Aristolochiaceae, which consists of dicotyledonous monochlamydeous plants,
with an inferior 3-6-celled fruit, found for the most part in the hotter
parts of the world, and in many cases used medicinally on account of their
tonic and stimulating properties. The genus has emmenagogic qualities,
especially the European species _A. rotunda_, _A. longa_, and _A.
Clemat[=i]tis_. _A. bracte[=a]ta_ is used in India as an anthelminthic; _A.
odoratissima_, a West Indian species, is a valuable bitter and
alexipharmic. _A. serpentaria_ is the Virginian snake-root, popularly
regarded as a remedy for snake bites.
ARISTOPHANES (-tof'a-n[=e]z), the greatest comic poet of ancient Greece,
born at Athens probably about the year 455 B.C., died 375 B.C. Little is
known of his life. He appeared as a poet in 427 B.C., and having indulged
in some sarcasms on the powerful demagogue Cleon, was ineffectually accused
by the latter of having unlawfully assumed the title of an Athenian
citizen. He afterwards revenged himself on Cleon in his comedy of the
_Knights_, in which he himself acted the part of Cleon, because no actor
had the courage to do it. Of fifty-four (or forty-four) comedies attributed
to him, eleven only remain; believed to be the flower of the ancient
comedy, and distinguished by wit, humour, and poetry, as also by grossness.
In them there is constant reference to the manners, actions, and public
characters of the day, the freedom of the old Greek comedy allowing an
unbounded degree of personal and political satire. The names of his extant
plays are _Acharnians_, _Knights_, _Clouds_, _Wasps_, _Peace_, _Birds_,
_Lysistrata_, _Thesmophoriazusae_, _Frogs_, _Ecclesiasuzae_, and
_Plutus_.--BIBLIOGRAPHY: B. B. Rogers, _Complete Works of Aristophanes,
with verse translation_ (by far the best translation); Hookham-Frere,
_Translation_ (five plays only); Couat, _Aristophane et l'ancienne comedie
attique_.
AR'ISTOTLE (Gr. _Aristot'eles_), a distinguished philosopher and naturalist
of ancient Greece, the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy, was
born in 384 B.C. at Stagira, in Macedonia; died at Chalcis, 322 B.C. His
father, Nicomachus, was physician to Amyntas II, King of Macedonia, and
claimed to be descended from Aesculapius. Aristotle had lost his parents
before he came, at about the age of seventeen, to Athens to study in the
school of Plato. With that philosopher he remained for twenty years, became
pre-eminent among his pupils, and was known as the 'Intellect of the
School'. Upon the death of Plato, 348 B.C., he took up his residence at
Atarneus, in Mysia, on the invitation of his former pupil Hermeias, the
ruler of that city, on whose assassination by the Persians, 343 B.C., he
fled to Mitylene with his wife Pythias, a near relative of Hermeias. During
his residence at Mitylene he received an invitation from Philip of Macedon
to superintend the education of his son Alexander, then in his fourteenth
year. This relationship between the great philosopher and the future
conqueror continued for five or six years, during which the prince was
instructed in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, logic, ethics, and politics, and
in those branches of physics which had even then made some considerable
progress. On Alexander succeeding to the throne Aristotle continued to live
with him as his friend and councillor till he set out on his Asiatic
campaign (334 B.C.). He returned to Athens and established his school in
the Lyceum, a gymnasium attached to the temple of Apollo Lyceius, which was
assigned to him by the State. He delivered his lectures in the wooded walks
of the Lyceum while walking up and down with his pupils. From the action
itself, or more probably from the name of the walks (_peripatoi_), his
school was called Peripatetic. Pupils gathered to him from all parts of
Greece, and his school became by far the most popular in Athens. The
statement that he had two circles of pupils, the _exoteric_ and the
_esoteric_ has given rise to much controversy. By some it has been held
that Aristotle published during his lifetime popular discourses with a view
to make way for his doctrines in Athenian society, then impregnated with
Platonic theories, and that these are called exoteric in contradistinction
to those in which are embodied his matured opinions. It was during the time
of his teaching at Athens that Aristotle is believed to have composed the
great bulk of his works. But it is not possible to speak with any certainty
about the chronology of his writings, as the references may be additions of
editors. On the death of Alexander a revolution occurred in Athens hostile
to the Macedonian interests with which Aristotle was identified. He
therefore retired to Chalcis, where he soon after died. Sir Charles
Walston, in 1891, opened a tomb near Eretria which he supposed to be that
of Aristotle. According to Strabo he bequeathed all his works to
Theophrastus, who, with other disciples of Aristotle, amended and continued
them. They afterwards passed through various hands, till, about 50 B.C.,
Andronicus of Rhodes put the various fragments together and classified them
according to a systematic arrangement. Many of the books bearing his name
are spurious, others are of doubtful genuineness. The whole are generally
divided into logical, theoretical, and practical. The logical works are
comprehended under the title _Organon_ (Instrument). The theoretical are
divided into physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. The physical works
(including those on natural history) are on the _General Principles of
Physical Science_, _The Heavens_, _Generation and Destruction_,
_Meteorology_, _Natural History of Animals_, _On the Parts of Animals_, _On
the Generation of Animals_, _On the Locomotion of Animals_, _On the Soul_,
_On Memory_, _Sleep and Waking_, _Dreams_, _Divination_. In mathematics
there are two treatises, _On Indivisible Lines_ and _Mechanical Problems_.
