missionary work, Dr Krapf returned to Abyssinia in 1855 with Mr Flad as pioneers of that mission; Krapf, however, was not permitted to remain in the country. Six lay workers came out at first, and they were subsequently joined by others. Their secular work, however, appears to have been more valuable to Theodore than their preaching, so that he employed them as workmen to himself, and established them at Gaffat, near his capital. Mr Stern arrived in Abyssinia in 1860, and after a visit to Europe returned in 1863, accompanied by Mr and Mrs Rosenthal. [ 1 ] (17) Wolda Selassié of Tigré was succeeded in 1817, through force of arms, by Sabagadis of Agamé, and the latter, as ras of Tigré, introduced various Englishmen, whom he much admired, into the country. He increased the prosperity of his land considerably, but by so doing roused the jealousy of Ras Marié of Amhara—to whom he had refused tribute—and Ubié, son of Hailo Mariam, a governor of Simen. Rivalry of British and French factions. In an ensuing battle (in January 1831), both Sabagadis and Marié were killed, and Ubié retired to watch events from his own province. Marié was shortly succeeded in the ras-ship of Amhara by Ali, a nephew of Guxa and a Mahommedan. But Ubié, who was aiming at the crown, soon attacked Ras Ali, and after several indecisive campaigns proclaimed himself negūs of Tigré. To him came many French missionaries and travellers, chief of whom were Lieut. Lefebvre, charged (1839) with political and geographical missions, and Captains Galinier and Ferret, who completed for him a useful triangulation and survey of Tigré and Simen (1840–1842). The brothers Antoine and Arnaud d’Abbadie ( q.v. ) spent ten years (1838–1848) in the country, making scientific investigations of great value, and also involving themselves in the stormy politics of the country. Northern Abyssinia was now divided into two camps, the one, Amhara and Ras Ali, under Protestant British, and the other, Tigré and Ubié, under Roman Catholic French, influence. The latent hostility between the two factions threatened at one time to develop into a religious war, but no serious campaigns took place until Kassa (later Theodore) appeared on the scene. (18) Lij (＝Mr) Kassa was born in Kwara, a small district of Western Amhara, in 1818. His father was a small local chief, and his uncle was governor of the districts of Dembea, Kwara and Chelga between Lake Tsana and the undefined N.W. frontier. He was educated in a monastery, but preferred a more active life, and by his talents Rise of the emperor Theodore. and energy came rapidly to the front. On the death of his uncle he was made chief of Kwara, but in consequence of the arrest of his brother Bilawa by Ras Ali, he raised the standard of revolt against the latter, and, collecting a large force, repeatedly beat the troops that were sent against him by the ras (1841–1847). On one occasion peace was restored by his receiving Tavavich, daughter of Ras Ali, in marriage; and this lady is said to have been a good and wise counsellor during her lifetime. He next turned his arms against the Turks, in the direction of Massawa, but was defeated; and the mother of Ras Ali having insulted him in his fallen condition, he proclaimed his independence. As his power was increasing, to the detriment of both Ras Ali and Ubié, these two princes combined against him, but were heavily defeated by him at Gorgora (on the southern shore of Lake Tsana) in 1853. Ubié retreated to Tigré, and Ras Ali fled to Begemeder, where he eventually died. Kassa now ruled in Amhara, but his ambition was to attain to supreme power, and Growing power of Shoa. he turned his attention to conquering the remaining chief divisions of the country, Gojam, Tigré and Shoa, which still remained unsubdued. Berro, ras of Gojam, in order to save himself, attempted to combine with Tigré, but his army was intercepted by Kassa and totally destroyed, himself being taken prisoner and executed (May 1854). Shortly afterwards Kassa moved against Tigré, defeated Ubié’s forces at Deragié, in Simen (February 1855), took their chief prisoner and proclaimed himself negūs negusti of Ethiopia under the name of Theodore III. He now turned his attention to Shoa. (19) Retracing our steps for a moment in that direction, we find that in 1813 Sahela (or Sella) Selassié, younger son of the preceding ras, Wassen Seged, had proclaimed himself negūs or king. His reign was long and beneficent. He restored the towns of Debra-Berhan and Angolala, and founded Entotto, the strong stone-built town whose ruins overlook the modern capital, Adis Ababa. In the terrible “famine of St Luke” in 1835, Selassié still further won the hearts of his subjects by his wise measures and personal generosity; and by extending his hospitality to Europeans, he brought his country within the closer ken of civilized European powers. During his reign he received the missions of Major W. Cornwallis Harris, sent by the governor-general of India (1841), and M. Rochet d’Héricourt, sent by Louis Philippe (1843), with both of whom he concluded friendly treaties on behalf of their respective governments. He also wrote to Pope Pius IX., asking that a Roman Catholic bishop should be sent to him. This request was acceded to, and the pope despatched Monsignor Massaja to Shoa. But before the prelate could reach the country, Selassié was dead (1847), leaving his eldest son, Haeli Melicoth, to succeed him. Melicoth at once proclaimed himself negūs, and by sending for Massaja, who had arrived at Gondar, gave rise to the suspicion that he wished to have himself crowned as emperor. By increasing his dominions at the expense of the Gallas, he still further roused the jealousy of the northerners, and a treaty which he concluded with Ras Ali against Kassa in 1850 determined the latter to crush him at the earliest opportunity. Thus it was that in 1855 Kassa, under the name of the emperor Theodore, advanced against Shoa with a large army. Dissensions broke out among the Shoans, and after a desperate and futile attack on Theodore at Debra-Berhan, Haeli Melicoth died of exhaustion and fever, nominating with his last breath his eleven-year-old son Menelek [ 2 ] as successor (November 1855). Darge, Haeli’s brother, took charge of the young prince, but after a hard fight with Angeda, one of Theodore’s rases, was obliged to capitulate. Menelek was handed over to the negūs, taken to Gondar, and there trained in Theodore’s service. (20) Theodore was now in the zenith of his career. He is described as being generous to excess, free from cupidity, merciful to his vanquished enemies, and strictly continent, but subject to violent bursts of anger and possessed of unyielding pride and fanatical religious zeal. He was also a man of education and intelligence, superior to those among whom he lived, with natural talents for governing and gaining the esteem of others. He had, further, a noble bearing and majestic walk, a frame capable of enduring any amount of fatigue, and is said to have been “the best shot, the best spearman, the best runner, and the best horseman in Abyssinia.” Had he contented himself with the sovereignty of Amhara and Tigré, he might have maintained his position; but he was led to exhaust his strength against the Wollo Gallas, which was probably one of the chief causes of his ruin. He obtained several victories over that people, ravaged their country, took possession of Magdala, which he afterwards made his principal stronghold, and enlisted many of the chiefs and their followers in his own ranks. As has been shown, he also reduced the kingdom of Shoa, and took Ankober, 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 Tavavich was now dead. The British consul, Walter C. Plowden, who was strongly attached to Theodore, having been ordered by his government in 1860 to return to Massawa, was attacked on his way by a rebel named Garred, mortally wounded, and taken prisoner. Theodore attacked the rebels, Theodore’s quarrel with Great Britain. and in the action the murderer of Mr Plowden was slain by his friend and companion Mr J. T. Bell , an engineer, 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 C. D. Cameron was appointed to succeed him as consul, and arrived at Massawa 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 sent home by Theodore, with a letter to the queen of England, which reached the Foreign Office on the 12th of February 1863. This letter was put aside and no answer returned, and to this in no small degree are to be attributed the difficulties that subsequently arose with that country. In November despatches were received from England, but no answer to the emperor’s letter, and this, together with a visit paid by Captain Cameron to the Egyptian frontier town of Kassala, greatly offended him; accordingly in January 1864 Captain Cameron and his suite, with Messrs Stern and Rosenthal, were cast into prison. When the news of this reached England, the government resolved, when too late, to send an answer to the emperor’s letter, and selected Mr Hormuzd Rassam to be its bearer. He arrived at Massawa in July 1864, and immediately despatched a messenger requesting permission to present himself before the emperor. Neither to this nor a subsequent application was any answer returned till August 1865, when a curt note was received, stating that Consul Cameron had been released, and if Mr Rassam still desired to visit the king, he was to proceed by the route of Gallabat. Later in the year Theodore became more civil, and the British party on arrival at the king’s camp in Damot, on the 25th of January 1866, were received with all honour, and were afterwards sent to Kwarata, on Lake Tsana, there to await the arrival of the captives. The latter reached Kwarata on the 12th of March, and everything appeared to proceed favourably. A month later they started for the coast, but had not proceeded far when they were all brought back and put into confinement. Theodore then wrote a letter to the queen, requesting European workmen and machinery to be sent to him, and despatched it by Mr Flad. The Europeans, although detained as prisoners, were not at first unkindly treated; but in the end of June they were sent to Magdala, where they were soon afterwards put in chains. They suffered hunger, cold and misery, and were in constant fear of death, till the spring of 1868 when they were relieved by the British troops. (21) In the meantime the power of Theodore in the country was rapidly waning. Shoa had already shaken off his yoke; Gojam was virtually independent; Walkeit and Simen were under a rebel chief; and Lasta, Waag and the country about Lake Ashangi had submitted to Wagshum Gobassié, who had also overrun Tigré and appointed Dejaj Kassai his governor. The latter, however, in 1867 rebelled against his master and assumed the supreme power of that province. This was the state of matters when the English troops made their appearance in the country. With a view if possible to effect the release of the prisoners by conciliatory measures, Mr Flad was sent back, with some artisans and machinery, and a letter from the queen, stating that these would be handed over to his majesty on the release of the prisoners and their return to Massawa. This, however, failed to influence the emperor, and the English government at length saw that they must have recourse to arms. In July 1867, therefore, it was resolved to send an army into Abyssinia to enforce the release of the captives, under Sir Robert Napier (1st Baron Napier of Magdala). The landing-place selected was Mulkutto (Zula), on Annesley Bay, the point of the coast nearest to the site of the ancient Adulis, and we are told that “the pioneers of the English expedition followed to some extent in the footsteps of the adventurous Sir Robert Napier’s expedition. soldiers of Ptolemy, and met with a few faint traces of this old-world enterprise” (C. R. Markham). The force amounted to upwards of 16,000 men, besides 12,640 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 mountainous 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 the 7th of January 1868, and soon after the troops began to move forward through the pass of Senafé, and southward through the districts of Agamé, Tera, Endarta, Wojerat, Lasta and Wadela. In the meantime Theodore had been reduced to great straits. His army, which at one time numbered over 100,000 men, 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. During this march he displayed an amount of engineering skill in the construction of roads, of military talent and fertility of resource, that excited the admiration and astonishment of his enemies. On the afternoon of the 10th of April a force of about 3000 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 honourable treatment. The captives were liberated and sent away, and accompanying a letter to the English general was a present of 1000 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 subsequently returned. The same day (13th April) Magdala was stormed and taken, practically without loss, and within they found the dead body of the emperor, who had fallen by his own hand. The inhabitants and troops were subsequently sent away, the fortifications destroyed and the town burned. The queen Terunish having expressed her wish to go back to her own country, accompanied the British army, but died during the march, and her son Alamayahu, the only legitimate son of the emperor, was brought to England, as this was the desire of his father. [ 3 ] The success of the expedition was in no small degree owing to the aid afforded by the several native chiefs through whose country it passed, and no one did more in this way than Dejaj Kassa or Kassai of Tigré. In acknowledgment of this, several pieces of ordnance, small arms and ammunition, with much of the surplus stores, were handed over to him, and the English troops left the country in May 1868. (22) It is now time to return to the story of the young prince Menelek, who, as we have seen, had been nominated by his late father as ruler of Shoa, but was in Theodore’s power in Tigré. The following table shows his descent since the beginning of the 19th century:— Menelek II., king of Shoa. Asfa Nassen, d. 1807 Wassan Seged d. 1811 Woizero Zenebe Work Becurraye Sella Selassié (1795–1847) Woizero Betsabesh Haeli Melicoth (1825–1855) Ejigayu Siefu (1826–1860) Dargé b. 1827 Mashashä Menelek II. b. 1844 Taïtu 1 son (dead) Zauditu (Judith) Tanina Work (daughter) On the retirement of Theodore’s forces from Shoa in 1855, Siefu, brother of Haeli Melicoth, proclaimed himself negūs of Shoa at Ankober, and beat the local representatives of the northern government. The emperor returned, however, in 1858, and after several repulses succeeded in entering Ankober, where he behaved with great cruelty, murdering or mutilating all the inhabitants. Siefu kept up a gallant defence for two more years, but was then killed by Kebret, one of his own chiefs. Thus chaos again reigned supreme in Shoa. In 1865, Menelek, now a dejazmach [ 4 ] of Tigré, took advantage of Theodore’s difficulties with the British government and escaped to Workitu, queen of the Wollo Galla country. The emperor, who held as hostage a son of Workitu, threatened to kill the boy unless Menelek were given up; but the gallant queen refused, and lost both her son and her throne. The fugitive meanwhile arrived safely in Shoa, and was there acclaimed as negūs. For the next three years Menelek devoted himself to strengthening and disciplining his army, to legislation, to building towns, such as Liché (near Debra-Berhan), Worra Hailu (Wollo Galla country), &c., and to repelling the incursions of the Gallas. On the death of Theodore (13th April 1868) many Shoans, including Ras Dargé, were released, and Menelek began to feel himself strong King John attains supreme power. enough, after a few preliminary minor campaigns, to undertake offensive operations against the northern princes. But these projects were of little avail, for Kassai of Tigré, as above mentioned, had by this time (1872) risen to supreme power in the north. With the help of the rifles and guns presented to him by the British, he had beaten Ras Bareya of Tigré, Wagshum Gobassié of Amhara and Tekla Giorgis of Gondar , and after proclaiming himself negūs negusti under the name of Johannes or John, was now preparing to march on Shoa. Here, however, Menelek was saved from probable destruction through the action of Egypt. This power had, by the advice of Werner Munzinger ( q.v. ), their Swiss governor of Massawa, seized and occupied in 1872 the northern province of Bogos; and, later on, insisted on occupying Hamasen also, for fear Bogos should be attacked. John, after futile protests, collected an army, and with the assistance of Ras Walad Michael, hereditary chief of Bogos, advanced against the Egyptian forces, who were under the command of one Arendrup, a Dane. Meeting near the Mareb, the Egyptians were beaten in detail, and almost annihilated at Gundet (13th November 1875). An avenging expedition was prepared in the spring of the following year, and, numbering 14,000 men under Ratib Pasha, Loring (American), and Prince Hassan, advanced to Gura and fortified a position in the neighbourhood. Although reinforced by Walad Michael, who had now quarrelled with John, the Egyptians were a second time (25th March 1876) heavily beaten by the Abyssinians, and retired, losing an enormous quantity of both men and rifles. Colonel C. G. Gordon, governor-general of the Sudan, was now ordered to go and make peace with John, but the king had moved south with his army, intending to punish Menelek for having raided Gondar whilst he, John, was engaged with the Egyptians. (23) Menelek’s kingdom was meanwhile torn in twain by serious dissensions, which had been instigated by his concubine Bafana. This lady, to whom he was much attached, had been endeavouring to secure the succession of one of her own sons to the throne of Shoa, and had almost succeeded in getting rid of Mashasha, son of Siefu and cousin of Menelek, who was the apparent heir. On the approach of John, the Shoans united for a time against their common enemy. But after a few skirmishes they melted away, and Menelek was obliged to submit and do obeisance to John. The latter behaved with much generosity, but at the same time imposed terms which effectually deprived Shoa of her independence (March 1878). In 1879 Gordon was sent on a fresh mission to John on behalf of Egypt; but he was treated with scant courtesy, and was obliged to leave the country without achieving anything permanent. The Italians now come on the scene. Assab, a port near the southern entrance of the Red Sea, had been bought from the local sultan in March 1870 by an Italian company, which, after acquiring more land in 1879 and 1880, was bought out by the Italian government in 1882. In this year Count Pietro Antonelli was despatched to Beginning of Italian influence. Shoa in order to improve the prospects of the colony by treaties with Menelek and the sultan of Aussa. Several missions followed upon this one, with more or less successful results; but both John and Menelek became uneasy when Beilul, a port to the north of Assab Bay, was occupied by the Italians in January 1885, and Massawa taken over by them from Egypt in the following month. This latter act was greatly resented by the Abyssinians, for by a treaty concluded with a British and Egyptian mission under Admiral Hewett and Mason Pasha [ 5 ] in the previous year, free transit of goods was to be allowed through this port. Matters came to a head in January 1887, when the Abyssinians, in consequence of a refusal from General Gené to withdraw his troops, surrounded and attacked a detachment of 500 Italian troops at Dogali, killing more than 400 of them. Reinforcements were sent from Italy, whilst in the autumn the British government stepped in and tried to mediate by means of a mission under Mr (afterwards Sir Gerald) Portal. His mission, however proved abortive, and after many difficulties and dangers he returned to Egypt at the end of the year. In April 1888 the Italian forces, numbering over 20,000 men, came into touch with the Abyssinian army; but negotiations took the place of fighting, with the result that both forces retired, the Italians only leaving some 5000 troops in Eritrea, as their colony was now called. Meanwhile John had not been idle with regard to the dervishes, who had in the meantime become masters of the Egyptian Sudan. Although he had set his troops in motion too late to relieve Kassala, Ras Alula, his chief general, had succeeded in inflicting a handsome defeat on Osman Digna at Kufit in September 1885. Fighting between the dervishes and the Abyssinians continued, and in August 1887 the dervishes entered and sacked Gondar. After some delay, King John took the field in force against the enemy, who were still harassing the north-west of his territory. A great battle ensued at Gallabat, in which the dervishes, under Zeki Tumal, were beaten. But a stray bullet struck the king, and the Abyssinians decided to retire. The king died during the night, and his body fell into the hands of the enemy (9th March 1889). (24) Immediately the news of John’s death reached Menelek, he proclaimed himself emperor, and received the submission of Gondar, Gojam and several other provinces. In common with other northern princes, Mangasha, reputed son and heir of King John, with the yellow-eyed Ras Alula, [ 6 ] refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of Menelek emperor. Menelek; but, on the latter marching against them in the following January with a large army, they submitted. As it happened, Count Antonelli was with Menelek when he claimed the throne, and promptly concluded (2nd of May 1889) with him on behalf of Italy a friendly treaty, to be known hereafter as the famous Uccialli treaty. In consequence of this the Italians occupied Asmara, made friends with Mangasha and received Ras Makonnen, [ 7 ] Menelek’s nephew, as his plenipotentiary in Italy. Thus it seemed as though hostilities between the two countries had come to a definite end, and that peace was assured in the land. For the next three years the land was fairly quiet, the chief political events being the convention (6th February 1891) between Italy and Abyssinia, protocols between Italy and Great Britain (24th March and 15th April 1891) and a proclamation by Menelek (10th April 1891), all on the subject of boundaries. As, however, the Italians became more and more friendly with Mangasha and Tigré the apprehensions of Menelek increased, till at last, in February 1893, he wrote denouncing the Uccialli treaty, which differed in the Italian and Amharic versions. According to the former, the negūs was bound to make use of Italy as a channel for communicating with other powers, whereas the Amharic version left it optional. Meanwhile the dervishes were threatening Eritrea. A fine action by Colonel Arimondi gained Agordat for Italy (21st December 1893), and a brilliant march by Colonel Baratieri resulted in the acquisition of Kassala (17th July 1894). On his return Baratieri found that Mangasha was intriguing with the dervishes, and had actually crossed the frontier with a large army. At Koatit and Senafé (13th to 15th January 1895) Mangasha was met and heavily defeated by Baratieri, who occupied Adrigat in March. But as the year wore on the Italian commander pushed his forces unsupported too far to the south. Menelek was advancing with a large army in national support of Mangasha, and the subsequent reverses at Amba Alagi (7th December 1895) and Macalle (23rd January 1896) forced the Italians to fall back. Reinforcements of many thousands were meanwhile arriving at Massawa, and in February Baratieri took the field at the head of over 13,000 men. Menelek’s army, amounting to about 90,000, had during this time advanced, and was occupying a strong position at Abba Garima, near Adua (or Adowa). Here Baratieri attacked him on the Battle of Adowa. 1st of March, but the difficulties of the country were great, and one of the four Italian brigades had pushed too far forward. This brigade was attacked by overwhelming numbers, and on the remaining brigades advancing in support, they were successively cut to pieces by the encircling masses of the enemy. The Italians lost over 4500 white and 2000 native troops killed and wounded, and over 2500 prisoners, of which 1600 were white, whilst the Abyssinians owned to a loss of over 3000. General Baldissera advanced with a large body of reinforcements to avenge this defeat, but the Abyssinians, desperately short of supplies, had already retired, and beyond the peaceful relief of Adrigat no further operations took place. It may here be remarked that the white prisoners taken by Menelek were exceedingly well treated by him, and that he behaved throughout the struggle with Italy with the greatest humanity and dignity. On the 26th of October following a provisional treaty of peace was concluded at Adis Ababa, annulling the treaty of Uccialli and recognizing the absolute independence of Abyssinia. This treaty was ratified, and followed by other treaties and agreements defining the Eritrean-Abyssinian and the Abyssinian-Italian Somaliland frontiers (see Italy , History , and Somaliland , Italian ). (25) The war, so disastrous to Italy, attracted the attention of all Europe to Abyssinia and its monarch, and numerous missions, two Russian, three French and one British, were despatched to the country, and hospitably received by Menelek. The British one, under Mr (afterwards Sir) Menelek as independent monarch. Rennell Rodd, concluded a friendly treaty with Abyssinia (15th of May 1897), but did not, except in the direction of Somaliland, touch on frontier questions, which for several years continued a subject of discussion. During the same year (1897) a small French expedition under Messrs Clochette and de Bonchamps endeavoured to reach the Nile, but, after surmounting many difficulties, stuck in the marshes of the Upper Sobat, and was obliged to return. Another expedition of Abyssinians, under Dejaj Tasamma and accompanied by three Europeans—Faivre (French), Potter (Swiss) and Artomonov (Russian)—started early in 1898, and reached the Nile at the Sobat mouth in June, a few days only before Major Marchand and his gallant companions arrived on the scene. But no contact was made, and the expedition returned to Abyssinia. In the same year Menelek proceeded northwards with a large army for the purpose of chastising Mangasha, who was again rebelling against his authority. After some trifling fighting Mangasha submitted, and Ras Makonnen despatched a force to subdue Beni Shangul, the chief of which gold country, Wad Tur el Guri, was showing signs of disaffection. This effected, the Abyssinians almost came into contact with the Egyptian troops sent up the Blue Nile (after the occupation of Khartum) to Famaka and towards Gallabat; but as both sides were anxious to avoid a collision over this latter town, no hostile results ensued. An excellent understanding was, in fact, established between these two contiguous countries, in spite of occasional disturbances by bandits on the frontier. On this frontier question, a treaty was concluded on the 15th of May 1902 between England and Abyssinia for the delimitation of the Sudan-Abyssinian frontier. Menelek, in addition, agreed not to obstruct the waters of Lake Tsana, the Blue Nile or the Sobat, so as not to interfere with the Nile irrigation question, and he also agreed to give a concession, if such should be required, for the construction of a British railway through his dominions, to connect the Sudan with Uganda. A combined British-Abyssinian expedition (Mr A. E. Butter’s) was despatched in 1901 to propose and survey a boundary between Abyssinia on the one side and British East Africa and Uganda on the other; and the report of the expedition was made public by the British government in November 1904. It was followed in 1908 by an agreement defining the frontiers concerned. (26) In 1899 the rebellion of the so-called “mad” mullah (Hajji Mahommed Abdullah) began on the borders of British Somaliland. An Abyssinian expedition was, at Great Britain’s request, sent against the mullah, but without much effect. In the spring and summer of 1901 a fresh expedition from Harrar was Co-operation with Britain against the Somali mullah. undertaken against the mullah, who was laying waste the Ogaden country. Two British officers accompanied this force, which was to co-operate with British troops advancing from Somaliland; but little was achieved by the Abyssinians, and after undergoing considerable privations and losses, and harassing the country generally, including that of some friendly tribes, it returned to Harrar. During the 1902–3 campaign of General (Sir) W. H. Manning, Menelek provided a force of 5000 to co-operate with the British and to occupy the Webi Shebeli and south-western parts of the Haud. This time the Abyssinians were more successful, and beat the rebels in a pitched fight; but the difficulties of the country again precluded effective co-operation. During General Egerton’s campaign (1903–4) yet another force of 5000 Abyssinians was despatched towards Somaliland. Accompanied by a few British officers, it worked its way southward, but did not contribute much towards the final solution. In any case, however, it is significant that the Abyssinians have repeatedly been willing to co-operate with the British away from their own country. Regarding the question of railways, the first concession for a railway from the coast at Jibuti (French Somaliland) to the interior was granted by Menelek to a French company in 1894. The company having met with numberless difficulties and financial troubles, the French government, on the extinction of the company’s funds, came Growth of European influence. to the rescue and provided money for the construction. (In the alternative British capitalists interested in the company would have obtained control of the line.) The French government’s help enabled the railway to be completed to Dire Dawa, 28 m. from Harrar, by the last day of 1902. Difficulties arose over the continuation of the railway to Adis Ababa and beyond, and the proposed internationalization of the line. These difficulties, which hindered the work of construction for years, were composed (so far as the European Powers interested were concerned) in 1906. By the terms of an Anglo-French-Italian agreement, signed in London on the 13th of December of that year, it was decided that the French company should build the railway as far as Adis Ababa, while railway construction west of that place should be under British auspices, with the stipulation that any railway connecting Italy’s possessions on the Red Sea with its Somaliland protectorate should be built under Italian auspices. A British, an Italian and an Abyssinian representative were to be appointed to the board of the French company, and a French director to the board of any British or Italian company formed. Absolute equality of treatment on the railway and at Jibuti was guaranteed to the commerce of all the Powers. Meanwhile the country slowly developed in parts and opened out cautiously to European influences. Most of the Powers appointed representatives at Menelek’s capital—the British minister-plenipotentiary and consul-general, Lieut.-Colonel Sir J. L. Harrington, having been appointed shortly after the British mission in 1897. In December 1903 an American mission visited Adis Ababa, and a commercial treaty between the United States and Abyssinia was signed. A German mission visited the country early in 1905 and also concluded a treaty of commerce with the negūs. Later in the year a German minister was appointed to the court of the emperor. After 1897 British influence in Abyssinia, owing largely no doubt to the conquest of the Sudan, the destruction of the dervish power and the result of the Fashoda incident, was sensibly on the increase. Of the remaining powers France occupied the most important position in the country. Ras Makonnen, the most capable and civilized of Menelek’s probable successors, died in March 1906, and Mangasha died later in the same year; the question of the succession therefore opened up the possibility that, in spite of recent civilizing influences, Abyssinia might still relapse in the future into its old state of conflict. The Anglo-French-Italian agreement of December 1906 contained provisions in view of this contingency. The preamble of the document declared that it was the common interest of the three Powers “to maintain intact the integrity of Ethiopia,” and Article I. provided for their co-operation in maintaining “the political and territorial status quo in Ethiopia.” Should, however, the status quo be disturbed, the powers were to concert to safeguard their special interests. The terms of the agreement were settled in July 1906, and its text forthwith communicated to the negūs. After considerable hesitation Menelek sent, early in December, a note to the powers, in which, after thanking them for their intentions, he stipulated that the agreement should not in any way limit his own sovereign rights. In June 1908, by the nomination of his grandson, Lij Yasu (b. 1896), as his heir, the emperor endeavoured to end the rivalry between various princes claiming the succession to the throne. (See Menelek .) A convention with Italy, concluded in the same year, settled the frontier questions outstanding with that country. ( G.* ) Bibliography .—For general information see A. B. Wylde’s Modern Abyssinia (London, 1901), a volume giving the result of many years’ acquaintance with the country and people; Voyage en Abyssinie . . . 1839–43, par une commission scientifique , by Th. Lefebvre and others (6 vols. and atlas, 3 vols., Paris, 1845–54); Elisée Reclus, Nouvelle géographie universelle , vol. x. chap. v. (Paris, 1885). For latest geographical and kindred information consult the Geographical Journal (London), especially “A Journey through Abyssinia,” vol. xv. (1900), and “Exploration in the Abai Basin,” vol. xxvii. (1906), both by H. Weld Blundell, and “From the Somali Coast through S. Ethiopia to the Sudan,” vol. xx. (1902), by C. Neumann; Antoine d’Abbadie, Géographie de l’Ethiopie (Paris, 1890). The British parliamentary paper Africa , No. 13 (1904), is a report on the survey of the S.E. frontier by Capt. P. Maud, R.E., and contains a valuable map. For geology, &c., see W. T. Blanford, Observations on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia (London, 1870); C. Futterer, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Jura in Ost-Afrika,” Zeit. Deutsch. Geol. Gesell . xlix. p. 568 (1897); C. A. Raisin, “Rocks from Southern Abyssinia,” Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. lix. pp. 292-306 (1903). Among works by travellers describing the country are—James Bruce’s Travels to discover the Source of the Nile [1768–1773] (Edinburgh, 1813, 3rd ed., 8 vols.); The Highlands of Aethiopia (3 vols., London, 1844), by Sir W. Cornwallis Harris, dealing with the Danakil country, Harrar and Shoa; Mansfield Parkyns, Life in Abyssinia; being notes collected during three years’ residence and travels (2nd ed., London, 1868); Antoine d’Abbadie, Douze ans dans La Haute-Ethiopie (Paris, 1868); P. H. G. Powell-Cotton, A Sporting Trip through Abyssinia (London, 1902); A. Donaldson Smith, Through Unknown African Countries (London, 1897); M. S. Wellby, ’ Twixt Sirdar and Menelik (London, 1901). For history see—A. M. H. J. Stokvis’ Manuel d’histoire , vol. i. pp. 439-46, and vol. ii. pp. lxxiv-v (Leiden, 1888–89), which contains lists of the sovereigns of Abyssinia, Shoa and Harrar, from the earliest times, with brief notes. Texts of treaties between Abyssinia and the European Powers up to 1896 will be found in vol. i. of Sir E. Hertslet’s The Map of Africa by Treaty (London, 1896). L. J. Morié’s Histoire de l’Ethiopie: Tome ii, “L’Abyssinie” (Paris, 1904), is a comprehensive survey (the views on modern affairs being coloured by a strong anti-British bias). For more detailed historical study consult C. Beccari’s Notizia e Saggi di opere e documenti inediti riguardanti la Storia di Etiopia durante i Secoli XVI. , XVII. e XVIII. (Rome, 1903), a valuable guide to the period indicated; E. Glaser, Die Abessinier in Arabien und Afrika (Munich, 1895); The Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia in 1541–1543 as narrated by Castanhoso (with the account of Bermudez), translated and edited by R. S. Whiteway (London, Hakluyt Society, 1902), which contains a bibliography; Futuh el-Habacha , a contemporary Arab chronicle of the wars of Mahommed Gran, translated into French by Antoine d’Abbadie and P. Paulitschke (Paris,1898); A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Jerome Lobo , from the French [by Samuel Johnson] (London, 1735); Record of the Expedition to Abyssinia , 3 vols., an official history of the war of 1868, by Major T. J. Holland and Capt. H. Hozier (London, 1870); Hormuzd Rassam, Narrative of the British Mission to Theodore [1865–1868] (2 vols., London, 1869); Henry Blanc, A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia (London, 1868), by one of Theodore’s prisoners; Sir Gerald H. Portal, My Mission to Abyssinia (London, 1892), an account of the author’s embassy to King John in 1887; Count A. E. W. Gleichen, With the Mission to Menelik , 1897 (London, 1898), containing the story of the Rennell Rodd mission; R. P. Skinner, Abyssinia of To-Day (London, 1906), a record of the first American mission to the country; G. F. H. Berkeley, The Campaign of Adowa and the Rise of Menelik (London, 1902). Books dealing with missionary enterprise are— Journal of a Three Years’ Residence in Abyssinia , by Bishop Samuel Gobat (London, 1834); J. L. Krapf , Travels , Researches and Missionary Labours during an 18 years’ residence in Eastern Africa (London, 1860); Cardinal G. Massaja, I miei Trentacinque anni di Missione nell’ Alta Etiopia (10 vols., Milan, 1886–1893). Political questions are referred to by T. Lennox Gilmour, Abyssinia: the Ethiopian Railway and the Powers (London, 1906); H. le Roux , Menelik et nous (Paris, 1901); Charles Michel, La question d’Ethiopie (Paris, 1905). ( F. R. C. ) ↑ Since Theodore’s time Protestant missionary work, except by natives, has been stopped. ↑ Menelek means “a second self.” ↑ He was subsequently sent to school at Rugby, but died in his nineteenth year, on the 14th of November 1879. He was buried at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. ↑ A title variously translated. A dejazmach ( dejaj ) is a high official, ranking immediately below a ras . ↑ The main object of this mission was to seek John’s assistance in evacuating the Egyptian garrisons in the Sudan, which were threatened by the dervishes. ↑ Ras Alula died February 1897, aged about 52. He had raised himself by his military talents from being a groom and private soldier to the position of generalissimo of the army. ↑ Ras of Harrar, which province had been conquered and occupied by Menelek in January 1887. |
ABYSSINIAN CHURCH. As the chronicle of Axum relates, Christianity was adopted in Abyssinia in the 4th century. About A.D. 330 Frumentius was made first bishop of Ethiopia by Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria. Cedrenus and Nicephorus err in dating Abyssinian Christianity from Justinian, c . 542. From Frumentius to the present day, with one break, the Metropolitan ( Abuna ) has always been appointed from Egypt, and, oddly enough, he is always a foreigner. Little is known of church history down to the period of Jesuit rule, which broke the connexion with Egypt from about 1500 to 1633. But the Abyssinians rejected the council of Chalcedon, and still remain monophysites. Union with the Coptic Church ( q.v. ) continued after the Arab conquest in Egypt. Abū Sālih records (12th century) that the patriarch used always to send letters twice a year to the kings of Abyssinia and Nubia, till Al Hākim stopped the practice. Cyril, 67th patriarch, sent Severus as bishop, with orders to put down polygamy and to enforce observance of canonical consecration for all churches. These examples show the close relations of the two churches in the Middle Ages. But early in the 16th century the church was brought under the influence of a Portuguese mission. In 1439, in the reign of Zara Yakub, a religious discussion between an Abyssinian, Abba Giorgis, and a Frank had led to the despatch of an embassy from Abyssinia to the Vatican; but the initiative in the Roman Catholic missions to Abyssinia was taken, not by Rome, but by Portugal, as an incident in the struggle with the Mussulmans for the command of the trade route to India by the Red Sea. In 1507 Matthew, or Matheus, an Armenian, had been sent as Abyssinian envoy to Portugal to ask aid against the Mussulmans, and in 1520 an embassy under Dom Rodrigo de Lima landed in Abyssinia. An interesting account of this mission, which remained for several years, was written by Francisco Alvarez, the chaplain. Later, Ignatius Loyola wished to essay the task of conversion, but was forbidden. Instead, the pope sent out Joāo Nunez Barreto as patriarch of the East Indies, with Andre de Oviedo as bishop; and from Goa envoys went to Abyssinia, followed by Oviedo himself, to secure the king’s adherence to Rome. After repeated failures some measure of success was achieved, but not till 1604 did the king make formal submission to the pope. Then the people rebelled and the king was slain. Fresh Jesuit victories were followed sooner or later by fresh revolt, and Roman rule hardly triumphed when once for all it was overthrown. In 1633 the Jesuits were expelled and allegiance to Alexandria resumed. There are many early rock-cut churches in Abyssinia, closely resembling the Coptic. After these, two main types of architecture are found—one basilican, the other native. The cathedral at Axum is basilican, though the early basilicas are nearly all in ruins— e.g. that at Adulis and that of Martula Mariam in Gojam, rebuilt in the 16th century on the ancient foundations. These examples show the influence of those architects who, in the 6th century, built the splendid basilicas at Sanaa and elsewhere in Arabia. Of native churches there are two forms—one square or oblong, found in Tigré; the other circular, found in Amhara and Shoa. In both, the sanctuary is square and stands clear in the centre. An outer court, circular or rectangular, surrounds the body of the church. The square type may be due to basilican influence, the circular is a mere adaptation of the native hut: in both, the arrangements are obviously based on Jewish tradition. Church and outer court are usually thatched, with wattled or mud-built walls adorned with rude frescoes. The altar is a board on four wooden pillars having upon it a small slab (tabūt) of alabaster, marble, or shittim wood, which forms its essential part. At Martula Mariam, the wooden altar overlaid with gold had two slabs of solid gold, one 500, the other 800 ounces in weight. The ark kept at Axum is described as 2 feet high, covered with gold and gems. The liturgy was celebrated on it in the king’s palace at Christmas, Epiphany, Easter and Feast of the Cross. Generally the Abyssinians agree with the Copts in ritual and practice. The LXX. version was translated into Geez, the literary language, which is used for all services, though hardly understood. Saints and angels are highly revered, if not adored, but graven images are forbidden. Fasts are long and rigid. Confession and absolution, strictly enforced, give great power to the priesthood. The clergy must marry, but once only. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a religious duty and covers many sins. Authorities .—Tellez, Historia de Ethiopia (Coimbra, 1660); Alvarez, translated and edited for the Hakluyt Soc. by Lord Stanley of Alderley, under the title Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia (London, 1881); Ludolphus, History of Ethiopia (London, 1684, and other works); T. Wright, Christianity of Arabia (London, 1855); C. T. Beke, “Christianity among the Gallas,” Brit. Mag. (London, 1847); J. C. Hotten, Abyssinia Described (London, 1868); “Abyssinian Church Architecture,” Royal Inst. Brit. Arch. Transactions , 1869; Ibid. Journal , March 1897; Archaeologia , vol. xxxii.; J. A. de Graça Barreto, Documenta historiam ecclesiae Habessinarum illustrantia (Olivipone, 1879); E. F. Kromrei, Glaubenslehre und Gebräuche der älteren Abessinischen Kirche (Leipzig, 1895); F. M. E. Pereira, Vida do Abba Samuel (Lisbon, 1894); Idem, Vida do Abba Daniel (Lisbon, 1897); Idem, Historia dos Martyres de Nagran (Lisbon, 1899); Idem, Chronica de Susenyos (Lisbon, text 1892, tr. and notes 1900); Idem, Martyrio de Abba Isaac (Coimbra, 1903); Idem, Vida de S. Paulo de Thebas (Coimbra, 1904); Archdeacon Dowling, The Abyssinian Church , (London, 1909); and periodicals as under Coptic Church . ( A. J. B. ) |
ABŪ ḤANĪFA AN-NU‛MĀN IBN THĀBIT, Mahommedan canon lawyer, was born at Kufa in A.H. 80 ( A.D. 699) of non-Arab and probably Persian parentage. Few events of his life are known to us with any certainty. He was a silk-dealer and a man of considerable means, so that he was able to give his time to legal studies. He lectured at Kufa upon canon law ( fiqh ) and was a consulting lawyer ( muftī ), but refused steadily to take any public post. When al-Manṣūr, however, was building Bagdad (145–149) Abū Ḥanīfa was one of the four overseers whom he appointed over the craftsmen (G. Le Strange, Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate , p. 17). In A.H. 150 ( A.D. 767) he died there under circumstances which are very differently reported. A persistent but apparently later tradition asserts that he died in prison after severe beating, because he refused to obey al-Manṣūr’s command to act as a judge (cadi, qādi ). This was to avoid a responsibility for which he felt unfit—a frequent attitude of more pious Moslems. Others say that al-Mahdī, son of al-Manṣūr, actually constrained him to be a judge and that he died a few days after. It seems certain that he did suffer imprisonment and beating for this reason, at the hands of an earlier governor of Kūfa under the Omayyads (Ibn Qutaiba, Ma ‛ ārif , p. 248). Also that al-Manṣūr desired to make him judge, but compromised upon his inspectorship of buildings (so in Tabarī). A late story is that the judgeship was only a pretext with al-Manṣūr, who considered him a partisan of the ‛Alids and a helper with his wealth of Ibrāhīm ibn ‛Abd Allāh in his insurrection at Kufa in 145 (Weil, Geschichte , ii. 53 ff.). For many personal anecdotes see de Slane’s transl. of Ibn Khallikan iii. 555 ff., iv. 272 ff. For his place as a speculative jurist in the history of canon law, see Mahommedan Law . He was buried in eastern Bagdad, where his tomb still exists, one of the few surviving sites from the time of al-Manṣūr, the founder. (Le Strange 191 ff.) See C. Brockelmann, Geschichte , i. 169 ff.; Nawawi’s Biogr. Dict. pp. 698-770; Ibn Hajar al-Haitami’s Biography , publ. Cairo, A.H. 1304; legal bibliography under Mahommedan Law . ( D. B. Ma. ) |
ACACIA, a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the family Leguminosae and the sub-family Mimoseae. The small flowers are arranged in rounded or elongated clusters. The leaves are compound pinnate in general (see fig.). In some instances, however, more especially in the Australian species, the leaflets are suppressed and the leaf-stalks become vertically flattened, and serve the purpose of leaves. The vertical position protects the structure from the intense sunlight, as with their edges towards the sky and earth they do not intercept light so fully as ordinary horizontally placed leaves. There are about 450 species of acacia widely scattered over the warmer regions of the globe. They abound in Australia and Africa. Various species yield gum. True gum-arabic is the product of Acacia Senegal , abundant in both east and west tropical Africa. Acacia arabica is the gum-arabic tree of India, but yields a gum inferior to the true gum-arabic. An astringent medicine, called catechu ( q.v. ) or cutch, is procured from several species, but more especially from Acacia catechu , by boiling down the wood and evaporating the solution so as to get an extract. The bark of Acacia arabica , under the name of babul or babool , is used in Scinde for tanning. The bark of various Australian species, known as wattles, is also very rich in tannin and forms an important article of export. Such are Acacia pycnantha , golden wattle, A. decurrens , tan wattle, and A. dealbata , silver wattle. Acacia Senegal , flowering branch, natural size (after A. Meyer and Schumann). From Strasburger’s Lehrbuch der Botanik . The pods of Acacia nilotica , under the name of neb-neb, and of other African species are also rich in tannin and used by tanners. The seeds of Acacia niopo are roasted and used as snuff in South America. Some species afford valuable timber; such are Acacia melanoxylon , black wood of Australia, which attains a great size; its wood is used for furniture, and takes a high polish; and Acacia homalophylla (also Australian), myall wood, which yields a fragrant timber, used for ornamental purposes. Acacia formosa supplies the valuable Cuba timber called sabicu. Acacia seyal is supposed to be the shittah tree of the Bible, which supplied shittim-wood. Acacia heterophylla , from Mauritius and Bourbon, and Acacia koa from the Sandwich Islands are also good timber trees. The plants often bear spines, especially those growing in arid districts in Australia or tropical and South Africa. These sometimes represent branches which have become short, hard and pungent, or sometimes leaf-stipules. Acacia armata is the kangaroo-thorn of Australia, A. giraffae , the African camel-thorn. In the Central American Acacia sphaerocephala (bull-thorn acacia) and A. spadicigera , the large thorn-like stipules are hollow and afford shelter for ants, which feed on a secretion of honey on the leaf-stalk and curious food-bodies at the tips of the leaflets; in return they protect the plant against leaf-cutting insects. In common language the term Acacia is often applied to species of the genus Robinia ( q.v. ) which belongs also to the Leguminous family, but is placed in a different section. Robinia Pseud-acacia , or false acacia, is cultivated in the milder parts of Britain, and forms a large tree, with beautiful pea-like blossoms. The tree is sometimes called the locust tree. |
ACADEMIES. The word “academy” is derived from “the olive grove of Academe, Plato’s retirement,” the birthplace of the Academic school of philosophy (see under Academy, Greek ). The schools of Athens after the model of the Academy continued to flourish almost without a break for nine centuries till they were abolished by a decree of Justinian. It was not without significance in tracing the history of the word that Cicero gave the name to his villa near Puteoli. It was there that he entertained his cultured friends and held the symposia which he afterwards elaborated in Academic Questions and other philosophic and moral dialogues. “Academy,” in its modern acceptation, may be defined as a society or corporate body having for its object the cultivation and promotion of literature, of science and of art, either severally or in combination, undertaken for the pure love of these pursuits, with no interested motive. Modern academies, moreover, have, almost without exception, some form of public recognition; they are either founded or endowed, or subsidized, or at least patronized, by the sovereign of the state. The term “academy” is very loosely used in modern times; and, in essentials, other bodies with the title of “society” or “college,” or even “school,” often embody the same idea; we are only concerned here, however, with those which, bearing the title of academy, are of historical importance in their various spheres. Early History .—The first academy, as thus defined, though it might with equal justice claim to be the first of universities, was the museum of Alexandria founded at the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. by the first of the Ptolemies. There all the sciences then known were pursued, and the most learned men of Greece and of the East gathered beneath its spacious porticos. Here, too, was the nucleus of the famous library of Alexandria. Passing over the state institute for the promotion of science founded at Constantinople by Caesar Bardas in the 9th century, and the various academies established by the Moors at Granada, at Corduba and as far east as Samarkand, we come to the academy over which Alcuin presided, a branch of the School of the Palace established by Charlemagne in 782. This academy was the prototype of the learned coteries of Paris which Molière afterwards satirized. It took all knowledge for its province; it included the learned priest and the prince who could not write his own name, and it sought to solve all problems by witty definitions. The David of Alcuin’s academy (such was the name that the emperor assumed) found no successors or imitators, and the tradition of an Oxford academy of Alfred the Great has been proved to rest on a forgery. The academy of arts founded at Florence in 1270 by Brunetto Latini was short-lived and has left no memories, and modern literary academies may be said to trace their lineage in direct descent from the troubadours of the early 14th century. The first Floral Games were held at Toulouse in May 1324, at the summons of a gild of troubadours, who invited “honourable lords, friends and companions who possess the science whence spring joy, pleasure, good sense, merit and politeness” to assemble in their garden of the “gay science” and recite their works. The prize, a golden violet, was awarded to Vidal de Castelnaudary for a poem to the glory of the Virgin. In spite of the English invasion and other adversities the Floral Games survived till, about the year 1500, their permanence was secured by the munificent bequest of Clémence Isaure, a rich lady of Toulouse. In 1694 the Académie des Jeux Floraux was constituted an academy by letters patent of Louis XIV.; its statutes were reformed and the number of members raised to 36. Suppressed during the Revolution it was revived in 1806, and still continues to award amaranths of gold and silver lilies, for which there is keen competition. Provence led the way, but Italy of the Renaissance is the soil in which academies most grew and flourished. The Accademia Pontaniana , to give it its subsequent title, was founded at Florence in 1433 by Antonio Beccadelli of Palermo and fostered by Laurentius Valla. Far more famous was the Accademia Platonica , founded c . 1442 by Cosimo de’ Medici, which numbered among its members Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Machiavelli and Angelo Poliziano. It was, as the name implies, chiefly occupied with Plato, but it added to its objects the study of Dante and the purification of the Italian language, and though it lived for barely half a century, yet its influence as a model for similar learned societies was great and lasting. Modern Academies .—Academies have played an important part in the revival of learning and in the birth of scientific inquiry. They mark an age of aristocracies when letters were the distinction of the few and when science had not been differentiated into distinct branches, each with its own specialists. Their interest is mainly historical, and it cannot be maintained that at the present day they have much direct influence on the advancement of learning either by way of research or of publication. For example, the standard dictionaries of France, Germany and England are the work, not of academies, but of individual scholars, of Littré, Grimm and Murray. Matthew Arnold’s plea for an English academy of letters to save his countrymen from the note of vulgarity and provinciality has met with no response. Academies have been supplanted, socially by the modern club, and intellectually by societies devoted to special branches of science. Those that survive from the past serve, like the Heralds’ College, to set an official stamp on literary and scientific merit. The principal academies of Europe, past and present, may be dealt with in various classes, according to the subjects to which they are devoted. I. Scientific Academies Austria .—The Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften at Vienna, originally projected by Leibnitz, was founded by the emperor Ferdinand I. in 1846, and has two classes—mathematics and natural science, and history and philology. Belgium and the Netherlands .—A literary society was founded at Brussels in 1769 by Count Cobenzl, the prime minister of Maria Theresa, which after various changes of name and constitution became in 1816 the Académie impériale et royale des sciences et belles-lettres , under the patronage of William I. of the Netherlands. It has devoted itself principally to natural history and antiquities. The Royal Institute of the Low Countries was founded in 1808 by King Louis Bonaparte. It was replaced in 1851 by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Amsterdam, to which in 1856 a literary section was added. Denmark .—The Kongelige danske videnskabernes selskab (Royal Academy of Sciences) at Copenhagen owes its origin to Christian VI., who in 1742 invited six Danish numismatists to arrange his cabinet of medals. Historians and antiquaries were called in to assist at the sittings, and the commission developed into a sort of learned club. The king took it under his protection, enlarged its scope by the addition of natural history, physics and mathematics, and in 1743 constituted it a royal academy with an endowment fund. France .—The old Académie des sciences had the same origin as the more celebrated Académie française . A number of men of science had for some thirty years met together, first at the house of P. Marsenne, then at that of Montmort, a member of the Council of State, afterwards at that of Melchisédec Thévenot, the learned traveller. It included Descartes, Gassendi, Blaise and Etienne Pascal. Hobbes, the author of Leviathan , was presented to it during his visit to Paris in 1640. Colbert conceived the idea of giving an official status to this learned club. A number of chemists, physicians, anatomists and eminent mathematicians, among whom were Christian Huyghens and Bernard Frenicle de Bessy (1605–1675), the author of a famous treatise on magic squares, were chosen to form the nucleus of the new society. Pensions were granted by Louis XIV. to each of the members, and a fund for instruments and experiment was placed at their disposal. They began their session on the 22nd of December 1666 in the Royal Library, meeting twice a week—the mathematicians on Wednesdays, the physicists on Saturdays. Duhamel was appointed permanent secretary, a post he owed more to his polished Latinity than to his scientific attainments, all the proceedings of the society being recorded in Latin, and C. A. Couplet was made treasurer. At first the academy was rather a laboratory and observatory than an academy proper. Experiments were undertaken in common and results discussed. Several foreign savants , in particular the Danish astronomer Roemer, joined the society, attracted by the liberality of the Grand Monarque; and the German physician and geometer Tschirnhausen and Sir Isaac Newton were made foreign associates. The death of Colbert, who was succeeded by Louvois, exercised a disastrous effect on the fortunes of the academy. The labours of the academicians were diverted from the pursuit of pure science to such works as the construction of fountains and cascades at Versailles, and the mathematicians were employed to calculate the odds of the games of lansquenet and basset. In 1699 the academy was reconstituted by Louis Phelypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, under whose department as secretary of state the academies came. By its new constitution it consisted of twenty-five members, ten honorary, men of high rank interested in science, and fifteen pensionaries, who were the working members. Of these three were geometricians, three astronomers, three mechanicians, three anatomists, and three chemists. Each of these three had two associates, and, besides, each pensionary had the privilege of naming a pupil. There were eight foreign and four free associates. The officers were, a president and a vice-president, named by the king from among the honorary members, and a secretary and treasurer chosen from the pensionaries, who held office for life. Fontenelle, a man of wit, and rather a popularizer of science than an original investigator, succeeded Duhamel as secretary. The constitution was purely aristocratical, differing in that respect from that of the French Academy, in which the principle of equality among the members was never violated. Science was not yet strong enough to dispense with the patronage of the great. The two leading spirits of the academy at this period were Clairault and Réaumur. To trace the subsequent fortunes of this academy would be to write the history of the rise and progress of science in France. It has reckoned among its members Laplace, Buffon, Lagrange, D’Alembert, Lavoisier, and Jussieu, the father of modern botany. On the 21st of December 1792 it met for the last time, and it was suppressed with its sister academies by the act of the Convention on the 8th of April 1793. Some of its members were guillotined, some were imprisoned, more were reduced to poverty. 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 Institut National which was to replace all the academies, and its first class corresponded closely to the old academy of sciences. In 1816 the Académie des sciences was reconstituted as a branch of the Institute. The new academy has reckoned among its members, besides many other brilliant men, Carnot the engineer, the physicists Fresnel, Ampère, Arago, Biot, the chemists Gay-Lussac and Thénard, the zoologists G. Cuvier and the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires. In France there were also considerable academies in most of the large towns. Montpellier, for example, had a royal academy of sciences, founded in 1706 by Louis XIV., on nearly the same footing as that of Paris, of which, indeed, it was in some measure the counterpart. It was reconstituted in 1847, and organized under three sections—medicine, science and letters. Toulouse also has an academy, founded in 1640, under the name of Société de lanternistes ; and there were analogous institutions at Nîmes, Arles, Lyons, Dijon, Bordeaux and elsewhere. Germany .