_The Metaphysics_ consist of fourteen books; the title (_Ta meta ta
Physika_, 'the things following the Physics',) is the invention of an
editor. The practical works embrace ethics, politics, economics, and
treatises on art, and comprise the _Nicomachaean Ethics_ (so called because
dedicated to his son, Nicomachus), _The Politics_, _Oeconomics_, _Poetry_,
and _Rhetoric_. Among the lost works are the dialogues and others termed
exoteric. A treatise _On the Constitution of Athens_ was discovered in
1891. His style is devoid of grace and elegance. His works were first
printed in a Latin translation, with the commentaries of Averroes, at
Venice in 1489; the first Greek edition was that of Aldus Manutius (5
vols., 1495-8). See _Peripatetic Philosophy_.--BIBLIOGRAPHY: Blakesley,
_Life of Aristotle_; S. H. Butcher, _Poetics_ (with translation and
excursus); R. Shute, _History of the Aristotelian Writings_; J. C. Wilson,
_Aristotelian Studies_; E. Zeller, _Aristotle and the Earlier
Peripatetics_; E. Barker, _Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle_.
ARISTOX'ENUS, an ancient Greek musician and philosopher of Tarentum, born
about 324 B.C. He studied music under his father Mnesias, and philosophy
under Aristotle, whose successor he aspired to be. He endeavoured to apply
his musical knowledge to philosophy, and especially to the science of mind,
but it only appears to have furnished him with far-fetched analogies and
led him into a kind of materialism. We have a work on the _Elements of
Harmony_ by him.
ARITH'METIC (Gr. _arithmos_, number) is primarily the science of numbers.
As opposed to algebra it is the practical part of the science. Although the
processes of arithmetical operations are often highly complicated, they all
resolve themselves into the repetition of four primary
operations--addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Of these
the two latter are only complex forms of the two former, and subtraction
again is merely a reversal of the process of addition. Little or nothing is
known as to the origin and invention of arithmetic. Some elementary
conception of it is in all probability coeval with the first dawn of human
intelligence. In consequence of their rude methods of numeration, the
science made but small advance among the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and
Romans, and it was not until the introduction of the decimal scale of
notation and the Arabic, or rather Indian, numerals into Europe that any
great progress can be traced. In this scale of notation every number is
expressed by means of the ten digits, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, by
giving each digit a local as well as its proper or natural value. The value
of every digit increases in a tenfold proportion from the right towards the
left; the distance of any figure from the right indicating the power of 10,
and the digit itself the number of those powers intended to be expressed:
thus 3464 = 3000 + 400 + 60 + 4 = 3 x 10^3 + 4 x 10^2 + 6 x 10 + 4. The
earliest arithmetical signs appear to have been hieroglyphical, but the
Egyptian hieroglyphics were too diffuse to be of any arithmetical value.