—The Collegium Curiosum was a scientific society, founded by J. C. Sturm, professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in the university of Altorf, in Franconia, in 1672, on the plan of the Accademia del Cimento . It originally consisted of twenty members, and continued to flourish long after the death of its founder. The early labours 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. Two volumes (1676–1685) of proceedings were published by Sturm. The former, Collegium Experimentale sive Curiosum , begins with an account of the diving-bell, “a new invention”; next follow chapters on the camera obscura, the Torricellian experiment, the air-pump, microscope, telescope, &c. The Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin , if judged by the work it has produced, holds the first place in Germany. Its origin was the Societas Regia Scientiarum , constituted in 1700 by Frederick I. on the comprehensive plan of Leibnitz, who was its first president. Hampered and restricted under Frederick William I., it was reorganized under Frederick II. on the French model furnished by Maupertuis, and received its present constitution in 1812. It is divided into two classes and four sections—physical and mathematical, philosophical and historical. Each section has a permanent secretary with a salary of 1200 marks, and each of the 50 regular members is paid 600 marks a year. Among the contributors to its transactions (first volume published in 1710), to name only the dead, we find Immanuel Bekker, Böckling, Bernoulli, F. Bopp, P. Buttmann, Encke (of comet fame), L. Euler, the brothers Grimm, the two Humboldts, Lachmann, Lagrange, Leibnitz, T. Mommsen, J. Müller, G. Niebuhr, C. Ritter (the geographer), Savigny and Zumpt. Frederick II. presented in 1768 A Dissertation on Ennui . To the Berlin Academy we owe the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum , the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum , and the Monumenta Germaniae Historica . The Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Mannheim was founded by the elector Palatine in 1755. Since 1780 it has devoted itself specially to meteorology, and has published valuable observations under the title of Ephemerides Societatis Meteorologicae Theodoro-Palatinae . The Bavarian Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München was founded in 1759. It is distinguished from other academies by the part it has played in national education. Maximilian Joseph, the enlightened elector (afterwards king) of Bavaria, induced the government to hand over to it the organization and superintendence of public instruction, and this work was carried out by Privy-councillor Jacobi, the president of the academy. In recent years the academy has specially occupied itself with natural history. The Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften , at Erfurt, which dates from 1754 and devotes itself to applied science, and the Hessian academy of sciences at Giessen, which publishes medical transactions, also deserve mention. Great Britain and Ireland .—In 1616 a scheme for founding a royal academy was started by Edmund Bolton, an eminent scholar and antiquary, who in his petition to King James I., which was supported by George Villiers, marquis of Buckingham, proposed that the title of the academy should be “King James, his Academe or College of honour.” A list of the proposed original members is still extant, and includes the names of George Chapman, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, John Selden, Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir Henry Wotton. The constitution is of interest as reflecting the mind of the learned king. The academy was to consist of three classes,—tutelaries, who were to be Knights of the Garter, auxiliaries, all noblemen or ministers of state, and the essentials, “called from out of the most famous lay gentlemen of England, and either living in the light of things, or without any title of profession or art of life for lucre.” Among other duties to be assigned to this academy was the licensing of all books other than theological. The death of King James put an end to the undertaking. In 1635 a second attempt to found an academy was made under the patronage of Charles I., with the title of “Minerva’s Museum,” for the instruction of young noblemen in the liberal arts and sciences, but the project was soon dropped. (For the “British Academy” see III. below.) About 1645 the more ardent followers of Bacon used to meet, some in London, some at Oxford, for the discussion of subjects connected with experimental science. This was the original of the Royal Society ( q.v. ), which received its charter in 1662. A society was formed in Dublin, similar to the Royal Society in London, as early as 1683; but the distracted state of the country proved unpropitious to the cultivation of philosophy and literature. The Royal Irish Academy grew from a society established in Dublin about 1782 by a number of gentlemen, most of whom belonged to the university. They held weekly meetings, and read, in turn, essays on various subjects. They professed to unite the advancement of science with the history of mankind and polite literature. The first volume of transactions appeared in 1788. Hungary .—The Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) was founded in 1825 by Count Stephen Széchenyi for the encouragement of the study of the Hungarian language and the various sciences. It has about 300 members and a fine building in Budapest containing a picture gallery and housing various national collections. Italy .—The Academia Secretorum Naturae was founded at Naples in 1560 by Giambattista della Porta. It arose like the French Academy from a little club of friends who met at della Porta’s house and called themselves the Otiosi . The condition of membership was to have made some discovery in natural science. Della Porta was suspected of practising the black arts and summoned to Rome to justify himself before the papal court. He was acquitted by Paul V., but commanded to close his academy. The Accademia dei Lincei , to which della Porta was admitted when at Rome, and of which he became the chief ornament, had been founded in 1603 by Federigo Cesi, the marchese di Monticelli. Galileo and Colonna were among its earliest members. Its device was a lynx with upturned eyes, tearing a Cerberus with its claws. As a monument the Lincei have left the magnificent edition of Fernandez de Oviedo’s Natural History of Mexico (Rome, 1651, fol.), printed at the expense of the founder and elaborately annotated by the members. This academy was resuscitated in 1870 under the title of Reale Accademia dei Lincei , with a literary as well as a scientific side, endowed in 1878 by King Humbert; and in 1883 it received official recognition from the Italian government, being lodged in the Corsini palace, whose owner made over to it his library and collections. The Accademia del Cimento was founded at Florence in 1657 by Leopold de' Medici, brother of the grand duke Ferdinand II., at the instigation of Vincenzo Viviani, the geometrician. It was an academy of experiment, a deliberate protest against the deductive science of the quadrivium. Its founder left it when he was made a cardinal, and it lasted only ten years, but the grand folio published in Italian (afterwards translated into Latin) in 1667 is a landmark in the history of science. It contains experiments on the pressure of the air (Torricelli and Borelli were among its members), on the incompressibility of water and on universal gravity. Science in Italy is now represented by the Reale Accademia delle Scienze (Royal Academy of Sciences), founded in 1757 as a private society, and incorporated under its present name by royal warrant in 1783. It consists of 40 full members, who must be residents of Turin, 20 non-resident, and 20 foreign members. It publishes a yearly volume of proceedings and awards prizes to learned works. There are, besides, royal academies of science at Naples, Lucca and Palermo. Portugal .—The Academia Real das Sciencias (Royal Academy of Sciences) at Lisbon dates from 1779. It was reorganized in 1851 and since then has been chiefly occupied in the publication of Portugaliae Monumenta Historica . Russia .—The Académie Impériale des sciences de Saint-Petersbourg , Imperatorskaya Akademiya naük , was projected by Peter the Great. The advice of Wolff and Leibnitz was sought, and several learned foreigners were invited to become members. Peter himself drew the plan, and signed it on the 10th of February 1724; but his sudden death delayed its fulfilment. On the 21st of December 1725, however, Catherine I. established it according to his plan, and on the 27th the society met for the first time. On the 1st of August 1726, Catherine honoured the meeting with her presence, when Professor G. B. Bilfinger, a German scientist, delivered an oration upon the determination of magnetic variations and longitude. Shortly afterwards the empress settled a fund of £4982 per annum for the support of the academy; and 15 eminent members were admitted and pensioned, under the title of professors in the various branches of science and literature. The most distinguished of these were Nicholas and Daniel Bernouilli, the two Delisles, Bilfinger, and Wolff. During the short reign of Peter II. the salaries of members were discontinued, and the academy neglected by the Court; but it was again patronized by the empress Anne, who added a seminary under the superintendence of the professors. Both institutions flourished for some time under the direction of Baron Johann Albrecht Korff (1697–1766). At the accession of Elizabeth the original plan was enlarged and improved; learned foreigners were drawn to St Petersburg; and, what was considered a good omen for the literature of Russia, two natives, Lomonosov and Rumovsky, men of genius who had prosecuted their studies in foreign universities, were enrolled among its members. The annual income was increased to £10,659, and sundry other advantages were conferred upon the institution. Catherine II. utilized the academy for the advancement of national culture. She altered the court of directors greatly to the advantage of the whole body, corrected many of its abuses, added to its means, and infused a new vigour and spirit into its researches. By her recommendation the most intelligent professors visited all the provinces of her vast dominions, with most minute and ample instructions to investigate the natural resources, conditions and requirements, and report on the real state of the empire. The result was that no country at that time could boast, within so few years, such a number of excellent official publications on its internal state, its natural productions, its topography, geography and history, and on the manners, customs and languages of the different tribes that inhabited it, as came from the press of this academy. In its researches in Asiatic languages, oriental customs and religions, it proved itself the worthy rival of the Royal Asiatic Society in England. The first transactions, Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae ad annum 1726, with a dedication to Peter II., were published in 1728. This was continued until 1747, when the transactions were called Novi Commentarii Academiae , &c.; and in 1777, Acta Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae , with some alteration in the arrangements and plan of the work. The papers, hitherto in Latin only, were now written indifferently in Latin or in French, and a preface added, Partie Historique , which contains an account of the society’s meetings. Of the Commentaries , fourteen volumes were published: of the New Commentaries (1750–1776) twenty. Of the Acta Academiae two volumes are printed every year. In 1872 there was published at St Petersburg in 2 vols., Tableau général des matières contenues dans les publications de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St Petersbourg . The academy is composed, as at first, of fifteen professors, besides the president and director. Each of the professors has a house and an annual stipend of from £200 to £600. Besides the professors, there are four pensioned adjuncts, who are present at the meetings of the society, and succeed to the first vacancies. The buildings and apparatus of this academy are on a vast scale. There is a fine library, of 36,000 books and manuscripts; and an extensive museum, considerably augmented by the collections made by Pallas, Gmelin, Guldenstadt and other professors, during their expeditions through the Russian empire. The motto of the society is Paulatim . Spain .—The Real Academia Española at Madrid (see below) had a predecessor in the Academia Naturae curiosorum (dating from 1657) modelled on that of Naples. It was reconstituted in 1847 after the model of the French academy. Sweden .—The Kongliga Svenska Vetenskaps Akademien owes its institution to six persons of distinguished learning, among whom was Linnaeus. They met on the 2nd of June 1739, and formed a private society, the Collegium Curiosorum ; and at the end of the year their first publication made its appearance. As the meetings continued and the members increased the society attracted the notice of the king; and on the 31st of March 1741 it was incorporated as the Royal Swedish Academy. Though under royal patronage and largely endowed, it is, like the Royal Society in England, entirely self-governed. Each of the members resident at Stockholm becomes in turn president, and continues in office for three months. The dissertations read at each meeting are published in the Swedish language, quarterly, and make an annual volume. The first forty volumes, octavo, completed in 1779, are called the Old Transactions . United States of America .—The oldest scientific association in the United States is the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. It owed its origin to Benjamin Franklin, who in 1743 published “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America,” which was so favourably received that in the same year the society was organized, with Thomas Hopkinson (1709–1751) as president and Franklin as secretary. In 1769 it united with another scientific society founded by Franklin, called the American Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, and adopted its present name, adding the descriptive phrase from the title of the American Society, and elected Franklin president, an office which he held until his death (1790). The American Philosophical Society is national in scope and is exclusively scientific; its Transactions date from 1771, and its Proceedings from 1838. It has a hall in Philadelphia, with meeting-rooms and a valuable library and collection of interesting portraits and relics. David Rittenhouse was its second and Thomas Jefferson was its third president. In 1786 John Hyacinth de Magellan, of London, presented a fund, the income of which was to supply a gold medal for the author of the most important discovery “relating to navigation, astronomy or natural philosophy (mere natural history excepted).” An annual general meeting is held. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston), the second oldest scientific organization in the United States, was chartered in Massachusetts in 1780 by some of the most prominent men of that time. James Bowdoin was its first president, John Adams its second. The Academy published Memoirs beginning in 1785, and Proceedings from 1846. The Rumford Premium awarded through it for the most “important discovery or useful improvement on Heat, or on Light” is the income of $5000 given to the Academy by Count Rumford. The National Academy of Sciences (1863) was incorporated by Congress with the object that it “shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment and report upon any subject of science or art.” Its membership was first limited to 50; after the amendment of the act of incorporation in 1870 the limit was placed at 100; and in 1907 it was prescribed that the resident membership should not exceed 150 in number, that not more than 10 members be elected in any one year, and that the number of foreign associates be restricted to 50. The Academy is divided into six committees: mathematics and astronomy; physics and engineering; chemistry; geology and palaeontology; biology; and anthropology. It gives several gold medals for meritorious researches and discoveries. It publishes scientific monographs (at the expense of the Federal Government). Its presidents have been Alexander D. Bache, Joseph Henry, Wm. B. Rogers, Othniel C. Marsh, Wolcott Gibbs, Alexander Agassiz and Ira Remsen. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia was organized in 1812. It has a large library, very rich in natural history, and its museum, with nearly half a million specimens, is particularly strong in conchology and ornithology. The society has published Journals since 1817, and Proceedings since 1841; it also has published the American Journal of Conchology . The American Entomological Society (in 1859–1867 the Entomological Society of Philadelphia, and since 1876 part of this academy) has published Proceedings since 1861, and the Entomological News (a monthly). There are also other scientific organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (chartered in 1874, as a continuation of the American Association of Geologists, founded in 1840 and becoming in 1842 the American Association of Geologists and Naturalists), which publishes its Proceedings annually; the American Geographical Society (1852), with headquarters in New York; the National Geographic Society (1888), with headquarters in Washington, D.C.; the Geological Society of America (1888), the American Ornithologists' Union (1883), the American Society of Naturalists (1883), the Botanical Society of America (1893), the American Academy of Medicine (1876); and local academies of science, or of special sciences, in many of the larger cities. The Smithsonian Institution at Washington is treated in a separate article. II. Academies of Belles Lettres Belgium .—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 Catherinists of Alost date from 1107. It is at least certain that numerous Chambers of Rhetoric (so academies were then called) existed in the first years of the rule of the house of Burgundy. France .—The French Academy ( l’Academie française ) was established by order of the king in the year 1635, but in its original form existed four or five years earlier. About the year 1629 certain literary friends in Paris agreed to meet informally each week at the house of Valentin Courart, the king’s secretary. The conversation turned mostly on literary topics; and when one of the number had finished some literary work, he read it to the rest, and they gave their opinions upon it. The fame of these meetings, though the members were bound to secrecy, reached the ears of Cardinal Richelieu, who promised his protection and offered to incorporate the society by letters patent. Nearly all the members would have preferred the charms of privacy, but, considering the risk they would run in incurring the cardinal’s displeasure, and that by the letter of the law all meetings of any sort were prohibited, they expressed their gratitude for the high honour the cardinal thought fit to confer on them, proceeded at once to organize their body, settle their laws and constitution, appoint officers and choose a name. Letters patent were granted by the king on the 29th of January 1635. The officers consisted of a director and a chancellor, chosen by lot, and a permanent secretary, chosen by vote. They elected also a publisher, not a member of the body. The director presided at the meetings, being considered as primus inter pares . The chancellor kept the seals and sealed all the official documents of the academy. The cardinal was ex officio protector. The meetings were held weekly as before. The object for which the academy was founded, as set forth in its statutes, was the purification of the French language. “The principal function of the academy shall be to labour with all care and diligence to give certain rules to our language, and to render it pure, eloquent and capable of treating the arts and sciences” (Art. 24). They proposed “to cleanse the language from the impurities it has contracted in the mouths of the common people, from the jargon of the lawyers, from the misusages of ignorant courtiers, and the abuses of the pulpit” ( Letter of Academy to Cardinal Richelieu ). The number of members was fixed at forty. The original members formed a nucleus of eight, and it was not till 1639 that the full number was completed. Their first undertaking consisted of essays written by 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 resembled the ἐπιδείξεις of the Greek rhetoricians. Next, at the instance of Cardinal Richelieu, they 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 criticized except at the author’s request, and fear of incurring the cardinal’s displeasure wrung from Corneille an unwilling consent. The critique of the academy was re-written several times before it met with the cardinal’s approbation. After six months of elaboration, it was published under the title, Sentiments de l’académie française sur le Cid . This judgment did not satisfy Corneille, as a saying attributed to him on the occasion shows. “ Horatius ,” he said, referring to his last play, “was condemned by the Duumviri, but he was absolved by the people.” But the crowning labour of the academy, begun in 1639, was a dictionary of the French language. By the twenty-sixth article of their statutes, they were pledged to compose a dictionary, a grammar, a treatise on rhetoric and one on poetry. Jean Chapelain, one of the original members and leading spirits of the academy, pointed out that the dictionary would naturally be the first of these works to be undertaken, and drew up a plan of the work, which was to a great extent carried out. A catalogue was to be made of all the most approved authors, prose and verse: these were to be distributed among the members, and all approved words and phrases were to be marked for incorporation in the dictionary. For this they resolved themselves into two committees, which sat on other than the regular days. C. F. de Vaugelas was appointed editor in chief. To remunerate him for his labours, he received from the cardinal a pension of 2000 francs. The first edition of this dictionary appeared in 1694, the sixth and last in 1835, since when compléments have been added. This old Académie française perished with the other pre-revolutionary academies in 1793, and it has little but the name in common with the present academy, a section of the Institute. That Jean Baptiste Suard, the first perpetual secretary of the new, had been a member of the old academy, is the one connecting link. The chronicles of the Institute down to the end of 1895 have been given in full by the count de Franqueville in Le premier siècle de l’Institut de France , and from it we extract a few leading facts and dates. Before the Revolution there were in existence the following institutions:—(1) the Académie de poésie et de musique , founded by Charles IX. in 1570 at the instigation of Baïf, which counted among its members Ronsard and most of the Pléiade; (2) the Académie des inscriptions et medailles , founded in 1701; (3) the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres ; (4) the old Académie des sciences ; (5) the Académie de peinture et de sculpture , a school as well as an academy; (6) the Académie d’architecture . The object of the Convention in 1795 was to rebuild all the institutions that the Revolution had shattered and to combine them in an organic whole; in the words of the preamble:—“ Il y a pour toute la République un Institut national chargé de recueiller les découvertes , de perfectionner les arts et les sciences .” As Renan has remarked, the Institute embodied two ideas, one disputable, the other of undisputed truth:—That science and art are a state concern, and that there is a solidarity between all branches of knowledge and human activities. The Institute was at first composed of 184 members resident in Paris and an equal number living in other parts of France, with 24 foreign members, divided into three classes, (1) physical and mathematical science, (2) moral and political science, (3) literature and the fine arts. It held its first sitting on the 4th of April 1796. Napoleon as first consul suppressed the second class, as subversive of government, and reconstituted the other classes as follows: (1) as before, (2) French language and literature, (3) ancient history and literature, (4) fine arts. The class of moral and political science was restored on the proposal of M. Guizot in 1832, and the present Institute consists of the five classes named above. Each class or academy has its own special jurisdiction and work, with special funds; but there is a general fund and a common library, which, with other common affairs, are managed by a committee of the Institute—two chosen from each academy, with the secretaries. Each member of the Institute receives an annual allowance of 1200 francs, and the secretaries of the different academies have a salary of 6000 francs. The class of the Institute which deals with the language and literature takes precedence, and is known as the Académie française . There was at first no perpetual secretary, each secretary of sections presiding in turn. Shortly afterwards J. B. Suard was elected to the post, and ever since the history of the academy has been determined by the reigns of its successive perpetual secretaries. The secretary, to borrow an epigram of Sainte-Beuve, both reigns and governs. There have been in order: Suard (13 years), François Juste Raynouard (9 years), Louis Simon Auger, François Andrieux, Arnault, Villemain (34 years), Henri Joseph Patin, Charles Camille Doucet (19 years), Gaston Boissier. Under Raynouard the academy ran a tilt against the abbé Delille and his followers. Under Auger it did battle with romanticism, “a new literary schism.” Auger did not live to see the election of Lamartine in 1829, and it needed ten more years for Victor Hugo after many vain assaults to enter by the breach. The academy is professedly non-political. It accepted and even welcomed in succession the empire, the restoration and the reign of Louis Philippe, and it tolerated the republic of 1848; but to the second empire it offered a passive resistance, and no politician of the second empire, whatever his gifts as an orator or a writer, obtained an armchair. The one seeming exception, Emile Ollivier, confirms the rule. He was elected on the eve of the Franco-German war, but his discours de réception , a eulogy of the emperor, was deferred and never delivered. The Institute appears in the annual budget for a grant of about 700,000 fr. It has also large vested funds in property, including the magnificent estate and library of Chantilly bequeathed to it by the duc d’Aumale. It awards various prizes, of which the most considerable are the Montyon prizes, each of 20,000 fr., one for the poor Frenchman who has performed the most virtuous action during the year, and one for the French author who has published the book of most service to morality. The conditions are liberally interpreted; the first prize is divided among a number of the deserving poor, and the second has been assigned for lexicons to Molière, Corneille and Madame de Sévigné. One alteration in the methods of the French Academy has to be chronicled: in 1869 it became the custom to discuss the claims of the candidates at a preliminary meeting of the members. In 1880, on the instance of the philosopher Caro, supported by A. Dumas fils , and by the aged Désiré Nisard, it was decided to abandon this method. A point of considerable interest is the degree in which, since its foundation, the French Academy has or has not represented the best literary life of France. It appears from an examination of the lists of members that a surprising number of authors of the highest excellence have, from one cause or another, escaped the honour of academic “immortality.” When the academy was founded in 1634, the moment was not a very brilliant one in French letters. Among the forty original members we find only ten who are remembered in literary history; of these four may reasonably be considered famous still—Balzac, Chapelain, Racan and Voiture. In that generation Scarron was never one of the forty, nor do the names of Descartes, Malebranche or Pascal occur; Descartes lived in Holland, Scarron was paralytic, Pascal was best known as a mathematician—(his Lettres provinciales was published anonymously)—and when his fame was rising he retired to Port Royal, where he lived the life of a recluse. The duc de la Rochefoucauld declined the honour from a proud modesty, and Rotrou died too soon to be elected. The one astounding omission of the 17th century, however, is the name of Molière, who was excluded by his profession as an actor. [ 1 ] On the other hand, the French Academy was never more thoroughly representative of letters than when Boileau, Corneille, La Fontaine, Racine, and Quinault were all members. Of the great theologians of that and the subsequent age, the Academy contained Bossuet, Fléchier, Fenelon, and Massillon, but not Bourdaloue. La Bruyere and Fontenelle were among the forty, but not Saint-Simon, whose claims as a man of letters were unknown to his contemporaries. Early in the 18th century almost every literary personage of eminence found his place naturally in the Academy. The only exceptions of importance were Vauvenargues, who died too early for the honour, and two men of genius but of dubious social position, Le Sage and the abbé Prévost d’Exiles. The approach of the Revolution affected gravely the personnel of the Academy. Montesquieu and Voltaire belonged to it, but not Rousseau or Beaumarchais. Of the Encyclopaedists, the French Academy opened its doors to D’Alembert, Condorcet, Volney, Marmontel and La Harpe, but not to Diderot, Rollin, Condillac, Helvétius or the Baron d’Holbach. Apparently the claims of Turgot and of Quesnay did not appear to the Academy sufficient, since neither was elected. In the transitional period, when the social life of Paris was distracted and the French Academy provisionally closed, neither André Chénier nor Benjamin Constant nor Joseph de Maistre became a member. In the early years of the 19th century considerations of various kinds excluded from the ranks of the forty the dissimilar names of Lamennais, Prudhon, Comte and Béranger. Critics of the French Academy are fond of pointing out that neither Stendhal, nor Balzac, nor Théophile Gautier, nor Flaubert, nor Zola penetrated into the Mazarine Palace. It is not so often remembered that writers so academic as Thierry and Michelet and Quinet suffered the same exclusion. In later times neither Alphonse Daudet nor Edmond de Goncourt, neither Guy de Maupassant nor Ferdinand Fabre, has been among the forty immortals. The non-election, after a long life of distinction, of the scholar Fustel de Coulanges is less easy to account for. Verlaine, although a poet of genius, was of the kind that no academy can ever be expected to recognize. Concerning the influence of the French Academy on ' the language and literature, the most opposite opinions have been advanced. On the one hand, it has been asserted that it has corrected 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 Matthew Arnold, in his Essay on the Literary Influence of Academies , has pronounced a glowing panegyric on the French Academy as a high court of letters, and a 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 eccentricity, that provincial spirit, that coarseness which, as he thinks, are barely compensated by English genius. Thus, too, Renan, one of its most distinguished members, says that it is owing to the academy “ qu’on peut tout dire sans appareil scholastique avec la langue des gens du monde .” “ Ah ne dites ,” he exclaims, “ qu’ils n’ont rien fait , ces obscures beaux esprits dont la vie se passe à instruire le procès des mots , à peser les syllables. Ils ont fait un chef-d’œuvre—la langue française .” On the other hand, its inherent defects have been well summed up by P. Lanfrey in his Histoire de Napoléon : “This institution had never shown itself the enemy of despotism. Founded by the monarchy and for the monarchy, eminently favourable to the spirit of intrigue and favouritism, incapable of any sustained or combined labour, a stranger to those great works pursued in common which legitimize and glorify the existence of scientific bodies, occupied exclusively with learned trifles, fatal to emulation, which it pretends to stimulate, by the compromises and calculations to which it subjects it, directed in everything by petty considerations, and wasting all its energy in childish tournaments, in which the flatteries that it showers on others are only a foretaste of the compliments it expects in return for itself, the French Academy seems to have received from its founders the special mission to transform genius into bel esprit , and it would be hard to produce a man of talent whom it has not demoralized. Drawn in spite of itself towards politics, it alternately pursues and avoids them; but it is specially attracted by the gossip of politics, and whenever it has so far emancipated itself as to go into opposition, it does so as the champion of ancient prejudices. If we examine its influence on the national genius, we shall see that it has given it a flexibility, a brilliance, a polish, which it never possessed before; but it has done so at the expense of its masculine qualities, its originality, its spontaneity, its vigour, its natural grace. It has disciplined it, but it has emasculated, impoverished and rigidified it. It sees in taste, not a sense of the beautiful, but a certain type of correctness, an elegant form of mediocrity. It has substituted pomp for grandeur, school routine for individual 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 monarchical 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 . Kings of France could condone a witticism even against themselves, a parvenu could not.” On the whole the influence of the French Academy has been conservative rather than creative. It has done much by its example for style, but its attempts to impose its laws on language have, from the nature of the case, failed. For, however perfectly a dictionary or a grammar may represent the existing language of a nation, an original genius is certain to arise—a Victor Hugo or an Alfred de Musset—who will set at defiance all dictionaries and academic rules. Germany .—Of the German literary academies the most celebrated was Die Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (the Fruitful Society), established at Weimar in 1617. Five princes were among the original members. The object was to purify the mother tongue. The German academies copied those of Italy in their quaint titles and petty ceremonials, and exercised little permanent influence on the language or literature of the country. Italy .—Italy in the 16th century was remarkable for the number of its literary academies. Tiraboschi, in his History of Italian Literature , has given a list of 171; and Jarkius, in his Specimen Historiae Academiarum Conditarum , enumerates nearly 700. Many of these, with a sort of Socratic irony, gave themselves ludicrous names, or names expressive of ignorance. Such were the Lunatici of Naples, the Estravaganti , the Fulminales , the Trapessati , the Drowsy , the Sleepers , the Anxious , the Confused , the Unstable , the Fantastic , the Transformed , the Ethereal . “The first academies of Italy chiefly directed their attention to classical literature; they compared manuscripts; they suggested new readings or new interpretations; they deciphered inscriptions 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 of the past, but not very favourable to comprehensive observation, and tending to bestow on an unprofitable pedantry the honours of real learning.” [ 2 ] The Italian nobility, excluded as they mostly were from politics, and living in cities, found in literature a consolation and a career. Such academies were oligarchical in their constitution; they encouraged culture, but tended to hamper genius and extinguish originality. Far the most celebrated was the Accademia della Crusca or Furfuratorum ; that is, of bran, or of the sifted, founded in 1582. The title was borrowed from a previous society at Perugia, the Accademia degli Scossi , of the well-shaken. Its device was a sieve; its motto, “Il più bel fior ne coglie” (it collects the finest flower); its principal object the purification of the language. Its great work was the Vocabulario della Crusca , printed at Venice in 1612. It was composed avowedly on Tuscan principles, and regarded the 14th century as the Augustan period of the language. Paul Beni assailed it in his Anti-Crusca , and this exclusive Tuscan purism has disappeared in subsequent editions. The Accademia della Crusca is now incorporated with two older societies—the Accademia degli Apatici (the Impartials) and the Accademia Florentina . Among the numerous other literary academies of Italy we may mention the academy of Naples, founded about 1440 by Alphonso, the king; the Academy of Florence, founded 1540, to illustrate and perfect the Tuscan tongue, especially by the close study of Petrarch; the Intronati of Siena, 1525; the Infiammati of Padua, 1534; the Rozzi of Siena, suppressed by Cosimo, 1568. The Academy of Humorists arose from a casual meeting of witty noblemen at the marriage of Lorenzo Marcini, a Roman gentleman. It was carnival time, and to give the ladies some diversion they recited verses, sonnets and speeches, first impromptus and afterwards set compositions. This gave them the name, Belli Humori, which, after they resolved to form an academy of belles lettres, they changed to Humoristi . In 1690 the Accademia degli Arcadi was founded at Rome, for the purpose of reviving the study of poetry, by Crescimbeni, the author of a history of Italian poetry. Among its members were princes, cardinals and other ecclesiastics; and, to avoid disputes about pre-eminence, all came to its meetings masked and dressed like Arcadian shepherds. Within ten years from its establishment the number of academicians was 600. The Royal Academy of Savoy dates from 1719, and was made a royal academy by Charles Albert in 1848. Its emblem is a gold orange tree full of flowers and fruit; its motto “Flores fructusque perennes,” the same as that of the famous Florimentane Academy, founded at Annecy by St Francis de Sales. It has published valuable memoirs on the history and antiquities of Savoy. Spain .—The Real Academia Española 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. In 1714 the king granted them the royal confirmation and protection. Their device is a crucible in the middle of the fire, with this motto, Limpia , fixa , y da esplendor —“It purifies, fixes, and gives brightness.” The number of its members was limited to 24; the duke d’Escalona was chosen director for life, but his successors were elected yearly, and the secretary for life. Their object, as marked out by the royal declaration, was to cultivate and improve the national language. They were to begin with choosing carefully such words and phrases as have been used by the best Spanish writers; noting the low, barbarous or obsolete ones; and composing a dictionary wherein these might be distinguished from the former. Sweden .—The Svenska Akademien was founded in 1786, for the purpose of purifying and perfecting the Swedish language. A medal is struck by its direction every year in honour of some illustrious Swede. This academy does not publish its transactions. III. Academies of Archaeology and History France .—The old Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (or “ Petite Académie ,” founded in 1663) was an offshoot of the French Academy, 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. Literature, and even science, he only encouraged so far as they redounded to his own glory. Nor were literary men inclined to assert their independence. Boileau well represented the spirit of the age when, in dedicating his tragedy 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. It consisted of four academicians: Chapelain, then considered the poet laureate of France, one of the authors of the critique on the Cid ; the abbé Amable de Bourzeis (1606–1671); François Charpentier (1620–1702), an antiquary of high repute among his contemporaries; and the abbé Jacques de Cassagnes (1636–1679), who owed his appointment more to the fulsome flattery of his odes than to his really learned translations of Cicero and Sallust. This company used to meet in Colbert’s library in the winter, at his country-house at Sceaux in the summer, generally on Wednesdays, to serve the convenience of the minister, who was always present. Their meetings were principally occupied with discussing the inscriptions, statues and pictures intended for the decoration of Versailles; but Colbert, a really learned man and an enthusiastic collector of manuscripts, was often pleased to converse with them on matters of art, history and antiquities. Their first published work was a collection of engravings, accompanied by descriptions, designed for some of the tapestries at Versailles. Louvois, who succeeded Colbert as a superintendent of buildings, revived the company, which had begun to relax its labours. Félibien, the learned architect, and the two great poets Racine and Boileau, were added to their number. A series of medals was commenced, entitled Médailles de la Grande Histoire , or, in other words, the history of the Grand Monarque. But it was to M. de Pontchartrain, comptroller-general of finance and secretary of state, that the academy owed its institution. He added to the company Renaudot and Jacques Tourreil, both men of vast learning, the latter tutor to his son, and put at its head his nephew, the abbé Jean Paul Bignon, librarian to the king. By a new regulation, dated the 16th of July 1701, the Académie royale des inscriptions et médailles was instituted, being composed of ten honorary members, ten pensioners, ten associates, and ten pupils. Its constitution was an almost exact copy of that of the Academy of Sciences. Among the regulations we find the following, which indicates clearly the transition from a staff of learned officials to a learned body: “The academy shall concern itself with all that can contribute to the perfection of inscriptions and legends, of designs for such monuments and decorations as may be submitted to its judgment; also with the description of all artistic works, present and future, and the historical explanation of the subject of such works; and as the knowledge of Greek and Latin antiquities, and of these two languages, is the best guarantee for success in labours of this class, the academicians shall apply themselves to all that this division of learning includes, as one of the most worthy objects of their pursuit.” Among the first honorary members we find the indefatigable Mabillon (excluded from the pensioners by reason of his orders), Père La Chaise, the king’s confessor, and Cardinal Rohan; among the associates Fontenelle and Rollin, whose Ancient History was submitted to the academy for revision. In 1711 they completed L’Histoire métallique du roi , of which Saint-Simon was asked to write the preface. In 1716 the regent changed its title to that of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres , a title which better suited its new character. 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 labours uninterruptedly; and on the 22nd 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 the same year were published the 45th and 46th vols. of the Mémoires de l’académie . On the 2nd of August of the same year the last séance of the old academy was held. More fortunate than its sister Academy of Sciences, it lost only three of its members by the guillotine. One of these was the astronomer Sylvain Bailly. Three others sat as members of the Convention; but for the honour of the academy, it should be added that all three were distinguished by their moderation. In the first draft of the new Institute, October 25, 1795, no class corresponded exactly to the old Academy of Inscriptions; but most of the members who survived found themselves re-elected either in the class of moral and political science, under which history and geography were included as sections, or more generally under the class of literature and fine arts, which embraced ancient languages, antiquities and monuments. In 1816 the academy received again its old name. The Proceedings of the society embrace a vast field, and are of very various merits. Perhaps the subjects on which it has shown most originality are comparative mythology, the history of science among the ancients, and the geography and antiquities of France. The old academy has reckoned among its members De Sacy the orientalist, Dansse de Villoison (1750–1805) the philologist, Anquetil du Perron the traveller, Guillaume J. de C. L. Sainte-Croix and du Theil the antiquaries, and Le Beau, who has been named the last of the Romans. The new academy has inscribed on its lists the names of Champollion, A. Rémusat, Raynouard, Burnouf and Augustin Thierry. 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 1805. Its objects were, first, the elucidation of the history, customs, antiquities, manners and monuments of the Celts, particularly in France; secondly, the etymology of all the European languages, by the aid of the Celto-British, Welsh and Erse; and, thirdly, researches relating to Druidism. The attention of the members was also particularly called to the history and settlements of the Galatae in Asia. Lenoir, the keeper of the museum of French monuments, was appointed president. The academy still exists as La société nationale des antiquaires de France . Great Britain .—The British Academy was the outcome of a meeting of the principal European and American academies, held at Wiesbaden in October 1899. A scheme was drawn up for an international association of the academies of the world under the two sections of natural science and literary science, but while the Royal Society adequately represented England in science there was then no existing institution that could claim to represent England in literature, and at the first meeting of the federated academies this chair was vacant. A plan was proposed by Professor H. Sidgwick to add a new section to the Royal Society, but after long deliberation this was rejected by the president and council. The promoters of the plan thereupon determined to form a separate society, and invited certain persons to become the first members of a new body, to be called “The British Academy for the promotion of historical, philosophical and philological studies.” The unincorporated body thus formed petitioned for a charter, and on the 8th of August 1902 the royal charter was granted and the by-laws were allowed by order in council. The objects of the academy are therein defined—“the promotion of the study of the moral and political sciences, including history, philosophy, law, politics and economics, archaeology and philology.” The number of ordinary fellows (so all members are entitled) is restricted to one hundred, and the academy is governed by a president (the first being Lord Reay) and a council of fifteen elected annually by the fellows. Italy .—Under this class the Accademia Ercolanese ( Academy of Herculaneum ) 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. Its object was to explain the paintings, &c., discovered at those places. For this purpose the members met every fortnight, and at each meeting three paintings were submitted to three academicians, who made their report at their next sitting. The first volume of their labours appeared in 1775, and they have been continued under the title of Antichità di Ercolano . They contain engravings of the principal paintings, statues, bronzes, marble figures, medals, utensils, &c., with explanations. In the year 1807 an academy of history and antiquities, on a new plan, was established at Naples by Joseph Bonaparte. The number of members was limited to forty, twenty of whom were to be appointed by the king; and these twenty were to present to him, for his choice, three names for each of those needed to complete the full number. Eight thousand ducats were to be annually allotted for the current expenses, and two thousand for prizes to the authors of four works which should be deemed by the academy most deserving of such a reward. 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 permanent establishment of this institution. In the same year an academy was established at Florence for the illustration of Tuscan antiquities, which published some volumes of memoirs. IV. Academies of Medicine and Surgery Austria .—The defunct Academy of Surgery at Vienna was instituted in 1784 by the emperor Joseph II. under the direction of the distinguished surgeon, Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla (1728–1800). For many years it did important work, and though closed in 1848 was reconstituted by the emperor Francis Joseph in 1854. In 1874 it ceased to exist; its functions had become mainly military, and were transferred to newer schools. France .— Académie de Médecine . 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 successors. The Académie de médecine succeeded to the old Académie royale de chirurgie et société royale de médecine . It was erected by a royal ordinance, dated December 20, 1820. It was divided into three sections—medicine, surgery and pharmacy. In its constitution it closely resembled the Académie des sciences . Its function was to preserve or propagate vaccine matter, and answer inquiries addressed to it by the government on the subject of epidemics, sanitary reform and public health generally. It has maintained an enormous correspondence in all quarters of the globe and published extensive minutes. Germany .—The Academia Naturae Curiosi , afterwards called the Academia Caesaraea Leopoldina , was founded in 1662 by J. L. Bausch, a physician of Leipzig, who published a general invitation to medical men to communicate all extraordinary cases that occurred in the course of their practice. The works of the Naturae Curiosi were at first published separately; but in 1770 a new arrangement was planned for publishing a volume of observations annually. From some cause, however, the first volume did not make its appearance until 1784, when it was published under the title of Ephemerides . In 1687 the emperor Leopold took the society under his protection, and its name was changed in his honour. This academy has no fixed abode, but follows the home of its president. Its library remains at Dresden. By its constitution the Leopoldine Academy consists of a president, two adjuncts or secretaries and unlimited colleagues or members. At their admission the last come under a twofold obligation—first, to choose some subject for discussion out of the animal, vegetable or mineral kingdoms, not previously treated by any colleague of the academy; and, secondly, to apply themselves to furnish materials for the annual Ephemerides . V. Academies of the Fine Arts France .—The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture at Paris was founded by Louis XIV. in 1648, under the title of Académie royale des beaux arts , to which was afterwards united the Académie d’architecture , founded 1671. It is composed of painters, sculptors, architects, engravers and musical composers. From among the members of the society who are painters, is chosen the director of the French Académie des beaux arts at Berne, also instituted by Louis XIV. in 1677. The director’s province is to superintend the studies of the painters, sculptors, &c., who, chosen by competition, are sent to Italy at the expense of the government, to complete their studies in that country. Most of the celebrated French painters have begun their career in this way. The Académie nationale de musique is the official and administrative name given in France to the grand opera. In 1570 the poet Baif established in his house a school of music, at which ballets and masquerades were given. In 1645 Mazarin brought from Italy a troupe of actors, and established them in the rue du Petit Bourbon, where they gave Jules Strozzi’s Achille in Sciro , the first opera performed in France. After Molière’s death in 1673, his theatre in the Palais Royal was given to Sulli, and there were performed all Gluck’s great operas; there Vestris danced, and there was produced Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Devin du Village . Great Britain .—The Royal Academy of Arts in London, founded in 1768, is described in a separate article. (See Academy, Royal .) The Academy of Ancient Music was established in London in 1710, with the view of promoting the study and practice of vocal and instrumental harmony. This institution had a fine musical library, and was aided by the performances of the gentlemen of the Chapel Royal and the choir of St Paul’s, with the boys belonging to each, and continued to flourish for many years. About 1734 the academy became a seminary for the instruction of youth in the principles of music and the laws of harmony. The Royal Academy of Music was formed for the performance of operas, composed by Handel, and conducted by him at the theatre in the Haymarket. The subscription amounted to £50,000, and the king, besides subscribing £1000, allowed the society to assume the title Royal. It consisted of a governor, deputy-governor and twenty directors. A contest between Handel and Senesino, one of the performers, in which the directors took the part of the latter, occasioned the dissolution of the academy after it had existed with honour for more than nine years. The present Royal Academy of Music dates from 1822, and was incorporated in 1830. It instructs pupils of both sexes in music. (See also the article Conservatoire for colleges of music.) Italy .—In 1778 an academy of painting and sculpture 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 1380, by Gian Galeazzo Visconti. About the middle of the 18th century an academy of the arts was established there, after the example of those at Paris and Rome. The pupils were furnished with originals and models, and prizes were distributed by competent judges annually. The prize for painting was a gold medal. Before the effects of the French Revolution reached Italy this was one of the best establishments of the kind in that kingdom. In the hall of the academy were some admirable examples of Correggio, as well as several statues of great merit, particularly a small bust of Vitellius, and a torso of Agrippina, of most exquisite beauty. The academy of the arts, which had been long established at Florence, fell into decay, but was restored in the end of the 18th century. In it there are halls for nude and plaster figures, for the use of the sculptor and the painter, with models of all the finest statues in Italy. But the treasures of this and the other institutions for the fine arts were greatly diminished during the occupancy of Italy by the French. The academy of the arts at Modena, after being plundered by the French, dwindled into a petty school for drawing from living models. There is also an academy of the fine arts in Mantua, and another at Venice. Russia .—The academy of St Petersburg was established in 1757 by the empress Elizabeth, at the suggestion of Count Shuvalov, and annexed to the academy of sciences. The fund for its support was £4000 per annum, and the foundation admitted forty scholars. Catherine II. formed it into a separate institution, augmented the annual revenue to £12,000, and increased the number of scholars to three hundred; she built for it 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. They are clothed, fed and lodged at the expense of the crown; and are instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, French, German and drawing. At the age of fourteen they are at liberty to choose any of the following arts; first, painting in all its branches, architecture, mosaic, enamelling, &c.; second, engraving on copper-plates, seal-cutting, &c.; third, carving on wood, ivory and amber; fourth, watch-making, turning, instrument-making, casting statues in bronze and other metals, imitating gems and medals in paste and other compositions, gilding and varnishing. Prizes are annually distributed, and from those who have obtained four prizes, twelve are selected, who are sent abroad at the charge of the crown. A certain sum is paid to defray their travelling expenses; and when they are settled in any town, they receive during four years an annual salary of £60. The academy has a small gallery of paintings for the use of the scholars; and those who have made great progress are permitted to copy the pictures in the imperial collection. For the purpose of design, there are full-size models of the best antique statues in Italy. South America .—There are several small academies in the various towns of South America, the only one of note being that of Rio de Janeiro, founded by John VI. of Portugal in 1816 and now known as the Escola Nacional de Bellas Artes . Spain .—In Madrid an academy for painting, sculpture and architecture, the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando , was founded by Philip V. The minister for foreign affairs is president. Prizes are distributed every three years. In Cadiz a few students are supplied by government with the means of drawing and modelling from figures; and such as are not able to purchase the requisite instruments are provided with them. Sweden .—An academy of the fine arts was founded at Stockholm in the year 1733 by Count Tessin. In its hall are the ancient figures of plaster presented by Louis XIV. to Charles XI. The works of the students are publicly exhibited, and prizes are distributed annually. Such of them as display distinguished ability obtain pensions from government, to enable them to reside in Italy for some years, for the purposes of investigation and improvement. In this academy there are nine professors and generally about four hundred students. Austria .—In the year 1705 an academy of painting, sculpture and architecture was established at Vienna, with the view of encouraging and promoting the fine arts. United States of America .—In America the institution similar to the Royal Academy of Arts in London is the National Academy of Design (1826), which in 1906 absorbed the Society of American Artists, the members of the society becoming members of the academy. The volume of excerpts from the general catalogue of books in the British Museum, “Academies,” 5 parts and index, furnishes a complete bibliography. ( F. S. ) ↑ The Academy has made the amende honorable by placing in the Salle des séances a bust of Molière, with the inscription “ Rienne manque à sa gloire , il manquait à la notre .” ↑ Hallam’s Int. to Lit. of Europe , vol. i. p. 654, and vol. ii. p. 502. |