The units were successive strokes to the number required, the ten an open
circle, the hundred a curled palm-leaf, the thousand a lotus flower, ten
thousand a bent finger. The letters of the alphabet afforded a convenient
mode of representing figures, and were used accordingly by the Chaldeans,
Hebrews, and Greeks. The first nine letters of the Hebrew alphabet
represented the units, the second nine tens, the remaining four together
with five repeated with additional marks, hundreds; the same succession of
letters with added points was repeated for thousands, tens of thousands,
and hundreds of thousands. The Greeks followed the same system up to tens
of thousands. They wrote the different classes of numbers in succession as
we do, and they transferred operations performed on units to numbers in
higher places; but the use of different signs for the different ranks
clearly shows a want of full perception of the value of place as such. They
adopted the letter M as a sign for 10,000 and by combining this mark with
their other numerals they could note numbers as high as 100,000,000. The
Roman numerals, which are still used in marking dates or numbering
chapters, were almost useless for purposes of computation. From one to four
were represented by vertical strokes [I], [II], [III], [IIII], five by [V],
ten by [X], fifty by [L], one hundred by [square C], afterwards [C], five
hundred by [D], a thousand by [M]. These signs were derived from each other
according to particular rules, thus [V] was the half of [X], [inverted V]
being also used; [L] was likewise the half of [C]. [M] was artistically
written [M] and [cIc*] and [Ic*], afterwards [D], became five hundred.
[ccI] represented 5000, [ccIc*c*] 10,000, [Ic*c*c*] 50,000, [cccIc*c*c*]
100,000. They were also compounded by addition and subtraction, thus [IV]
stood for four, [VI] for six, [XXX] for thirty, [XL] for forty, [LX] for
sixty. Arithmetic is divided into _abstract_ and _practical_: the former
comprehends notation, numeration, addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division, measures and multiples, fractions, powers and roots; the latter
treats of the combinations and practical applications of these and the
so-called rules, such as reduction, compound addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division, proportion, interest, profit and loss, &c.
Another division is _integral_ and _fractional_ arithmetic, the former
treating of integers, or whole numbers, and the latter of fractions.
Decimal fractions were invented in the sixteenth century, and logarithms,
embodying the last great advance in the science, in the seventeenth
century.
ARITHMET'ICAL, pertaining to arithmetic or its operations.--_Arithmetical
mean_, the middle term of three quantities in arithmetical progression, or
half the sum of any two proposed numbers; thus 11 is the arithmetical mean
to 8 and 14.--_Arithmetical progression_, a series of numbers increasing or
decreasing by a common difference, as 1, 3, 5, 7, &c.--_Arithmetical
signs_, certain symbols used in arithmetic, and indicating processes or
facts. The common signs used in arithmetic are the following: [plus sign]
signifying that the numbers between which it is placed are to be added;
[minus sign] - that the second is to be subtracted from the first; [times
sign] that the one is to be multiplied by the other; [divide sign] that the
former is to be divided by the latter; [equals sign] signifies that the one
number is equal to the other; [proportional signs - colons] are the signs
placed between the members of a proportional series, as 4 : 6 :: 8 : 12. A
small figure placed on the right hand of another at the top signifies the
corresponding power of the number beside which it is placed, as 5^2, 4^3,
meaning the square of 5 and the cube of 4. [cube root] placed before or
over a number signifies the square root of that number; with a figure it
signifies the root of a higher power, as [cube root], which means cube
root. A period placed to the left of a series of figures indicates that
they are decimal fractions.
A'RIUS, the originator of the Arian heresy. See _Arians_.
ARIZO'NA, a former territory of the United States, admitted into the union
as a sovereign State on 14th Feb., 1912, is bounded south by Mexico, west
by California and Nevada (the River Colorado forming the greater part of
the boundary), north by Utah, and east by New Mexico; area, 113,956 sq.
miles. The surface is generally mountainous, but many fertile and
well-watered valleys lie between the ridges. Part of the surface consists
of deserts often entirely destitute of vegetation. The territory belongs to
the basin of the Colorado, which passes through a portion of it, besides
forming the boundary; while the Gila and Little Colorado, tributaries of
the Colorado, traverse it from east to west. The canyons of the Colorado
form a wonderful feature, the river flowing for hundreds of miles in a deep
rocky channel with walls rising perpendicularly to the height of 1500 to
6000 feet. In some parts timber is plentiful. The rainfall is small, and
irrigation has been employed for agricultural purposes. Large tracts of
elevated land have been found excellently adapted as pastures for sheep and
cattle. The territory is rich in copper, gold, silver, lead, and other
minerals, and mining is largely carried on, with much copper smelting and
refining. The capital is Phoenix. Pop. 29,053. The Southern and the Santa
Fe Pacific Railways traverse it. Pop. (1920), 333,903 (of which 171,468 are
white), exclusive of Apaches and other Indians on reservations (area,
29,017 sq. miles; pop. (1920), 42,400).