ACADEMY, GREEK or Academe (Gr. ἀκαδήμεια or ἑκαδημία ), the name given to the philosophic successors of Plato. The name is derived from a pleasure-garden or gymnasium situated in the suburb of the Ceramicus on the river Cephissus about a mile to the north-west of Athens from the gate called Dipylum. It was said to have belonged to the ancient Attic hero Academus, who, when the Dioscuri invaded Attica to recover their sister Helen, carried off by Theseus, revealed the place where she was hidden. Out of gratitude the Lacedaemonians, who reverenced the Dioscuri, always spared the Academy during their invasions of the country. It was walled in by Hipparchus and was adorned with walks, groves and fountains by Cimon (Plut. Cim . 13), who bequeathed it as a public pleasure-ground to his fellow-citizens. Subsequently the garden became the resort of Plato ( q.v. ), who had a small estate in the neighbourhood. Here he taught for nearly fifty years till his death in 348 B.C. , and his followers continued to make it their headquarters. It was closed for teaching by Justinian in A.D. 529 along with the other pagan schools. Cicero borrowed the name for his villa near Puteoli, where he composed his dialogue The Academic Questions . The Platonic Academy (proper) lasted from the days of Plato to those of Cicero, and during its whole course there is traceable a distinct continuity of thought which justifies its examination as a real intellectual unit. On the other hand, this continuity of thought is by no means an identity. The Platonic doctrine was so far modified in the hands of successive scholarchs that the Academy has been divided into either two, three or five main sections (Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 220). Finally, in the days of Philo, Antiochus and Cicero, the metaphysical dogmatism of Plato had been changed into an ethical syncretism which combined elements from the Scepticism of Carneades and the doctrines of the Stoics; it was a change from a dogmatism which men found impossible to defend, to a probabilism which afforded a retreat from Scepticism and intellectual anarchy. Cicero represents at once the doctrine of the later Academy and the general attitude of Roman society when he says, “My words do not proclaim the truth, like a Pythian priestess; but I conjecture what is probable, like a plain man; and where, I ask, am I to search for anything more than verisimilitude?” And again: “The characteristic of the Academy is never to interpose one’s judgment, to approve what seems most probable, to compare together different opinions, to see what may be advanced on either side and to leave one’s listeners free to judge without pretending to dogmatize.” The passage from Sextus Empiricus, cited above, gives the general view that there were three academies: the first, or Old, academy under Speusippus and Xenocrates; the second, or Middle, academy under Arcesilaus and Polemon; the third, or New, academy under Carneades and Clitomachus. Sextus notices also the theory that there was a fourth, that of Philo of Larissa and Charmidas, and a fifth, that of Antiochus. Diogenes Laertius says that Lacydes was the founder of the New Academy (i. 19, iv. 59). Cicero ( de Orat . iii. 18, &c.) and Varro insist that there were only two academies, the Old and the New. Those who maintain that there is no justification for the five-fold division hold that the agnosticism of Carneades was really latent in Plato, and became prominent owing to the necessity of refuting the Stoic criterion . The general tendency of the Academic thinkers was towards practical simplicity, a tendency due in large measure to the inferior intellectual capacity of Plato’s immediate successors. Cicero ( de Fin . v. 3) says generally of the Old Academy: “Their writings and method contain all liberal learning, all history, all polite discourse; and besides they embrace such a variety of arts, that no one can undertake any noble career without their aid . . . . In a word the Academy is, as it were, the workshop of every artist.” It is true that these men turned to scientific investigation, but in so doing they escaped from the high altitudes in which Plato thought, and tended to lay emphasis on the mundane side of philosophy. Of Plato’s originality and speculative power, of his poetry and enthusiasm they inherited nothing, “nor amid all the learning which has been profusely lavished upon investigating their tenets is there a single deduction calculated to elucidate distinctly the character of their progress or regression” (Archer Butler, Lect. on Anc. Phil. ii. 315). The modification of Academic doctrine from Plato to Cicero may be indicated briefly under four heads. (1) Plato’s own theory of Ideas was not accepted even by Speusippus and Xenocrates. They argued that the Good cannot be the origin of things, inasmuch as Goodness is only found as an attribute of things. Therefore, the idea of Good must be secondary to some other more fundamental principle of existence. This unit Speusippus attempted to find in the Pythagorean number-theory. From it he deduced three principles, one for numbers, one for magnitude, one for the soul. The Deity he conceived as that living force which rules all and resides everywhere. Xenocrates, though like Speusippus infected with Pythagoreanism, was the most faithful of Plato’s successors. He distinguished three spheres, the sensible, the intelligible, and a third compounded of the two, to which correspond respectively, sense, intellect and opinion ( δόξα ). Cicero notes, however, that both Speusippus and Xenocrates abandon the Socratic principle of hesitancy. (2) Up to Arcesilaus, the Academy accepted the principle of finding a general unity in all things, by the aid of which a principle of certainty might be found. Arcesilaus, however, broke new ground by attacking the very possibility of certainty. Socrates had said, “This alone I know, that I know nothing.” But Arcesilaus went farther and denied the possibility of even the Socratic minimum of certainty: “I cannot know even whether I know or not.” Thus from the dogmatism of the master the Academy plunged into the extremes of agnostic criticism. (3) The next stage in the Academic succession was the moderate scepticism of Carneades, which owed its existence to his opposition to Chrysippus, the Stoic. To the Stoical theory of perception, the φαντασία καταληπτική , by which they expressed a conviction of certainty arising from impressions so strong as to amount to science, he opposed the doctrine of acatalepsia, which denied any necessary correspondence between perceptions and the objects perceived. He saved himself, however, from absolute scepticism by the doctrine of probability or verisimilitude, which may serve as a practical guide in life. Thus his criterion of imagination ( φαντασία ) is that it must be credible, irrefutable and attested by comparison with other impressions; it may be wrong, but for the person concerned it is valid. In ethics he was an avowed sceptic. During his official visit to Rome, he gave public lectures, in which he successively proved and disproved with equal ease the existence of justice. (4) In the last period we find a tendency not only to reconcile the internal divergences of the Academy itself, but also to connect it with parallel growths of thought. Philo of Larissa endeavours to show that Carneades was not opposed to Plato, and further that the apparent antagonism between Plato and Zeno was due to the fact that they were arguing from different points of view. From this syncretism emerged the prudent non-committal eclecticism of Cicero, the last product of Academic development. For detailed accounts of the Academicians see Speusippus , Xenocrates , &c.; also Stoics and Neoplatonism . Consult histories of philosophy by Zeller and Windelband, and Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers , ii. 270 (Eng. tr., London, 1905). |
ACADEMY, ROYAL. The Royal Academy of Arts in London, to give it the original title in full, was founded in 1768, “for the purpose of cultivating and improving the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture.” Many attempts had previously been made in England to form a society which should have for its object the advancement of the fine arts. Sir James Thornhill, his son-in-law Hogarth, the Dilettanti Society, made efforts in this direction, but their schemes were wrecked by want of means. Accident solved the problem. The crowds that attended an exhibition of pictures held in 1758 at the Foundling Hospital for the benefit of charity, suggested a way of making money hitherto unsuspected. Two societies were quickly formed, one calling itself the “Society of Artists” and the other the “Free Society of Artists.” The latter ceased to exist in 1774. The former flourished, and in 1765 was granted a royal charter under the title of the “Incorporated Society of Artists of Great Britain.” But though prosperous it was not united. A number of the members, including the most eminent artists of the day, resigned in 1768, and headed by William Chambers the architect, and Benjamin West, presented on 28th November in that year to George III., who had already shown his interest in the fine arts, a memorial soliciting his “gracious assistance, patronage and protection,” in “establishing a society for promoting the arts of design.” The memorialists stated that the two principal objects they had in view were the establishing of “a well-regulated school or academy of design for the use of students in the arts, and an annual exhibition open to all artists of distinguished merit; the profit arising from the last of these institutions” would, they thought, “fully answer all the expenses of the first,” and, indeed, leave something over to be distributed “in useful charities.” The king expressed his agreement with the proposal, but asked for further particulars. These were furnished to him on the 7th of December and approved, and on the 10th of December they were submitted in form, and the document embodying them received his signature, with the words, “I approve of this plan; let it be put into execution.” This document, known as the “Instrument,” defined under twenty-seven heads the constitution and government of the Royal Academy, and contained the names of the thirty-six original members nominated by the king. Changes and modifications in the laws and regulations laid down in it have of course been made, but none of them without the sanction of the sovereign, and the “Instrument” remains to this day in all essential particulars the Magna Charta of the society. Four days after the signing of this document—on the 14th of December—twenty-eight of the first nominated members met and drew up the Form of Obligation which is still signed by every academician on receiving his diploma, and also elected a president, keeper, secretary, council and visitors in the schools; the professors being chosen at a further meeting held on the 17th. No time was lost in establishing the schools, and on the 2nd of January 1769 they were opened at some rooms in Pall Mall, a little eastward of the site now occupied by the Junior United Service Club, the president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, delivering on that occasion the first of his famous “discourses.” The opening of the first exhibition at the same place followed on the 26th of April. The king when founding the Academy undertook to supply out of his own privy purse any deficiencies between the receipts derived from the exhibitions and the expenditure incurred on the schools, charitable donations for artists, &c. For twelve years he was called upon to do so, and contributed in all something over £5000, but in 1781 there was a surplus, and no further call has ever been made on the royal purse. George III. also gave the Academy rooms in what was then his own palace of Somerset House, and the schools and offices were removed there in 1771, but the exhibition continued to be held in Pall Mall, till the completion in 1780 of the new Somerset House, when the Academy took possession of the apartments in it which the king, on giving up the palace for government offices, had expressly stipulated should be provided. Here it remained till 1837, when the government, requiring the use of these rooms, offered in exchange a portion of the National Gallery, then just erected in Trafalgar Square. The offer, which contained no conditions, was accepted. But it was not long before the necessity for a further removal became imminent. Already in 1850 notice was given by the government that the rooms occupied by the Academy would be required for the purposes of the National Gallery, and that they proposed to give the Academy £40,000 to provide themselves with a building elsewhere. The matter slumbered, however, till 1858, when the question was raised in the House of Commons as to whether it would not be justifiable to turn the Academy out of the National Gallery without making any provision for it elsewhere. Much discussion followed, and a royal commission was appointed in 1863 “to inquire into the present position of the Royal Academy in relation to the fine arts, and into the circumstances and conditions under which it occupies a portion of the National Gallery, &c.” In their report, which contained a large number of proposals and suggestions, some of them since carried out, the commissioners stated that they had “come to the clear conclusion that the Royal Academy have no legal, but that they have a moral claim to apartments at the public expense.” Negotiations had been already going on between the government and the Academy for the appropriation to the latter of a portion of the site occupied by the recently purchased Burlington House, on which the Academy offered to erect suitable buildings at its own expense. The negotiations were renewed in 1866, and in March in the following year a lease of old Burlington House, and a portion of the garden behind it, was granted to the Academy for 999 years at a peppercorn rent, subject to the condition that “the premises shall be at all times exclusively devoted to the purpose of the cultivation of the fine arts.” The Academy immediately proceeded to erect, on the garden portion of the site thus acquired, exhibition galleries and schools, which were opened in 1869, further additions being made in 1884. An upper storey was also added to old Burlington House, in which to place the diploma works, the Gibson statuary and other works of art. Altogether the Academy, out of its accumulated savings, has spent on these buildings more than £160,000. They are its own property, and are maintained entirely at its expense. The government of the Academy was by the “Instrument” vested in “a president and eight other persons, who shall form a council.” Four of these were to retire every year, and the seats were to go by rotation to every academician. The number was increased in 1870 to twelve, and reduced to ten in 1875. The rules as to retirement and rotation are still in force. Newly elected academicians begin their two years’ service as soon as they have received their diploma. The council has, to quote the “Instrument”, “the entire direction and management of the business” of the Academy in all its branches; and also the framing of new laws and regulations, but the latter, before coming into force, must be sanctioned by the general assembly and approved by the sovereign. The general assembly consists of the whole body of academicians, and meets on certain fixed dates and at such other times as the business may require; also at the request to the president of any five members. The principal executive officers of the Academy are the president, the keeper, the treasurer, the librarian and the secretary, all now elected by the general assembly, subject to the approval of the sovereign. The president is elected annually on the foundation day, 10th December, but the appointment is virtually for life. No change has ever been made in the conditions attached to this office, with the exception of its being now a salaried instead of an unsalaried post. The treasurership and librarianship, both offices originally held not by election but by direct appointment from the sovereign, are now elective, the holders being subject to re-election every five years, and the keepership is also held upon the same terms; while the secretaryship, which up to 1873 had always been filled like the other offices by an academician, has since then been held by a layman. Other officers elected by the general assembly are the auditors (three academicians, one of whom retires every year), the visitors in the schools (academicians and associates), and the professors of painting, sculpture and architecture—who must be members—and of anatomy and chemistry. There are also a registrar, and curators and teachers in the schools, who are appointed by the council. The thirty-six original academicians were named by George III. Their successors have been elected, up to 1867, by academicians only—since that date by academicians and associates together. The original number was fixed in the “Instrument” at forty, and has so remained. Each academician on his election has to present an approved specimen of his work—called his diploma work—before his diploma is submitted to the sovereign for signature. On receiving his diploma he signs the Roll of Institution as an academician, and takes his seat in the general assembly. The class of associates, out of whom alone the academicians can be elected, was founded in 1769—they were “to be elected from amongst the exhibitors, and be entitled to every advantage enjoyed by the royal academicians, excepting that of having a voice in the deliberations or any share in the government of the Academy.” Those exhibitors who wished to become candidates had to give in their names at the close of the exhibition. This condition no longer exists, candidates having since 1867 merely to be proposed and seconded by members of the Academy. On election, they attend at a council meeting to sign the Roll of Institution as an associate, and receive a diploma signed by the president and secretary. In 1867 also associates were admitted to vote at all elections of members; in 1868 they were made eligible to serve as visitors in the schools, and in 1886 to become candidates for the professorships of painting, sculpture and architecture. At first the number of associates was limited to twenty; in 1866 the number was made indefinite with a minimum of twenty, and in 1876 the minimum was raised to thirty. Vacancies in the lists of academicians and associates caused by death or resignation can be filled up at any time within five weeks of the event, except in the months of August, September and October, but a vacancy in the associate list caused by election only dates from the day on which the new academician receives his diploma. The mode of election is the same in both cases, first by marked lists and afterwards by ballot. All who at the first marking have four or more votes are marked for again, and the two highest then go to the ballot. Engravers have always constituted a separate class, and up to 1855 they were admitted to the associateship only, the number, six, being in addition to the other associates; now the maximum is four, of whom not more than two may be academicians. A class of honorary retired academicians was established in 1862, and of honorary retired associates in 1884. The first honorary foreign academicians were elected in 1869. The honorary members consist of a chaplain, an antiquary, a secretary for foreign correspondence, and professors of ancient history and ancient literature. These posts, which date from the foundation of the Academy, have always been held by distinguished men. Academy Schools .—One of the most important functions of the Royal Academy, and one which for nearly a century it discharged alone, was the instruction of students in art. The first act, as has been shown, of the newly founded Academy was to establish schools—“an Antique Academy,” and a “School for the Living Model” for painters, sculptors and architects. In the first year, 1769, no fewer than seventy-seven students entered. A school of painting was added in 1815, and special schools of sculpture and architecture in 1871. It would occupy too much space to follow the various changes that have been made in the schools since their establishment. In one important respect, however, they remain the same, viz. in the instruction being gratuitous—no fees have ever been charged. Up to the removal of the Academy to its present quarters the schools could not be kept permanently open, as the rooms occupied by them were wanted for the exhibition. They are now open all the year round with the exception of a fortnight at Christmas, and the months of August and September. They consist of an antique school, upper and lower schools of painting, a school of drawing from the life, a school of modelling from the life and an architectural school. Admission is gained by submitting certain specimens of drawing or modelling, and the successful candidates, called probationers, have then to undergo a further test in the schools, on passing which they are admitted as students for three years. At the end of that time they are again examined, and if qualified admitted for a further term of two years. These examinations are held twice a year, in January and July. Female students were first admitted in 1860. There are many scholarships, money prizes and medals to be gained by the various classes of students during the time of studentship, including travelling studentships of the value of £200 for one year, gold and silver medals, and prizes varying from £50 to £10. There are permanent curators and teachers in all the schools, but the principal teaching is done by the visitors, academicians and associates, elected to serve in each school. The average cost of maintaining these schools, including salaries, fees, cost of models, prizes, books, maintenance of building, &c., is from £5000 to £6000 a year, apart from certain scholarships and prizes derived from moneys given or bequeathed for this purpose, such as the Landseer scholarships, the Creswick prize, the Armitage prizes and the Turner scholarship and gold medal. Charities .—Another of the principal objects to which the profits of the Royal Academy have been devoted has been the relief of distressed artists and their families. From the commencement of the institution a fund was set apart for this purpose, and subsequently a further sum was allotted to provide pensions for necessitous members of the Academy and their widows. Both these funds were afterwards merged in the general fund, and various changes have from time to time been made in the conditions under which pensions and donations have been granted and in their amount. At the present time pensions not exceeding a certain fixed amount may be given to academicians and associates, sixty years of age, who have retired and whose circumstances show them to be in need, provided the sum given does not make their total annual income exceed a certain limit, and the same amounts can be given to their widows subject to the same conditions. No pensions are granted without very strict inquiry into the circumstances of the applicant, who is obliged to make a yearly declaration as to his or her income. The average annual amount of these pensions has been latterly about £2000. Pensions are also given according to the civil service scale to certain officers on retirement. It may be stated here that with the exception of these pensions and of salaries and fees for official services, no member of the Academy derives any pecuniary benefit from the funds of the institution. Donations to distressed artists who are or have been exhibitors at the Royal Academy, their widows and children under twenty-one years of age, are made twice a year in February and August. The maximum amount that can be granted to any one applicant in one donation is £100, and no one can receive a grant more than once a year. The average yearly amount thus expended is from £1200 to £1500. In addition to these charities from its general funds, the Academy administers for the benefit of artists, not members of the Academy, certain other funds which have been bequeathed to it for charitable purposes, viz. the Turner fund, the Cousins fund, the Cooke fund, the Newton bequest and the Edwards fund (see below). Exhibitions .—The source from which have been derived the funds for carrying on the varied work of the Royal Academy, its schools, its charities and general cost of administration, and which has enabled it to spend large sums on building, and provided it with the means of maintaining the buildings, has been the annual exhibitions. With the exception of the money left by John Gibson, R.A., some of which was spent in building the gallery containing the statues and bas-reliefs bequeathed by him, these exhibitions have provided the sole source of revenue, all other moneys that have come to the Academy having been either left in trust, or been constituted trusts, for certain specific purposes. The first exhibition in 1769 contained 136 works, of which more than one-half were contributed by members, and brought in £699: 17: 6. In 1780, the first year in which the receipts exceeded the expenditure, the number of works was 489, of which nearly one-third were by members, and the sum received was £3069: 1s. This increase continued gradually with fluctuations, and in 1836, the last year at Somerset House, the number of works was 1154, and the receipts were £5179: 19s. No great addition to the number of works exhibited took place at Trafalgar Square, but the receipts steadily grew, and their careful management enabled the Academy, when the time came for moving, to erect its own buildings and become no longer dependent on the government for a home. The greater space afforded by the galleries at Burlington House rendered it possible to increase the number of works exhibited, which of late years has reached a total of over 2000, while the receipts have also been such as to provide the means for further building, and for a largely increased expenditure of all kinds. It may be noted that the number of works sent for exhibition soon began to exceed the space available. In 1868, the last year at Trafalgar Square, the number sent was 3011. This went on increasing, with occasional fluctuations, at Burlington House, and in the year 1900 it reached the number of 13,462. The annual winter exhibition of works by old masters and deceased British artists was begun in 1870. It was never intended to be a source of revenue, but appreciation by the public has so far prevented it from being a cause of loss. The summer exhibition of works by living artists opens on the first Monday in May, and closes on the first Monday in August. The winter exhibition of works by deceased artists opens on the first Monday in January, and closes on the second Saturday in March. The galleries containing the diploma works, the Gibson statuary and other works of art are open daily, free. Presidents of the Royal Academy.—Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1768–1792; Benjamin West (resigned), 1792–1805; James Wyatt (president-elect), 1805; Benjamin West (re-elected), 1806–1820; Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1820–1830; Sir Martin Archer Shee, 1830–1850; Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, 1850–1865; Sir Francis Grant, 1866–1878; Frederick, Lord Leighton of Stretton, 1878–1896; Sir John Everett Millais, 1896; Sir Edward John Poynter, 1896. The library contains about 7000 volumes, dealing with the history, the theory and the practice of the various branches of the fine arts, some of them of great rarity and value. It is open daily to the students and members, and to other persons on a proper introduction. The trust funds administered by the Royal Academy are:— The Turner fund (J. M. W. Turner, R.A.), which provides sixteen annuities of £50 each, for artists of repute not members of the Academy, also a biennial scholarship of £50 and a gold medal for a landscape painting. The Chantrey fund (Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A.), the income of which, paid over by the Chantrey trustees, is spent on pictures and sculpture. (See Chantrey .) The Creswick fund (Thomas Creswick, R.A.), which provides an annual prize of £30 for a landscape painting in oil. The Cooke fund (E. W. Cooke, R.A.), which provides two annuities of £35 each for painters not members of the Academy, over sixty years of age and in need. The Landseer fund (Charles Landseer, R.A.), which provides four scholarships of £40 each, two in painting and two in sculpture, tenable for two years, open to students at the end of the first two years of studentship, and given for the best work done during the second year. The Armitage fund (E. Armitage, R.A.), which provides two annual prizes of £30 and £10, for a design in monochrome for a figure picture. The Cousins fund (S. Cousins, R.A.), which provides seven annuities of £80 each for deserving artists, not members of the Academy, in need of assistance. The Newton bequest (H. C. Newton), which provides an annual sum of £60 for the indigent widow of a painter. The Bizo fund (John Bizo), to be used in the scientific investigation into the nature of pigments and varnishes, &c. The Edwards fund (W. J. Edwards), producing £40 a year for the benefit of poor artists or artistic engravers. The Leighton bequest (Lord Leighton, P.R.A.), received from Mrs Orr and Mrs Matthews in memory of their brother, the income from which, about £300, is expended on the decoration of public places and buildings. The literature concerning the Royal Academy consists chiefly of pamphlets and articles of more or less ephemeral value. More serious works are: William Sandby, The History of the Royal Academy of Arts (London, 1862) (withdrawn from circulation on a question of copyright); Report from the Select Committee on Arts and their Connexion with Manufactures , with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix (London, 1836); Report of the Royal Commission on the Royal Academy , with Minutes of Evidence and Appendix (London, 1863); Martin Archer Shee, The Life of Sir M. A. Shee , P.R.A. (London, 1860); C. R. Leslie, R.A., and Tom Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds , P.R.A. (London, 1865); J. E. Hodgson, R.A. (the late), and Fred. A. Eaton, Sec. R.A., “The Royal Academy in the Last Century,” Art Journal , 1889–1891. But the chief sources of information on the subject are the minute-books of the council and of the general assembly, and the annual reports, which, however, only date from 1859. ( F. A. E. ) |
ACADIAN, in geology, the name given by Sir J. W. Dawson in 1867 to a series of black, red and green shales and slates, with dark grey limestones, which are well developed at St John, New Brunswick; Avalon in E. Newfoundland, and Braintree in E. Massachusetts. These rocks are of Middle Cambrian age and possess a Paradoxides fauna. They have been correlated with limestone beds in Tennessee, Alabama, Central Nevada and British Columbia (St Stephen). See Cambrian System ; also C. D. Walcott, Bull. U.S. Geol. Survey , No. 81, 1891; and Sir J. W. Dawson, Acadian Geology , 1st ed. 1855, 3rd ed. 1878. |
ACADIE, or Acadia , a name given by the French in 1603 to that part of the mainland of North America lying between the latitudes 40° and 46°. In the treaty of Utrecht (1713) the words used in transferring the French possessions to Britain were “Nova Scotia or Acadia.” See Nova Scotia for the limits included at that date under the term. |
ACANTHOCEPHALA, a compact group of cylindrical, parasitic worms, with no near allies in the animal kingdom. Its members are quite devoid of any mouth or alimentary canal, but have a well-developed body cavity into which the eggs are dehisced and which communicates with the exterior by means of an oviduct. The size of the animals varies greatly, from forms a few millimetres in length to Gigantorhynchus gigas , which measures from 10 to 65 cms. The adults live in great numbers in the alimentary canal of some vertebrate, usually fish, the larvae are as a rule encysted in the body cavity of some invertebrate, most often an insect or crustacean, more rarely a small fish. The body is divisible into a proboscis and a trunk with sometimes an intervening neck region. The proboscis bears rings of recurved hooks arranged in horizontal rows, and it is by means of these hooks that the animal attaches itself to the tissues of its host. The hooks may be of two or three shapes. Like the body, the proboscis is hollow, and its cavity is separated from the body cavity by a septum or proboscis sheath. Traversing the cavity of the proboscis are muscle-strands inserted into the tip of the proboscis at one end and into the septum at the other. Their contraction causes the proboscis to be invaginated into its cavity (fig. 2). But the whole proboscis apparatus can also be, at least partially, withdrawn into the body cavity, and this is effected by two retractor muscles which run from the posterior aspect of the septum to the body wall (fig. 3). From Cambridge Natural History , vol. ii., “Worms, &c.,” by permission of Macmillan & Co., Ltd. Fig. 1. A, Five specimens of Echinorhynchus acus , Rud., attached to a piece of intestinal wall, B, The proboscis of one still more highly magnified. The skin is peculiar. Externally is a thin cuticle; this covers the epidermis, which consists of a syncytium with no cell limits. The syncytium is traversed by a series of branching tubules containing fluid and is controlled by a few wandering, amoeboid nuclei (fig. 2). Inside the syncytium is a not very regular layer of circular muscle fibres, and within this again some rather scattered longitudinal fibres; there is no endothelium. In their minute structure the muscular fibres resemble those of Nematodes. Except for the absence of the longitudinal fibres the skin of the proboscis resembles that of the body, but the fluid-containing tubules of the latter are shut off from those of the body. The canals of the proboscis open ultimately into a circular vessel which runs round its base. From the circular canal two sac-like diverticula called the “lemnisci” depend into the cavity of the body (fig. 2). Each consists of a prolongation of the syncytial material of the proboscis skin, penetrated by canals and sheathed with a scanty muscular coat. They seem to act as reservoirs into which the fluid of the tense, extended proboscis can withdraw when it is retracted, and from which the fluid can be driven out when it is wished to expand the proboscis. From Cambridge Natural History , vol. ii., “Worms, &c.,” by permission of Macmillan & Co., Ltd. Fig. 2. —A longitudinal section through the anterior end of Echinorhynchus haeruca , Rud. (from Hamann). a , The proboscis not fully expanded. b , Proboscis-sheath. c , Retractor muscles of the proboscis. d , Cerebral ganglion. e , Retinaculum enclosing a nerve. f , One of the retractors of the sheath. g , A lemniscus. h , One of the spaces in the sub-cuticular tissue. i , Longitudinal muscular layer. j , Circular muscular layer. k , Line of division between the sub-cuticular tissue of the trunk and that of the proboscis with the lemnisci. There are no alimentary canal or specialized organs for circulation or for respiration. Food is imbibed through the skin from the digestive juices of the host in which the Acanthocephala live. J. Kaiser has described as kidneys two organs something like minute shrubs situated dorsally to the generative ducts into which they open. At the end of each twig is a membrane pierced by pores, and a number of cilia depend into the lumen of the tube; these cilia maintain a constant motion. The central ganglion of the nervous system lies in the proboscis-sheath or -septum. It supplies the proboscis with nerves and gives off behind two stout trunks which supply the body (fig. 2). Each of these trunks is surrounded by muscles, and the complex retains the old name of “retinaculum.” In the male at least there is also a genital ganglion. Some scattered papillae may possibly be sense-organs. From Cambridge Natural History , vol. ii., “Worms, &c.,” by permission of Macmillan & Co., Ltd. Fig. 3. —An optical section through a male Neorhynchus clavaeceps , Zed. (from Hamann). a , Proboscis. b , Proboscis sheath. c , Retractor of the proboscis. d , Cerebral ganglion. f , f , Retractors of the proboscis sheath. g , g , Lemnisci, each with two giant nuclei. h , Space in sub-cuticular layer of the skin. l , Ligament. m , m , Testes. o , Glands on vas deferens. p , Giant nucleus in skin. q , Opening of vas deferens. The Acanthocephala are dioecious. There is a “stay” called the “ligament” which runs from the hinder end of the proboscis sheath to the posterior end of the body. In this the two testes lie (fig. 3). Each opens in a vas deferens which bears three diverticula or vesiculae seminales, and three pairs of cement glands also are found which pour their secretions through a duct into the vasa deferentia. The latter unite and end in a penis which opens posteriorly. The ovaries arise like the testes as rounded bodies in the ligament. From these masses of ova dehisce into the body cavity and float in its fluid. Here the eggs are fertilized and here they segment so that the young embryos are formed within their mother’s body. The embryos escape into the uterus through the “bell,” a funnel-like opening continuous with the uterus. Just at the junction of the “bell” and the uterus there is a second small opening situated dorsally. The “bell” swallows the matured embryos and passes them on into the uterus, and thus out of the body via the oviduct, which opens at one end into the uterus and at the other on to the exterior at the posterior end of the body. But should the “bell” swallow any of the ova, or even one of the younger embryos, these are passed back into the body cavity through the second and dorsal opening. From Cambridge Natural History , vol. ii., “Worms, &c.,” by permission of Macmillan & Co., Ltd. Fig. 4. A, The larva of Echinorhynchus proteus from the body cavity of Phoxinus laevis , with the proboscis retracted and the whole still enclosed in a capsule. B, A section through the same; a , the invaginated proboscis; b , proboscis sheath; c , beginning of the neck; d , lemniscus. Highly magnified (both from Hamann). From Cambridge Natural History , vol. ii., “Worms, &c.,” by permission of Macmillan & Co., Ltd. Fig. 5. —Fully formed larva of Echinorhynchus proteus from the body cavity of Phoxinus laevis (from Hamann). Highly magnified. a , Proboscis; b , bulla; c , neck; d , trunk; e , e , lemnisci. The embryo thus passes from the body of the female into the alimentary canal of the host and leaves this with the faeces. It is then, if lucky, eaten by some crustacean, or insect, more rarely by a fish. In the stomach it casts its membranes and becomes mobile, bores through the stomach walls and encysts usually in the body-cavity of its first and invertebrate host. By this time the embryo has all the organs of the adult perfected save only the reproductive; these develop only when the first host is swallowed by the second or final host, in which case the parasite attaches itself to the wall of the alimentary canal and becomes adult. A curious feature shared by both larva and adult is the large size of many of the cells, e.g. the nerve cells and the bell. O. Hamann has divided the group into three families, to which a fourth must be added. (i.) Fam. Echinorhynchidae . This is by far the largest family and contains the commonest species; the larva of Echinorhynchus proteus lives in Gammarus pulex and in small fish, the adult is common in many fresh-water fish: E. polymorphus , larval host the crayfish, adult host the duck: E. angustatus occurs as a larva in Asellus aquaticus , as an adult in the perch, pike and barbel: E. moniliformis has for its larval host the larvae of the beetle Blaps mucronata , for its final host certain mice, if introduced into man it lives well: E. acus is common in whiting: E. porrigeus in the fin-whale, and E. strumosus in the seal. A species named E. hominis has been described from a boy. (ii.) Fam. Gigantorhynchidae . A small family of large forms with a ringed and flattened body. Gigantorhynchus gigas lives normally in the pig, but is not uncommon in man in South Russia, its larval host is the grub of Melolontha vulgaris , Cetonis auratus , and in America probably of Lachnosterna arcuata : G. echinodiscus lives in the intestine of ant-eaters: G. spira in that of the king vulture, Sarcorhampus papa , and G. taeniodes in Dicholopus cristatus , a cariama. (iii.) Fam. Neorhynchidae . Sexually mature whilst still in the larval stage. Neorhynchus clavaeceps in Cyprinus carpio has its larval form in the larva of Sialis lutaria and in the leech Nephelis octocula : N. agilis is found in Mugil auratus and M. cephalus . (iv.) Apororhynchidae . With no proboscis. This family contains the single species Apororhynchus hemignathi , found near the anus of Hemignathus procerus , a Sandwich Island bird. Authorities. —O. Hamann, O. Jen. Zeitschr. xxv., 1891, p. 113; Zool. Anz. xv., 1892, 195; J. Kaiser, Bibl. Zool. ii., 1893; A. E. Shipley, Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci. xxxix., 1896; ibid . xlii., 1899, p. 361; Villot, Zool. Anz. viii., 1885, p. 19. ( A. E. S. ) |
ACANTHUS (the Greek and Latin name for the plant, connected with ἀκή , a sharp point), a genus of plants belonging to the natural order Acanthaceae. The species are natives of the southern parts of Europe and the warmer parts of Asia and Africa. The best-known is Acanthus mollis (brankursine, or bears’ breech), a common species throughout the Mediterranean region, having large, deeply cut, hairy, shining leaves. Another species, Acanthus spinosus , is so called from its spiny leaves. They are bold, handsome plants, with stately spikes, 2 to 3 ft. high, of flowers with spiny bracts. A. mollis , A. latifolius and A. longifolius are broad-leaved species; A. spinosus and A. spinosissimus have narrower, spiny toothed leaves. In decoration, the acanthus was first reproduced in metal, and subsequently carved in stone by the Greeks. It was afterwards, with various changes, adopted in all succeeding styles of architecture as a basis of ornamental decoration. There are two types, that found in the Acanthus spinosus , which was followed by the Greeks, and that in the Acanthus mollis , which seems to have been preferred by the Romans. |
ACAPULCO, a city and port of the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast of Mexico, 190 m. S.S.W. of the city of Mexico, Pop. (1900) 4932. It is located on a deep, semicircular bay, almost land-locked, easy of access, and with so secure an anchorage that vessels can safely lie alongside the rocks that fringe the shore. It is the best harbour on the Pacific coast of Mexico, and it is a port of call for steamship lines running between Panama and San Francisco. The town is built on a narrow strip of low land, scarcely half a mile wide, between the shore line and the lofty mountains that encircle the bay. There is great natural beauty in the surroundings, but the mountains render the town difficult of access from the interior, and give it an exceptionally hot and unhealthy climate. The effort to admit the cooling sea breezes by cutting through the mountains a passage called the Abra de San Nicolas had some beneficial effect. Acapulco was long the most important Mexican port on the Pacific, and the only depot for the Spanish fleets plying between Mexico and Spain’s East Indian colonies from 1778 until the independence of Mexico, when this trade was lost. The town has been chosen as the terminus for two railway lines seeking a Pacific port—the Interoceanic and the Mexican Central. The town suffered considerably from earthquakes in July and August 1909. There are exports of hides, cedar and fruit, and the adjacent district of Tabares produces cotton, tobacco, cacao, sugar cane, Indian corn, beans and coffee. |
ACARNANIA, a district of ancient Greece, bounded on the W. by the Ionian Sea, on the N. by the Ambracian Gulf, on the E. and S. by Mt. Thyamus and the Achelous. The Echinades islands, off the S.W. coast, are gradually being joined up to the mainland. Its most populous region was the plain of the Achelous, commanded by the principal town Stratus; communication with the coast was impeded by mountain ridges and lagoons. Its people long continued in semi-barbarism, having little intercourse with the rest of Greece. In the 5th century B.C. with the aid of Athens they subdued the Corinthian factories on their coast. In 391 they submitted to the Spartan king Agesilaus; in 371 they passed under Theban control. In the Hellenistic age the Acarnanians were constantly assailed by their Aetolian neighbours. On the advice of Cassander they made effective their ancient cantonal league, apparently after the pattern of Aetolia. In the 3rd century they obtained assistance from the Illyrians, and formed a close alliance with Philip V. of Macedonia, whom they supported in his Roman wars, their new federal capital, Leucas, standing a siege in his interest. For their sympathy with his successor Perseus they were deprived of Leucas and required to send hostages to Rome (167). The country was finally desolated by Augustus, who drafted its inhabitants into Nicopolis and Patrae. Acarnania took a prominent part in the national uprising of 1821; it is now joined with Aetolia as a nome. The sites of several ancient towns in Acarnania are marked by well-preserved walls, especially those of Stratus, Oeniadae and Limnaea. Authorities .—Strabo vii. 7, x. 2; Thucydides; Polybius iv. 40; Livy xxxiii. 16-17; Corpus Inscr. Graecarum , no. 1739; E. Oberhummer, Akarnanien im Altertum (Munich, 1887); Heuzey, Mt. Olympe et l’Acarnanie (Paris, 1860). ( M. O. B. C. ; E. Gr. ) |
ACARUS (from Gr. ἅκαρι , a mite), a genus of Arachnids, represented by the cheese mite and other forms. |
ACASTUS, in Greek legend, the son of Pelias, king of Iolcus in Thessaly (Ovid, Metam . viii. 306; Apollonius Rhodius i. 224; Pindar, Nemea , iv. 54, v. 26). He was a great friend of Jason, and took part in the Calydonian boar-hunt and the Argonautic expedition. After his father’s death he instituted splendid funeral games in his honour, which were celebrated by artists and poets, such as Stesichorus. His wife Astydameia (called Hippolytē in Horace, Odes , iii. 7. 17) fell in love with Peleus ( q.v. ), who had taken refuge at Iolcus, but when her advances were rejected accused him falsely to her husband. Acastus, to avenge his fancied wrongs, left Peleus asleep on Mount Pelion, having first hidden his famous sword. On awaking, Peleus was attacked by the Centaurs, but saved by Cheiron. Having recovered his sword he returned to Iolcus and slew Acastus and Astydameia. Acastus was represented with his famous horses in the painting of the Argonautic expedition by Micon in the temple of the Dioscuri at Athens. |
ACATALEPSY (Gr. ἀ -, privative, and καταλαμβάνειν , to seize), a term used in Scepticism to denote incomprehensibility. |
ACAULESCENT (Lat. acaulescens , becoming stemless, from a , not, and caulis , a stem), a term used of a plant apparently stemless, as dandelion, the stem being almost suppressed. |
ACCA LARENTIA (not Laurentia), in Roman legend, the wife of the shepherd Faustulus, who saved the lives of the twins Romulus and Remus after they had been thrown into the Tiber. She had twelve sons, and on the death of one of them Romulus took his place, and with the remaining eleven founded the college of the Arval brothers (Fratres Arvales). The tradition that Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf has been explained by the suggestion that Larentia was called lupa (“courtesan,” literally “she-wolf”) on account of her immoral character (Livy i. 4; Ovid, Fasti , iii. 55). According to another account, Larentia was a beautiful girl, whom Hercules won in a game of dice (Macrobius i. 10; Plutarch, Romulus , 4, 5, Quaest. Rom. 35; Aulus Gellius vi. 7). The god advised her to marry the first man she met in the street, who proved to be a wealthy Etruscan named Tarutius. She inherited all his property and bequeathed it to the Roman people, who out of gratitude instituted in her honour a yearly festival called Larentalia (Dec. 23). According to some, Acca Larentia was the mother of the Lares, and, like Ceres, Tellus, Flora and others, symbolized the fertility of the earth—in particular the city lands and their crops. See Mommsen, “Die echte und die falsche Larentia,” in Römische Forschungen , ii. 1879; E. Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History (Eng. trans. 1906), whose views on the subject are criticized by W. W. Fowler in W. H. D. Rouse’s The Year’s Work in Classical Studies (1907); C. Pascal, Studii di antichità e Mitologia (1896). |
ACCELERATION (from Lat. accelerare , to hasten, celer , quick), hastening or quickening; in mechanics, a term employed to denote the rate at which the velocity of a body, whose motion is not uniform, either increases or decreases. (See Mechanics and Hodograph .) |
ACCENT. The word “accent” has its origin in the Lat. accentus , which in its turn is a literal translation of the Gr. προσῳδία . The early Greek grammarians used this term for the musical accent which characterized their own language, but later the term became specialized for quantity in metre, whence comes the Eng. prosody . Besides various later developments of usage it is important to observe that “accent” is used in two different and often contrasted senses in connexion with language. In all languages there are two kinds of accent: (1) musical chromatic or pitch accent; (2) emphatic or stress accent. The former indicates differences in musical pitch between one sound and another in speech, the latter the difference between one syllable and another which is occasioned by emitting the breath in the production of one syllable with greater energy than is employed for the other syllables of the same word. These two senses, it is to be noticed, are different from the common usage of the word in the statement that some one talks with a foreign or with a vulgar accent. In these cases, no doubt, both differences of intonation and differences of stress may be included in the statement, but other elements are frequently no less marked, e.g. the pronunciation of t and d as real dentals, whereas the English sounds so described are really produced not against the teeth but against their sockets, the inability to produce the interdental th whether breathed as in thin or voiced as in this and its representation by d or z , the production of o as a uniform sound instead of one ending as in English in a slight u sound, or such dialect changes as lydy ( laidy ) for lady , or toime for time ( taime ). In different languages the relations between pitch and stress differ very greatly. In some the pitch or musical accent predominates. In such languages if signs are employed to mark the position of the chief accent in the word it will be the pitch and not the stress accent which will be thus indicated. Amongst the languages of ancient times Sanskrit and Greek both indicate by signs the position of the chief pitch accent in the word, and the same method has been employed in modern times for languages in which pitch accent is well marked, as it is, for example, in Lithuanian, the language still spoken by some two millions of people on the frontier between Prussia and Russia in the neighbourhood of Königsberg and Vilna. Swedish also has a well-marked musical accent. Modern Greek has changed from pitch to stress, the stress being generally laid upon the same syllable in modern as bore the pitch accent in ancient Greek. In the majority of European languages, however, stress is more conspicuous than pitch, and there is plenty of evidence to show that the original language from which Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic and other languages of Europe are descended, possessed stress accent also in a marked degree. To the existence of this accent must be attributed a large part of the phenomena known as Ablaut or Gradation (see Indo-European Languages ). In modern languages we can see the same principle at work making Acton out of the O. Eng. (Anglo-Saxon) āc-tūn (oak-town), and in more recent times producing the contrast between New Town and Newton . In French, stress is less marked than it is in English, but here also there is evidence to show that in the development from Latin to French a very strong stress accent must have existed. The natural result of producing one syllable of a word with greater energy than the others is that the other syllables have a less proportion of breath assigned to them and therefore tend to become indistinct or altogether inaudible. Thus the strong stress accent existing in the transition period between Latin and French led to the curtailing of long Latin words like latrocínium or hospitále into the words which we have borrowed from French into English as larceny and hotel . It will be observed that the first syllable and that which bears the accent are the two which best withstand change, though the strong tendency in English to stress heavily the first syllable bids fair ultimately to oust the e in the pronunciation of larceny . No such changes arise when a strong pitch accent is accompanied by a weaker stress accent, and hence languages like ancient Sanskrit and ancient Greek, where such conditions existed, preserve fuller forms than their sister languages or than even their own descendants, when stress takes the place of pitch as the more important element in accent. In both pitch and stress accent different gradations may be observed. In pitch, the accent may be uniform, rising or falling. Or there may be combinations of rising and falling or of falling and rising accents upon the same syllable. In ancient Greek, as is well known, three accents are distinguished—(1) the acute (′), a rising accent; (2) the grave (`), apparently merely the indication that in particular positions in the sentence the acute accent is not used where it would occur in the isolated word; and (3) the circumflex, which, as its form (^) shows, and as the ancient grammarians inform us, is a combination of the rising and the falling accent upon the same syllable, this syllable being always long. Different Greek dialects, however, varied the syllables of the word on which the accent occurred, Aeolic Greek, for example, never putting the acute on the last syllable of a word, while Attic Greek had many words so accented. The pitch accent of the Indo-European languages was originally free, i.e. might occur on any syllable of a word, and this condition of things is still found in the earliest Sanskrit literature. But in Greek before historical times the accent had become limited to the last three syllables of a word, so that a long word like the Homeric genitive φερομένοιο could in no circumstances be accented on either of its first two syllables, while if the final syllable was long, as in the accusative plural φερομένους , the accent could go back only to the second syllable from the end. As every vowel has its own natural pitch, and a frequent interchange between e (a high vowel) and o (a low vowel) occurs in the Indo-European languages, it has been suggested that e originally went with the highest pitch accent, while o appeared in syllables of a lower pitch. But if there is any foundation for the theory, which is by no means certain, its effects have been distorted and modified by all manner of analogical processes. Thus ποιμήν with acute accent and δαίμων with the acute accent on the preceding syllable would correspond to the rule, so would aletes and ἔπος , but there are many exceptions like ὁδός where the acute accent accompanies an o vowel. Somewhat similar distinctions characterize syllables which are stressed. The strength of the expiration may be greatest either at the beginning, the end or the middle of the syllable, and, according as it is so, the accent is a falling, a rising, or a rising and falling one. Syllables in which the stress is produced continuously whether increasing or decreasing are called single-pointed syllables, those in which a variation in the stress occurs without being strong enough to break the syllable into two are called double-pointed syllables. These last occur in some English dialects, but are commonest in languages like Swedish and Lithuanian, which have a “sing-song” pronunciation. It is often not easy to decide whether a syllable is double-pointed or whether what we hear is really two-single-pointed syllables. There is no separate notation for stress accent, but the acute (′) is used for the increasing, the grave (`) for the decreasing stress, and the circumflex (^) for the rising and falling (increasing and decreasing) and (ˇ) for the opposite. A separate notation is much to be desired, as the nature of the two accents is so different, and could easily be devised by using S for the falling, (′) for the rising stress, and § for the combination of the two in one syllable. This would be clearer than the upright stroke (|) preceding the stressed syllable, which is used in some phonetic works. The relation between the two accents in the same language at the same time is a subject which requires further investigation. It is generally assumed that the chief stress and the chief pitch in a word coincide, but this is by no means certain for all cases, though the incidence of the chief stress accent in modern Greek upon the same syllable as had the chief pitch accent in ancient times suggests that the two did frequently fall upon the same syllable. On the other hand, in words like the Sanskrit saptá , the Gr. ἑπτά , the pitch accent which those languages indicate is upon a syllable which certainly, in the earliest times at least, did not possess the principal stress. For forms in other languages, like the Lat. septem or the Gothic sibun , show that the a of the final syllables in Sanskrit and Greek is the representative of a reduced syllable in which, even in the earliest times, the nasal alone existed (see under N for the history of these so-called sonant nasals). It is possible that sporadic changes of accent, as in the Gr. μήτηρ compared with the Sanskrit matā́ , is owing to the shifting of the pitch accent to the same syllable as the stress occupied. There is no lack of evidence to show that the stress accent also may shift its position in the history of a language from one syllable to another. In prehistoric times the stress in Latin must have rested upon the first syllable in all cases. Only on this hypothesis can be explained forms like peperci (perfect of parco ) and collīdo (a compound of laedo ). In historical times, when the stress in Latin was on the second syllable from the end of the word if that syllable was long, or on the third syllable from the end if the second from the end was short, we should have expected to find * peparci and * collaedo , for throughout the historical period the stress rested in these words upon the second syllable from the end. The causes for the change of position are not always easy to ascertain. In words of four syllables with a long penult and words of five syllables with a short penult there probably developed a secondary accent which in course of time replaced the earlier accent upon the first syllable. But the number of such long words in Latin is comparatively small. It is no less possible that relations between the stress and pitch accents were concerned. For unless we are to regard the testimony of the ancient Latin grammarians as altogether untrustworthy there was at least in classical Latin a well-marked pitch as well as a stress accent. This question, which had long slumbered, has been revived by Dr J. Vendryes in his treatise entitled Recherches sur l’histoire et les effets de l’intensité initiale en latin (Paris, 1902). In English there is a tendency to throw the stress on to the first syllable, which leads in time to the modification of borrowed words. Thus throughout the 18th century there was a struggle going on over the word balcony , which earlier was pronounced balcóny . Swift is the first author quoted for the pronunciation bálcony , and Cowper’s balcóny in “John Gilpin” is among the latest instances of the old pronunciation. Disregarding the Latin quantity of orātor and senātor , English by throwing the stress on the first syllable has converted them into órător and sénător , while Scots lawyers speak also of a cúrător . How far French influence plays a part here is not easy to say. Besides the accent of the syllable and of the word, which have been already discussed, there remains the accent of the sentence. Here the problem is much more complicated. The accent of a word, whether pitch or stress, may be considerably modified in the sentence. From earliest times some words have become parasitic or enclitic upon other words. Pronouns more than most words are modified from this cause, but conjunctions like the Gr. τε (“and”), the Lat. que , have throughout their whole history been enclitic upon the preceding word. A very important word may be enclitic, as in English don’t , shan’t . It is to be remembered that the unit of language is rather the sentence than the word, and that the form which is given to the word in the dictionary is very often not the form which it takes in actual speech. The divisions of words in speech are quite different from the divisions on the printed page. Sanskrit alone amongst languages has consistently recognized this, and preserves in writing the exact combinations that are spoken. Accent, whether pitch or stress, can be utilized in the sentence to express a great variety of meanings. Thus in English a sentence like You rode to Newmarket yesterday , which contains five words, may be made to express five different statements by putting the stress upon each of the words in turn. By putting the stress on you the person addressed is marked out as distinct from certain others, by putting it upon rode other means of locomotion to Newmarket are excluded, and so on. With the same order of words five interrogative sentences may also be expressed, and a third series of exclamatory sentences expressing anger, incredulity, &c., may be obtained from the same words. It is to be noticed that for these two series a different intonation, a different musical (pitch) accent appears from that which is found in the same words when employed to make a matter-of-fact statement. In languages like Chinese, which have neither compound words nor inflection, accent plays a very important part. As the words are all monosyllabic, stress could obviously not be so important as pitch as a help to distinguish different senses attached to the same vocable, and in no other language is variety of pitch so well developed as in Chinese. In languages which, like English, show comparatively little pitch accent it is to be noticed that the sentence tends to develop a more musical character under the influence of emotion. The voice is raised and at the same time greater stress is generally employed when the speaker is carried away by emotion, though the connexion is not essential and strong emotion may be expressed by a lowering as well as by a raising of the voice. In either case, however, the stress will be greater than the normal. Bibliography .—H. Sweet, Primer of Phonetics (1890, now in 3rd edition), § 96 ff., History of English Sounds (1888), § 110 ff., and other works; E. Sievers, Grundzüge der Phonetik (1893), § 532 ff.; O. Jespersen, Lehrbuch der Phonetik (1904), an abbreviated German translation of the author’s larger work in Danish, § 216 ff. The books of Sievers and Jespersen give (especially Sievers) full references to the literature of the subject. For the accent system of the Indo-European languages see “Betonung” in Brugmann’s Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen , vol. i. (1897), or, with considerable modifications, his Kurze vergleichende Grammatik der idg. Sprachen (1902), §§ 32-65 and 343-350. ( P. Gi. ) |
ACCEPTANCE (Lat. acceptare , frequentative form of accipere , to receive), generally, a receiving or acknowledgment of receipt; in law, the act by which a person binds himself to comply with the request contained in a bill of exchange ( q.v. ), addressed to him by the drawer. In all cases it is understood to be a promise to pay the bill in money, the law not recognizing an acceptance in which the promise is to pay in some other way, e.g. partly in money and partly by another bill. Acceptance may be either general or qualified. A general acceptance is an engagement to pay the bill strictly according to its tenor, and is made by the drawee subscribing his name, with or without the word “accepted,” at the bottom of the bill, or across the face of it. Qualified acceptance may be a promise to pay on a contingency occurring, e.g. on the sale of certain goods consigned by the drawer to the acceptor. No contingency is allowed to be mentioned in the body of the bill, but a qualified acceptance is quite legal, and equally binding with a general acceptance upon the acceptor when the contingency has occurred. It is also qualified acceptance where the promise is to pay only part of the sum mentioned in the bill, or to pay at a different time or place from those specified. As a qualified acceptance is so far a disregard of the drawer’s order, the holder is not obliged to take it; and if he chooses to take it he must give notice to antecedent parties, acting at his own risk if they dissent. In all cases acceptance involves the signature of the acceptor either by himself or by some person duly authorized on his behalf. A bill can be accepted in the first instance only by the person or persons to whom it is addressed; but if he or they fail to do so, it may, after being protested for non-acceptance, be accepted by some one else “supra protest,” for the sake of the honour of one or more of the parties concerned in it, and he thereupon acquires a claim against the drawer and all those to whom he could have resorted. |
ACCEPTILATION (from Lat. acceptilatio ), in Roman and Scots law, a verbal release of a verbal obligation. This formal mode of extinguishing an obligation contracted verbally received its name from the book-keeping term acceptilatio , entering a receipt, i.e. carrying it to credit. The words conveying the release had to correspond to, or strictly cover, the expressed obligation. Figuratively, in theology, the word acceptilation means free remission or forgiveness of sins. |