ARJISH DAGH, the loftiest peak of the peninsula of Asia Minor, at the
western extremity of the Anti-Taurus Range, 13,150 feet; an extinct
volcano; on the N. and N.E. slopes are extensive glaciers.
ARK, the name applied in our translation of the Bible to the boat or
floating house in which Noah resided during the flood or deluge; to the
floating vessel of bulrushes in which the infant Moses was laid; and to the
chest in which the tables of the law were preserved--the _ark of the
covenant_. This last was made of shittim-wood, overlaid within and without
with gold, about 3 3/4 feet long by 2 1/4 feet high and broad, and over it
were placed the golden covering or mercy-seat and the two cherubim. It was
placed in the sanctuary of the temple of Solomon; before his time it was
kept in the tabernacle, and was moved about as circumstances dictated. At
the captivity it appears to have been either lost or destroyed.
ARKANSAS (ar'kan-s[a:] or ar-kan'sas), one of the United States of America,
bounded north by Missouri; east by the Mississippi, which separates it from
the States of Mississippi and Tennessee; south by Louisiana and Texas; and
west by the Indian Territory and Texas; area, 53,335 sq. miles. The surface
in the east is low, flat, and swampy, densely wooded, and subject to
frequent inundations from the numerous streams which water it. Towards the
centre it becomes more diversified, presenting many undulating slopes and
hills of moderate elevation. In the west it rises still higher, being
traversed by a range of hills called the Ozark, which attains a height of
2000 feet, some peaks rising to 3000. In various parts the prairies are of
great extent; the forests also are extensive, principally of oak, hickory,
ash, cotton, linden, maple, locust, and pine. Coal and other minerals are
worked. The principal rivers, all tributaries of the Mississippi, are the
Arkansas, the Red River, the St. Francis, and the Washita. Near the centre
of the State are warm springs, much resorted to for chronic rheumatic and
paralytic affections. The climate is subject to great extremes of heat and
cold, and in the lower districts is unhealthy to new settlers. The staple
products are cotton and maize; fruit is tolerably abundant. Many districts
are admirably adapted for grazing, and great numbers of excellent cattle
are reared. Arkansas was colonized as early as 1685 by the French. As part
of Louisiana it was purchased by the United States in 1803. It was made
into a separate territory in 1819, and admitted into the Union in 1836. It
was one of the seceding States. The capital is Little Rock. The enumerated
population in 1920 was 1,750,995.
ARKANSAS, a river of the United States, which gives its name to the above
State, the largest affluent of the Mississippi after the Missouri. It rises
in the Rocky Mountains, about lat. 39deg N., long. 107deg W., flows in a
general south-easterly direction through Colorado, Kansas, the Indian
Territory, and lastly through the State of Arkansas, and after a course of
2170 miles enters the Mississippi. During greater part of the year it is
navigable for steamboats for 800 miles.
ARKITE. See _Explosives_.
ARK'LOW, a town in Ireland, County Wicklow, on the right bank of the Avoca,
which falls into the sea about 500 yards below the town; the scene of a
severe fight during the rebellion of 1798. Fishing is the chief industry.
Pop. 5042.