ACCESS (Lat. accessus ), approach, or the means of approaching. In law, the word is used in various connexions. The presumption of a child’s legitimacy is negatived if it be proved that a husband has not had access to his wife within such a period of time as would admit of his being the father. (See Legitimacy .) In the law of easements, every person who has land adjoining a public road or a public navigable river has a right of access to it from his land. So, also, every person has a right of access to air and light from an ancient window. For the right of access of parents to children under the guardianship of the court, see Infant . |
ACCESSION (from Lat. accedere , to go to, to approach), in law, a method of acquiring property adopted from Roman law, by which, in things that have a close connexion with or dependence on one another, the property of the principal draws after it the property of the accessory, according to the principle, accessio cedet principali . Accession may take place either in a natural way, such as the growth of fruit or the pregnancy of animals, or in an artificial way. The various methods may be classified as (1) land to land by accretion or alluvion; (2) moveables to land (see Fixtures ); (3) moveables to moveables; (4) moveables added to by the art or industry of man; this may be by specification, as when wine is made out of grapes, or by confusion, or commixture, which is the mixing together of liquids or solids, respectively. In the case of industrial accession ownership is determined according as the natural or manufactured substance is of the more importance, and, in general, compensation is payable to the person who has been dispossessed of his property. In a historical or constitutional sense, the term “accession” is applied to the coming to the throne of a dynasty or line of sovereigns or of a single sovereign. “Accession” sometimes likewise signifies consent or acquiescence. Thus, in the bankruptcy law of Scotland, where there is a settlement by a trust-deed, it is accepted on the part of each creditor by a “deed of accession.” |
ACCESSORY, a person guilty of a felonious offence, not as principal, but by participation; as by advice, command, aid or concealment. In certain crimes, there can be no accessories; all concerned being principals, whether present or absent at the time of their commission. These are treason, and all offences below the degree of felony, as specified in the Offences against the Person Act 1861. There are two kinds of accessories— before the fact, and after it. The first is he who commands or procures another to commit felony, and is not present himself; for if he be present, he is a principal. The second is he who receives, harbours, assists, or comforts any man that has done murder or felony, whereof he has knowledge. An accessory before the fact is liable to the same punishment as the principal; and there is now indeed no practical difference between such an accessory and a principal in regard either to indictment, trial or punishment. Accessories after the fact are in general punishable with imprisonment (with or without hard labour) for a period not exceeding two years, but in the case of murder punishable by penal servitude for life, or not less than three years, or by imprisonment (with or without hard labour) to the extent of two years. The law of Scotland makes no distinction between the accessory to any crime and the principal (see Art and Part ). Except in the case of treason, accession after the fact is not noticed by the law of Scotland, unless as an element of evidence to prove previous accession. |
ACCIAJUOLI, DONATO (1428–1478), Italian scholar, 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 entrusted 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 Florentines against Pope Sixtus IV. His body was taken back to Florence, and buried in the church of the Carthusians at the public expense, and his daughters were portioned by his fellow-citizens, the fortune he left being, owing to his probity and disinterestedness, very small. He wrote a Latin translation of some of Plutarch’s Lives (Florence, 1478); Commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics ; and the lives of Hannibal, Scipio and Charlemagne. In the work on Aristotle he had the co-operation of his master Argyropulus. |
ACCIDENCE (a mis-spelling of “accidents,” from the Latin neuter plural accidentia , casual events), the term for the grammatical changes to which words are subject in their inflections as to gender, number, tense and case. It is also used to denote a book containing the first principles of grammar, and so of the rudiments of any subject or art. |
ACCIDENT (from Lat. accidere , to happen), a word of widely variant meanings, usually something fortuitous and unexpected; a happening out of the ordinary course of things. In the law of tort, it is defined as “an occurrence which is due neither to design nor to negligence”; in equity, as “such an unforeseen event, misfortune, loss, act or omission, as is not the result of any negligence or misconduct.” So, in criminal law, “an effect is said to be accidental when the act by which it is caused is not done with the intention of causing it, and when its occurrence as a consequence of such act is not so probable that a person of ordinary prudence ought, under the circumstances, to take reasonable precaution against it” (Stephen, Digest of Criminal Law , art. 210). The word may also have in law the more extended meaning of an unexpected occurrence, whether caused by any one’s negligence or not, as in the Fatal Accidents Act 1846, Notice of Accidents Act 1894. See also Contract , Criminal Law , Employers’ Liability , Insurance , Tort , &c. In logic an “accident” is a quality which belongs to a subject but not as part of its essence (in Aristotelian language κατὰ συμβεβηκός , the scholastic per accidens ). Essential attributes are necessarily, or causally, connected with the subject, e.g. the sum of the angles of a triangle; accidents are not deducible from the nature, or are not part of the necessary connotation, of the subject, e.g. the area of a triangle. It follows that increased knowledge, e.g. in chemistry, may show that what was thought to be an accident is really an essential attribute, or vice versa. It is very generally held that, in reality, there is no such thing as an accident, inasmuch as complete knowledge would establish a causal connexion for all attributes. An accident is thus merely an unexplained attribute. Accidents have been classed as (1) “inseparable,” i.e. universally present, though no causal connexion is established, and (2) “separable,” where the connexion is neither causally explained nor universal. Propositions expressing a relation between a subject and an accident are classed as “accidental,” “real” or “ampliative,” as opposed to “verbal” or “analytical,” which merely express a known connexion, e.g. between a subject and its connotation ( q.v. ). |
ACCIDENTALISM, a term used (1) in philosophy for any system of thought which denies the causal nexus and maintains that events succeed one another haphazard or by chance (not in the mathematical but in the popular sense). In metaphysics, accidentalism denies the doctrine that everything occurs or results from a definite cause. In this connexion it is synonymous with Tychism ( τύχη , chance), a term used by C. S. Peirce for the theories which make chance an objective factor in the process of the Universe. Opponents of this accidentalism maintain that what seems to be the result of chance is in reality due to a cause or causes which, owing to the lack of imagination, knowledge or scientific instruments, we are unable to detect. In ethics the term is used, like indeterminism, to denote the theory that mental change cannot always be ascribed to previously ascertained psychological states, and that volition is not causally related to the motives involved. An example of this theory is the doctrine of the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae (“liberty of indifference”), according to which the choice of two or more alternative possibilities is affected neither by contemporaneous data of an ethical or prudential kind nor by crystallized habit (character). (2) In painting, the term is used for the effect produced by accidental lights (Ruskin, Modern Painters , I. 11. 4, iii. § 4, 287). (3) In medicine, it stands for the hypothesis that disease is only an accidental modification of the healthy condition, and can, therefore, be avoided by modifying external conditions. |
ACCIUS, LUCIUS, Roman tragic poet, the son of a freedman, was born at Pisaurum in Umbria, in 170 B.C. The year of his death is unknown, but he must have lived to a great age, since Cicero ( Brutus , 28) speaks of having conversed with him on literary matters. He was a prolific writer and enjoyed a very high reputation (Horace, Epistles , ii. 1, 56; Cicero, Pro Plancio , 24). The titles and considerable fragments (about 700 lines) of some fifty plays have been preserved. Most of these were free translations from the Greek, his favourite subjects being the legends of the Trojan war and the house of Pelops. The national history, however, furnished the theme of the Brutus and Decius ,—the expulsion of the Tarquins and the self-sacrifice of Publius Decius Mus the younger. The fragments are written in vigorous language and show a lively power of description. Accius wrote other works of a literary character: Didascalicōn and Pragmaticōn libri , treatises in verse on the history of Greek and Roman poetry, and dramatic art in particular; Parerga and Praxidica (perhaps identical) on agriculture; and an Annales . He also introduced innovations in orthography and grammar. See Boissier, Le Poète Accius , 1856; L. Müller, De Accii fabulis Disputatio (1890); Ribbeck, Geschichte der römischen Dichtung (1892); editions of the tragic fragments by Ribbeck (1897), of the others by Bährens (1886); Plessis, Poésie latine (1909). |
ACCIUS, a Latin poet of the 16th century, to whom is attributed a paraphrase of Aesop’s Fables, of which Julius Scaliger speaks with great praise. |
ACCLAMATION (Lat. acclamatio , a shouting at), in deliberative or electoral assemblies, a spontaneous shout of approval or praise. Acclamation is thus the adoption of a resolution or the passing of a vote of confidence or choice unanimously, in direct distinction from a formal ballot or division. In the Roman senate opinions were expressed and votes passed by acclamation in such forms as Omnes , omnes , Aequum est , Justum est , &c.; 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. In ecclesiastical councils vote by acclamation is very common, the question being usually put in the form, placet or non placet . The Sacred College has sometimes elected popes by acclamation, when the cardinals simultaneously and without any previous consultation “acclaimed” one of their number as pontiff. A further ecclesiastical use of the word is in its application to set forms of praise or thanksgiving in church services, the stereotyped responses of the congregation. In modern parliamentary usage a motion is carried by acclamation when, no amendment being proposed, approval is expressed by shouting such words as Aye or Agreed . |
ACCLIMATIZATION, the process of adaptation 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 at first injurious to them. The subject of acclimatization is very little understood, and some writers have even denied that it can ever take place. It is often confounded with domestication or with naturalization ; but these are both very different phenomena. A domesticated animal or a cultivated plant need not necessarily be acclimatized ; that is, it need not be capable of enduring the severity of the seasons without protection. The canary bird is domesticated but not acclimatized , and many of our most extensively cultivated plants are in the same category. A naturalized animal or plant, on the other hand, must be able to withstand all the vicissitudes of the seasons in its new home, and it may therefore be thought that it must have become acclimatized. But in many, perhaps most cases of naturalization (see Appendix below) there is no evidence of a gradual adaptation to new conditions which were at first injurious, and this is essential to the idea of acclimatization . On the contrary, many species, 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 L. Agassiz (in his work on Lake Superior) tells us that the roadside weeds of the north-eastern United States, to the number of 130 species, are all European, the native weeds having disappeared westwards; while in New Zealand there are, according to T. Kirk ( Transactions of the New Zealand Institute , vol. ii. p. 131), no less than 250 species of naturalized 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 naturalized in New Zealand, where they multiply to such an extent as to injure and probably exterminate many native productions. In none of these cases is there any indication that acclimatization was necessary or ever took place. On the other hand, the fact that an animal or plant cannot be naturalized is no proof that it is not acclimatized . It has been shown by C. 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. We have a proof of this in the fact that so few, comparatively, of our perfectly hardy garden plants ever run wild; and even the most persevering attempts to naturalize them usually fail. Alphonse de Candolle ( Géographie botanique , p. 798) informs us that several botanists of Paris, Geneva, and especially of Montpellier, have sown the seeds of many hundreds of species of exotic hardy plants, in what appeared to be the most favourable situations, but that in hardly a single case has any one of them become naturalized. Attempts have also been made to naturalize continental insects in Britain, in places where the proper food-plants abound and the conditions seem generally favourable, but in no case do they seem to have succeeded. Even a plant like the potato, so largely cultivated and so perfectly hardy, has not established itself in a wild state in any part of Europe. Different Degrees of Climatal Adaptation in Animals and Plants .—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. This is probably due to the fact, established by the experiments of A. C. Becquerel, that plants possess no proper temperature, but are wholly dependent on that of the surrounding medium. 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. Thus, the tiger ranges from the equator to northern Asia as far as the river Amur, and to the isothermal of 32° Fahr. The mountain sparrow ( Passer montana ) is abundant in Java and Singapore in a uniform equatorial climate, and also inhabits Britain and a considerable portion of northern Europe. It is true that most terrestrial animals are restricted to countries not possessing a great range of temperature or very diversified climates, but there is reason to believe that this is due to quite a different set of causes, such as the presence of enemies or deficiency of appropriate food. When supplied with food and partially protected from enemies, they often show a wonderful capacity of enduring climates very different from that in which they originally flourished. Thus, the horse and the domestic fowl, both natives of very warm countries, flourish without special protection in almost every inhabited portion of the globe. The parrot tribe form one of the most pre-eminently tropical groups of birds, only a few species extending into the warmer temperate regions; yet even the most exclusively tropical genera are by no means delicate birds as regards climate. In the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for 1868 (p. 381) is a most interesting account, by Charles Buxton, of the naturalization of parrots at Northreps Hall, Norfolk. A considerable number of African and Amazonian parrots, Bengal parroquets, four species of white and rose crested cockatoos, and two species of crimson lories, remained at large for many years. Several of these birds bred, and they almost all lived in the woods the whole year through, refusing to take shelter in a house constructed for their use. Even when the thermometer fell 6° below zero, all appeared in good spirits and vigorous health. Some of these birds have lived thus exposed for many years, enduring the English cold easterly winds, rain, hail and snow, all through the winter—a marvellous contrast to the equable equatorial temperature (hardly ever less than 70°) to which many of them had been accustomed for the first year or years of their existence. Similarly the recent experience of zoological gardens, particularly in the case of parrots and monkeys, shows that, excluding draughts, exposure to changes of temperature without artificial heat is markedly beneficial as compared with the older method of strict protection from cold. Hardly any group of Mammalia is more exclusively tropical than the Quadrumana, yet, if other conditions are favourable, some of them can withstand a considerable degree of cold. Semnopithecus schistaceus was found by Captain Hutton at an elevation of 11,000 feet in the Himalayas, leaping actively among fir-trees whose branches were laden with snow-wreaths. In Abyssinia a troop of dog-faced baboons was observed by W. T. Blanford at 9000 feet above the sea. We may therefore conclude that the restriction of the monkey tribe to warm latitudes is probably determined by other causes than temperature alone. Similar indications are given by the fact of closely allied species inhabiting very extreme climates. The recently extinct Siberian mammoth and woolly rhinoceros were closely allied to species now inhabiting tropical regions exclusively. Wolves and foxes are found alike in the coldest and hottest parts of the earth, as are closely allied species of falcons, owls, sparrows and numerous genera of waders and aquatic birds. A consideration of these and many analogous facts might induce us to suppose that, among the higher animals at least, there is little constitutional adaptation to climate, and that in their case acclimatization is not required. But there are numerous examples of domestic animals which show that such adaptation does exist in other cases. The yak of Thibet cannot long survive in the plains of India, or even on the hills below a certain altitude; and that this is due to climate, and not to the increased density of the atmosphere, is shown by the fact that the same animal appears to thrive well in Europe, and even breeds there readily. The Newfoundland dog will not live in India, and the Spanish breed of fowls in this country suffer more from frost than most others. When we get lower in the scale the adaptation is often more marked. Snakes, which are so abundant in warm countries, diminish rapidly as we go north, and wholly cease at lat. 62°. Most insects are also very susceptible to cold, and seem to be adapted to very narrow limits of temperature. From the foregoing facts and observations we may conclude, firstly, that some plants and many animals are not constitutionally adapted to the climate of their native country only, but are capable of enduring and flourishing under a more or less extensive range of temperature and other climatic conditions; and, secondly, that most plants and some animals are, more or less closely, adapted to climates similar to those of their native habitats. In order to domesticate or naturalize the former class in countries not extremely differing from that from which the species was brought, it will not be necessary to acclimatize , in the strict sense of the word. In the case of the latter class, however, acclimatization is a necessary preliminary to naturalization, and in many cases to useful domestication, and we have therefore to inquire whether it is possible. Acclimatization by Individual Adaptation .—It is evident that acclimatization 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. C. Darwin believed, however, that there were indications that it occasionally occurred in plants, where it can be best observed, owing to the circumstance that so many plants are propagated by cuttings or buds, which really continue the existence of the same individual almost indefinitely. He adduced the example of vines taken to the West Indies from Madeira, which have been found to succeed better than those taken directly from France. But in most cases habit, however prolonged, appears to have little effect on the constitution of the individual, and the fact has no doubt led to the opinion that acclimatization is impossible. There is indeed little or no evidence to show that any animal to which a new climate is at first prejudicial can be so acclimatized by habit that, after subjection to it for a few or many seasons, it may live as healthily and with as little care as in its native country; yet we may, on general principles, believe that under proper conditions such an acclimatization would take place. Acclimatization 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 example, hardier and more tender varieties often arise. The following cases are given by C. Darwin:—Among the numerous fruit-trees raised in North America some are well adapted to the climate of the northern States and Canada, while others only succeed well in the southern States. Adaptation of this kind is sometimes very close, so that, for example, few English varieties of wheat will thrive in Scotland. Seed-wheat from India produced a miserable crop when planted by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley on land which would have produced a good crop of English wheat. Conversely, French wheat taken to the West Indies produced only barren spikes, while native wheat by its side yielded an enormous harvest. Tobacco in Sweden, raised from home-grown seed, ripens its seeds a month earlier than plants grown from foreign seed. In Italy, as long as orange trees were propagated by grafts, they were tender; but after many of the trees were destroyed by the severe frosts of 1709 and 1763, plants were raised from seed, and these were found to be hardier and more productive than the former kinds. Where plants are raised from seed in large quantities, varieties always occur differing in constitution, as well as others differing in form or colour; but the former cannot be perceived by us unless marked out by their behaviour under exceptional conditions, as in the following cases. After the severe winter of 1860–1861 it was observed that in a large bed of araucarias some plants stood quite unhurt among numbers killed around them. In C. Darwin’s garden two rows of scarlet runners were entirely killed by frost, except three plants, which had not even the tips of their leaves browned. A very excellent example is to be found in Chinese history, according to E. R. Huc, who, in his L’ Empire chinois (tom. ii. p. 359), gives the following extract from the Memoirs of the Emperor Khang :—“On the 1st day of the 6th moon I was walking in some fields where rice had been sown to be ready for the harvest in the 9th moon. I observed by chance a stalk of rice which was already in ear. It was higher than all the rest, and was ripe enough to be gathered. I ordered it to be brought to me. The grain was very fine and well grown, which gave me the idea to keep it for a trial, and see if the following year it would preserve its precocity. It did so. All the stalks which came from it showed ear before the usual time, and were ripe in the 6th moon. Each year has multiplied the produce of the preceding, and for thirty years it is this rice which has been served at my table. The grain is elongate and of a reddish colour, but it has a sweet smell and very pleasant taste. It is called Yu-mi , Imperial rice, because it was first cultivated in my gardens. It is the only sort which can ripen north of the great wall, where the winter ends late and begins very early; but in the southern provinces, where the climate is milder and the land more fertile, two harvests a year may be easily obtained, and it is for me a sweet reflection to have procured this advantage for my people.” Huc adds his testimony that this kind of rice flourishes in Manchuria, where no other will grow. We have here, therefore, a perfect example of acclimatization by means of a spontaneous constitutional variation. That this kind of adaptation may be carried on step by step to more and more extreme climates is illustrated by the following examples. Sweet-peas raised in Calcutta from seed imported from England rarely blossom, and never yield seed; plants from French seed flower better, but are still sterile; but those raised from Darjeeling seed (originally imported from England) both flower and seed profusely. The peach is believed to have been tender, and to have ripened its fruit with difficulty, when first introduced into Greece; so that (as Darwin observes) in travelling northward during two thousand years it must have become much hardier. Sir J. Hooker ascertained the average vertical range of flowering plants in the Himalayas to be 4000 ft., while in some cases it extended to 8000 ft. The same species can thus endure a great difference of temperature; but the important fact is, that the individuals have become acclimatized to the altitude at which they grow, so that seeds gathered near the upper limit of the range of a species will be more hardy than those gathered near the lower limit. This was proved by Hooker to be the case with Himalayan conifers and rhododendrons, raised in Britain from seed gathered at different altitudes. Among animals exactly analogous facts occur. When geese were first introduced into Bogota they laid few eggs at long intervals, and few of the young survived. By degrees the fecundity improved, and in about twenty years became equal to what it is in Europe. The same author tells us that, according to Garcilaso, when fowls were first introduced into Peru they were not fertile, whereas now they are as much so as in Europe. C. Darwin adduced the following examples. Merino sheep bred at the Cape of Good Hope have been found far better adapted for India than those imported from England; and while the Chinese variety of the Ailanthus silk-moth is quite hardy, the variety found in Bengal will only flourish in warm latitudes. C. Darwin also called attention to the circumstance that writers of agricultural works generally recommend that animals should be removed from one district to another as little as possible. This advice occurs even in classical and Chinese agricultural books as well as in those of our own day, and proves that the close adaptation of each variety or breed to the country in which it originated has always been recognized. Constitutional Adaptation often accompanied by External 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. C. Darwin collected a large number of cases in his Animals and Plants under Domestication . In his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (p. 167), A. R. Wallace has recorded cases of simultaneous variation among insects, apparently due to climate or other strictly local causes. He found that the butterflies of the family Papilionidae , and some others, became similarly modified in different islands and groups of islands. Thus, the species inhabiting Sumatra, Java and Borneo are almost always much smaller than the closely allied species of Celebes and the Moluccas; the species or varieties of the small island of Amboyna are larger than the same species or closely allied forms inhabiting the surrounding islands; the species found in Celebes possess a peculiar form of wing, quite distinct from that of the same or closely allied species of adjacent islands; and, lastly, numerous species which have tailed wings in India and the western islands of the Archipelago, gradually lose the tail as we proceed eastward to New Guinea and the Pacific. Many of these curious modifications may, it is true, be due to other causes than climate only, but they serve to show how powerfully and mysteriously local conditions affect the form and structure of both plants and animals; and they render it probable that changes of constitution are also continually produced, although we have, in the majority of cases, no means of detecting them. It is also impossible to determine how far the effects described are produced by spontaneous favourable variations or by the direct action of local conditions; but it is probable that in every case both causes are concerned, although in constantly varying proportions. Selection and Survival of the Fittest as Agents in Naturalization .—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 climatal conditions on the parents has any tendency to produce variations in the offspring better adapted to such conditions. Neither does it appear that this class of variations are very frequent. It is, however, certain that whenever any animal or plant is largely propagated constitutional variations will arise, and some of these will be better adapted than others to the climatal and other conditions of the locality. In a state of nature, every recurring severe winter or otherwise unfavourable season weeds out those individuals of tender constitution or imperfect structure which may have got on very well during favourable years, and it is thus that the adaptation of the species to the climate in which it has to exist is kept up. Under domestication the same thing occurs by what C. Darwin has termed “unconscious selection.” Each cultivator seeks out the kinds of plants best suited to his soil and climate and rejects those which are tender or otherwise unsuitable. The farmer breeds from such of his stock as he finds to thrive best with him, and gets rid of those which suffer from cold, damp or disease. A more or less close adaptation to local conditions is thus brought about, and breeds or races are produced which are sometimes liable to deterioration on removal even to a short distance in the same country, as in numerous cases quoted by C. Darwin ( Animals and Plants under Domestication ). The Method of Acclimatization .—Taking into consideration the foregoing facts and illustrations, it may be considered as proved—1 st , 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; 2 nd , 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 chance of acclimatizing 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 maintain itself without acclimatization, 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. Favourable variations of constitution will soon show themselves, and these should be carefully selected to breed from, the tender and unhealthy individuals being rigidly eliminated. 