[Illustration: Arkwright's Water Frame]
ARK'WRIGHT, Sir Richard, famous for his inventions in cotton-spinning, was
born at Preston, in Lancashire, in 1732, died 1792. The youngest of
thirteen children, he was bred to the trade of a barber. When about
thirty-five years of age he gave himself up exclusively to the subject of
inventions for spinning cotton. The thread spun by Hargreaves' jenny could
not be used except as weft, being destitute of the firmness or hardness
required in the longitudinal threads or warp. But Arkwright supplied this
deficiency by the invention of the _spinning-frame_, which spins a vast
number of threads of any degree of fineness and hardness, leaving the
operator merely to feed the machine with cotton and to join the threads
when they happen to break. His invention introduced the system of spinning
by rollers, the carding, or _roving_ as it is technically termed (that is,
the soft, loose strip of cotton), passing through one pair of rollers, and
being received by a second pair, which is made to revolve with (as the case
may be) three, four, or five times the velocity of the first pair. By this
contrivance the roving is drawn out into a thread of the desired degree of
tenuity and hardness. His inventions being brought into a pretty advanced
state, Arkwright removed to Nottingham in 1768 in order to avoid the
attacks of the same lawless rabble that had driven Hargreaves out of
Lancashire. Here his operations were at first greatly fettered by a want of
capital; but two gentlemen of means having entered into partnership with
him, the necessary funds were obtained, and Arkwright erected his first
mill, which was driven by horses, at Nottingham, and took out a patent for
spinning by rollers in 1769. As the mode of working the machinery by
horse-power was found too expensive, he built a second factory on a much
larger scale at Cromford, in Derbyshire, in 1771, the machinery of which
was turned by a water-wheel. Having made several additional discoveries and
improvements in the processes of carding, roving, and spinning, he took out
a fresh patent for the whole in 1775, and thus completed a series of the
most ingenious and complicated machinery. Notwithstanding a series of
law-suits in defence of his patent rights, and the destruction of his
property by mobs, he amassed a large fortune. He was knighted by George III
in 1786.
ARLBERG ([.a]rl'ber_h_), a branch of the Rhaetian Alps, in the west of
Tyrol, between it and Vorarlberg, pierced by the fourth longest railway
tunnel in the world. It is 6 1/2 miles long, and was finished in Nov.,
1883, and connects the valley of the Inn with that of the Rhine, and the
Austrian railway system with the Swiss railways.
AR'LECDON, an urban district of England, in Cumberland, 4 miles east of
Whitehaven, with coal and iron mines. Pop. (1921), 5152.
ARLES ([.a]rl; ancient, AREL[=A]TE), a town of Southern France, department
Bouches du Rhone, 17 miles south-east of Nismes. It was an important town
at the time of Caesar's invasion, and under the later emperors it became
one of the most flourishing towns on the farther side of the Alps. It still
possesses numerous ancient remains, of which the most conspicuous are those
of a Roman amphitheatre, which accommodated 24,000 spectators. It has a
considerable trade, manufactures of silk, &c., and furnishes a market for
the surrounding country. Pop. 16,746.
AR'LINGTON, Henry Bennet, Earl of, member of the Cabal ministry, and one of
the scheming creatures of Charles II, born 1618, died 1685. He is supposed
to have lived and died a Roman Catholic.
AR'LON, a Belgian town, capital province of Luxemburg, a thriving town,
with manufactures of ironware, leather, tobacco, &c. Pop. 12,012.
ARM, the upper limb in man, connected with the thorax or chest by means of
the scapula or shoulder-blade, and the clavicle or collar-bone. It consists
of three bones, the arm-bone (_hum[)e]rus_), and the two bones of the
fore-arm (_radius_ and _ulna_), and it is connected with the bones of the
hand by the _carpus_ or wrist. The head or upper end of the arm-bone fits
into the hollow called the _glenoid cavity_ of the scapula, so as to form a
joint of the ball-and-socket kind, allowing great freedom of movement to
the limb. The lower end of the humerus is broadened out by a projection on
both the outer and inner sides (the outer and inner _condyles_), and has a
pulley-like surface for articulating with the fore-arm to form the
elbow-joint. This joint somewhat resembles a hinge, allowing of movement
only in one direction. The ulna is the inner of the two bones of the
fore-arm. It is largest at the upper end, where it has two processes, the
_coronoid_ and the _olecranon_, with a deep groove between to receive the
humerus. The radius--the outer of the two bones--is small at the upper and
expanded at the lower end, where it forms part of the wrist-joint. The
muscles of the upper arm are either _flexors_ or _extensors_, the former
serving to bend the arm, the latter to straighten it by means of the
elbow-joint. The main flexor is the _biceps_, the large muscle which may be
seen standing out in front of the arm when a weight is raised. The chief
opposing muscle of the biceps is the _triceps_. The muscles of the fore-arm
are, besides flexors and extensors, _pronators_ and _supinators_, the
former turning the hand palm downwards, the latter turning it upwards. The
same fundamental plan of structure exists in the limbs of all vertebrate
animals.