2. As soon as the stock has been kept a sufficient time to pass through all the ordinary extremes of climate, 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 individuals are produced, subjecting them to all the vicissitudes of the climate. It can hardly be doubted that in most cases this plan would succeed. It has been recommended by C. Darwin, and at one of the early meetings of the Société Zoologique d’ Acclimatation , at Paris, Isodore Geoffroy St Hilaire insisted that it was the only method by which acclimatization was possible. But in looking through the long series of volumes of Reports published by this society, there is no sign that any systematic attempt at acclimatization has even once been made. A number of foreign animals have been introduced, and more or less domesticated, and some useful exotics have been cultivated for the purpose of testing their applicability to French agriculture or horticulture; but neither in the case of animals nor of plants has there been any systematic effort to modify the constitution of the species, by breeding largely and selecting the favourable variations that appeared . Take the case of the Eucalyptus globulus as an example. This is a Tasmanian gum-tree of very rapid growth and great beauty, which will thrive in the extreme south of France. In the Bulletin of the society a large number of attempts to introduce this tree into general cultivation in other parts of France are recorded in detail, with the failure of almost all of them. But no precautions such as those above indicated appear to have been taken in any of these experiments; and we have no intimation that either the society or any of its members are making systematic efforts to acclimatize the tree. The first step would be, to obtain seed from healthy trees growing in the coldest climate and at the greatest altitude in its native country, sowing these very largely, and in a variety of soils and situations, in a part of France where the climate is somewhat but not much more extreme. It is almost a certainty that a number of trees would be found to be quite hardy. As soon as these produced seed, it should be sown in the same district and farther north in a climate a little more severe. After an exceptionally cold season, seed should be collected from the trees that suffered least, and should be sown in various districts all over France. By such a process there can be hardly any doubt that the tree would be thoroughly acclimatized in any part of France, and in many other countries of central Europe; and more good would be effected by one well-directed effort of this kind than by hundreds of experiments with individual animals and plants, which only serve to show us which are the species that do not require to be acclimatized . Acclimatization 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 constitutionally adapted to the climate, proves that acclimatization 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 Tierra 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 animals and plants; but there is every reason to believe that, if the migration occurs step by step, man can be acclimatized to almost any part of the earth’s surface in comparatively few generations. Some eminent writers have denied this. Sir Ranald Martin, from a consideration of the effects of the climate of India on Europeans and their offspring, believed that there is no such thing as acclimatization. Dr Hunt, in a report to the British Association in 1861, argued that “time is no agent,” and—“if there is no sign of acclimatization in one generation, there is no such process.” But he entirely ignored the effect of favourable variations, as well as the direct influence of climate acting on the organization from infancy. Professor Theodor Waitz, in his Introduction to Anthropology , adduced many examples of the comparatively rapid constitutional adaptation of man to new climatic conditions. Negroes, for example, who have been for three or four generations acclimatized in North America, on returning to Africa become subject to the same local diseases as other unacclimatized individuals. He well remarked 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 excessive mortality of European troops in India, and the delicacy of the children of European parents, do not affect the real question of acclimatization under proper conditions. They only show that acclimatization is in most cases necessary, not that it cannot take place. The best examples of partial or complete acclimatization are to be found where European races have permanently settled in the tropics, and have maintained themselves for several generations. There are, however, two sources of inaccuracy to be guarded against, and these are made the most of by the writers above referred to, and are supposed altogether to invalidate results which are otherwise opposed to their views. In the first place, we have the possibility of a mixture of native blood having occurred; in the second, there have almost always been a succession of immigrants from the parent country, who continually intermingle with the families of the early settlers. It is maintained that one or other of these mixtures is absolutely necessary to enable Europeans to continue long to flourish in the tropics. There are, however, certain cases in which the sources of error above mentioned are reduced to a minimum, and cannot seriously affect the results; such as those of the Jews, the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope and in the Moluccas, and the Spaniards in South America. The Jews are a good example of acclimatization, because they have been established for many centuries in climates very different from that of their native land; they keep themselves almost wholly free from intermixture 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. They have, for instance, attained a population of millions in such severe climates as Poland and Russia; in the towns of Algeria they have succeeded so conspicuously as to bring about an outburst of anti-semitism; and in Cochin-China and Aden they succeed in rearing children and forming permanent communities. In some of the hottest parts of South America Europeans are perfectly acclimatized, and where the race is kept pure it seems to be even improved. Some very valuable notes on this subject were furnished to the present writer by the well-known botanist, Richard Spruce, who resided many years in South America, but who was prevented by ill-health from publishing his researches (see A. R. Wallace, Notes of a Botanist , 1908). As a careful, judicious and accurate observer, both of man and nature, he had few superiors. He says: The white inhabitants of Guayaquil (lat. 2° 13′ S.) are kept pure by careful selection. The slightest tincture 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, that the women of Guayaquil are considered (and justly) the finest along the whole Pacific coast. They are often tall, sometimes very handsome, decidedly healthy, although pale, and assuredly prolific enough. Their sons are big, stout men, but when they lead inactive lives are apt to become fat and sluggish. Those of them, however, who have farms in the savannahs and are accustomed to take long rides in all weathers, and those whose trade obliges them to take frequent journeys in the mountainous interior, or even to Europe and North America, are often as active and as little burdened with superfluous flesh as a Scotch farmer. 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 following the southern solstice. In March 1843 the temperature only once fell as low as 83° during the whole month, the usual lowest night temperature being 85°. Yet people of all colours find it very healthy, and the whites are very prolific. I resided in the town itself nine months, and in the neighbourhood seven months more. The population (in 1863–1864) was about 10,000, of which not only a considerable proportion was white, but was mostly descended from the first emigrants after the conquest. Purity of descent was not, however, quite so strictly maintained as at Guayaquil. The military adventurers, who have often risen to high or even supreme rank in Peru, have not seldom been of mixed race, and fear or favour has often availed to procure them an alliance with the oldest and purest-blooded families. These instances, so well stated by Spruce, seem to demonstrate the complete acclimatization of Spaniards in some of the hottest parts of South America. Although we have here nothing to do with mixed races, yet the want of fertility in these has been often taken to be a fact inherent in the mongrel race, and has been also sometimes held to prove that neither the European nor his half-bred offspring can maintain themselves in the tropics. The following observation is therefore of interest:— At Guayaquil for a lady of good family—married or unmarried—to be of loose morals is so uncommon, that when it does happen it is felt as a calamity by the whole community. But here, and perhaps in most other towns in South America, a poor girl of mixed race—especially if good-looking—rarely thinks of marrying one of her own class until she has—as the Brazilians say—“approveitada de sua mocidade” (made the most of her youth) in receiving presents from gentlemen . If she thus bring a good dowry to her husband, he does not care to inquire, or is not sensitive, about the mode in which it was acquired. The consequence of this indiscriminate sexual intercourse, especially if much prolonged, is to diminish, in some cases to paralyse, the fertility of the female. And as among people of mixed race it is almost universal, the population of these must fall off both in numbers and quality. The following example of divergent acclimatization of the same race to hot and cold zones is very interesting, and will conclude our extracts from Spruce’s valuable 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 acclimatizing the Red Indian in a certain zone of the Andes. Any person who has compared the physical characters of the native races of South America must be convinced that these have all originated in a common stirps. Many local differences exist, but none capable of invalidating this conclusion. The warmth yet shade-loving Indian of the Amazon; the Indian of the hot, dry and treeless coasts of Peru and Guayaquil, who exposes his bare head to the sun with as much zest as an African negro; the Indian of the Andes, for whom no cold seems too great, who goes constantly barelegged and often bare-headed, through whose rude straw hut the piercing wind of the paramos sweeps and chills the white man to the very bones;—all these, in the colour and texture of the skin, the hair and other important features, are plainly of one and the same race. Now there is a zone of the equatorial Andes, ranging between about 4000 and 6000 feet altitude, where the very best flavoured 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. Indians taken down from the sierra get ague and dysentery. Those of the plains find the temperature chilly, and are stricken down with influenza and pains in the limbs. I have seen the difficulty experienced in getting farms cultivated in this zone, on both sides of the Cordillera. The permanent residents are generally limited to the major-domo and his family; and in the dry season labourers are hired, of any colour that can be obtained—some from the low country, others from the highlands—for three, four, or five months, who gather in and grind the cane, and plant for the harvest of the following year; but the staff of resident Indian labourers, such as exists in the farms of the sierra, cannot be kept up in the Yungas , as these half-warm valleys are called. White men, who take proper precautions, and are not chronically soaked with cane-spirit, stand the climate perfectly, but the creole whites are still too much caballeros to devote themselves to agricultural work. 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 scattered 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 temperate region (in North America); so that here we have one moiety acclimatized 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? Plainly it might, time being given; for one cannot doubt that the inherent adaptability is the same in both, or (if not) that the white man possesses it in a higher degree. The observations of Spruce are of themselves almost conclusive as to the possibility of Europeans becoming acclimatized in the tropics; and if it is objected that this evidence applies only to the dark-haired southern 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. In South Africa the Dutch have been settled and nearly isolated for over 200 years, and have kept themselves almost or quite free from native intermixture. They are still preponderatingly fair in complexion, while physically they are tall and strong. They marry young and have large families. The population, according to a census taken in 1798, was under 22,000. In 1865 it was near 182,000, the majority being of “Dutch, German or French origin, mostly descendants of original settlers.” In more recent times, the conditions have been so greatly changed by immigration, that the later statistics cease to have a definite meaning with regard to acclimatization. We have here a population which doubled itself every twenty-two years; and the greater part of this rapid increase must certainly be due to the old European immigrants. In the Moluccas, where the Dutch have had settlements for 250 years, some of the inhabitants 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. But the Dutch accommodate themselves admirably to a tropical climate, doing much of their work early in the morning, dressing very lightly, and living a quiet, temperate and cheerful life. They also pay great attention to drainage and general cleanliness. In addition to these examples, it is obvious that the rapid increase of English-speaking populations in the United States and in Australia is far greater than can be explained by immigration, and shows two conspicuous examples of acclimatization. On the whole, we seem justified in concluding that, under favourable conditions, and with a proper adaptation of means to the end in view, man may become acclimatized with at least as much certainty and rapidity (counting by generations rather than by years) as any of the lower animals. The greatest difficulty in his way is not temperature, but the presence of parasitic diseases to resist which his body has not been prepared, and modern knowledge is rapidly defining these dangers and the modes of avoiding them. ( A. R. W. ) Appendix The task of collecting information as to animals which have become permanently naturalized away from their native haunts is anything but easy, as few regular records have been kept by acclimatizers. Moreover, recorders of local fauna have been almost unanimous in ignoring the introduced forms, except when they have had occasion to comment on the effects, real or supposed, of these immigrants on aboriginal faunas. Mammals .—It is unnecessary here to dwell upon the world-wide distribution of the two rats Mus rattus and M. decumanus , and of the house-mouse M. musculus ; their introduction has always been involuntary. Similarly nearly all our domestic mammals except the sheep have become feral somewhere or other, whether by intentional liberation or by escape; but the smaller ones more than the larger, such as pigs, goats, dogs and cats. This has been especially the case in Hawaii and New Zealand; in America, Australia and Hawaii, horses and cattle are also feral. Feral pigs are numerous in New Zealand. The domestic Indian buffalo ( Bos bubalus ) exists as a wild animal in North Australia; it is very liable to revert to a wild state, being little altered from its still-existing wild ancestor. A more curious case is that of the one-humped camel ( Camelus dromedarius ), a beast only known in domestication, and that in arid countries; yet a number of these have become feral in the Spanish marshes, where they wade about like quadrupedal flamingoes. The red deer ( Cervus elaphus ) is now widely distributed as a wild animal over New Zealand, where also the fallow-deer ( C. dama ) and the Indian sambar ( C. aristotelis or unicolor ) have been introduced locally. The sambar, or one or other of its subspecies, has also been naturalized in Mauritius, and in the Marianne Islands in the open Pacific. The wide introduction of the rabbit, as a wild animal, is well known. Amounting to a serious pest in Australasian colonies, it is also established in the Falklands and Kerguelen; its presence in much of Europe is attributed to early acclimatization, as it seems anciently to have been confined to the Iberian peninsula. The hare has been established in New Zealand and Barbadoes. Few other rodents have been designedly naturalized, but the North American grey squirrel ( Sciurus cinereus ) appears to be established as a wild animal in Woburn Park, Bedfordshire, England, and may probably spread thence. To check the increase of the rabbit, stoats, weasels and polecats (the last in the form of the domesticated ferret) were introduced into New Zealand on a very large scale in the last quarter of the 19th century. They have spread widely, and have not confined their depredations to the rabbits, so that the indigenous flightless birds have suffered largely. Another carnivore of very similar habits, the Indian mongoose ( Herpestus griseus or H. mungo ), has been naturalized in Jamaica, whence it has been carried to other West Indian Islands, and in the Hawaiian group. It has also been tried, but unsuccessfully, in Australia. The first introduction into Jamaica took place in 1872, and ten years later the animal was credited with saving many thousands of pounds annually by its destruction of rats. But before an equal space of time had further elapsed, it had itself become a pest; the most recent information, however, is to the effect that its numbers are now on the decline, and that the disturbed faunal equilibrium is being readjusted. The civets, being celebrated for their odoriferous secretion, are likely animals to have been naturalized. W. T. Blanford ( Fauna of British India , “Mammals”) thinks that the presence of the Indian form, Viverricula malaccensis , in Socotra, the Comoro Islands and Madagascar is due to the assistance of man. The common fox of Europe has been introduced into Australia, where it is destructive to the native fauna and to lambs. Among primates, a Ceylonese monkey ( Macacus pileatus ) has been naturalized in Mauritius for centuries, the circumstances of introduction being unknown. The common Australian “opossum” or phalanger ( Trichosurus vulpecula ) has been naturalized in New Zealand, although very destructive to fruit trees; the value of its fur being probably the motive. It is said that the pelage of the New Zealand specimens is superior, as might be expected from the colder climate. Birds .—The introduction of mammals has been largely influenced by economic conditions, when, indeed, it was not absolutely accidental and unavoidable; but in the case of birds it has been more gratuitous, so to speak, in many cases, and hence is looked upon with especial dislike by naturalists. The domestic birds have comparatively seldom become feral, doubtless, as C. Darwin points out, from the reduction of their powers of flight in many cases. The guinea-fowl, however, has long been in this condition in Jamaica and St Helena, and the fowl in Hawaii and other Polynesian islands. The pheasant has been naturalized in the United States, New Zealand, Hawaii and St Helena. Its naturalization in western Europe is very ancient, but the race supposed to have been introduced by the Romans ( Phasianus colchicus ) has been much modified within the last century or two by the introduction of the ring-necked Chinese form ( P. torquatus ), which produces fertile hybrids with the old breed. Thus those acclimatized were usually, no doubt, of mixed blood, and further introductions of pure Chinese stock have tended to make the latter the dominant form, at any rate in the United States (where it is erroneously called Mongolian [ 1 ] ) and in New Zealand. In Hawaii and St Helena the ring-neck appears to have been the only pheasant introduced pure, but in the former the Japanese race ( P. versicolor ) is also naturalized. The golden pheasant ( Chrysolophus pictus ) is locally established in the United States, as appear to be other pheasants of less common species. The Reeves’ pheasant ( P. reevesi ) is at large on some English estates. Of the partridges, the continental red-leg ( Caccabis rufa ) is established in England, and its ally, the Asiatic chukore ( C. chukar ), in St Helena, as is the Californian quail ( Lophortyx californica ) in New Zealand and Hawaii. The latter, however, though thriving as an aviary bird, has failed at large in England, as did the bob-white ( Ortyx virginianus ) both there and in New Zealand. The desirable character of the grouse as game-birds has led to many attempts at their acclimatization, but usually these have been unsuccessful; the red grouse ( Lagopus scoticus ), however, the only endemic British bird, is naturalized in some parts of Europe. Of waterfowl, the Canada goose ( Branta canadensis ) is naturalized to a small extent in Britain, and also, to a less degree, the Egyptian goose ( Chenalopex aegyptiacus ); the latter bird also occurs wild in New Zealand. The modern presence of the black swan of Australia ( Chenopis atrata ) in New Zealand appears to be due to a natural irruption of the species about half a century ago as much as to acclimatization by man, if not more so. Birds of prey are, unjustly enough, regarded with so little favour that few attempts have been made to naturalize them; the continental little owl ( Athene noctua ), however, has for some time been well established in England, where it has hardly, if ever, appeared naturally. Pigeons have been very little naturalized; the tame bird has become feral locally in various countries, and the Chinese turtledove ( Turtur chinensis ) is established in Hawaii, as is the small East Indian zebra dove ( Geopelia striata ) in the Seychelles, and the allied Australian ( G. tranquilla ) in St Helena. There has also been very little naturalization of parrots, but the rosella parrakeet of Australia ( Platycercus eximius ) is being propagated by escaped captives in the north island of New Zealand, and its ally the mealy rosella ( P. pallidiceps ) is locally wild in Hawaii, the stock in this case having descended from a single pair intentionally liberated. Attempts to naturalize that well-known Australian grass-parrakeet the budgerigar ( Melopsittacus undulatus ) in England have so far proved abortive, and none of the species experimented with in Norfolk and Bedfordshire effected a settlement. The greyheaded love-bird ( Agapornis cana ) of Madagascar is established in the Seychelles. Some of the passerine birds have been the most widely distributed, especially the house-sparrow ( Passer domesticus ), which is now an integral, and very troublesome, part of the fauna in the Australasian States and in North America. It is, in fact, as notorious an example of over-successful acclimatization as the rabbit, but in Hutton and Drummond’s recent work on the New Zealand animals (London, 1905) it is not regarded in this light, considering that some very common exotic birds were needed to keep down the insects, which it certainly did. Even in the United States also, it has been found a useful destroyer of weed-seeds. The house-sparrow is also feral in Argentina, some of the West Indian islands, Hawaii and the Andamans. The allied tree-sparrow ( P. montanus ) has been locally naturalized in the United States; it is a more desirable bird, being less prolific and pugnacious, but it is expelled from towns by the house-sparrow. The so-called Java sparrow ( Munia oryzivora ), although a destructive bird to rice, has been widely distributed by accident or design, and is now found in several East Indian islands besides Java, in south China, St Helena, India, Zanzibar and the east African coast. An allied but much smaller weaver-finch, a form of the spice-bird ( Munia nisoria punctata ), is introduced and well distributed over the Hawaiian islands. The little rooibek of South Africa ( Estrilda astrild ) has been so long and well established in St Helena that it is known in the bird trade as the St Helena waxbill, and the brilliant scarlet weaver of Madagascar ( Foudia madagascariensis ) inhabits as an imported bird Mauritius, the Seychelles and even the remote Chagos Islands. Returning to the true finches, the only one which can compete with the house-sparrow in the extent of its distribution by man is the goldfinch ( Carduelis carduelis ), now established all over New Zealand, as well as in Australia, the United States and Jamaica. It bears a good character, and is one of the marked successes of naturalization. The redpoll ( Acanthis linaria ), chaffinch ( Fringilla coelebs ) and greenfinch ( Chloris chloris ) are established in New Zealand, the last named being a pest there, as is also the cirl-bunting ( Emberiza cirlus )—the yellow-hammer ( E. citrinella ) being perhaps confused with this also. Among starlings, the Indian mynah (generally the house mynah, Acridotheres tristis , but some other species seem to have been confused with this) has been naturalized in the Andamans, Seychelles, Réunion, Australia, Hawaii and parts of New Zealand. Its alleged destructiveness to the Hawaiian avifauna seems open to doubt. The European starling ( Sturnus vulgaris ) is naturalized in New Zealand, Australia and to some extent in the United States. Thrushes have not been widely introduced, but the song-thrush and blackbird ( Turdus musicus and Merula merula ) are common in New Zealand; attempts were made, but unsuccessfully, to establish the latter in the United States. The so-called hedge-sparrow ( Accentor modularis ), really a member of this group, is one of the successful introductions into New Zealand. The robin ( Erithacus rubecula ) failed there. Rooks ( Corvus frugilegus ) and the Australian “magpie” or piping crow ( Gymnorhina ) are to be found in New Zealand, but only locally, especially the former. Reptiles and Amphibians .—Very little naturalization has been effected, or indeed apparently attempted, in regard to these groups, but the occurrence of the edible frog of the continent of Europe ( Rana esculenta ) as an introduced animal in certain British localities is well known. An Australian tree-frog ( Hyla peronii ) is naturalized in many parts of the north island of New Zealand. Fish .—The instances of naturalization in this class are few, but important. The common carp ( Cyprinus carpio ), originally a Chinese fish, has for centuries been acclimatized in Europe, where indeed it is in places a true domestic creature, with definite variations. It is, however, quite feral also, and has been introduced into North America. The Prussian carp ( Carassius vulgaris ) is established in New Zealand, and the nearly-allied goldfish, a domestic form ( C. auratus ) of Chinese origin, has been widely distributed as a pet, and is feral in some places. The gourami ( Osphromenus olfax ) of the East Indies has been established in Mauritius and Cayenne, being a valuable food-fish. The most important case of naturalization of fish is, however, the establishment of some Salmonidae in Tasmania and New Zealand. These are the common trout and sea-trout ( Salmo fario and S. trutta ); they attain a great size. So far, attempts to establish the true salmon in alien localities have been unsuccessful, but the American rainbow trout ( S. irideus ) has thriven in New Zealand, and the brook char of the same continent ( S. fontinalis ) inhabits at least one stream there to the exclusion of the common trout. Invertebrates .—Many insects and other invertebrates, mostly noxious, have been accidentally naturalized, and some have been deliberately introduced, like the honey-bee, now feral in Australasia and North America, and the humble-bee, imported into New Zealand to effect the fertilization of red clover. The spread of the European house-fly has been deliberately encouraged in New Zealand, as wherever it penetrates the native flesh-fly, a more objectionable pest, disappears. The wide distribution of three common cockroaches ( Periplaneta americana , Blatta orientalis and Ectobia germanica ) is well known, but these are chiefly house-insects. The common small white butterfly of Europe ( Pontia or Pieris rapae ) is now established in North America; and the march of the jigger, or foot-infesting flea ( Sarcopsylla penetrans ) of tropical America, across Africa, has taken place in quite recent years. The Romans are credited with having purposely introduced the edible snail ( Helix pomatia ) into England, and the common garden snail and slugs ( Helix aspersa , Limax agrestis and Arion hortensis ) have been unwittingly established in New Zealand. In that country, also, the earthworms of Europe are noticed to replace native forms as the ground is broken. General Remarks .—A great deal has been said about the upsetting of the balance of nature by naturalization, and as to the ill-doing of exotic forms. But certain considerations should be borne in mind in this connexion. In the first place, naturalization experiments fail at least as often as they succeed, and often quite inexplicably. Thus, the linnet and partridge have failed to establish themselves in New Zealand. This may ultimately throw some light on the disappearance of native forms; for these have at times declined without any assignable cause. Secondly, native forms often disappear with the clearing off of the original forest or other vegetation, in which case their recession is to a certain extent unavoidable, and the fauna which has established itself in the presence of cultivation is needed to replace them. Thirdly, the ill effect of introduced forms on existing ones may often be due rather to the spread of disease and parasites than to actual attack; thus, in Hawaii the native birds have been found suffering from a disease which attacks poultry. And the recession of the New Zealand earthworms and flies before exotic forms probably falls under this category. As man cannot easily avoid introducing parasites, and must keep domestic animals and till the land, a certain disturbance in aboriginal faunas is absolutely unavoidable. Under certain circumstances, however, the native animals may recover, for in some cases they even profit by man’s advent, and at times themselves become pests, like the Kea parrot ( Nestor notabilis ), which attacks sheep in New Zealand, and the bobolink or rice-bird ( Dolichonyx oryzivorus ) in North America. Finally, it should never be forgotten that the worst enemies of declining forms have been collectors who have not given these species the chance of recovering themselves. ( F. Fn. ) ↑ The true Mongolian pheasant ( P. mongolicus ), a very different bird, has recently been introduced into England. |
ACCOLADE (from Ital. accolata , derived from Lat. collum , the neck), a ceremony anciently used in conferring knighthood; but whether it was an actual embrace (according to the use of the modern French word accolade ), or a slight blow on the neck or cheek, is not agreed. Both these customs appear to be of great antiquity. Gregory of Tours writes that the early kings of France, in conferring the gilt shoulder-belt, kissed the knights on the left cheek; and William the Conqueror is said to have made use of the blow in conferring the honour of knighthood on his son Henry. At first it was given with the naked fist, a veritable box on the ear, but for this was substituted a gentle stroke with the flat of the sword on the side of the neck, or on either shoulder as well. In Great Britain the sovereign, in conferring knighthood, still employs this latter form of accolade. “Accolade” is also a technical term in music-printing for a sort of brace joining separate staves; and in architecture it denotes a form of decoration on doors and windows. |
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